In an alternate world of shadow, steam, and danger, the future hinges on six individuals forming a new friendship.
An AU Equestria Girls fanfic.
In an alternate world of steam and gunpowder, the mysterious ruler known as Celestia is dead and the dark god Nightmare Moon has already sentenced half of Greater Everfree to the apocalypse. The future now depends on six strangers uniting before the world either falls into darkness or self-destructs.
Yet there are far greater forces at work than anyone realizes, and secrets far more terrible and destructive than any monster lie deep in the realms of eternal night. As the same power that brought the world to its knees becomes the means to fulfill the dreams of human ambition, what sort of future these six strangers will bring is called into question: a harmony of peace or a far greater cataclysm than the one currently facing the world.
Nightwatch: Prologue - On that Day Eight Years Ago
It was only an hour and three quarters to twelve by the time the steam-powered carriage reached the streets of Hoofheim.
Being above the arctic circle and in the land of the "midnight sun", the sun was still out although low on the horizon. Most of the residents had turned in regardless, leaving only a few still finishing up their extended day's business. Many stopped and marveled to see an honest-to-goodness, top-of-the-line steam-powered motored carriage pulled without the aide of a single horse or any other beast of burden. Only the very rich possessed such luxuries--and that wasn't merely speaking about the very rich in Hoofheim but in all of Greater Everfree. For Hoofheim, a city state whose geographic isolation had kept it free from the wars of the continent at the price of stunting its economy and trade to where only a single paved road ran through the middle of it, it was like seeing a foreign dignitary.
A stiff wind blew through the town and seized a bit of newspaper that had been discarded on the street. It drove it right into and through the one open window on the side of the carriage before depositing it in the lap of the one seated there.
A ten year old girl, dressed neatly and elegantly in a uniform of a fine boarding school, hands and nails washed, shoes polished, and not one hair out of place, reached took it up. It wasn't to read it, but rather to keep it from disturbing a vividly purple and green puppy whose head was currently resting on her lap as he dozed from the rhythm of the steam engine. Once that was done, she looked back out the window and smiled.
"Are you enjoying being home, Twilight?"
The girl turned her head back into the carriage. It was built for a long, comfortable journey. The seats were arranged around the center and were deep and cushioned. The windows were trimmed with elegant filigree and the walls etched with beautiful designs. Special systems kept it sealed from any of the coal vapor so that the air in it remained clean and fresh, and there were even compartments for holding food and drink.
All around her, asleep in various positions, were others dressed just like her aside from some variation for boys and girls. Including her there were seven in all. However, one other individual was still awake. It was hard to make her out with the curtains pulled, but it was an adult woman. Her own outfit was the same style as that of the children, only for a headmistress. Her long hair stretched over her shoulders and flowed down over her garment. Even in the dim light the girl marveled at how it seemed to glow with iridescence. Only in the deepest darkness did its true hue, a pink shade, come out. I've never seen hair like that! That had been her first thought on meeting her six years ago.
Yet the greatest part of her that stood out even now was her smile. That warm, inviting smile... The same one that dispelled all her doubt and nervousness ever since her first day.
Twilight smiled back and nodded. "I really do love Canterlot, but it feels so nice to be back! Look! There's the lightpole I used to tie ribbons around in May! And over there's Big Joe who ran the sweet shop where I got my favorite peppermint sticks! And right there! That's the grating where I found a five krone piece one day and I made a sticky string to fish it out with! Oh!" She turned to the window excitedly. "There's Sea Swirl's dog! She's gotten so big! And there’s the library!"
"You have a lot of happy memories here, don't you, Twilight?"
She nodded back eagerly. However, her enthusiasm soon faded into a frown. “But…it’s so far out of the way, Princ-”
The woman held up a finger to silence her. Twilight blushed.
“Sorry…Headmistress Celestia.”
“And it’s no bother, Twilight. I told you the whole reason for this summer trip was so that I could give every student a nice visit home. That includes you. And look.” She gestured outside. “We’re here right at the Summer Solstice. Even when we came in late, you can still see everything.”
Her face sank. “But all the others are from Manehattan, Cloudsdale, and Fillydelphia. You can get there in just a couple days from Canterlot. You had to go so far northwest for me…”
“It wouldn’t be fair to ignore taking you to your hometown when everyone else gets to visit theirs. Besides, Twilight, you’ve been gone the longest.”
Twilight stayed unhappy looking as she slumped back into her seat. Her hand gripped the newspaper a bit tighter. “That’s not the only thing.”
Celestia glanced down over the newspaper in her grip. While it was a bit battered, it was from that morning. And by now the wonder of telegraphs had sent the news throughout the entire continent of Greater Everfree to where it was a front page story not only on the papers of a backwoods nation like Hoofheim but everywhere.
CONTINENTAL SUMMIT OPENS TODAY
Celestia’s smile ebbed a little. “Twilight, I’ve told you before that I wish you would devote yourself completely to your studies. Don’t worry about things like this.”
“If you hadn’t had to come all the way to Hoofheim, you could be there right now.”
She waved a hand and smiled again. “Oh, there’s no need for anyone from Canterlot to go there anymore. We’re such a tiny nation that Equestria almost doesn’t even know we exist anymore; let alone any other nation. There’s nothing I can do there either. Don’t you fret about it.”
She reached out one of her hands, wrapped with a simple white dressing, and clasped it over the one holding onto the newspaper. It made the girl turn and look up to her. Her smile was so gentle and comforting the girl couldn’t help but feel better just at the sight of it.
“You just worry about taking the next few days off and relaxing with your family.”
“What about you and the others?”
“We’ll be in Hoofheim proper.”
“There aren’t many nice places to stay up here…”
She laughed. “We’ll manage. This country is plenty beautiful to make up for it, and I want to show them around to everything in them. Besides, I’ve stayed in these lands before, remember?”
She smiled a little. “Yeah, I guess I do,” she chuckled. Again, however, the smile faded. Her opposite hand, this one also wrapped with a simple white dressing, flexed slightly. “But…before I do…I was wondering…”
She trailed off as Celestia lightly pressed a finger to her lips. “I already told you, Twilight. The trip first. As soon as it’s over, I’ll answer anything you want to know about it and more. All you need to know right now is this is important.”
Twilight nearly opened her mouth to speak again but rapidly closed it, having long since learned not to mention anything about that to anyone else within earshot. That had been one of Celestia’s earliest lessons.
The two suddenly leaned forward; the tell-tale sign that the carriage was slowing to a stop. It halted soon after and Twilight looked out the window. They were right on the corner of her street. Even from here, the girl only needed to look down the street and up the hill to make out the roof of her house. Stopping awakened the puppy, who shook his head and yawned.
“Here we are. Are you ready?”
Twilight had been ready for hours. She rose now, taking her puppy with her and laying him on top of her bag before pulling up the straps to hold him in. The driver opened the carriage door, letting the midnight sun of Hoofheim spill in. One student stirred a little, but nothing else.
“Now I’ll be by tomorrow,” Celestia spoke as she started to walk to the door, “but we leave in four days. Don’t forget. We’ll be taking a boat all the way back to Mount Eris so we have to make sure to get there on time.”
“I won’t.” She took another step toward the door, but paused, causing Celestia to look up a little.
“Is something wrong?”
“It’s just…well, nothing.”
“No, what is it?”
The girl bowed her head and swallowed. “I…wish you were coming, headmistress. I’m alright with dad and mom and older brother, but…” She winced a little in embarrassment. “Ever since I got to the school…ever since I’ve been there on my own…I…I just…kind of felt like, well…like I…I had a…another…”
She trailed off.
“I mean to say how you used to…to…you’ve kind of felt like my...my…”
Finally, she sighed and shook her head, looking back up. “It’s-”
She cut herself off. Celestia’s smile was gone. She was staring at Twilight with wide eyes and her mouth hanging slightly ajar. The girl blanched. She winced and shook her head. “I…I didn’t mean it! S-Sorry! Forget I…”
She trailed off again, for in that next moment Celestia smiled again. It was far more wan this time. Fainter with an air of bitterness in it. Did she see a twinkle in her eye?
“Twilight.”
The girl straightened. This was the first time she had ever heard Celestia speak in that voice outside of the inner rooms. And it was the first time she had spoken it while smiling.
“Thank you. When this vacation is over, I will tell you everything.”
Now it was Twilight’s turn to let out a gasp, knowing what that meant.
“Now go on. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
The girl paused. She almost wanted to press, but the headmistress’ voice indicated the subject was closed for now. With that in mind, she gave a respectful bow, barely restraining from going to one knee even in the confines of the carriage, then turned. Soon she was passing out of the door and setting foot on the cobblestone street.
She stopped only to take a deep breath and then began to the sidewalk. She could see lights in her home's windows. She had been exchanging letters for weeks to prepare for her arrival. She told them she couldn’t wait to show them all what she had learned, to see how much taller her brother had gotten, and, of course, to prepare the house for a puppy.
A puppy…
She slowed to a halt at the realization. Spike’s dog treats. She had made some but they were too gooey so Celestia had them stored near the boiler to hopefully dry them out, and she had forgotten to get them. She quickly turned around, hoping to stop the carriage before it took off again.
“Headm-”
For a brief moment, she saw the carriage in all of its glory stretched out on the road.
A heartbeat later, it was consumed by a fiery explosion.
The force of the blast struck her; throwing her, her bag, and her dog into the dirt-packed side street. Spike landed in a patch of grass while her bag burst open and scattered items everywhere. She noticed none of that roughly skid to a halt on the street. Her eyes were still wide with the image of the fire and eruption. She immediately snapped up again as soon as she could.
All that was left of the carriage was a bit of the metal frame and a smoldering wheel slowly rolling off to the opposite side of the street. Everything else was a pillar of flame and smoke.
Gone. The treats…the carriage…her classmates…
The headmistress…
All gone.
She was unable to move even as the locals turned the lights on in their own houses. She was deaf to the calls for water and numb to the heat, ash, and the scrapes her body sustained. She only stared in apoplectic, abject horror. Her mind couldn’t grasp what she was seeing. She had been talking to the headmistress less than a minute ago… Less than thirty seconds ago… She saw her in her mind’s eye; not just here but all of the times over the past six years, especially in the inner rooms and whenever she tucked her in or read to her—just like her real mother would.
Tears started to gush from her eyes. Her throat tightened and she began to cry. She tore to her feet. Her puppy was forgotten as she wheeling around and dashed the rest of the way down the road. She didn't stop until she was charging up the front steps of her own house, and she made her hands into fists and pounded on it for all she was worth.
It didn’t take long for the door to open. The residents were already awake and the explosion only alerted them further. A middle-aged woman stepped into the frame and looked down, giving a start on seeing Twilight there; her cheeks streaming with tears and sobbing.
“Mom! She’s gone!”
Even as she cried this she dove forward and wrapped her arms around her dress tightly. Before long she heard the sounds of an older man get up and walk over to her as well, but she didn’t care. She kept clutching her and crying for all she was worth. She tried to talk but bitter, choked-up sobs were all that came out.
“What…what happened…?”
Twilight was too distraught to realize that the voice sounded disconnected. “We…we had just…just gotten to Hoofheim…and…and she let me off…and…I tried to go back for t-t-treats and…and…!” Even explaining it was too painful as she winced and began to sob again, once more clutching her mother’s dress and crying into it.
Yet in the middle of all of her sadness she began to realize something. Her mother wasn’t hugging her in support. She merely stood there, as immobile as a statue. Her crying ceased momentarily. Her tear-streaked face grew confused as she leaned back and looked up. Her mother was looking at her in total bewilderment and just a hint of unease. As for her father, he seemed to be uncomfortable as well. “I think she was in that carriage…” he mused aloud. “She must have just gotten out…”
The woman smiled slightly, although it was uncertain and weak, before she lightly put her hands on her shoulders. “Um…there, there, dear. It’ll be alright. Just take it easy.”
That didn’t comfort Twilight. “M…mom? Dad?”
Both looked even more uncomfortable. “Um…sweetie, why don’t you come in for a bit? My son is away right now. You can stay in his room and just lie down until-”
“No…” Twilight cut off, now taking a step back and pulling from her touch. “Mom, what are you doing? It’s me! It’s Twilight Sparkle!”
The man sighed. “Young lady, I think you’re confused… Please, just listen to what she says and lie down…”
The girl's eyes widened in horror a second time. She looked into the eyes of her parents and she could finally see what was running through their heads as they looked at her.
A stranger.
They don’t know who I am.
Her father looked up and behind her. “Over here. She was in that carriage. Somehow she got free. Maybe she was let out right before it happened.”
The girl spun around. A number of townsfolk were now approaching her; ones that had been awakened by the explosion. She recognized each and every one of them. Neighbors. Temple goers. Grocers. Gardeners. People she had shared times and memories with. People who she knew by name. They looked at her and saw the soot and scratches she had endured. Their faces filled with concern or pity or even gratefulness that she was alright.
Not one of them looked at her with recognition.
“That poor girl…she’s the only survivor.”
“Her mother might have been on that carriage.”
“Where did she come from? What is that uniform?”
That broke her. Suddenly she stepped forward and slapped a hand against her chest.
“Everyone!”
Her first word, frantic and desperate, made the crowd go silent.
“It’s me! It’s Twilight! I live here!” She pointed behind her. “This is my home! These are my parents!” She held her arms wide. “This is my town! What’s gotten into all of you? Why don’t you remember me?”
A few seconds of silence passed and everyone stared at her without looking away. Finally, two people turned to each other and began to murmur more quietly while staring at her. Others soon followed. Some shook their heads sadly while others nodded. She overheard a few voices saying things like “confused” and “poor girl”. Yet none of them ever recognized her.
Twilight's heart began to pound with fear. A sick, cold feeling was in her gut. She turned back but the man and woman there, the parents she knew, only recoiled from her slightly.
It was too much. She began to shake all over as she started to gasp. Her tiny hands, one clean and the other bandaged, grasped the sides of her head. She turned her head to the midnight sky in confusion and horror.
What’s happening to me?!
“Lord Torch of the Dragonlands.”
Torch walked into the inner chamber with his usual countenance: frowning and glaring at everyone. By now, everyone knew to ignore it except when trying not to give offense. Glare and glower as he might, it would take more than “saber rattling” to get his way here. Especially since there was more than enough of that to go around.
There had been multiple reasons for setting the Continental Summit not only within Equestria but far in the mountain regions in the proverbial “Castle of the Two Sisters”; one of the country’s most ancient and iconic landmarks. Equestria made up the central and greatest portion of Greater Everfree, so it gave no importance to any of its surrounding nations above another. The castle itself was geographically isolated even with recent advances in steam power and technology. Most of all, it was still the most powerful and yet peaceful of the nations about it; allowing it to retain its historical position of power broker.
And the inner room of the castle, warmly lit with a fireplace and a resplendent chandelier, now served as host to all of the continent’s major powers in what could have been its darkest hour.
At the moment, with all nations contributing equally to the guard throughout the castle, and all equally contributing to the palace guard in what was temporarily declared an apolitical zone, relations were warm and cordial. Even Commander Hurricane was smiling and sharing a laugh with Princess Platinum. Everyone there knew, underneath the surface, nothing was further from the truth. Even when the only squabbles and conflicts were between neighboring nations Greater Everfree had been an increasingly violent continent over the past 400 years. Many nations could outline their history of being nothing more than never-ending feuds between families for certain regions that changed ownership from one king to the next.
Times were changing, though. Steam power was everywhere. Rail lines ran freely across many international borders. The pursuit of land was now being supplanted by the pursuit of wealth. Gunpowder and its associated devices were growing more efficient all the time and the fires of industry were now burning in every corner of Greater Everfree. The “Industrial Revolution”. That was what they had named the past century and it was changing everything. The only thing that hadn’t changed was historical tensions, and with new means available it wouldn’t be long before something boiled over. And everyone knew it would be catastrophic.
That was why mere representatives wouldn’t suffice. It had to be stopped quickly before the next major war broke out.
Lord Torch wasted little time on greetings but rapidly moved to the large circular table in the center of the room. All other national leaders were already seated, letting the light of the large and conspicuous chandelier over their heads bathe each equally. As soon as he joined them, Queen Megara looked up with a pleasant smile from her beautiful countenance. As always, she treated these circumstances as far more happy and cordial than they truly were. “And now that we’re all here, we may finally begin. I’d like to start by thanking you all for accepting my invitation to have this summit, and I hope that we may all remain-”
“I believe we exchanged sufficient pleasantries at dinner, your majesty. I prefer to go straight to the point,” King Grover interjected. He immediately looked further down the table. “Queen Novo, Griffonstone immediately requests that if we are to go to war with the neighboring nations that Mount Eris refuses to allow any shipments from Appleloosa to go any farther west than Griffonstone.”
Several members of the delegation went wide-eyed at the outlandish suggestion, and so early in talks. Commander Hurricane and General Firefly alike both grit their teeth in anger while King Platinum himself was slack-jawed. Chancellor Puddinghead nearly fell out of his chair. “Wh…why King Grover, surely you’re not trying to dictate who we ship our land’s produce to, are you?”
“I don’t recall asking anything of you on the subject, chancellor. Mount Eris’ territory is the only land route to the west that doesn’t run through Equestria, and we’re tired of having to rely on them as an intermediary. Give us a deal on tariffs and we’ll be more than happy to rely on you exclusively for foodstuffs from now on.”
“Completely outrageous,” Platinum snorted. “You’re just trying to control the main agricultural supply routes. That would help you quite a bit in an armed conflict, would it not? Seal off the west from receiving sustenance when you invade.”
“Protecting our interests is all. Besides, if you converted so much of your pasture and cropland into factories to where you can’t even feed yourselves, that’s short-sightedness on your part.”
“Make a move to isolate the trade of Mount Eris, and you can consider that an affront to Cloudsdale,” Commander Hurricane interjected. “We’ll halt any attempt you make to try.”
“Is that a threat for military action, commander?”
“I merely said we’ll halt any attempt you make. If you feel sufficiently strong to see firsthand what that will entail…”
“And I most certainly would never stand for any attempt to restrict our overland trade,” Puddinghead spoke up. “We sell to whom we wish. We would join against any attempt by Mount Eris to construct a blockade.”
“I don’t mean to break up what seems to be a conversation between you men,” the queen spoke up with an edge on her voice, “but I don’t believe I ever consented to King Grover’s desire or refused it.” She turned to Puddinghead. “And I don’t appreciate you threatening me before I have had a chance to say yes or no. On our part, we ask Appleloosa to remain neutral in any and all events.”
He scoffed. “Are you suggesting that we just allow all of you to decide what we do with our land’s own produce, as if we were not entitled to our own fields?”
“You may do whatever you like, so long as you have a sufficiently strong army to assert your dominion. Ours is strong enough to take some of that land for ourselves, if necessary.”
“I’ve noticed,” Platinum spoke up, “which is precisely the reason I am asking Trottingham to cease shipyard lumber shipping to Mount Eris.”
Now it was Novo’s turn to look shocked, while Prime Minister Cobblestone rose in alarm. “What…?”
“We’re a bit concerned of the size of your navy. As King Grover has suggested, all overland routes need to move through you or Equestria to reach the west. There are some concerns a naval blockade might not be far in the future.” He looked up to Cobblestone. “In exchange, we are fully prepared to start supplying you with the latest in firearms. We understand in that capacity you are a bit, shall we say, ‘backward’.”
Novo’s teeth clenched. “How dare you…”
Cobblestone didn’t get a chance to respond as Torch slammed a fist against the table. “Exchange of arms was stated at our last conference to constitute formation of a military treaty, Princess. Does your statement mean you intent to form an intercontinental alliance?”
“And what if it does?”
“Then the Dragonlands might as well declare war on Trottingham right now. We won’t allow a potentially hostile party to take root on our doorstep. Certainly not one that will give Manehattan easy access to a land invasion.”
By now, Queen Megara’s face had sunk. While she had successfully organized the conference, it had only been the first of many. And they were growing progressively less fruitful and more uncivil. The talks had barely begun and all modicums of civility and decorum had already been thrown out the window. She held a hand to the bridge of her nose.
This isn’t going-
Her thoughts were cut off as the ceiling imploded.
A sound like a thunderclap rang from the center of the chamber and the grand chandelier was hurtled down into their midst. It wasn’t alone. The ceiling of the grand castle broke free and was cast down with it, smashing the table under a deluge of debris. Everyone immediately shot out of their chairs, even Puddinghead, and backed away as quickly as they could.
What they saw next was even more shocking. Instead of crashing in with a pile of rubble and dust, the wood, stone, paneling, and décor, to say nothing of the grand chandelier, was smashed completely flat over the ruins of the table. It was like a great invisible piston suddenly ground it into dirt and all in the span of an instant. All that survived was a few broken fragments and flat space around it.
The air gave a second noise. It sounded, strangely enough, almost like an inverted thunderclap. Like the air was expanding where it previously had a void rather than rushing into a newly made one. A ray of blackness slammed down on the flat space that had just been made. Rapidly, it expanded outward into a black sphere, and radiated a moment before collapsing back in on itself. The thunderous noise crackled one last time and vanished.
The entire room was silent and still. Delegates and guards alike were frozen in a mixture of shock and genuine fear. No one had noticed that the blackness had caused both fires to snuff out. There was no light in the chamber anymore save through the new opening. The full moon shone down a pale, silvery light over the flattened area and its new arrival.
It slowly rose to its feet. The sound of interlocking plates of armor rang through the silence of the chamber. At first, it seemed to have a great black cape made of feathers so dark that they looked like a unified mass. On standing, the people let out a unified gasp on seeing it shift of its own accord; revealing itself to be giant ebony wings. The figure itself was clad in armor from head to toe: sharp, gleaming, beautiful, and cold. The shape was distinctly feminine. The helmet was ridged and cruel with a single spire rising up from the middle like a horn. The face was visible, though. Her skin was as black as her wings and her long hair spilled out behind her headpiece. It had points of light within it that gleamed in the wan moonlight, as if it was nothing but a sky of stars.
The figure took in three breaths through her nostrils; each one long, deep, and audible. She opened her eyes and caused those gathered to give another start, for they were not only serpentine but vivid, green, and shone like lights in the darkness. Her expression was emotionless as she looked about the chamber. Her eyes slowly moved over every representative and guard.
Only now did Queen Megara finally find the strength to swallow. “Ex…excuse me…?”
The eyes of the woman flicked to her like a viper that saw the warmth of a mouse. She cringed but somehow she found her voice. “Who…who are you?”
The dark lady smiled. “My name is Nightmare Moon. However…”
The wings extended. Without even flapping them, the dark lady rose into the air as if suspended by invisible ropes. Everyone gasped at that, but more so when the shadow she left behind turned blacker yet and began to etch lines and patterns into the floor beneath her. In moments, it was complete--a black sigil.
She extended one of her hands and each armored digit on them over it. Black flames, like “negative” fires, erupted from the mark.
The entire Castle of the Two Sisters, in a single instant, exploded.
A pillar of black, shadowy fire erupted from within the innermost part of the structure; annihilating the room, the surrounding rooms, and all floors up and down. Only the outer walls weren’t instantly eradicated, but they were still blasted apart. Chunks of masonry tore into the outer guard, smashing them into jelly as it rolled over them or ripping them asunder like cannonball fire.
Only the ones on the outskirts set to patrol the woodlands were spared; left to gape at the ghastly horror that was the spire of black flame—knowing their own leaders and comrades had been devoured by it. A shockwave ripped over the mountainside and a deafening boom echoed for dozens of miles. And when all died down, the pillar of black fire continued to burn rising like a furnace from the abyss.
The survivors were left to stare at the warmthless, lightless flame. After some time, one of them, captivated by a mixture of fear but also puzzlement and wonder, felt bold enough to look out from the forest for a closer look. He watched the black flames dance without dying for a moment, but saw no more.
Tentatively, he moistened his lips and stepped closer yet, fully out onto the grass.
An instant later, a creature looking like a twisted shadow of a great wildcat, deformed to the point where it no longer resembled any animal of the world, erupted from the flames. It sailed through the air, straight toward the man, and on landing promptly tore his head off.
The other guards had little chance to be shocked over that death as dozens of similar beasts burst out of the same blackness. Hundreds followed afterward, and thousands after that. Each one sought its mark and killed with one strike. Some were clustered enough together and were able to stop screaming long enough to raise their weapons to defend themselves, but shooting the monsters was like shooting shadows. Bullets and blades alike sailed harmlessly through them before they tore into the survivors. In moments, it was over. All remaining members of the delegations were gone.
The abominations kept pouring out of the fire. The black flames slowly diminished at the price of giving rise to more of them. They spread out and filled the field about the ruins of the castle. At last, the black flames died enough to expose the dark lady again; still hovering exactly where she had stood when she unleashed her death.
Her armored hand extended to the surrounding land.
“Go forth. Kill. Bathe the world in my fires of darkness. Let all be turned to a beautiful, wondrous, complete night. Form the womb for the new world that it may begin to grow.”
The beasts of blackness set out to a one; looking for more prey.
There is a world where a princess and her friends create a land of everlasting friendship and harmony.
There is a world where this same girl and her friends laugh and play as they attend a common high school.
There are other worlds than these, and this is one that has now changed forever.
“Starlight!” A pause, before more angrily: “Starlight! Starlight, get over here!”
The sound of panting echoed up the stairwell of the farmhouse-turned-center-of-business. Not long after, a purple-haired woman in a pair of rounded spectacles with a crack in the lenses, a shabby secondhand suit, and an arm band bearing an emblem of a griffon, quite out of breath and nearly stumbling, stumbled to the top. She emerged into the main “office” of the manager for the local branch of the Hayseed Agricultural Company: a rather fancy name given to a mundane business that had somehow managed to live by filling in niches left in the scars of the Lunar Fall.
The office itself was nothing more than an old attic space that had been repainted and paneled, leaving just enough room for a desk, chairs, and a few other office furnishings in front of a circular window. There were two people already in there. One was the head teamster for that branch office. The other was the manager himself. The former of the two had far less enthusiasm about her job than Starlight did, which even then was far greater than the last wage-earning employee had possessed before she quit. The manager, on the other hand, was a gruff, scowling, impatient, and unlikeable man all around. And he gave Starlight the same look he always did when she showed herself.
“Where in the world have you been? I expected you back up here with last month’s records and hour ago!”
The records in question were currently in a sizeable, only semi-organized stack in her arms as she struggled to catch her breath. “Sorry, sir… The last secretary left them in such a mess and I’ve been trying to get them sorted out since-”
“I didn’t ask for your excuses! I told you to bring me something an hour ago and you didn’t bring it! That’s an hour off for today!”
Starlight clenched her teeth, having long since learned that looking shocked about it or protesting was useless, as she hobbled to his desk and set them down.
“Now listen up. Hayworth here tells me that we’re running a deficit of over 3,000.”
“Well, in all honesty, I’m not surprised, sir. I warned you a while ago that if we don’t have all the bookkeeping tallied at the end of each week we were going to-”
“You getting a smart mouth with me, you Griffonstone import?”
Starlight clenched her teeth again but stayed silent. “No, I’m only saying…”
“I didn’t pay you to ‘say’ anything except what I ask for. Get your ass down to the distributors and tell ‘em I want this sorted out now. You get them to drag up every transaction we have and you get that taken care of.”
“Sir, isn’t this the accountant’s job?”
“Pft. That turncoat walked out yesterday saying she was getting a better offer from Golden Harvest. As if anyone could outsell us… Anyway, you’ve seen enough of the books and you lent a hand last harvest season. It shouldn’t be too hard for you to pick it up and take care of it.”
Cheaper too… She nearly muttered. “I don’t even know what her systems were like. This’ll take me a little time…”
“A little time? And you expect me to go to our clients and tell them to just sit around and wait to see if we stole 3,000 dollars from them? Use your head! I thought you were supposed to be smart!”
By now, Starlight was struggling not to quiver.
“You get out there and you get it hammered out and you get it hammered out today! You’ve got an hour to make up anyway now.”
Starlight had to take a deep breath before she said the next part. “Well…technically, sir…since this is something so important, I think it would be best if you went in person to the distributors and explained the situation…”
“You back-talking me now? You want me to get your visa revoked or something, Starlight? Just say the word and I’ll do it today.”
She sighed. She got that threat at least three times a week—the ultimate whip that could always keep her in line. Normally she wouldn’t even bother protesting as much as she had, but it was sundown…
With a very tired look, she straightened out her suit jacket and turned around. “I’ll head out there immediately, sir…”
“That’s more like it,” he snorted as he sat back down and reached for the books. “And by the way, so you won’t have to make this up too, you can just take the trip out of tomorrow’s lunch break.”
It was a good thing her back was already turned, because Starlight’s teeth really did bare this time. “You’re too kind, boss…”
Within five minutes, Starlight Glimmer was making her way out of the front doors and down the road. She had paused only to grab the matching hat for her secondhand suit. It helped her maintain at least some air of professionalism. Goodness knew, with her arm band properly displayed for all in the community to see, she had a hard enough time looking the way.
She walked rather briskly, not so much due to her boss’ thinly-veiled threat but the fact the sun was getting very close to the horizon and she fully intended to stop to grab some food on the way. If she wasn’t going to get to sit down to eat in peace today, she could at least enjoy her stroll. The weather was nice. There were only a scant few clouds in the sky, something everyone in town feared like ravens at an ill man’s bedside, and the sun was shining for now.
So long as it wasn’t inconveniencing them, few people paid much attention to weather nowadays. Fillydelphia certainly didn’t unless it was cloudy. And if they did look at the sky, they, like Starlight was doing now, made sure to keep their eyes away from the Northeast.
It was unusual to see so much commerce in a town so close to the Equestrian borders nowadays; even if prior to eight years ago it had been built up with paved roads, three story buildings, and gaslighting down several of the streets. There were many towns like this near the border that were now empty and left only for the dead. This one still functioned partially due to being one of the last communities on an east-west trade route as well as being close to Fillydelphia proper; only ten miles north of it. If the Lunar Fall had never happened, a railroad would have been built with the township as a major station. All plans for that had long since been scrapped, however. And while many of the residents stayed there (out of livelihood from running the various companies and guilds rather than bravery), the place had changed.
Starlight passed by several buildings that were boarded up and left in a state of indefinite closure and/or disrepair. Signs with guidelines for what to do in the case of an emergency as well as to remember to practice the alarm drills at home with families were posted everywhere. The next block had homes with well-trimmed and tended gardens bordered by ones that had been left wild for some time. Many of the roads had large cracks and potholes in them, even in the more urban areas such as the one that Starlight now walked down, and the gaslighting didn’t work in a quarter of town. On the next block, she saw a large area of the road had been excavated when the residents were forced to fix the city’s plumbing themselves. No public works officials from Fillydelphia would come there now. They always said they would, of course, but always something would come up where they didn’t have budget or were needed elsewhere.
The real reason, of course, was the same reason the manager wasn’t doing this errand himself
As she passed into the main thoroughfare, where horse-drawn wagons pulled goods to and fro, she was sufficiently insulated from the northwest. Many people like her walked in the open and even children felt safe enough to play on the sidewalks. They were even turning on the lights as the evening approached. The far majority, however, especially those who were conducting business or errands, wore the same griffon arm bands. Most of them had far shabbier clothing than Starlight. Two hadn’t had a haircut in a while and were wearing shirts made from sackcloth. Another looked like she hadn’t seen two meals a day in a long time. Even the most diligent of them had a hollow, worn-out look.
They had more reason to fear the Northeast than anyone, and yet they also had more reason than anyone to be there.
“Oh Starlight!”
She looked up and saw a man, donned in a tweed jacket even more worn out than hers with an old, rusted, pressurized tank on his back and a box full of deflated balloons on his front walking down the street, waving at her.
“You’ve got to hit up the store on Maredisan and 2nd. They got tea in today and who knows when they’ll get it again.”
“Oh really? Thanks for the info!”
He nodded before turning and beginning to call out his balloons for sale, while Starlight slowed a bit in her step. The truth was the township rarely got goods that the various store proprietors wouldn’t get for themselves from cities in the interior and bring back. It hadn’t seen tea bags for sale in close to eight months. She knew her boss was continuously short-changing her, and stopping to eat, drink, or buy would only be more time she’d have to make up later, but the store the shabby man mentioned was closer to the Northeast and night was approaching, which was why it likely hadn’t sold out yet. The chance to get tea again was too much. In the end, she made a turn on the next street.
The area changed again as she walked along. The errand runners gave way to members of Fillydelphia’s military. They were spotty at first, in groups of two marching about on various duties, but it wasn’t long before Starlight was keeping to one side of the sidewalk with her head low as entire regiments of them marched along. A bit further, and not one but two wagons passed her filled with more soldiers. She risked looking up into the back of them when they passed. They were all new recruits. The draft age had been lowered to 15 by the looks of them. And they all looked every part how a kid would who realized they were likely being sent to their deaths. Some of them barely seemed to know what to do with the rifles in their hands.
When she reached a junction, she turned to head to the Northwest instead while the wagons went on to the Northeast. The road was a straight shot, but try as she might not to look at it she caught it in her peripheral vision. A mile from there was the current border of “No Man’s Land”. She had been to it only three weeks ago, despite the prohibition of Griffonstone refugees (even ones from the Sire’s Hollow area).
She saw the blockhouse that had been erected, and beyond it the walls hastily constructed of whatever rubble was available to mortar together; whether it be boulders, building chunks, or even pavement. She saw four different placements for the new rapid-fire guns that used spring loading to eject shells and insert new ones, so that you could just keep shooting with the same weapon and spray the battlefield. Most of all, she saw the forest growing thick just across the barrier and beyond that the darkening skies over Northwest Fillydelphia and Equestria. They said they gradually gave way to everlasting night if you went far enough into it, although there was no way anyone could know for sure. After all, no one had ever gone there and come back alive.
Soon it vanished behind buildings again. A bit further and the soldiers gave way to townsfolk again, and beyond that kids started to come out once again. It was then that she caught something new.
Up ahead there were a number of individuals with arm bands, children, and even a native citizen clustered around the sidewalk. In the current state of Greater Everfree, street performers were far from uncommon, but few came out that close to Equestria. And fewer yet drew in those kinds of crowds at this time of day. Starlight, her curiosity piqued, made out an old crate on the pavement to act as a form of table, and a purple and green dog making the rounds with an old hat in his teeth.
Standing behind the crate was a young woman, dressed in a simple purple sleeved cape made to look like a magician’s over a set of normal clothing. A carved stick that must have been her “wand” was in one hand. As Starlight drew nearer, she saw that she had five cards spread out in front of her.
The dog finished and returned to the young woman’s side. Removing the hat from his mouth, she turned to the others. “Ok! Who wants to volunteer?”
Three different kids raised their hands. She pointed to one. “You had your hand up first, so come on up!”
The child cheered as he approached.
“Now say your name for the audience.”
“Pop Fly.”
“And we’ve never met before, have we Pop Fly?”
“Nope.”
“Alright then, pick a card!”
The boy looked down, carefully considered his option, and finally drew one.
“Now show it to the audience!”
He held it up and showed it to the crowd without letting the girl see, including Starlight. She snorted at the whole thing; having seen many card tricks before and guessing how this would work. Nevertheless, she kept watching as he put it back down with the others.
“Ok, now stand back.”
The boy quickly stepped back and the rest of the audience retreated as well. The young woman smiled and held up her wand.
“Everyone ready?” She held her wand out over the cards and began to wave over them. “Hocus pocus, figgledy fam, arazzamatazz…and alakazam!”
She tapped the chosen card with the wand, and instantly it was incinerated by a spurt of flame. Starlight actually did look up a little at that. Phosphorous paper? She knew of it in professional magic shows. It easily allowed this sort of thing. Most street performers couldn’t afford it, however…
The smoke from the fire endured in the air longer than it should have. It condensed into a thin wisp and seemed to trace in a swirl down and around to the dog, though Starlight quickly figured she imagined it. At the same time, the young woman held out her hand to his muzzle.
A moment later, the dog made a bit of a gyration and then opened his mouth. The card fell down into her hand—whole, entire, and the same as had been chosen.
The audience let out a chorus of “oohs” and “aahs”. The kids gasped in delight. A chorus of applause went out soon after. As for Starlight, her eyes had widened and her jaw hung loose. She actually stopped dead in her tracks.
After a time, she forced herself to look onward and walked again. “That’s…quite the trick. Don’t think I’ve ever seen one like that before…” she muttered to herself.
As a matter of fact, it continued to weigh on Starlight’s mind the rest of the way. She didn’t even look at the town or the people in it again all the way to the store on the corner, or react to the fact that news of the tea had to have gotten out as there was already a line of people out the door there. Even when the town’s naturalized citizens joined the line and ordered her, along with every other armband-wearing individual, to move down so that they could get in front of them, she kept puzzling over it.
The line eventually did wear down, and at last Starlight left the store with her purchases in hand. She was in luck. The sun was touching the horizon and the interior of the unlit store was already getting so dark she could barely see inside. No sooner had she walked onto the street, however, than the city’s clock tower chimed the top of the hour. She winced, knowing it had been half past when she left, and sighed hopelessly. Since she’d be late either way, two more minutes wouldn’t hurt, so she elected to move to a nearby public bench to take a load off. She didn’t mind that the street remained unlit, both from the gaslighting as well as the various windows and edifices. There hadn’t been an attack since the Lunar Fall and that was eight years ago.
As soon as she sat down, she exhaled in relief and began to pull her shoes off to give her feet some small relief.
“Hey miss?”
Starlight looked up, thinking she was the one being addressed, only to find herself looking at the line stretching out of the corner store (somewhat shorter now as various residents gave up with the onset of sundown). She gave a start on seeing that the young woman who performed the street magic was now standing in it with her dog at her side. A local citizen was behind her looking cross and impatient.
She turned to her uncertainly. “Um, yes?”
“Move up the line, already. I need to be done here in five minutes if I’m going to make it back.”
“Move up…?” She saw numerous people still in front of her. “I’m sorry, but…I’m at the back of the line…”
She rolled her eyes before pointing at the arm band on the one in front of her. “See that?”
“Er, yes?”
“Anyone like that you can just push by. You can skip a good dozen spots.”
“I’m not sure I understand…”
She groaned. “What’s there to understand? You see one in front of you, you get priority. You can jump up toward the front of the line.”
“But they were here before me…”
“Who cares? Just get in front of them!”
She looked confused. “Um, isn’t that unfair?”
Letting out a groan of disgust, she shoved forward and the young woman yiped as she shoved her to one side before doing the same to the next few people in line. “Forget it, just get out of my way too. Figures they’d get tea in the same day some nut is crazy enough to come to this town and get in line…”
The dog growled at her, but did no more. The young woman herself was left standing open mouthed, but she looked more surprised when the people shoved aside simply frowned and got back in line. She stared at them a moment before looking at the nearest one. “Um, excuse me, but…didn’t she just cut in front of you?”
“Sure did,” she sighed tiredly.
The young woman blinked. “And…you’re not mad about that?”
“Sure am.”
That only confused her more. “I’m not sure I-”
She was cut off as a sharp series of cracks went off over the cityscape. Yelping again, she cringed and pulled away from the direction they had come from—the Northeast. The dog whined, tucked his tail between his legs, and pressed against the ground. No one else on the street paid it any mind. The line indifferently moved one step forward.
The sounds continued to repeat for several moments before cutting off, but she remained cringing. At this point, Starlight half-smiled. “You’re not used to being this close to the borders of Equestria, are you?”
She looked at her but continued to shield herself.
“Relax. That happens a couple times a day. They’re just putting down some Nighttouched is all. If it was the Light Eaters, they’d sound an alarm all over town.”
On hearing this, she slowly eased and rose. She smiled nervously as she wiped her forehead, while her dog got up more cautiously. “Oh, uh…heh…thanks. I…guess people living this close to Equestria are…kind of used to this by now…”
“You can tell pretty quick who’s from around here and who’s not, although that guy was right. It’s been a while since anyone who’s not from here was dumb enough to come to town.” A pause. “No offense.”
“Er, none taken.”
“What does bring you to this part of the world?”
“Oh, uh…” The young woman hesitated. Her lips tightened as she ran a hand over the back of her neck, before she looked to one side regretfully. “To be honest? I just go wherever I can nowadays…”
“Wherever you can?”
“A lot of towns don’t really care for street performers. And after the Lunar Fall, a lot of them don’t like seeing things that seem weird…”
Starlight scoffed. “Oh, I can definitely understand that. Sure didn’t take much to get mankind superstitious all over again, did it? And I can definitely understand trying to find some place you’re wanted. Those can be a luxury, can’t they?”
She looked up again, only now noticing the arm band on Starlight’s own limb. “Say, what are those things any…” She trailed off. “Wait, that’s an emblem of a griffon. As in the crest for Griffonstone?”
Starlight sighed. “Yup.”
Her eyes widened more. “Then that means…”
“You got it.”
She winced uncomfortably. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to-”
“Don’t sweat it. It’s not like Regent Gruff is doing any of us any favors toward getting us home. And honestly most of us don’t have our old homes to go back to anyway. Either way, you get used to it after…what is it now…eight years?”
She kept her head bowed. “I know that’s not true…”
Starlight stared back silently. For a moment, a shadow of pain passed over her own face. Yes, she was quite correct. One didn’t ever get quite used to it no matter how much time passed. However, for her to know that…
“So are you a refugee too? From where? Former Fillydelphia?”
She looked up and put a finger to her lips insistently. The spectacled woman paused but complied. From her position on the bench and the young woman’s position in line, to say nothing of everyone having their own issues to deal with, it seemed no one else had heard that. The sun was finally sinking under the horizon and even whispering about things like that after dark was enough to elicit superstition. However, she rose from the bench and moved closer so she could speak more quietly.
“Wow, just…just wow. You…you were actually there?”
She shook her head. “No. I was on a trip when the Lunar Fall happened.”
Starlight eased, looking almost disappointed. “Oh…oh, yes…of course. I mean, obviously.” Seeing that the young woman noticed her expression, she grinned sheepishly. “I’m sorry, no offense again. I just thought for a moment that I met someone who actually got out of Equestria after it happened. I should have known there’d be no survivors…” Another pause. “And…there I go sticking my old shoe in my mouth again.”
That last comment had seemed to shake up the young lady quite a bit, but after taking a deep breath she forced out a sigh. “It’s…it’s fine.”
“But still, even seeing someone from Equestria nowadays is amazing. I mean…”
More of the repeating gunfire went off, filling the air with crackling. Starlight sighed and stopped talking, waiting patiently for it to subside before resuming. This time, however, it was followed up by a second round. A third came afterward and kept going until she realized that it had to have been reloaded. She looked up. “What in the world are they shooting at out-”
She cut herself off, as did every man, woman, and child in the township at that moment. Everyone forgot about their businesses, their errands, tea, vouchers that showed a deficit, and everything else in that very second.
The sirens to the Northeast began to blare.
There was a collective moment in which everyone in the town was fully paralyzed at that sound. In the next moment, chaos broke. The children on the street began to scream in terror. The people in the line broke and ran back out into the streets. Starlight and the young woman were far enough to avoid it, but one near the door frame was cast to the ground and trampled. Even that wasn’t fast enough for others in the store, who proceeded to break through the window and pour out through the open frame.
Far up the road, the wagons bearing soldiers were whipped into a gallop to take the rest of the soldiers to the Northeast. However, they barely got up to speed before half of the recruits in the second began to jump out of the back, throw away their weapons, and run as fast as they could. Soon after, citizens and refugees alike, clutching what few possessions they had enough bravery to stop and collect, burst from their homes and ran along with everyone else.
The young woman turned to Starlight. “That’s…that’s that alarm you mentioned, isn’t it?”
She didn’t answer. The color had drained from her face. After a moment longer, she looked back to the young woman as the mob began to rush around them, threatening to knock them over as well. “You need to get moving to the Southwest. Now. Don’t stop for anything. Keep going until you can’t walk anymore.”
She looked confused, but Starlight no longer had time to worry about the life of a stranger she had just met. Leaving the tea behind, she turned and bolted the same way everyone else was. Her old hat flew off of her head but she didn’t even glance over her shoulder. She left it to be trampled by the growing crowds.
With the sun fully down, and every remaining light in the township rapidly being doused, it was hard to see anything. People ran into each other and nearly bowled each other over fleeing. Heaven help anyone who stepped out from their home into the flood. She barely made it a block before she saw the more seasoned recruits of the Fillydelphia military running the opposite way, fighting against the flow to try and join the front line. More gunshots echoed over the landscape. By now, all four of the batteries had to be firing along with the rifles. She made it halfway down the next block when the cannon fire began to erupt. That made the crowd more frantic and run even harder.
Some wardens emerged at the end of the second block and began to direct people, whirling noisemakers instead of torches in one hand and shouting at them over the screams to try and corral them, but it was useless. They were ignored or trampled as frantically as the civilians were. All of the civil drills that had been run, all of contingencies they made to relocate people to blockades and safe areas, all of the secure routes to take—all forgotten.
Starlight was no better. She had seen a Light Eater before… And she and everyone else knew while the survival rate of an attack by Nighttouched breaching a barrier varied from 25 to 65 percent, no one survived the Light Eaters once they saw you.
The crowds began to thin out a bit further from the boundary zone. It kept any further tramplings from happening. Some lights had been left burning here, but all tried to stay out of their glow. It was just as she was getting enough room to run easier that Starlight and the crowds around her heard the first screams. And she, foolish as she was, turned like so many others to look.
A dark haze hung above the crowds a block behind her. She realized quickly it wasn’t smoke. The birds, the ones that had abandoned that part of Fillydelphia so long ago, had returned, but they were no longer the birds that anyone remembered. Their brilliant and colorful plumage had turned to shades of murk and night. Their eyes gleamed yellow like tiny candle fires—the only light in the closing darkness. And she saw as they went down again and again, causing screams from the crowds.
Starlight looked back; panic doubling her speed. The memory of the last time she saw a flock of Nighttouched birds still lingered in her mind. How they acted like one mind as they swarmed over people, pecking and tearing until there was nothing left but bones. The scariest part was that was the desired outcome. No one had ever heard of one who survived a Nighttouched wound, but based on what happened to these songbirds and countless others…
Screaming went off at her sides. The breath caught in her throat as she looked and gasped. The rats of the city, or perhaps a legion from the forest that had infiltrated the drainage channels, were emerging from the sewers. Each one had turned black and their formerly red eyes now gleamed yellow. They swarmed over the legs of the people to the side of her. Screams followed as they faltered, and no one dared help them up again. Like Starlight, they only ran harder and tried to stay in the center of the road.
She didn’t run much farther before she halted along with everyone else nearby. The city was cloaked in blackness for the most part now and that made it easy to see a hoard of tiny yellow eyes in the middle of the road ahead. That was all anyone could see but that was more than enough. No one would risk going through them. And as they surged forward Starlight lost the last of her reason and simply ran away in whatever direction she could as fast as she could.
She wasn’t sure what happened over the next few minutes. Sometimes she would turn, especially if she heard screams (or other noises) in the road ahead of her, but everywhere she went led to darkness. What little lights were still in the city were mostly the eyes of the Nighttouched, and she fled from anything that had the slightest twinkle. Run, run, run…that was the only emotion or thought on her mind. Get away. Get as far away as possible.
It wasn’t until exhaustion forced her to slow that her wits returned and she realized, much to her further unease, that she was now quite alone. She didn’t know how. In the chaos, people could have split off gradually or perhaps met a less wholesome fate. What more, she was in an unfamiliar part of the city. While the sky was clear enough, the moon wasn’t out and she could only make out the vague outline of buildings. Screams, gunfire, and bestial noises continued to echo over the cityscape, but none of them were near her. It was hard to tell if that was a blessing or a curse.
Suddenly, she cried out as her foot caught something and she fell to the ground. Instinctively her hands went out and skidded on pavement, making her wince, but scrapes on her palms were nothing compared to what the monsters could do to her. It allowed her to feel the ground in front of her, and she realized it was the sidewalk stone. She looked up and around again. Very vaguely against the night sky she made out the outline of buildings on three sides. She had reached a cul-de-sac.
That made her more fearful. She quickly got up and turned to go back the way she came, but she skid to a halt on hearing screams from a ways ahead and around a corner. It was too dark. She could walk right into a swarm of Nighttouched or one of the larger ones. Instead, she turned back and stepped on the pavement. Extending her hands in front of her, she reached forward until she felt a building wall. She moved along it until she found the indentation of a doorway and reached for the handle. However, on testing it she found it locked. She swore and tried to find a different opening. Even if this was an abandoned part of town, she had no choice now but to hide.
She had just reached the second door and began to try it when a fiery glow momentarily illuminated the door frame clearly. Rather than feel happy about that she gave a horrified gasp. She wheeled around and saw the source. Mounted ten feet in the air, one of the gas lamps was flickering around the tiny pilot light. Her breathing had slowed enough for her to hear the hiss of leaky gas. Every so often it sputtered and flared up briefly as an illuminating beacon.
Starlight began to shake violently. She turned back to the door and furiously pulled at it, but no use. She wasn’t strong enough. She went to another door and tried that one, but by the time the fire flared up again and remained somewhat steady she gave up. She’d risk running blind on the dark roads. It was safer than staying in the light.
She turned around to run again, but didn’t make it a single step.
Three sets of the yellow eyes were now looking at her, and they were drawing closer. A moment later, the lamp flared again to let her see them clearly. These weren’t the smaller swarming creatures. These ones were deer, or had been at one point. In addition to the dark, muted colors, their teeth seemed to have enlarged and converted to being sharper. Their hooves were twisted and stained with blood they had already spilled from trampling. One of them was a stag, and his horns had grown more, sharper, gore-stained points.
Starlight backed up but soon hit the back wall. She had no weapons or means to defend herself. She could scream, but the gunfire was still going off and everyone was screaming. Even if she called for help, who would arrive in time? She knew it was hopeless. She could watch helplessly as they drew closer.
But as they reached the street lamp, a new sound broke through the darkness. A dog barking.
Starlight looked up as the three Nighttouched turned around. Moments later, one of the does gave out a gurgle as a purple and green dog leapt out of the darkness, clamped its jaws around her throat, and took her to the ground. In spite of its size, the dog was far stronger than it looked, and as soon as it was down he began to sharply twist his head while keeping his jaws clamped on its throat. Blood frothed from the wound as the Nighttouched cast out its hooves madly to try and hit its attacker or free itself.
“Hang on!”
The lamp flared as the other two turned to the voice. Starlight was surprised again as she saw the same young woman from earlier dash forward through the opening that her dog had made. Soon she was in front of Starlight, and stopped there and wheeled to the other too. She gasped and wheezed for a moment, clearly not used to running, before she straightened up. “Just stay behind me!”
Starlight looked at her confused. What was she supposed to do? It was too late to argue, however. The buck lowered his horns and readied for a charge while the remaining doe took off immediately. Her dog, still struggling with the other doe, couldn’t defend her.
A moment later, she held up her stick. Starlight nearly groaned at the sight of it, but was cut off as the young woman began to speak. She quickly realized she wasn’t saying one of the four languages she herself knew, but based on the sound and phonetics of it she realized it wasn’t any type of language anyone knew. Her brow crooked on realizing it sounded like “magic words” and not the kiddie stuff from earlier. The doe didn’t care as it came close enough to rear on its back hooves and try to batter her with its forelegs.
Before it could, she stopped speaking and pointed the wand at the doe. Starlight actually cried out when, to her shock, an actual ball of fire erupted from the end of stick and impacted the creature. Not only did the resulting burst bathe the creature in fire, it generated enough force to snap it back and drop it to the ground. It rose again only to madly run off, still enflamed.
The buck broke into a charge with antlers out. The young woman gave a bit of a start but wheeled to it. She chanted something different this time before pointing the wand at it. Starlight cried out in surprise again as a small bolt of lightning snaked out of the sky and struck it dead center in the skull. It quickly seized and fell to the ground, and its momentum caused its body to keep skidding forward until it was right next to Starlight. The scent of burned flesh hit her nostrils, but it moved no more. That bolt had killed it instantly.
At the same time, the dog gave one final mighty twist and a cracking went out from the neck of the other doe. It went limp soon after and he let it fall out of his jaws. Both the doe and the buck began to change soon after. Their muted, darker colors “bled” out of their skin like water into a sponge, returning their physicality to normal at the same time, before they finally reached one point on their bodies and disappeared—the very same place a Light Eater had made contact with them some time in the past eight years.
The young woman let out a sigh of relief and turned to Starlight. “Are you alright?”
She stared back open-mouthed. “What…what kind of magician’s prop is that?”
“Prop? What are…” she trailed off, suddenly wincing before blushing. “Um…yeah! A prop! Right, of course! That’s what this is right here! Yup! Just a run-of-the-mill, old-fashioned, street performer prop! Yeah, I totally got rid of those two Nighttouched just now by using a common, everyday prop!”
Starlight quickly realized she was the poorest liar she had ever met, which only served to make her more shocked. “You don’t actually mean that’s an actual ‘magic wand’, do you? Or is it some new weapon that Manehattan came up with?”
“Oh, no-no! It’s just, um…homemade!”
Starlight would have normally frowned at the insult to her intelligence, but she didn’t have the luxury as she got to her feet. “Anyway, forget that! We need to get out of here! That gaslight behind us is still on! If we’re anywhere near it, then-”
She was cut off by a whimpering sound from the lady’s dog. Again she looked up, and the breath caught in her throat. She couldn’t even gasp a “no” before her eyes shrank into pinpricks.
What she had dreaded more than anything had come to pass.
It stood out from the darkness when it rounded the corner, giving off some sort of faint, shimmering sheen about its body. It wasn’t so much light as what one might see on a glossy finish. It was as tall as a man and longer than a tiger. It had no concrete shape. While it had four limbs like any quadrupedal creature and a head angled down like that of a big cat, complete with a mouth full of teeth, none of it was from any living creature. It was all very crude and basic; like it had been sculpted out of clay by a child. More of a concept of a beast rather than a true one. But it did have the one feature all of them shared: the eyespots. Shimmering like moonlight on the water, they quickly zeroed in on the flame of the broken gaslight.
Starlight’s heart froze in her chest as she started to shake. She was one of the few on Greater Everfree that had seen a Light Eater with her own eyes and lived to tell about it. Compared to the one she had witnessed, this was nothing. It was a quarter of its size and not nearly as defined. She was terrified of it none the less. No weapon could kill them. No fire make them retreat. No wall barricade them from entry. They had remained confined to former Equestria not due to any effort on the part of humanity but due simply to their own preference—stopping before they could go any farther.
All knew, deep in their heart of hearts, that they were living on borrowed time with them. That every day was just a question of whether or not they would come and kill them. She knew that time had come for her and she couldn’t even find the courage to scream.
The dog backed up until it could growl again, but that returned to a whine when it rounded the corner and began to approach. As it neared, however, Starlight heard the young lady again.
“Phew, it’s just a lesser one… Maybe I can pull this off.”
Starlight was nearly apoplectic as she looked at her. If she hadn’t been, she would have laughed at her hysterically. She had seen a Light Eater be fired on by a cannon from a distance of two feet. Other than leaving an inconsequential hole in the middle of its body that closed itself up again three seconds later…nothing. Bullets, spears, and explosives meant nothing to them. They had no flesh to cut, no bones to break, and no blood to spill.
The young woman called forth the same words she had said last time as the thing moved closer. A moment later, she snapped the wand down and let loose another fireball. It impacted against its right shoulder and burst.
Starlight had to blink at what she saw a few times. Although her brain told her it was totally impossible, she swore she saw the Light Eater actually pause in mid-step for just a moment. However, it kept walking soon after. Of course it did. Why wouldn’t it? It was completely invincible and unkillable. She smirked at herself hopelessly, realizing she was grasping at straws so much she was hallucinating. Soon after, the thing drew close enough that its primordial limbs crouched. Its crude jaw opened. She let out a dazed half-laugh. It was over.
Abruptly, she felt a force seize her by the arm and sharply yank her away from the wall, before she was half-shoved, half-flung to one side along with the young lady. Just in time, for the Light Eater lunged forward, its jaw clamped around the top of the lamp post and snuffed it out, before it kept going and smashed into the side of the building. Its force belied its size as it instantly smashed through the door frame and pounded a hole deep enough into the abandoned edifice for half of its body to sink in, and all just from a casual move.
As it slowly extracted itself, the young woman, Starlight’s twice-savior now, whirled on her. “What are you doing? Why were you just standing there?”
Her smile remained wan and wistful. “There’s no point… It’ll tear through buildings to kill us now… I got away from them eight years ago but I’m going to go out the same way as everyone in Sire’s Hollow… It’s over.”
The Light Eater finished pulling itself out and its eyespots turned again. Now it focused completely on the two of them. Its spectral jaw cracked open wide. The next move it made would rip through the both of them.
The lady aimed her wand again. She chanted something new. This time large, dagger-like ice crystals formed out of thin air about the wand and shot at the thing. They simply passed through its body to the other side, although Starlight once again imagined that they moved only slowly through it. The young lady tried another series of magic words afterward…
One of the Light Eater’s misshapen limbs sliced the air so fast if one blinked they wouldn’t have even seen it rise and fall again. A light tinkling sound was heard as the severed end of the wand fell to the ground. Now she didn’t even have her tricks anymore. Now she was as helpless as Starlight.
She gaped a moment before looking up again. The thing took another step forward, forcing her to back up and push into Starlight. Her dog came over from behind and clamped his jaws on her suitcoat shoulder, pulling her back soon after, but she didn’t react to that either as she knew it was nothing but a delay.
Finally, the young lady let her head bow, and for a moment Starlight thought she had realized the inevitability. Instead, she heard something new from her.
“I guess I have no choice.”
Her arm extended into the air and her hand and palm spread wide. Starlight gave a start a moment later when, again to her surprise, an invisible force etched out something on the back of her hand that glowed as bright as a fire.
A symbol…a hexagon. One of the points on it shone out brighter than the rest, emitting a lavender light like a beacon.
“What the…”
“Member of my house, I command you to come to me! Master of Sorcery—Starswirl the Bearded!”
Starlight’s ennui broke on hearing the very air shudder at the young woman’s proclamation. The wind whipped up and the air begin to change. Even the Light Eater paused at it. Soon after, she shrieked again when the young lady began to shine all over her body with that same lavender light. It streamed off of her in thin rays and condensed over the top of her body, before it snaked out and etched something like a painting of light in midair. For a moment Starlight saw the image: the figure of an old man with a long, wispy beard clad in a wide-brimmed magician’s hat and cloak, both etched with stars and bells. So real she swore he would come to life…
The image, on completion, broke and melded into a curtain which fell over the young woman. When it did her clothing changed. The robe that was just for street magic thickened and lengthened into a magician’s cloak worthy of legend. The severed wand she held grew, enlarged, and reshaped into a proper oak stave with a jewel fitted inside. A large, wide-brimmed hat landed on her head, and her cloak collar grew so large that her face vanished between it and the hat brim. Only her eyes still stood out. They were glowing too now.
The Light Eater raised its leg again and swung it down upon her, but she easily hopped to one side to avoid the pavement-shattering blow. It whirled around and lashed out at her again with another limb, but she leapt back from this too. It readied itself to charge but before it could she crossed the stave in front of her. She chanted again, far more powerfully this time with new words. Fiery runes wrote themselves on the air in front of her as fire condensed about her staff, forming a new projectile ball of flame that looked like raw magma. It sailed into the Light Eater and burst.
Starlight’s jaw nearly hit the ground at what happened next.
The Light Eater caught aflame.
A horrible, hideous noise bellowed from its misshapen mouth. It was crying out in pain. It had actually been hurt. And the fires continued to burn it, driving it back as it slapped its own crude body against the rubble and the damage it had done in an effort to snuff it out.
The young lady began to chant again, drawing a rune that looked like lightning this time. Before she was done, the last of the flames were doused and the monster gave an actual angry-sounding noise as it lunged. It was as fast as a bullet, but lightning was faster. She completed her spell and a monstrous bolt snaked from the heavens and struck it in the side. Its body was flung out of the sky and cast so hard into the side of the cul-de-sac it smashed another hole into the buildings.
Quickly she brought the stave around and made one final rune; this one an icy blue. The Light Eater was in more pain than before, but that only made it madder and more fearsome. In spite of the fact Starlight could see an indentation in its side that wasn’t regenerating from the lightning blast, and one of its limbs seemed to have partially burned away, it was almost immediately on its feet again and rearing up. A moment later it sprung off to lunge at her…
Its rear legs never left the ground, for she swung her staff forward and ice erupted from the street in long, spear-like shafts. They pierced its body no less than eight times throughout its torso and limbs and anchored it where it was. Something physical…actually holding a Light Eater in place.
It held its mouth open as its aborted cry faded. It remained rigid a moment longer before all of its limbs relaxed. The eyespots slowly faded into nothing. The rest of its body began to disintegrate and fade away as if it had never been anything more than a mist of fog. In moments, it was gone.
A Light Eater had been killed.
Starlight wasn’t sure how long she struggled to comprehend that; gawking and staring at the ice that had previously pierced it. What finally broke her concentration was a long, deep panting from the young woman. She turned and saw her hunched over on her stave. Her new clothes were breaking off of her like the ash of paper in a breeze and fading into nothingness. Once the cloak and hat were gone, the staff itself fractured to nothing but the half of the stick once again. She let it fall out of her grip, now back in her previous appearance, and nearly faltered.
At the last moment, she took in a deep breath and straightened again. She turned and looked behind her. For a moment worry was in her eyes, and not for Starlight’s welfare but rather at what she had just done.
“Are you alright?”
Starlight blinked.
“Are you hurt?”
“You…” she finally managed, “you…saved me. You killed that Light Eater…”
Instantly she turned red and even more nervous-looking. “Well, um…if you want to thank me, how about you do me a favor and forget you ever saw any of that?”
“Forget…? You…you just killed a Light Eater! Do you know what that means? Do you-”
Another stream of gunfire went off, not too far away. The barking orders of a commanding officer joined it not long after. Considering how calm it was, it sounded like a search and rescue group. That meant as bad as it had been they had to have repelled the rest of the Nighttouched.
On hearing it, however, the young lady quickly tensed. “I…I gotta go. I’m glad I was able to help. Stay safe! Come on, Spike!”
The dog released Starlight at last and quickly ran up to his master. She turned and began to run. Starlight only let her get five steps before she held out a hand and shouted.
“Wait! I didn’t even say thank you! At least give me your name!”
She paused. She turned back to her, hesitated again, but finally spoke just as the gunfire went off again.
“So…let me see if I get this straight. There you were, facing off against not only three Nighttouched but an actual Light Eater, and all of the sudden this person just pops out of nowhere, turns into some kind of wizard, and blows away all four of them including the Light Eater? Just like that? Waves their hand and does some hocus pocus and that’s the end of it? Or did they have to get help from a unicorn first?”
Starlight frowned at the facetiousness. It was the next morning and, along with 450 other residents of the township, she was holed up in a temporary refugee camp three miles outside the city’s outskirts while the Fillydelphia military combed it. All in all, 120 soldiers had died the night before along with 37 civilians so far, but already it was clear more would have been spared if the panic hadn’t gone out from the Light Eater alarm. Merely sounding that had made half of the newer soldiers go AWOL and collapsed the proper evacuation procedures.
Nevertheless, the threat had passed. No Light Eaters ever showed up during daylight, and all the Nighttouched grew sluggish and found places to hide. It was the perfect opportunity to finish them off and clean the town. And with a fresh division reinforcing the city, that left plenty of time for things like interviewing civilians as Starlight currently found herself undergoing in a side tent with two Fillydelphia officers.
“I’m telling you, that Light Eater was killed.”
“Right,” she snidely smirked. “Wasn’t good enough of a story that you somehow survived three Nighttouched all on your own. Had to throw in a juicy bit like that to make it really sound good, eh?” She reached out and tapped her arm band. “I guess your original story of how you avoided a massacre back in Griffonstone wasn’t exciting people anymore?”
Starlight frowned, and the other officer gave the interrogator a jab. “Knock it off, will you? Don’t joke about something like that.”
“Hey, she’s the one making up some baloney about seeing a Light Eater get killed. Everyone knows nothing can hurt ‘em.”
“Someone did,” Starlight spoke up again. “And if we can hurt them and kill them, then we need to learn how. Then maybe we won’t have to live waiting for stuff like this happening again.”
“Ah, give it a rest. Everyone knows there was no Light Eater to begin with. Some new guy got jittery and sounded the alarm is all. It was just another Nighttouched surge.”
“I don’t know about that,” the second spoke up. “Iron Tip’s group sighted one charging the barricade. Three eye witnesses. The colonel had us searching the city to confirm it left last night.”
“So he panicked. Big deal. If had seen a real one, he would have lived to tell anyone about it.”
The second sighed. “Let’s just be glad things didn’t go worse in spite of the panic. This isn’t the ‘cleanest’ we ever came out from a Nighttouched raid, but considering how things broke down…”
The tent flap suddenly opened. The head of a fellow officer ducked inside. “Hey you two. You still doing interrogations?”
“You bet.”
“Not anymore you’re not. Wrap up in here and head on out. The division is mobilizing. We’re leaving the rest to the garrison here and heading out.”
“Heading out? What for?”
“A wire just came in. This wasn’t the only attack last night. It happened all up and down the barrier. That means Trottingham or Griffonstone will probably make a move soon.”
He ducked back outside, leaving his fellow officers considerably more tense and less interested in Starlight. The first one frowned as she took up her hat and rifle from the wall. “We’re done now in my book. I heard they got tea in this town and I want to pick out some bags before we deploy again…”
She walked out, leaving her companion to sigh and turn to Starlight. “Thank you for the information. I’ll be sure to include the details in the report to our CO. For what it’s worth, I don’t doubt a Light Eater really was involved last night and something made it turn back. And a few of the soldiers saw lightning flash on that block too.”
Starlight said nothing. She was already frowning and looking to the side. The officer winced before she turned and made her way out as well.
She no longer paid them any mind, especially if they wouldn’t listen to her. All she thought of now was the young lady from last night, the symbol on her hand, the strange power that had come from her, and, most of all, what she said over the gunfire.
Twilight Sparkle…I’ll find you again wherever you are.
The palisade wall was ripped through as if it were no more than a pile of leaves. In its wake, the Nighttouched boar charged through the broken logs. It winced as it emerged into the light of day, clearly not caring for the sunlight, but that didn’t stop it from resuming its run a moment later.
Whereas most people would have fled in terror the moment a Nighttouched showed itself, especially one twice the size of a normal boar with two sets of razor-sharp tusks and a hide already dotted with arrows, improvised wooden pikes, and even a broken pitchfork, the farmers it now faced shouted as one before rushing it. Two with intact pitchforks immediately went for its head--pointing the ends toward its eyes. As maddened as it was, the action had the effect of making it slow rather than run itself on them. Before it could reposition itself to get through them, other farmers bearing shovels wielded like blunt spears fell at its sides. They stabbed out for the neck and hoof region to try and keep it in place while others quickly ran for buckets of oil and rags they had handy.
Unfortunately, they weren't fast enough to enact the next part of their counter assault. The boar gave a squeal and charged forward, swinging its head madly. It ran past one of the pitchfork carriers and bowled him aside. It tried to keep running to drive its tusks into another farmer beyond her, but before it could a pair of lassos snapped out of the air. One went around its head while another went around its front tusks, and both were quickly drawn tight and pulled in either direction. At the same time, a team of four farmers, two on a side, pulled a cord of their own tight to intercept its ankles as it charged past.
It seemed to work briefly. Its head was twisted while its legs got tangled in the line, which served to stun it enough for their companion to get out of the way. Soon after, however, it squealed again and began to thrash about itself. Not only did it rip the four trying to hold it by the ankles off of their feet and drag them about, but the two farmers that had it lassoed were violently snapped to and fro as they refused to let go of the cords; yanking and thrashing them across the ground.
However, spinning around in place allowed more farmers to rush in from the sides bearing long branches sharpened into points, and they plunged them into the sides of the boar. It took two of them to a pole, and they had to wait for it to "help" them by spinning into their thrusts, but they managed to pierce its tough hide. Unfortunately, it did little more than what all previous skewers had done. It squealed furiously and began to lash about, wrenching the poles from the grip of the farmers and carrying them around dangerously to try and knock its attackers aside. For a moment, they were forced to pull back.
That, however, was when the original group finally went on the move. Taking their hoes and rakes, they had wrapped the ends in the oily rags and lit them aflame. Now they were coming in with firebrands on three sides and surrounding its head with them. For a moment, the Nighttouched’s thrashing ceased as it found itself confronted with light and heat.
Only now did the largest farmer in the bunch step forward. Powerful, solid, and standing a good head over all the others, he brandished a large, double-sided, woodcutting axe with both of his powerful arms. As soon as he had it over one shoulder, he charged for the boar from behind. From his path, he was ready to come up around and cut into its neck from behind.
However, just as he was nearly upon it, the boar suddenly reared back and lashed out with a powerful pair of hind hooves. The strong man’s eyed widened as one hoof connected with his arm and the other his middle. A crack rang out, and for all of his size and power he was battered backward as easily as the palisade wall had been. His body crashed into the ground violently, and the boar squealed loudly as it swept its head and body about, battering away the firebrands and wheeling fully on him.
His face was still tight with pain, having dropped his axe and now clutching for the hit arm, when the Nighttouched charged at him. It didn’t trample him outright, but instead got near enough to rear up on its back legs. He looked up in fear as he saw its cruel cloven hooves cut the air before they began to head down…
The blow didn’t land.
A moment before it could, a farmer no more than half of the size of the big one, hair tied into a “work” ponytail underneath a rancher’s hat, clothes fully soiled from a day of hard labor already, had darted in front of him. Both of her hands lashed out and seized the boar by the front legs, and she planted her own and held. In spite of the fact she should have been nothing more than debris to the Nighttouched, she tightened her jaw, dug in her boots, locked her arms and, impossibly, held it off.
Soon after, giving a powerful grunt of her own, she let one of her arms back to heft some of the beast's weight onto her, before she wrenched her body to one side. In an impossibly strong feat, she cast the Nighttouched against the ground. That didn’t serve but to stun it for more than a moment, but she used that same second to twist her body around to one side, raise up one of her legs, cock it back, and then drive it solidly into its jaw. A sound of heel on bone rocked out, and the massive boar that had ignored so much done to it actually snapped its head skyward.
Quickly, she reached out and snatched the handle of the big farmer’s discarded axe. Before the boar had a chance to recover, she was wheeling back around, hoisting it over her own head with both arms, and then burying it in the side of its neck. Inky, corrupted blood flowed forth from the wound as the thing reared up violently again. It shot back to its feet, still bleeding, before it snapped its tusks at her. However, she quickly pulled away, only to make a fist soon after and drive it forward behind its eyeball where the bone was missing. The force was so great, the eyeball popped right out of its socket. Stunned and in pain yet again, it gave her the moment to quickly seize one of the discarded ropes still hung around its neck. Pulling it tight, she quickly snapped around and actually leapt onto the Nighttouched's back. In an instant, she got a length of it, wrapped it around the end of its snout, and yanked upward; forcing its neck upward to open the existing wound on its neck even more.
“’K, now!”
The rest of the farmers, holding back until this signal, rushed in. More wooden poles were driven into its sides. Sharpened tools plunged deep into soft tissue. It tried to thrash and fight, but the young woman on its back was able to restrain its movements enough for it to keep from striking back. Finally, the injuries took their toll. As more blood flowed, it slowed down and began to stumble. Its legs finally gave way underneath it and it went down. A few more stabs, and it gave out one last gurgle before it collapsed to its side; the young woman jumping off of it as it did. Soon after the murky colors on it began to bleed out of its skin, leaving only a boar half of its original size and quite dead.
Most of the farmers were panting, tired, and, in some cases, a bit injured. The rush over, a few of them even looked afraid now. Not the young woman, however, who simply pulled her hat off long enough to wipe her brow before replacing it. “Whoo-whee! That was an onery one!” She smiled. “Now we get pork fer a whole month!” She looked up and around. “Alright, Apples! Let’s take a breather but don’t keep it too long! Apple Fritter, Apple Bumpkin, Red Gala…y’all get busy fixin’ that fence ‘fore the next wild pig decides ta’ start rootin’ ‘round it! The rest of ya’, that crop ain’t gonna harvest itself!”
She frowned soon after saying this; wheeling about. The big farmer was being helped up by two of the others, but all three froze on seeing her glare.
“And as for you, Big Macintosh,” she snorted, walking right up to the man who towered over her and fearlessly poking him in the chest, “yer lucky yer hide is as thick as yer head, ya’ know that? Ya’ ain’t cut, are ya’?”
“Um…nope.”
“Well thank god fer that, ya’ lucky fool! Maybe you’ll only get laid up with a broken rib or an arm if yer lucky! Ain’t you the one who told me ya’ never try ta’ run up ta’ ah Nighttouched from behind?”
“Er…uh…eeyup.”
“Then what’dya mean by doing the same damn thing?”
He began to sweat, looking more uneasy about his mess up than his injury by now.
“Ya’ ever do that again, you better hope the Nighttouched gets ya’ ‘cause it’ll be easier than what Ah’m gonna do ta’ ya’! Now go get Apple Strudel to patch ya’ up!” She wheeled about. “An’ one more thing. Apple Munchies?”
One of the farmers who had begun to head back stopped and turned to her. She smiled as she walked over to the dead boar, grabbed the broken pitchfork end, yanked it free, then tossed it to her.
“Found yer lost pitchfork head.”
On catching it, she smiled back a moment before looking concerned. “Say cousin, you need anyone to help you drag that back?”
“Nah, ah got it.” Using the ropes still on it, she bound its front legs and hind legs, before seizing both and, with a grunt, pulling them up on her shoulders. In spite of the fact the boar had to weigh nearly 200 lbs, she began to pull it along easy enough.
“You sure we can eat that?”
“Landsakes, Munchies. Don’t act like some baby turnin’ her nose at peas and carrots. Ah’ve been eatin’ these things for close ta’ eight years now. Fine once they’re dead.”
The farmers soon dispersed. For most of them, that meant moving back to the several-hundred-acre apple orchard which stretched as far as they eye could see. Most of it was very well tended and maintained, with large wicker bushels stocked on the end of every pruned row to collect the produce. Yet the northwest boundary of the farm was bordered by the palisade wall, which stretched in both directions for several miles until it vanished from view. On the other side was an adjoining farm that had long since been left to fallow. It was wild and overgrown now; its own produce having grown tall and thick to allow shady spots and shadows to fill it. Considering the fact the very sunlight seemed “dimmer” only a little ways onto that side, it went without saying no one crossed the barrier from the other side either.
The farmers paid it little mind, aside from the fact that all of them kept a tool that could be used as a weapon close at hand or doubled their existing tools for them if necessary. Most of them were buzzing about the orchard. The crop was good that year and they were taking extra care to grab each and every apple they could from the trees. It was a bit easier than one would think as the farm, for as large as it was, seemed to have more than its share of hands. A good hundred individuals were working it. Twenty other individuals were acting as watchmen either along the palisade wall or were tending to the other perimeters of the orchard; tending carefully-planted hedge rows or widening the trenches that had been dug around them. The way it was secured, the only way in or out was a forded pass at the end of the farm that led on to a dirt road. The road itself stretched a good five miles before it reached a main thoroughfare. Until then, it passed numerous other farms--each of which had been abandoned and left to slowly rot and overgrow. By comparison, an additional thirty individuals constantly kept the apple orchard in tip-top shape, from the wagons to the weeds to the paint on the windowsills. The way they went about carefully going through each task, it seemed many of them were looking for things to do.
On the end nearest the road leading out of the farm were the main buildings. While there was a multi-purpose building on a hill further in the orchard, the farmhouse, barn, and summer kitchen were all clustered together along with the vegetable garden. The young woman passed six kids working it together as she drug the carcass of the boar toward the last of the buildings; what was currently functioning as their combination slaughterhouse.
She was nearly to the threshold when she heard the gunshot.
Immediately, she dropped the boar and turned to the farmhouse. She knew that particular sound only came from granny’s homemade rifle; the same one she had gotten from her father. She took off for the house soon after.
She barely had managed to come around the front when she saw the door fly open. Grasping his forearm, an angry-looking young man, one of the Appleloosan civil servants by the dress and haircut, half-stormed, half-fled outside and down the steps. His horse was tied to an old fence post and he made straight for it.
She was actually stunned into stopping. “Notary, what’re you-”
“You know, you’re lucky you and your whole family are crazy enough to live right on the border!” he snapped as he kept walking. “Because even if I call the sheriff to come out here to have your crazy grandma locked up he’ll never head out here! That’s why he sends me to give these government notices instead of doing it himself!”
“Wait, what?” As she said this, she looked at his forearm. She noticed now that red fluid was oozing between his fingers. “Wait, wait…ya’ don’t mean… Did granny-”
“You can take it up with him from now on!” he shouted as he reached the horse, quickly untying it. “See how he likes it when you go about shooting the messenger!”
“Ah…ah don’t…”
The front door to the house flung open, causing her to turn around. She was just in time to see an anxious-looking elderly woman begin to hobble out after him as best she could; a pair of cats trailing her from behind. A piece of paper was clutched in her fist. “Notary! Notary Public, wait just one second, young man!”
“Like hell!” he shouted back as he mounted up. “You think I’m going to wait for that old prune to reload?”
She continued to call out, but it was no use. As soon as he was on, he turned his horse around and took off galloping down the road. A faster pace than folks usually took to get away from Sweet Apple Acres. The young woman continued to look confused between the two of them, but as soon as he out of earshot she turned fully to the older woman. “Aunt Goldie, what was that all about? Did granny actually try to shoot Notary Public?”
“Oh, y’know how your grandmother gets…” she sighed. “Ah reckon she was tryin’ ta’ just fire ah warnin’ shot but her eyesight ain’t been so good. Ah tried ta’ get her ta’ put it down, Applejack. Ah really did. She just got so onery again, though, and ah was afraid she was gonna have a spell. It ain’t no excuse, of course. Ah should’ve tried harder…”
“Nevermind that now,” she cut off. “What was all this about?”
“Hell if ah know, dear. All ah know is Notary rode right up, knocked on the door, asked if he could talk ta’ Granny Smith, ah showed him in, he delivered this here letter,” She held it up. “And the next thing ah know Granny’s goin’ for her rifle. Ah could’ve sworn ah cleaned that gun out ‘cause ah know she always keeps it loaded, but there ain’t no sense in keepin’ ah powder-loaded gun ready to-”
“Can I see that?”
“Of course.” She finished hobbling over to the young woman and passed it over. “Ah sure can’t read it. Not since my reading glasses broke. That’s why ah was tryin’ to chase him down to explain what as the matter, but if Granny wanted to scare him off she sure did…”
Ignoring the rest of the litany, Applejack took the letter and opened it up. She quickly read it over, and as soon as she was done her face twisted in such an expression she looked as if she might have shot at Notary Public herself.
Sheriff Silverstar sighed, both at the angry young woman standing before his desk with hands on her hips as well as the fact his front door was not only off its hinges but practically snapped in two from how hard she had struck it barging in. “You know, I’m already struggling not to charge your grandmother with assault. I don’t need you adding property damage to it.”
“This is pig swallor!” she shouted, slapping the letter down on his desk. All over the top was the official insignia of the Appleloosan government, and on the bottom was the proper seal and signatures by the acting civil authorities.
“I didn’t write it, Applejack! The government did! I’m just going to carry it out!”
“And you can just sit back and do that like it ain’t no big deal? Sweet Apple Acres has been a part of this community since before you were born! Every folk who settled here did so because of us! Our farm practically made this whole town!”
The sheriff sighed before he folded his hands and hardened his gaze. “That’s just it. You and the rest of the Apples still don’t get it…it’s not your farm anymore. And it hasn’t been your farm for three years.”
Hearing this seemed to sting the farmer, making her visibly wince.
“The law is the law, Applejack. When the government agreed to sign the lease, the condition was that they reserved the right to revoke at any time for any reason. It’s right there on paper.”
“But it ain’t fair! Not to us and not to anyone still left in this town! They can’t just come out of the blue and yank it like that! Not when we’re feedin’ so many people!”
“But it’s not out of the blue,” he answered, shifting uncomfortably in his seat.
Her anger ebbed. She raised an eyebrow. “What’dya mean?”
He frowned as he looked one way and another, not trying to meet her gaze. “…The order came in from the governor not to tell any of the locals about it, but seeing as you and your family are right there on the border and you’re most at risk, I’ll tell you. Maybe it’ll get you to go along with this.”
“Tell us what?”
He exhaled uneasily, rubbing his mustache. “Four days ago, Fillydelphia got attacked. The township that got hit had never been struck before and it got hit bad. Not just Nighttouched, Applejack. The rumor they have is some of them spotted a Light Eater.”
She forgot being angry for a moment. “Ya…ya serious? They’re really surgin’ again?”
“Last time that happened we lost the two towns north of here and all of the northwest farms…” he sighed. “If they follow the same pattern, and they say they are going to follow the same pattern, then this town’s done too.”
Applejack’s jaw dropped. He looked back up at her regretfully.
“So you see it really doesn’t matter either way. Either the government pushes you off first or you get overrun by Nighttouched and maybe something worse. I figure the folks down south thought they’d cut their losses…”
She frowned again. “Losses?! There’s ah whole town of folks to worry about!”
“And they would have run off along with the real owners of Sweet Apple Acres years ago if you and your family wasn’t holding their ground, but that was just because they thought the government would back them up if push came to shove. They’re not doing it anymore, though.”
“Sweet Apple Acres is keeping all those fat cats fed in Appleloosa!”
He sadly shook his head. “That’s not good enough anymore. They’ve got new refrigeration houses and canning plants. They can do without fresh produce for a while longer now. Once this harvest season is done, they’re ordering you out. Then they’ll move in and burn down the orchard.”
Applejack stared back in horror. “Burn it down?! That wasn’t in the letter!”
The sheriff wiped his brow. “It’s new policy. Too many folks did what you’re thinking of doing: sticking around once they pull out and defending the land. They figure they won’t stay if there’s nothing to defend. Besides…” He trailed off.
She frowned. “Besides what?”
He sighed. “Besides…no one’s ever taken land back from the Nighttouched or Light Eaters once it’s gone. There’s no sense leaving anything behind…”
“You can’t do this, sheriff! You knew my mom and dad! You knew how much that farm meant to them!”
“What am I supposed to do, Applejack? Either I carry this out or they’ll bring in someone who will. Then I’ll be out of a job on top of everything else. We can’t fight the government.”
“We don’t have to roll over and take it, either!” she snapped back. “Ah thought this town meant something to you, sheriff! I thought our farm did!”
“It did, Applejack. As in it did once, but it doesn’t any longer,” he retorted, surprising the young woman as his own face hardened. “I don’t know if you noticed, but I already sent my wife and kid away six years ago. I would have joined them long before now if not for your family.”
Now the farmer really did look surprised. “Wh…what?”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but not everyone is as stubborn as your family and not everyone has their heads in the ground. Don’t you get it? It doesn’t matter how strong you are. There’s no stopping those things. Every time the Appleloosan government tried they got massacred for it. You can’t even kill Light Eaters to begin with! We can’t defend against that, but we can let our pride go to our heads and make us stay here and get killed fighting battles we can’t win. And in your case…” He paused, sighing again. “In your case, you’re asking too many other folks to stick out their necks for you.”
She clenched her teeth. “Ah ain’t never asked nobody to stick out their neck for us and you know it! We defended that farm and this town! Us! We never so much as asked you to drop by!”
“And you really think you can do that forever?” His voice had softened. “Your whole family has relocated there, Applejack. The rest of them already lost their own farms. They thought they could stick it out there too and they had to run in the end. Now you got old folks, teens, children… You don’t have fighters. And you don’t have guns either. You may be able to handle the occasional Nighttouched, but what are you going to do when a whole swarm comes down? Your whole family isn’t as strong as you. And not all of them can even defend themselves. They break down that barrier and cut you off, there won’t be any escape. What if you have to leave someone behind?”
Applejack softened again, growing increasingly uncomfortable to hear this. It made her wince and hesitate for a time, but in the end her jaw squared itself again. “Well, that’s our business!”
“And what about the rest of your family? They really want to stick it out? They want to fight the government along with the Nighttouched?”
“Yer damn right they do!” she snapped with renewed vigor. “’Cause home and family means something to ‘em! That farm is the Apple family! We lose it and go to some dirty, smell, soot-covered, cramped town we’ll lose what pride we got left and half of us’ll starve between factory jobs!”
Silverstar’s face grew more sympathetic. He leaned in as his voice lowered. “Applejack, just because something bad happened to her doesn’t mean-”
Now he really did snap back, for Applejack’s fist came down so hard that she punched a hole through the top of his desk. She glared at him with a near psychotic fury. The sheriff didn't move a muscle.
“You ever bring Apple Bloom into our discussions again, and yer first deputy will be bringing me in on murder. Ya’ got that?”
He couldn’t even answer. Not the way she was looking at him now. At any rate, she was done there. Pulling her hand out of the desk, now dripping blood from where she had gashed it smashing through the wood, she turned and walked back out the way she came. On the way, she angrily kicked the remains of the door out of her way.
Silverstar wasn’t able to move again until all sounds of her horse had vanished.
Applejack wasn’t much for drinking, and when she was she didn’t do it on an empty stomach. That night she skipped dinner and went straight to the whiskey bottle. In all fairness, no one really felt like eating. It didn’t take long for word to get around to all of the family, and only half of them even had the appetite for a late supper in spite of all the extra work they had gone through killing the Light Eater. Everyone’s chores went more slowly, especially when she returned and gave them the bad news on her unfruitful meeting with the sheriff. The icing on the cake was that Granny Smith was again not feeling well enough to come downstairs.
She was on the front porch, leaning back in a chair and pouring herself a second shot on the end table when the farmhouse doors opened. She glanced up a little and saw an individual similar to her; right down to the rancher’s hat. He looked to her uneasily. “Hey cuz.”
“Hey Braeburn. How’s Big Mac?”
He winced. “He’s all patched up. Wanted to get back to work but Strudel told him to take it easy. Then he got the news and, well…he said he was going to work alone on finishing up that boar.”
Knowing that he was purposely withdrawing to where no one could see him was all Applejack needed to know about that. She nodded back. She could talk to him later about it.
“Like hell we are. Ah’ll fight ‘em tooth and nail. Even if ah have to fight them off on one side an’ an army of Nighttouched on the other…the ones they should be fightin’ ‘stead of burning folks out of their homes and turnin’ coward. It’s nothin’ to them if we want to defend our own land.”
Braeburn lowered his head uneasily. “But…it ain’t our land…”
Applejack winced again on hearing that, and downed the second shot.
The screen door opened, causing both to look up. Goldie Delicious poked her head out from inside, but quickly looked at the young woman. “Applejack?”
“Yeah Aunt Goldie?”
“Yer grandmother wants to talk to you for a while. She said to bring the whiskey bottle.”
A minute later, Applejack was in her room. It was still upstairs, no matter how much they all insisted on relocating her to the first floor with her bad hip. In all honesty, it hadn’t been much cause for concern. Granny Smith was well into her senior years, but she had definitely been robust enough to keep up with everyone else.
At least, she had been three years ago. Since then she had lost a lot of weight, and not in the healthy sense of the word. She laughed far less than she used to. Things she used to take pride in, such as heading up the annual crafting of Zap Apple Jam, she now deferred to her with little argument. She spent a lot of time in her room now, and not always because she wasn’t feeling well.
As was often the case, only her bedside lamp was on when she came into the room. She had lain down again, and Applejack had pulled a chair close to her. She liked sitting there. It kept her from being able to see the photograph on the wall behind her, featuring the bulk of the original family. Every time she entered the room, she tried not to look at the part with a brown, long-haired man wearing her own hat standing next to a curly-haired woman with a buttercup in her own hair, while at their feet an unusually lanky boy, a yellow-haired girl, and a baby with a large red ribbon in her hair sat.
Applejack poured herself the third shot and Granny the first. In spite of her age, she took it up and knocked it back. She made an even more sour face than usual on putting it down again. “Dagnabbit…never could get used ta’ the taste of Apple Cider’s corn whiskey. Better off usin’ it ta’ remove paint.” She slumped back against her pillow. “But ah’ll try anythin’ ta’ get ta’ sleep tonight…”
The young woman winced. After a moment, she pulled off her hat--a rare gesture for her. “Granny, ah…ah went ta’ the sheriff. And…and ah tried, but-”
“Oh, Applejack. Ya’ don’t need to explain anythin’ ta’ me,” she waved off. “Yer the most honest girl ah know. If’n ya’ say you tried, then you tried and that’s the end of it.”
“But…but ah couldn’t change his mind…”
“Of course ya’ couldn’t. If it were just Sheriff Silverstar ya’ might have, but once ya’ bring in the politicians all bets are off that don’t end up in more dollar signs for ‘em. Learned that the hard way as ah grew up. Ah hoped you could have gone a bit longer, though. Nah, ah…”
Her face grew melancholy as her eyes lowered.
“Ah just wanted some company for a bit besides Goldie… From whoever’s gonna be the next head of the Apple family.”
Applejack stiffened. “Granny, you don’t-”
“Why, ya’ look as nervous as ah cat in a room fulla rocking chairs. Ah ain’t about to kick no buckets anytime soon. At least not if ah can help it. Although, heh…” she smiled faintly, “I dunno. After hearin’ today, ah kinda wouldn’t mind this bein’ my last harvest season.”
Talk like that did little to comfort Applejack. “We ain’t lost the farm yet, Granny. We’ll think of somethin’. Ah know we will.”
She didn’t answer. She only kept smiling as she leaned back a little more. “Ah reckon ah oughta apologize to Notary Public. Poor young fella…used ta’ always come by and snake some of the Jonathans before dippin’ his hands in the pies. Back in the good ol’ days before all the critters turned nasty. Ah switched him more’n once but the truth is ah always liked him comin’ back for more.”
She looked up again, but it was past Applejack and to the picture on the wall. Swallowing, the young woman kept staring at her without turning to it. She didn’t want to see it now. Granny’s smile faded a little.
“Reckon…ah should be used ta’ losin’ things by now. After this long…” she went on more softly. “Ah still remember my daddy…yer great-granddaddy…tellin’ me how everyone figured your great-great-granddaddy was licked the day they rewrote the law. Went from bein’ one of them landed nobles ta’ being a dirt poor laborer in the span of one day. But he told me…he said: ‘Smith, your grandpappy was the best of all the Knights of Appleloosa. Even when the rest of them forgot about where they came from and how they fought tooth and nail day in and day out, and just sat back and got fat off the taxes, he held true to it. No one could whip him in a fight. Not until they finally brought in the guns and they didn’t even have a spot for him in the army.’”
Applejack remembered those stories. As a child, she loved them. Back when Appleloosa was far wilder and filled with feuding and warring families. They were one of the last countries to adopt use of gunpowder other than for basic bombards. Before those days, no one could beat the Appleloosans in combat. And no one got to be a knight unless they were the best of the best. Those days were long gone before her great-great-grandfather was removed from service, though.
“And that’s why he was the best at farming. Ta’ him, it weren’t never anythin’ other than somethin' else to whip. Scraped by with nothing and got this farm, then worked it with his sweat and tears until he built it up into Sweet Apple Acres. That’s when the farm became our name. We didn’t need none of them fancy crests or standards or titles. We had that land we had taken and made with our own hands.”
Her smile faded as she sighed.
“Nothin’ makes sense ta’ me anymore, Applejack. World’s changin’ too fast for me. Everything’s changin’ too fast. First came that Moon Crash…”
“Lunar Fall, granny…”
“Whatever it was…whatever it was that took Bright and Buttercup… Then all them refugees came in…then came that bad year where we had to sell to those damn city slickers…then Apple B-”
She cut herself off at that. For a moment, her eyes began to shimmer and her face tightened. She turned it to one side, refusing to let her granddaughter see her cry.
“Y’know…ah thought our luck had changed when they put out that Caretaker Law…thought there was a chance ah’d die on our own land same as the rest of the family. But now this comes out. It weren’t Notary Public ah was mad at, dear… I was mad because…well, because…” She swallowed. “Because ah started to wonder if there really was any place for us in this world anymore…”
At once, Applejack put her hand out on top of hers. “There is, granny. You bet there is. And ah’ll make sure the whole family always is here for it. Ah promise you that. Ah’ll get around this. Ya’ see if ah don’t.”
She turned toward her. “Applejack…”
“Have ah ever said ah’d do something and lied about it? Ya’ just leave everythin’ ta’ me. Ah’ll fix it.”
After a time, she looked back up to her. For a few moments, she stared back in her granddaughter’s eyes and didn’t see them waver. She risked a small smile. “Maybe that’s the real reason ah wanted ya’ up here, Applejack. Ah had to tell myself it’s time ta’ stop worryin’ ‘bout these things myself and let the youngin’s handle it. They won’t be youngin’s forever, after all.”
She brought her other hand around to clasp hers.
“Alright dear…ah’ll leave it ta’ you.”
Thirty minutes later, Applejack had moved to the back porch. The rest of the whiskey was sitting nearby untouched. She didn’t feel like anymore since all it was doing was giving her a headache; not actually making her feel better about the situation. She had started drinking when she only had her anger to worry about. After the conversation with Granny Smith, she now had far more on her mind. Now she stared at the forest behind her property. Even with night fallen, it still somehow seemed like “darker” night over the area above Equestria. The stars almost seemed to stand out more.
She finally reached over to fumble for the bottle again. Her fingers slipped and knocked it over. She turned to it, seeing it pouring out now that it was on its side. She nearly reached to pick it up, but finally just turned away and let it drain.
The back door flew open with such violence that it let out an echoing crack against the back of the house. “Applejack!”
The farmer nearly fell backward out of her chair. “For cryin’ out loud, Braeburn!” she shouted in a harsh whisper, wheeling on the door frame. “The youngin’s are headed to bed! Keep yer voice down!”
“Sorry, but…I got good news! I was checkin’ in on Big Macintosh, and he thought of something! Something he picked up from the trader last time he was at the market! It might get us out of this!”
Her eyes widened. “Well, what is it?”
Applejack set the form down rather carefully on the sheriff’s desk, ignoring the hole she had put in it just the day before. Today, she was in a far better mood as she tapped the top of it. “Right there.”
He leaned in closer. “The ‘Home Soil Act’?”
“Appleloosa passed it just four months ago ta’ get more enlistees and get them fightin’ for their homes. So long as at least one member of yer family is in active service, your land can’t get touched by the government. So long as we sign up for the army, we’re in good shape.”
Silverstar looked over the form a moment before he frowned. “There’s some provisions here. First, it’s got to be for front line combat. And it goes out of effect as soon as you’re marked as deceased. Second, you got to report across the country for it to take effect. Damn near where the Nighttouched crossed the border…”
“But so long as one of us stays in the military, they can’t seize our farm. So that’s that. We sign ourselves up for the military and we’re set.”
He sighed. “Now, Applejack…”
“Don’t you ‘now Applejack’ me! Ah just stopped by to set you straight! Ah’m mailin’ in this form tomorrow! Ah whole bunch of us will be headin’ out there! There’s more than enough folks back home to handle the chores and harvest while we’re gone.”
“But you’re going to be using your own family to hold the farm for ransom more or less. And even if you do, this can’t last forever. Those things are just going to keep coming…”
“Well ah ain’t got any better ideas! So long as it keeps us on the land for right now, that’s what ah’m doin’! And ah ain’t holdin’ nobody ransom. Every one of us who goes is gonna volunteer just like me!”
The sheriff said no more. He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms.
Applejack leveled a glare at him. “Ya’ got more on yer mind, ah can tell.”
“Not if you’re going to do what you did yesterday. Trying to talk you out of something you got your mind on is like trying to get a cat to tie a knot.”
“It’s ‘cause ah never gave up on battles ah started.”
“You mean you never knew what battles weren’t worth fighting.” He sighed. “I know you didn’t come here for my blessing. You’ll do what you’ve always done; whatever you felt like. Just…just stop and think about what might be more important.”
She frowned as she shoved her hat down on her head, taking up the form again. “If the Apple family loses this, we got nothing. No place in the world left to go. Nothin’ is more important than that.”
Never one to let the grass grow under her feet, the plan went into motion very quickly. Applejack filled out the form and sent it by post while she brought back the registration to the farm to settle who officially would go. Most of them shared the same mindset as her. Moreover, the family had already been fighting Nighttouched without firearms or proper weapons for years. This wasn’t much of a change for them. Applejack alone was convinced she was worth more than ten of the standard soldier, and no one would dispute her on that. Besides, if war broke out, they might have found themselves fighting humans rather than monsters; and all of them preferred their odds with that.
Aside from her and Braeburn, 18 other members of the family decided to head out. Big Macintosh, who indeed ended up having a broken rib from the incident of the boar, wanted to come, and truth be told he probably could have healed up fast and been the second best among them. Nevertheless, Applejack told him to stay behind.
“Ya’ need ta’ look after the farm, and more important ya’ need to look after Granny. She ain’t gonna like this.”
And, indeed, she hadn’t. Not after the similar situation with Apple Bloom. She gave her an earful the first day and the silent treatment the next two. However, she knew that Applejack wouldn’t have suggested this without being willing to put her own neck on the line. And right now it was their only choice. It took almost until the day they left, but finally she came down to address them all.
“Bunch of young pigheaded idiots… Ya’ all do somethin’ stupid like get yerselves killed Ah’m gonna head out there myself and give y’all a kick in the shin. Ya’ just promise me that no matter what y’all look out fer each other. Y’all stay together, get me? And if’n they won’t let ya’ do that, then ta’ Hell with them. Ya’ come right home. This farm ain’t worth it.”
The morning of departure, the family loaded up a pair of covered wagons with what provisions and belongings they would need. As there was no money for train fare to spare, they would have to go the country route. It was a pretty far trip to boot. There was a deadline for enlistment on submittal of the forms, and to make it they would have to take a roundabout way. Going directly would force them to cross the mountains of the Mount Eris city state, and those routes had long since been closed off. They would have to make it to the river and ferry down to the coast, catch a boat to the tip of Mount Eris’ western side, then work their way back north and into Appleloosa all over again. Ironically, using the river would make it faster, although the trip over land would still span hundreds of miles. Fortunately, none of them had much in the way of possessions.
Applejack herself took only a change of clothes, the ones on her back (especially her hat), some rope, a claw hammer, and the last family photograph they had all felt like taking. It had been about three years ago now, when, in spite of everything, the family was still together and still smiled for them. On the way out of the house, not knowing when she would be back to see it again, she stopped by Granny Smith’s room and looked at the picture with her parents in it.
“Mom, dad…ya’ mind havin’ my back? Not fer me. Fer Granny.”
Not long after that, she headed down and bid everyone their goodbyes, including the rest of the family. After making promises to write as soon as she arrived and to succeed, as well as an admonition to keep the farm going, they headed out. Naturally, she was one of the first to walk. It was only when they left the last bit of their community behind that she began to feel a touch of the loneliness—her vast family crunched onto one farm now reduced to just twenty members nearby. And neither granny nor Big Macintosh around.
Nevertheless, she kept her head high on the road ahead.
The whole farm is countin’ on me. Ah won’t let ‘em down.
And maybe…just maybe…I’ll find Apple Bloom out there somewhere.
The barkeep glanced over to the stools at the main bar, frowning slightly at a slumped figure splaying her entire upper body over the top of it. She looked away a moment later, smiling and nodding to the only other patron in the tiny, dimly lit, public house. “Thank you very much. Please tell your friends that we have coffee from the Southlands.”
The patron smiled and nodded back, glancing to the figure at the bar to give her a dismissive look, then rose and departed. The barkeep was given a moment to take up the tab for the single cup of coffee that the patron had left behind, and frowned again on seeing there were only three cents in tip.
“Hey,” the slumped patron at the bar sounded listlessly again. “Hey…can I get another cider?”
She sighed as she cleaned the cup and saucer and walked back to the bar. She turned to a glass jar at one side and tossed the three cents into it before she went to the cash register to close the rest of the tab. As it gave a chime to the tune of the register opening, the patron lifted her head groggily.
“Uh, hello? Another cider here?”
She frowned once again as she shut the drawer. “Sorry, Dash. I’m cutting you off.”
“Aw, come on…” she whined. “I’m not that drunk…yet…”
“You also have an outstanding tab that’s over a hundred. And cider isn’t cheap. It’d be one thing if you just wanted beer…”
“Hey, I’m a big-time soldier-of-fortune… Gotta keep trim…” she moaned back half-drunkenly as she shifted slightly. Aside from her rather unremarkable attire that looked like it was either a combination of secondhand work clothes and combat uniform or, far more likely, something she had scrounged from the trash, the biggest feature that stood out was her rainbow-colored hair. While many people had two tones or even three, there were few who had an entire set of seven for the full spectrum. “You know what it’d do to my line of work if I got a gut?”
“I can’t afford any more credit. I’m sorry.” She walked past the rows of liquor mounted on the back of the bar to a rather odd-looking, large, brass machine emitting a bit of steam and pouring its contents into a smaller urn: a giant percolator. She removed the urn and looked into it, only to sigh and roll her eyes. “Just my luck…broken again. No wonder they didn’t want another cup…”
“I can pay you tomorrow…”
“You said that yesterday and the day before,” she called back as she carried the urn around to a cloth curtain. She passed through a moment later, leaving the patron alone in the bar.
She sulked for a moment at the fact she wasn’t getting another drink. Bringing her empty glass to her lips, she sucked it a bit for some last droplets, but she had already drained it a while ago and frowned as she sat it down. She looked up again soon after, her eyes tracing over the bar, before they went to the tip jar. Aside from the three cents, there was a good quantity of change on the bottom and several bills on top. Most of them were propped upright and near the lid.
She raised her eyelids a bit more. She glanced to the curtain and saw it still settling. She looked back to the jar. She moistened her lips a little, looked one way and another, and then began to let her hand drift over to the top of it.
It just began to dip into the lid when she heard a cough. Paling, she quickly shot her hand back and turned to the opening to the back. The barkeep was standing there with arms crossed.
“The landlord would kill me if they knew I was letting you run a tab, whether your name is Rainbow Dash or not. If you don’t want me to kick you out right now for adding theft to it, you’ll pay me something on it right now.”
She grimaced. In spite of her half-drunk state, that was enough to command her attention and she nodded. She leaned up in her chair, slightly unbalanced, and began to feel in her pockets. She started on her vest and into the inner shirt, fishing through each pocket, before moving down to her pants. She produced half of an old train ticket, a bullet, a bent key, and a button. Finally, she slowly and unsteadily took off her shoes. The left one was empty, but the right one she shook over the bar. A single coin worth one dollar tinkled out.
The barkeep sighed as she snatched it up, scattering the rest of the pocket filth along the way. She went over the register and quickly began to check it out. “Some days I think you purposely try not to have any dignity…”
“Hey, safest place for it,” she shrugged as she replaced her shoe before leaning back down on the bartop.
She finished up and shut the drawer. “Congratulations. You now only owe me 117. And you’re not going to make up that tab lying there at my counter.”
“Eh, I’m saving myself,” she answered with a half-asleep hand wave. “There’ll be plenty of jobs soon enough. Always are. Especially for the ‘Sonic Rainboom’...”
The barkeep didn't respond as she walked back to the tip jar and plucked it off the counter. Turning around, she looked up to the top shelf of the wall of liquors. She ended up reaching for a box of imported Cherries Jubilee Brandy. Taking it off and setting it down on the counter, she opened it up, revealing a sizeable amount of cash in there, and dumped the jar's contents inside.
Dash's half-lidded eyes raised a bit on seeing the money. “Y’know, you could hire me if you want that tab settled. You’re sure good for it…”
“Not as good as you might think.” She shut the lid again, picking it up and replacing it on the shelf before restoring the tip jar to its former place. She got out a rag next and began to clean off the now-dirty counter. She succeeded until she got to Dash’s head and shoulders. However, as she pushed the rag in, she wouldn’t move it. She frowned again as she began to clean around her body instead.
“Besides, it not like you need to do that kind of work. Any time a local comes in and sees you leaning on that counter, they say they got a job you can do…”
“Eh…none of that’s for me. I’m a fighter…”
The way she said that sounded far more like an excuse than a matter of principle, but there was nothing else for it. She finished cleaning up as best as she could, but at the end Dash still hadn’t moved.
Sighing, the barkeep put the rag to one side and leaned over the bar. Her face grew more concerned. “Look…I’m serious. Forget the tab. You shouldn’t spend all your time here.”
“Why not?” she idly answered with a yawn, waving her hand in the air again. “I love it here, Berry. Great atmosphere and cider…”
She would have said more, but the door to the public house suddenly opened. While Dash went back to lazing on the counter, Berry looked up, and watched as three men walked in over the threshold. She immediately began to tense on seeing them. Based on their looks, they were travelers rather than locals, but that was neither here nor there in this part of the world. The town itself was nothing more than a crossroads or waystation for about a third of its residents at any point. What she didn’t like was the kind of travelers they appeared to be.
All of their clothes were dark and subdued colors--perfect for doing things under the cover of darkness. They were various sizes but all were strong-looking. Guns were at their hips with brass cartridges for ammunition strapped alongside them, but the first one also sported a pair of knives on the opposite side, the second had a rifle slung over his back, and the third balanced a shotgun over one shoulder. Aside from waltzing in bearing weapons, the main thing she didn’t like was their faces. Their eyes were calculating, their faces set, and their lips curled into a bit of a smirk.
Not the look of someone who just wanted a drink.
“Public house is closed to non-guild members until 6 o’clock.”
“Well, I guess we’re in luck then,” the lead one answered, reaching into his traveling coat at the same time as his companions. Moments later, they came out bearing small brass badges in the emblem of a pair of chamber-loaded single shots.
She tensed a little on seeing them but didn't budge. “I thought the branch office wasn’t issuing those anymore.”
“Well, I don’t know if you’ve looked around the world lately, but there’s a bigger need for licensed Huntsmen now than ever,” he half-chuckled, prompting his friends to do the same. The whole while, they drew closer to the bar, and reached it just as they finished laughing. “Besides,” He gestured to Dash. “Looks to me like you’re already letting the local drunks come in. Why not us?”
“She happens to be a guild member too,” the barkeep answered with an exhale. “Alright, what can I get-”
“Wait, wait, hang on,” the man cut off. He jabbed his thumb in Dash's direction. “She’s a Huntsman?”
The smallest of the three snickered. “You’re kidding. Look at her. Looks like she washed up the river. And she’s half passed out already.”
The third and largest one merely chuckled along; clearly not the “brains” of the group.
“Man, they must really be desperate for membership if they’re handing them out to shrimps like her…” the first muttered before looking back to the barkeep. “Three of the hardest stuff you got. We’ve got to hit the road soon. Latest news is the Nighttouched are making another move and there’ll be a lot of folks who need protection when they head south.”
The barkeep said no more but went behind the bar for some glasses. The second of the three moved over to Dash and looked her over as she lay there unmoving. He snickered a second later. “Aw man, I can practically hear her snoring. Who’d have thought some broad like this would be such a lech? She looks younger than my sister.”
“Hey, check out her hair, Hoops,” the third spoke up. “How long you think it takes her to dye it like that?”
“Pft, who cares. Looks like some little brat’s fingerpaint…” He trailed off, realization striking him. “Hold on a sec. There’s only one Hunstman out there that has rainbow hair…”
As Dash didn’t react, he moved over to the side of her. Reaching out, he placed his hand on her head and pushed it up enough to reveal her face. Her eyes were closed and she let out a snore, before slowly cracking them open and seeing herself being stared at.
Immediately, “Hoops” burst into a grin and snickered. “Heh, well look who we have here. It is her. A local legend right here in the flesh, boys. And looking every bit a national hero…smelling like a bar bathroom and covered with cider stains. If it isn’t ol’ Rainbow Crash!”
The other two immediately started to snicker at her as well. While her eyes were still glazed, she frowned. “Rainbow Dash…”
The barkeep winced at the exchange as she quickly got out a bottle and poured the drinks, but they went ignored now that focus was on Dash. “Well, well…you’ve certainly gone up in the world, haven’t you? Passed out in this hole in the wall, Little Miss Ace Flyer? And in the Huntsman Guild too? I guess you fit right in with the jobs chasing after crying chickens, eh?”
The three shared another laugh. Dash kept frowning at them, but simply turned her head face down again.
“Hey, don’t be like that,” Hoops snickered, reaching for his own drink. “Here’s a toast to the Last Wonderbolt! Have a drink on me!”
At once, he reached over and dumped out the contents on her head. She immediately snapped up in alarm and sputtered while they laughed again.
“Oops. Guess it’s a drink on you.”
Berry frowned as she went for a towel, while Dash slowly pushed herself up the rest of the way off the counter. She didn’t even look at Hoops as she slowly wiped at her eyes and hair.
“Heh, you really are all washed up, aren’t you? I heard there was a time you’d pick a fight with anyone for even looking at you the wrong way. Now look at you.”
“So you’re not only gutless, you’re just a has-been too,” his friend joined in mocking. “Look at her. She probably couldn’t even put on a set of Steam Wings, let alone fly ‘em. Maybe they gave her that award because they felt sorry for the little sot.”
The third one laughed a bit at the jokes, then blinked and looked between the two men. “So, uh…who’s Rainbow Crash again?”
The second one rolled his eyes and glared at him. Hoops groaned and pinched the bridge of his nose. Dash began to ring out her hair. “Alright, listen up,” Hoops finally spoke up. “I’m only gonna explain this once.”
Smiling darkly at Dash again, he walked closer to her. She didn’t even seem to notice as she kept wringing her hair out, and as a result was off guard when he kicked out beneath her for the stool post. The chair was knocked right out underneath her, and she was knocked free and sent to the ground; smacking her chin painfully against the bar edge as she did. The pain on her face was evident as she landed on her rear end and the two laughed again.
“This dirty drunk on the floor here used to be Rainbow Crash. She was one of Cloudsdale’s Steam Wing Air Corp: the Wonderbolts. Their big time elite forces. Once upon a time, they even say she was somehow one of the best if not the best. You ask me?”
At this point, she had slowly begun to rise from the ground again, and Hoops took the moment to lash out and kick behind her leg. At once, she fell on the floor again, sprawling out this time.
“I think she just got lucky. Shouldn’t a Wonderbolt be able to see a little kick coming?”
She didn’t answer, just paused a moment before slowly pushing her way up again.
“Anyway, I’m sure you all remember the Farmland War a little while back, right guys? Fillydelphia ended up trashing Cloudsdale good. Real good. They say there’s only a couple hundred of them left in the world now. All of them civilians. That last big push, they got all of the military. Every last Wonderbolt? They gave everything they got and fought right down to the end until they dropped… All except Crash right here.”
She had pushed up by now and slowly began to rise.
“Couple days later, after all his dirty work was done, the President of Fillydelphia decides to be a magnanimous butcher and grants amnesty to all the survivors, and even goes so far as to give a special award to Crash right here and honorary citizenship. How about that, boys? Crash here…”
She was standing by now, and Hoops reached out to “pat” her in the form of a rough shove, sending her back and slamming against the wall before falling onto a side stool.
“Hey!” Berry finally interjected.
“…ran away and hid until all her comrades were feeding worms, leaving them to die to save her own skin, and then she got an award for all of it! How does that sound?”
Dash remained seated there, stunned from the shove, but kept her head bowed. However, hearing this made her jaw clench. She muttered.
“Huh?” Hoops grinned, putting a hand to his ear. “Something to say, Crash? Care to set the record straight for some adoring fans? Don’t want any tarnish on your hero record?”
“I said…” she quietly muttered, “I never ran away.”
He sneered. “Yeah right. All the rest of the Wonderbolts got massacred but you weren’t even hurt from what I hear. The whole Cloudsdale army went up in smoke but you came out smelling like a rose. If that wasn’t running off like a gutless coward, I don’t know what is. I say you’re a yellow has-been…and looking at you now I think you’re more like a never-was.”
He stepped forward, grinning and puffing out his chest, until he stood and towered over her.
“Unless you wanna get up and change my mind?”
Dash raised her head slightly, but after a moment lowered it again. She remained in the seat.
“Thought so. You are gutless. You’re not even worth the time. There’s only one thing you are good for…”
A solid sound of flesh on flesh rang out as Hoops slugged Dash across the face with enough power to knock her out of the chair and to the floor. His friends laughed again, hooting and hollering, as he beamed over her.
“Now I’m famous for knocking out the big hot-shot Wonderbolt hero, ain’t I?”
Dash wasn’t, in fact, knocked out, but she remained sprawled on the floor barely moving. Scoffing at her one last time, Hoops turned away as if she wasn’t worth his attention.
The barkeep, however, had enough. “That does it. Guild members or not, I don’t need you coming in here and attacking my customers.”
“Don’t tell me that pile of apple cider puke on the floor actually had two bits to rub together, let alone pay you,” the second chuckled. “You should thank us for taking out the trash.”
“Just pay your tab and get out of here.”
“Well, you see,” Hoops answered, smiling as he leaned forward and put his elbow on the bar, “that there’s the thing. Like I said, we’re all on business. We’re headed up northeast. Lots of money there to be made. But getting there is a bit of an issue. One of those classic ‘you gotta spend money to make money’ deals. So we had kind of a business proposition for you. How’s about you lend us some cash and we’ll give you 25 percent of the fees and bounties we get, just like you were an equal partner. Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it?”
“I think it sounds like you can’t pay your tab. In that case, get lost now.”
“Hey now,” the second spoke up, smiling as well and moving in closer, “don’t knock that deal. 25 percent is more than you’ll make here in a week. We’re doing you a favor, really. Won’t you reconsider?”
Berry hesitated, noticing that the tone among the men was changing. As well as the fact that all three of them were moving to the bar to face her now. She swallowed a little. “I think you three need to leave before the local magistrate stops by for his hourly visit. I’m not interested in your business proposition.”
“Well, that’s a real shame…”
At once, Hoops and the second pulled out their firearms and aimed them at her, while the third lowered his shotgun and aimed it.
“Because now that you’ve been so rude, it’s more of a business transaction.”
She swallowed, realizing they had seen right through her bluff. In that part of the country, you never went without having a firearm of your own, but hers was well under the counter and from the looks of the three men they were just itching for her to make a move toward it. Her hands slowly went up and her palms opened.
“Now how about opening the cash register?”
Swallowing, she kept her hands up as she slowly inched over to it and away from her concealed weapon. The big one of the three moved around as she did so that he was behind the bar with her, and he quickly took note of her own weapon and how far it was from her before pressing his gun into her ribs. Once at the register, she lowered her hand just long enough to punch “No Sale” and it popped open. The third man immediately dug inside and began to pull out the bills, only to frown. “Aw Hell, Hoops.”
“What’s the matter?”
He held it up to him. “This is all she’s got. There ain’t even sixty here.”
“Yeah right,” the second spoke up. “I cased this place before we walked in. She had a tip jar set out with more than that, and I don’t think there’s any banks around here she could have stuffed it in.”
Hoops wheeled back to Berry. “Alright, you heard him. Where’d you stash it?”
She hesitated nervously for a moment. “I…I don’t have any…”
She winced as a gunshot rang out, shattering one of the bottles behind her.
“These brass cartridges can get real expensive, lady. I can’t afford to take many warning shots. Where?”
Berry was shaking now. “Look…I…I don’t have much…I’m having to use everything in tips just to pay my landlord… After the last time the Nighttouched advanced traffic almost dried up…”
“Well that’s your problem, not ours.” The gun barrel moved up to her head. “This is the last time I’m asking…where is it? Or would you like to have to pay for a busted-up bar too after we have a look around?”
“Hoops…Hoops…oh yeah…”
The three men turned to the floor. Dash was still lying there, still in the same position, with only one change. Her head was to one side and she was grinning a little.
“Yeah, I remember a Hoops… Way back when I joined the Wonderbolts, there was this brown mop-top in the group. Thought he was pretty hot stuff… Talked a lot of trash about the newer recruits… Had two friends with him too. A little one who always talked big but couldn’t stay on a set of Steam Wings if he was bolted to ‘em…and a big one who was too dumb to know which end was up…”
Hoops’ smile faded, as did that of his companions. The second, in particular, began to frown while the third seemed to be too dense to realize what the comment was about. “And here I thought you had enough…”
Dash turned her head up and opened her eyes, still grinning as she started to push up slowly. She seemed considerably more sober than she had a little while ago. “Now how I remember all that going down is, sure enough, the big one took off and landed right on his thick head while the little one got ten feet in the air before he tossed his lunch. And as for Hoops? Well, he thought he was pretty tough stuff, and I imagine he was back in whatever corner of Fillydelphia he came from…which meant he must have felt pretty bad when he came in dead last in every evaluation.”
Now Hoops was frowning as well. He forgot about Berry and turned fully to her. “If you don’t want another trip to the floor, you washout, you better keep quiet.”
“You know,” she went on as she got her feet tucked underneath her, “I heard he and his buds ended up joining the infantry instead. After all, they weren’t bad. Even the big one could act as a meat shield if nothing else. And the little one was so loud he’d draw fire real easy. Yet something just doesn’t seem to add up about that… You see, it’s just like you said. During the Farmland War, the whole military got wiped out. All of them. Anyone in a uniform and holding a rifle. But somehow, you three are here.”
Hoops began to bristle as Dash finished slowly pushing herself up, wavering a little, but still grinning.
“So the way I figure it, the only way there’s three fine young men from Fillydelphia still standing in front of me is that you three had to have deserted. Dropped your guns, lost your uniforms, and then ran off with your tails right between your legs. And since the line was already unbreakable a good month before the hammer fell, that meant you have to have deserted before things got out of hand. And between your duds and your guns, I'm guessing the only kind of jobs you can get at the guild are ones where you escort some dumb banker or businessman across the country to safety, and you wait until you got them in the middle of nowhere before you take 'em for every cent they have while never coming within 20 miles of a Nighttouched. It’d explain why you look so clean.”
She smirked and chuckled.
“That’s funny…you called me ‘gutless’.”
By now, even the third one had picked up on the insinuation, and all three were beginning to look angry although only Hoops had turned fully to her. He was now glaring. Before he only had fun at her expense; now he was clearly irritated.
“Well, you got one thing in common with the ol’ Rainbow Crash… She never knew when to keep her big mouth shut either.”
“And you got one big thing in common with the Hoops I remember. At the end of the day, the only thing he ever really was good at was pushing other people around. Guess you just stuck with what you were best at, eh?”
He cracked a sneer across his lips. “Alright, that did it. I was willing to let you go with just smashing your face in,” He began to raise his weapon to her. “But if you’re gonna-”
He got no farther.
At once, Dash’s remaining inebriation and sluggishness vanished. In an instant, all of the muscles in her body tightened like steel cords. Her foot lashed out while Hoops was still talking, hooked upward, and kicked the gun right up and out of his hands. As the firearm sailed into the air, his face tightened from the pain of his finger being wrenched out of the trigger lock, but he soon had far worse when Dash finished extending her foot only to bring out the heel and swing it down; nailing him right in the carpels and breaking the first two. Crying out now, he yanked his hand back just as his gun descended again; at which point Dash nimbly cocked her leg back and thrust it forward. It was knocked right out of the air, turned into a projectile, and sent flying into Hoops’ forehead butt-first. His head snapped up as he staggered backward.
The second caught this and took his gun off of the barkeep to wheel it on her, but he was far too slow. The woman moved like a blur as she seemed to simply vault across the bar area. His eyes widened before she brought her knee up and smashed him in the throat. She was still throwing herself at him in the process, causing him to not only gag in pain but shove him backward. He idly dropped his gun and seized his neck with his free hand as he staggered, and Dash used the moment to plant her feet, seize his extended gun arm, twist it up, and then drive a fist into the pressure point under his arm. Half of his body went flaccid from the pain, leaving him helpless as she twisted around and smashed her opposite elbow into his face. The rest of him went limp after that, letting her easily wrap an arm around him, hoist him up, and drive him head first into the floor. It wasn’t enough to break anything, but the impact left him down for the count.
The third one finally reacted here; snapping his shotgun around and aiming it right at Dash before squeezing the trigger. However, she was already on the move twisting to one side by the time the shot was fired. From that distance, a couple of shells from a shotgun should have had the same result either way, but, almost impossibly, she was still able to dodge to one side to evade it. Immediately she went in, taking advantage of how the recoil of that gun would stun even a man of that size and leapt into the air. Her leg came forward and, in a rapid blur, lashed out and slammed his head one way and the other.
That wasn’t enough to stop someone that big, but it did hurt him enough to anger him into dropping his gun and lunging at Dash himself. One of his arms swung out for her head but she simply ducked under it before delivering two rapid punches into his gut, both aimed for the pressure point, before following it up with a bone-jarring uppercut. Somehow, in spite of the blows both staggering him and leaving him in pain, he let out a grunt before he managed to surge toward her and swing again. This time she sidestepped and brought her knee up and into his stomach while reaching over and seizing him by his shoulders. Not only did she drive a blow into him but she flung him forward, narrowly making him skid by the tables before dumping him face first into the floor. Cracking her neck a little, she advanced up to his upper body at a more casual pace just as he began to raise his dazed head. A quick iron palm to the back of his skull that sent it colliding with the tile again was enough to drop him as well.
She rose and turned around just as Hoops, bruised and advancing on her in rage, drew one of his knives with his good hand and slashed for her head. One of her arms snapped up like a bar of steel and intercepted him at the wrist, and the moment she stopped him she seized him by the palm with the other hand and quickly twisted. He cried out as his hand snapped open and dropped the knife, and she proceeded to reach up with her original blocking arm, seize his trigger finger and middle finger, and twist again. Two more cracks went out as they bent the wrong way, but he hardly had time to scream before Dash bent that arm behind his back and seized him by the back of the head. She twisted him over and curled up her leg at the same time, essentially throwing him head first into her own foot. Half-throwing him back up onto his feet, she let him stand there dazed only a moment before making her hands into cups, swinging them around, and boxing him on the sides of his head with so much force his eyes nearly rolled back in his head.
Dazed, in pain, and beaten, he began to fall to the floor. He only got halfway before Dash reached out and seized him by the collar.
“By the way, only one person in the world gets to call me ‘Rainbow Crash’.”
She punctuated that by driving her head into his skull, instantly causing him to go limp. She let him collapse a moment later. Two teeth toppled out of his hung-open mouth on landing.
“What do you know? Now the Tooth Fairy will spot you for your trip,” she chuckled. That done, she immediately began to look lethargic again. She took a deep breath as she held her arms over her head in a stretch, lacing her fingers together and cracking her knuckles. “Man, now I really wish I had some cider…” She turned to Berry soon after. “Sorry about the bullet holes. At least I kept from smashing them into any tables or chairs though, eh?”
She was honestly dumbfounded at what Rainbow Dash had just shown off. “Oh…uh…um…yeah.” She hesitated momentarily before she finally calmed enough to nod to her. “Th…thank you.”
“Heh, no problem. But I’d keep your gun on them until I get the magistrate. Not sure how long that thick-headed one will stay down, although Hoops here won’t be using his guns again for another couple months.”
Snapping out of it, the barkeep quickly went to the opposite end of the bar to fetch her own rifle. As soon as she had it out and began to check it, however, she spotted that Dash was already turned around and headed for the front door.
She hesitated a moment, swallowing. “Hold on.”
She turned back. Berry exhaled once before she turned around, reached up for the Cherries Jubilee Brandy case, and set it down on the counter. “If they had busted up my bar, I would have been in the hole a lot more than just the cash register and what I’ve got in here. I know guild members normally work for fees, and…well…I know you’re broke, so…” She ruefully opened the lid and pushed it forward. “And…and your tab’s clear.”
For a moment, a gleam lit up her eyes at the sight of the wads of bills. She smiled a bit more and took a half-step forward. However, she stopped there and looked to the barkeep…how she was already wincing at the thought of losing the contents of that box…how the already barely-clean bar now had fresh damage to it…how her mind was struggling to think how she was going to make the next end meet…
It made the smile on Dash’s face fade all together, but only for a moment. She smirked before she scoffed at the gesture. “Aw, come on. Like I could take money from a friend. This one was a freebie.”
The barkeep looked up in surprise. “R…Really?”
“In fact,” she smirked, “I think as soon as I’ve dunked my head under the pump out there and gotten sobered up, I’m gonna go on and head northeast myself. I’ll collect a big wad of cash and not only will I come back and settle my tab the right way, I’ll take care of your payment problems on top of it. Consider it a ‘thank you’ for spotting me all that cider.”
Now the barkeep really was stunned, nearly dropping her impromptu cash box. “Are…are you serious? I…I mean, I can’t…I don’t…”
She grinned. “Heh, I’ve been hoping for weeks to get you tongue-tied, Berry Punch. Keeps your lectures to a minimum.”
“I really…I mean…are you sure? You don’t have a cent to your name. How are you going to get there?”
She shrugged. “Same as always. I’ll improvise.”
“Well at least let me spot you a train ticket for handling these three…”
“Pft…these guys?” she snorted dismissively, turning around and resuming her walk to the door. “They were hardly worth a fee to begin with.”
As she walked along, she held up her left hand and glanced over the hexagonal symbol etched on the back of it, with one point standing out more than the other five.
In the nicer corners of Manehattan, ones that, even in the current state of the world, managed to stay somewhat insulated from the ever-present calamity and therefore continue some form of lifestyle similar to what was present before the Lunar Fall, lovely dining establishments were not uncommon. Real silverware and porcelain flatware, crystal glassware, fresh flowers, staff that dressed in ties and buttoned shirts, and a chamber orchestra playing even at lunchtime were luxuries still available to the upper echelon of the city. And among them all, the Hilltop Terrace stood apart in that it had private rooms accessible only via one of the new steam-powered elevators. Here on the upper floors, the patrons were able to see above the grimy haze of the smoggy, sooty streets below and enjoy a wonderful look about the whole of the ever-ascending Manehattan skyline in the light of day.
As lovely as the view was, however, a far more pleasant view alerted several of the guests when the door to the dining area opened. Several found themselves staring at the new arrival; more so of the male variety than the female, much to their chagrin.
The woman was tall, prim, and dazzling to behold. Her face was that of a sculptor’s angel. Her hair was as shimmering as silk. Her makeup and coiffure had been done so perfectly that not even a single strand was out of place. Even more eye-catching was her attire--the very latest, sharpest, and most elegant in stylish women’s suits, and her wide-brimmed hat was tipped just right such that only one of her lovely eyes was visible. Not just beautiful, but sophisticated and graceful.
Her manners only reinforced that as she thanked the waiter for ushering her in before passing over the threshold. She strolled with grace and poise toward a two-person table close to the main window tucking a case under one arm. While she didn’t “milk it” for all she was worth, she clearly was aware of her fashionable, eye-catching style and wasn’t afraid to let everyone get a good look.
A blond-haired man in glasses with a suit of his own was seated there. Although he caught her as soon as she walked in, he didn’t seem quite as receptive as the others. Nevertheless, he rose from his chair as she neared. As soon as she reached him, she held out her hand, which he immediately accepted.
“Miss Rarity.” He planted a kiss upon it. “You’re looking as radiant as always. I’ll suppose that’s another one of your new designs?”
“Oh, this old thing?” she laughed. “Perish the thought. It was simply the first halfway decent thing I could find in my closet before heading out. You’re looking smashing as well, Mr. Tartan Top. That shade on your coat suits your eyes just perfectly.”
He smiled slightly and nodded back. The waiter, meanwhile, pulled her chair out. She smiled appreciatively back at him as he sat. “Thank you, sir. I always tell all my friends and associates that service at the Hilltop Terrace is without peer, and you did not disappoint on this occasion either.”
“Thank you, Ms. Rarity,” he answered as he seated her. Tartan Top resumed his own seat as soon as she was down. “Now, may I start you with your usual Sauvignon Blanc?”
“Oh, today is a special occasion, garcon. I believe I will be a bit different and have a Chardonnay.”
“Very good, madam. Shall I list the ones we have available?”
“Oh no, dear. I trust your judgment implicitly.”
He smiled and nodded back. “And for the gentleman?”
“I’ll have a bottle of the specialty Viognier.”
The waiter paused. “May I remind the good sir that the specialty Viognier is 100 dollars per glass?”
“Oh, that won’t be an issue,” Rarity spoke up. “I’m covering the bill for today. We have a great deal to celebrate.”
The waiter hesitated again, but in the end nodded to both. “Very good, madam and mister.” He turned and departed.
Rarity was left to give Tartan Top a beaming smile; bringing her case on her lap and opening it up. “Now I do so hate to start off with business before we had a chance to catch up, but since today is to be something of a celebration I figured it would be best if we had something to celebrate.” The case open, she pulled out three separate sketches of detailed uniforms that had been written over pre-drawn models. “Now then, I spoke with both the Major General as well as the member of the Finance Committee on Monday and they absolutely love this design. And when I mentioned that we could make them at only 120 a uniform, they immediately said they’d authorize the order for 500,000 in two weeks!”
In spite of her ladylike demeanor, she barely contained her excitement as she drew out another slip of paper; this one a contract.
“This is the big order we’ve both been waiting for! Carousel Couture becomes the primary outfitter of the Manehattan Armed Forces, and Tartan Top Textiles becomes one of the biggest fabric companies in Manehattan! So…” She pushed the contract forward. “If you’ll just sign on the bottom like we agreed, everything will be well and we can spend the rest of this lunch passing the time drinking to our success.” She folded her hands and beamed at him expectantly.
Throughout the entire speech, Tartan Top had shown little to no change. That didn’t stop as he sat idly in his chair and looked down at the contract, not lifting a hand toward it. After a short while he looked up again. “Actually Rarity…I’m afraid I’ll have to decline.”
The lovely, smiling woman continued to sit there, still as a statue, for several seconds. She blinked at last. “Oh, um…pardon me, Tartan Top…I think I must have misheard you just now. I could have sworn that you just said that you decline…”
“I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I’ve reconsidered my options,” he calmly explained, straightening in his chair. “I recently discovered that I could be netting 60 per uniform instead of 40. An extra 50 percent is an offer that I can’t ignore.”
“Fif…fifty?” Rarity responded, her smile still present but her arched eyebrows starting to shrink. “Why, who could possibly afford…I mean, who in the world…excuse me, I mean who would be offering you such a deal?”
“Suri Polomare. I’m sure you’ve heard of Polomare’s, right?”
A twitch momentarily broke Rarity’s pleasant look. “I…may have heard the name in some of the darker corners of back alley seamstresses…”
“Well, she’s moving up in the world quite a bit, and that sort of offer was music to my ears. I’d be slapping the shareholders in the face if I snubbed it.”
Rarity’s fair smile began to fracture, alternating between her lovely countenance and a shocked look. “Well…well, ahem…Suri Polomare doesn’t have an order for 500,000 new uniforms to be paid by the Manehattan government.”
“Oh, but she will in two weeks.” He smiled a bit wider.
Rarity’s pupils turned into pinpricks. “Excuse me?”
“She’s already secured a quote with Chancellor Fancy Pants himself. 500,000 new uniforms at a price of 180 each. She initially quoted 200, but knocking off 20 per uniform made him all too happy to come on board.”
“But…but he’ll definitely sign with Carousel Couture once he hears we can save him an additional 60…”
“But you can’t give him that price without me, and I’m going with the garment company that’s giving me 60 off of each. And since that officially makes Polomare’s deal the cheapest on the market, it seems as if Tartan Top Textiles will indeed be the major fabric producer in Manehattan. We just won’t be doing it alongside Carousel Couture.”
Rarity was speechless. Her eyes stared out into space as she sat frozen with her mouth hung open. After a moment, the waiter, bearing a silver tray with a glass of wine and an empty glass with an unopened bottle arrived. As soon as it did, Tartan Top rose from his chair before he could say a word.
“Now that I think it would be improper to take any more of your good will, I will take what is mine and bid you farewell, Miss Rarity.” At once, he plucked the unopened bottle from the tray with one hand while he took up his hat with the other, placed it on his head, and tipped it to her with a smirk. “Thank you for the wine. I wish you continued success on your boutiques…especially since that appears to be all you will have to your name for the forseable future.”
Without another word, he turned and left with the bottle slipped under his arm. Rarity herself stared at his now-empty chair unmoving; her eye periodically twitching.
One hour later, Rarity’s well-groomed features and lovely countenance were quite different.
She was back in her office/workshop on the upper floors of Carousel Couture. Not wanting to risk her work space being disturbed, cluttered, or stained, she was in the stylish meeting lounge that preceded it, half curled up on the couch. Her afternoon tea had been ignored on the table, which was just as well considering how many tears sullied with her mascara she had put into it, although she had grabbed the “biscuits” from the tray and periodically paused in her airy sobs long enough to stuff one in her face. The doors were shut, the windows drawn, her face and hair were disheveled, and she was in the perfect spot to wallow in depression and misery.
A knock rang out on the door, and a moment later it cracked open. An auburn-haired woman, looking like she took almost as much care of her appearance as Rarity did, poked her head inside. “Ms. Rarity?” she called in a light Trottingham accent. “Ms. Pommel downstairs informed me you requested your ‘Stress Tea’ this afternoon. Is everything alright?”
Not hearing any answer immediately save for more sobs and biscuit “noms”, she pushed the door open the rest of the way and stepped inside. She took one look at Rarity’s mascara-stained face and went wide-eyed. “Ribbons and ruffles, Ms. Rarity! Pardon my saying so, but you look terrible! What in Greater Everfree happened?”
Rarity took a moment to sniffle and compose herself, grasping for her pocket handkerchief and giving a quite unladylike snort into it before straightening. “It…it…it’s Tartan Top, Sassy… The…the lunch meeting today went…simply awful!”
Sassy moved in to the couch nearby and sat down, smiling at her supportingly. “Oh bother, Rarity. I’m certain it wasn’t nearly so bad. Remember the time Sapphire Shores changed the order from wanting a backstitch to a topstitch when all the dresses were already assembled? You reacted the same way and we still made the order with time to spare.”
“He dropped out of the contract!”
Sassy’s jaw instantly dropped in horror. “He did what?!”
Seeing her reaction, Rarity’s lip began to quiver again.
Sassy gave a start and shook her head at once. “I mean…I-I-I’m certain it’s nothing we can’t bounce back from!” Her smile was as transparent as the strain in her voice. “Right…?”
“Maybe if we made it mandatory for ten hours of unpaid overtime and expected the workers to get by on only twelve meals a week…” Rarity dismally answered. “Otherwise there’s no way we can undercut the offer that Polomare’s is making…” Face tightening, she finally threw herself back on the couch, laying a hand over her forehead, and cried an exaggerated wail. “Oh, let’s face facts, darling! We’re doomed! Do-oo-ooomed!”
“Now, now, Ms. Rarity…” Sassy went on, even if she was trying to bolster her own sagging spirits in the same breath. “I’m certain it’s not as hopeless as it seems…”
“I know! It’s even worse! This is all my fault! I put everything into changing my parents’ last three boutiques into a national-scope outfitter, and look what it got me! Mountains of debt and 500 new employees I won’t even be able to pay thrice! I sank everything into this venture, Sassy! We’re fin-ni-ished!”
Sassy looked rather uncomfortable at the bleak outlook of affairs, but she pushed on. “Well, if there’s anyone who can get us out of this mess, it’s certainly you. You almost single-handedly not only salvaged this business after the Lunar Fall but you kept Ponyville from becoming a waystation for every vagabond and highwayman from here to Trotheim. And you did that when you didn’t have a fraction of the means and experience you had then.”
Rarity continued to recline for a moment more, sniffling and moaning, before she drew her head up at last. She let out a tired exhale. “I suppose you’re right. And it would be one thing if this was just for myself, but considering everyone else who’s invested in this business, and not just in terms of capital…” Sniffling one last time, she wiped away for her eyes. “I think I do owe them a bit more effort than just my tears. But I’m sad to say the situation is rather bleak. The most utilitarian and economic uniforms in the world mean nothing without the materials to make them.”
“Well then, our only problem is finding a new supplier, isn’t it?”
She sighed as she sat up fully. “Yes, but one problem is quite enough. The next cheapest supplier who was willing to sell to us wanted 80 per uniform—twice what Tartan Top initially offered. I’m afraid without a reputation behind us, no supplier is willing to risk a discount on Carousel Couture.”
“We’ll just have to start again. A fresh round of telegrams to every branch supplier in town. The contract is practically signed already. Certainly that makes us more appealing than before?”
Rarity didn’t look too optimistic. “We’ve been trying to square things away with suppliers for four months, Sassy. I’m not sure how much better we can do in two weeks from scratch. But…” She held her head up higher, forcing a mild smile on her own face. “We won’t know unless we try, and I’m not doing the business any favors lying around eating Chevalese pastries. Let’s head downstairs and get to work.”
About five hours later, Rarity’s initial dismal assessment of the situation was still being confirmed. She immediately commissioned telegrams to fourteen separate suppliers she had previously contacted attempting to secure a deal for the uniform contract to Manehattan. On the suggestion of her factory manager, she included information that the deal was as good as done if they could incur a materials cost of only 40 per uniform, operating on the idea that a bird in the hand was worth two in the bush.
Yet the other suppliers in Manehattan were just as business-savvy as Rarity and, in many cases, far more cutthroat. They knew full well it would be far better to sink her current deal and pair with different designers for a slightly higher bid to get themselves more out of the arrangement. And in a town where textiles were so aggressive, it was far better to let an up-and-coming company sink to avoid future competition than to make a tidy profit in the short term. She had scarcely begun to look through their records for whatever additional suppliers they could contact when telegrams began to come back declining her offer. Half of them had been rejected by the time she began to send additional ones out.
Within three hours Rarity and Sassy had exhausted all of their original options. They had little choice after that but to look into smaller fabric companies that had offered solicitations. These ones were even bigger shots in the dark than before.
Rarity sighed as Ms. Pommel brought her a cup of afternoon coffee, thumbing through one sheet of a potential contact after another. “No…no…no…certainly not…no…a thousand times no…” She paused and held up one, frowning. “This one appears to be the kind of fabric we need, but they won’t go lower than 75…”
Sassy held up one. “Ms. Rarity, what about Plaid Practical? They’re offering as low as 35.”
“Yes, and it most certainly shows in their product,” she answered with a frown. “The swatch they sent us was the most threadbare and miserable excuse for a textile that I’d ever seen in my life.”
“But we are rather desperate at the moment…”
“Not desperate enough to sacrifice quality,” she answered, turning her nose up indignantly. “I’m sorry Ms. Saddles, but I won’t match our price if the uniforms we produce are made of such shoddy materials. Not only would that do irreparable damage to our own reputation, but the client would be left with a marketed all-weather uniform that would only be fit for cleaning rags.”
Two hours later, however, with still no success, Sassy at least was clearly beginning to wonder if high quality would be worth the price of them all being without means to feed themselves, and even Rarity was beginning to lose heart all over again. Her coffee had been drained and she had worked so steadily that she was now half-hunched over a cluttered table with one contact after another marked “NO SALE”. She had to blink several times at her own slips to make sure she wasn’t looking over the same ones twice.
“Is there any way we could possibly reduce our portion? If we can’t cut the cost one way…”
Rarity sighed. “No, that’s impossible. If we hadn’t expanded we might have had a chance, but we won’t be able to cover our debt payments and continue our expansion at any cheaper. A few dollars might be workable but not enough to be competitive. I’m afraid this is all but hopeless.”
“Well, it’s…” Sassy looked outside, only to frown regretfully. “…nearly sundown." A pause, before she made her voice more upbeat. "But we still have more time. We have all of…" Again, her voice dimmed. "Thirteen days…" She smiled again. "And a place like Manehattan is bound to have a surplus of supply…or…" Again, her face turned downcast. "It would have eight years ago before all of this mess happened…” A pause. “I’m afraid I’m growing inclined to agree with you, Ms. Rarity.”
“Ms. Rarity! Ms. Rarity!”
By this point, both women were so discouraged they didn’t even look up when Rarity’s assistant/apprentice designer came running back into the room, waving a letter in the air. “Ms. Pommel, I think we’re both ready to call it a day on putting in any more rejections…”
“Oh, but this isn’t a rejection! It came in the evening mail!”
Both of them looked idly up as she placed the letter in front of Rarity. Sighing a little, she adjusted her reading glasses and took up the envelope. “‘Fabrichique’? I’ve never heard of them before…” She reached for her letter opener, broke the seal, and opened it up, producing not only a letter but three different swatches of fabric. She focused on those first, blinking a little in surprise at them.
“Oh?” She took up one sample and examined it more closely. “Interesting weave… Nice choice of fibers…” She picked up another, rubbing it between her fingers. “Smooth feel, but not silky…” She grasped it with her other hand and tugged. “Just the right amount of give too…” She took up the third one and held it up to her table light. She ‘hmmed’ as she kept examining it. “Why, this is almost as good as Tartan Top’s. In fact,” she took up another swatch and held the two at once. “if they could make an intermediate between these two, I’d say it’d be just what we were looking for.”
A bit more pep in her voice now, Rarity took up the letter and began to read it over. By now, Sassy had straightened in her own chair while Ms. Pommel waited to one side. It took about a whole minute, but at last Rarity’s face lit up.
“Oh my… I don’t believe it! It’s like a miracle!”
“Well buttons and bobbins, Ms. Rarity! Don’t keep us in suspense! What does it say?”
She held up the letter. “It’s a new fabric company soliciting designers! And they’re offering us a generous starting price! At this, we could make each uniform at a cost to them of only…” She quickly looked back, ran over the numbers, and did some calculations in her head. “…42 dollars each!”
Now Sassy lit up. “Why, that’s wonderful! An extra two dollars would make us have to scale back a little and tighten our belts a bit more, but compared to having no contract at all it’s a small price to pay!”
“Yes, that’s what I thought!” Ms. Pommel chimed in. “Um, except for one small thing…”
“Oh, that’s no bother at all, Sassy,” Rarity waved off. “We only need this deal to break Carousel Courture into the Manehattan garment industry. The plan was always to have this be our first big sale. With our feet in the door here, we can contract with Fillydelphia next and then attract enough investors to start putting out domestic lines.”
“Of course,” Ms. Pommel tried to speak up again. “But I’m afraid…”
"I only hope we can attract enough on this first deal to make a big enough 'splash'..."
“Don’t you worry about a thing about that end, Ms. Rarity," Sassy reassured. "As soon as we have this deal signed I’ll make sure every fashion periodical and advertiser in this entire town knows about it! I’ll go door to door like a salesman if I have to!”
Rarity smiled back appreciatively, and looked again at the letter. “This is simply wonderful! This little miracle may have saved the entire business! Ms. Pommel, let’s get a wire out to Fabrichique to send their representative at once to Manehattan so we can have a new contract signed immediately, and then I’m taking out all three of us to dinner! It will make up for that abysmal lunch! Although…after that abysmal lunch, I’m hoping you won’t mind if we eat some place that’s a little less than five-star. Perhaps a three or two even…”
“Ms. Rarity!”
Both Rarity and Sassy snapped up as Ms. Pommel finally shouted loud enough to command attention. That done, she exhaled once before looking regreftul. “I don’t want to rain on anyone’s parade, but before you think of closing the deal, perhaps you should look at the address on that envelope more closely.”
She blinked once before looking back down at the table, finding the envelope, and bringing it up in front of her again. She read for a moment before her eyes widened a little. “Oh my… Ap…Appleloosa?”
“Not just Appleloosa, I’m afraid. The Macintosh Hills part of Appleloosa. Not only is that out in the country, it’s very near…” She swallowed at the thought. “…the Equestria border.”
Sassy cupped a hand to her mouth. “Oh dear… Rarity, have you been reading the papers?”
She looked uneasy. “I’ll admit I have been a bit preoccupied the past few days…”
“The latest word is they believe the Nighttouched may be making another move soon. Everyone’s in a tizzy. Fillydelphia, Griffonstone, Mount Eris, and Appleloosa are all bracing themselves either for a surge of those monsters or one of the other countries to react. Or worse…that Trottingham or the Dragonlands will try to use the opportunity again.”
“By now they have to have already commandeered all of the telegraph lines for emergencies…assuming that the Macintosh Hills even had one… And since their company is so new, they don’t have a representative outside of Appleloosa yet,” Ms. Pommel sighed. “That letter was postmarked a month ago. It’d take at least that long to send a response, and probably a lot longer with what’s going on. We only have fourteen days.”
Rarity began to look dismayed all over again. She bowed her head and silently thought about this for a few moments. Sassy sighed as she slumped in her own seat. “Oh, linens and lace… This was our ray of sunlight in the clouds and now it’s gone dark again. Now I really do wish Manehattan would have tried to build airships of their own…”
Suddenly, the young woman looked up again. “I…don’t suppose the rail lines would still be open, would they?”
Both Sassy and Ms. Pommel looked up so fast one would think they had sat on a tack. Rarity herself looked a little nervous at her own suggestion, but looked them both in the eye.
“Excuse me, Ms. Rarity?”
“Would they?”
Ms. Pommel stammered a moment. “I…I suppose they would be, because they need to allow evacuation, but-”
“And it’s my understanding that there is an express line that runs from Manehattan to Appleloosa, is there not?”
The jaws of the other two women dropped. “Ms. Rarity,” Sassy began to speak, “you…you can’t possibly…”
“I…I don’t see why not, Ms. Rarity, b-b-but…”
“So, in theory,” she drew herself up, taking in a deep breath, “a representative of our company could take a rail to Appleloosa, walk into Fabrichique in person, negotiate the deal, get the contract sighed, and come back with a signature on a piece of paper guaranteeing that we can get materials for that price and thereby allow our own government contract to be valid, and present it for signature on the desk of the Military Budgeting committee within the two week deadline, correct?”
“I agree with Ms. Pommel wholeheartedly! That would be an act of madness!” Sassy concurred. “Besides, the Macintosh Hills are so close to the border there’s a good chance they would get hit by another surge forward, whether it be those monsters from Equestria or armies from Trottingham! Even if they didn’t, those rail lines they’ll be using to get us the material might end up commandeered or worse!”
“None of that matters!” Rarity insisted. “All we need is a slip of paper with a signature on it that guarantees we can get that price and our own contract to the Manehattan government is valid! We can claim production delays or wartime expenditures later if need be, but the bottom line is they’ll have already signed the binding contract, we’ll already have our capital, and we’ll be past this giant hurdle and dealing with much smaller and more manageable ones!”
Ms. Pommel wrung her hands nervously. “But taking a trip out there is…is suicide! If you’re caught out on that train line when…I-I mean if the Nighttouched break through, you’ll be stranded out in the country with no escape! And that’s not accounting for all the criminals, bounty hunters, looters, and robbers that will be clogging the train lines looking for marks from refugees!”
“Ms. Rarity,” Sassy said more quietly yet insistently, “no one here says you have to do this. We all know you for being a generous spirit, but there comes a point when some sacrifices are just too much to make. It won’t do Carousel Couture or Ponyville any good to lose both you and the contract if the worst should happen.”
She hesitated on hearing these responses. Her eyes drifted to the ground and she bit her lower lip, wavering for a few moments. Finally, however, she closed her eyes, tightened up, and lifted her head again. “As you pointed out before, Ms. Saddles, there is more at stake here than myself or even the employees of this company. After what happened last year, this business is now the only thing I have left and it’s the only thing still stable in this world a lot of others have left. Because of that, I simply cannot stand to one side and pretend I don’t see this last opportunity in front of me.”
She lifted her nose into the air again. “I’m sorry, ladies, but my mind is made up. Ms. Pommel, if you would be so kind as to leave a bit early today for the Manehattan Station to purchase a ticket for the next train to Appleloosa. I will be down myself as soon as I have finished packing a few things and I wish to depart at once. Ms. Saddles, I believe I can count on my manager to keep things running smoothly while I’m gone?”
The two hesitated, neither liking this, but also unable to argue. They both slumped a little in the end. Ms. Pommel finally nodded. “Of course, Ms. Rarity… I’ll leave right away,” she answered quietly before turning to leave.
“Certainly, Ms. Rarity,” Sassy answered even more quietly.
“Thank you both, darlings. Now…I need to head off as well. It will take me a good twenty minutes just to pick out an outfit perfect for making a business deal on the first day of meeting face-to-face…”
She rose from her own seat at her assistant/apprentice designer cleared the threshold of the room. However, she barely began to step out when Sassy spoke up again. “Shall I let everyone know the news tomorrow?”
Rarity gave a panicked start. “Oh, merciful heavens, no. I wouldn’t want to ruin morale when there’s no cause to. Just…” She paused to breathe. “Tell them I’m on a business trip looking for a better supplier for the uniform textiles. That’s technically the truth…”
Her manager looked uneasy. “Are you certain that you don’t want the employees to know because they might also try and talk you out of it? I can’t keep this company afloat without you, Rarity. None of us can.”
She laughed airily, although it sounded a tad forced. “Oh, Sassy…you and Coco are just being pessimistic. Thousands…or…at least hundreds…of individuals make this sort of trip all the time and don’t run into any trouble. A quick trip to Appleloosa, a few hours for a signature, and then a quick trip back. I shouldn’t even need a whole week, let alone two. I’ll be back before you know it. After all,”
She calmly shrugged.
“What’s the worst thing that could possibly happen?”
With the dark confines of the cellar, a woman with long, pink hair slowly opened her eyes. They focused only a moment as her awareness came back, before the pupils shrank. A cold shiver ran down her spine.
Morning had come again.
Sunlight was streaming through the cracks of the floorboards over her head, just enough to make out the bottom of the cellar. What was once nothing but dug earth and floorboards had been set up with crude bits of furniture and hastily-made wooden shelves, which in turn were filled with items of bedding, litter, fluff, and other nesting materials. No less than thirty separate animals were crowded into that dark space. Many of them were small—rodents and birds. A pair of foxes was in one corner. A trio of raccoons was in another. Most conspicuous was an adult bear actually taking up the side nearest a wooden staircase that he could hardly climb without breaking. On the other side, on an old mattress covered up with down pillows, blankets, and a curled-up white rabbit, lay the woman.
She had woken up as soon as the lark in the cellar had begun to sing. Now she lay there trembling. Like a frightened child, she pulled the covers over her mouth and nose. The other animals began to rise but they all stayed exactly where they were. Not one dared move. Slowly, she looked from one corner of the room to another. All was still. All was silent. Not the slightest speck of light—natural or otherwise.
After some time, the covers were slowly pulled away. She slowly and silently extruded herself from beneath them and slid herself onto the floor. She reached her hand out for a thin chain dangling from the ceiling to the floor and grasped the end. After hesitating long enough to swallow a lump in her throat, she pulled.
On the floor above her, the chain grew taut around an old metal cylinder fashioned into a hood. It drew upward, allowing a lit candle underneath it to be exposed. Ever since moving into the cellar, she always waited for the sun to rise and for silence before emerging from it every day. She realized two months after she started that this was insufficient. Something could have broken in and taken refuge in the shadowy areas of the upstairs, as something had on that particular day, and when she emerged it promptly killed two chickens and a box turtle she had taken in. The candle she had exposed served to “draw them out” if they were taking shelter in the dark places above her. Even if hiding from daylight, they seemed to always hate unnatural light enough to try and snuff it.
She waited patiently. One minute passed. Two minutes passed. On the third minute, she finally relaxed. Letting out a shaky exhale, she eased her arm and lowered the hood again. She rose to her feet, no longer trying to be quiet. The other animals followed suit and began to get up from their respective positions. That included the rabbit she had left on her pillow. As for her, she moved to the wooden staircase and ascended it a few steps, so that her head touched the floor of the room overhead. She placed her hand on it and paused again.
Fears ran through her heart. After all, even with her precautions, there could always be a way something got missed. Taking in one deep breath, she pushed it open.
Nothing but rays of sunlight from her windows and her empty house greeted her.
She smiled in full relief, relaxing completely at last, and moved to one side. Moments later, the birds flapped out and the rest of the animals rapidly climbed the stairs to join them in the main room.
The “house” the woman lived it had been abandoned along with the land on it well before the Lunar Fall. The terrain surrounding most of the area was rocky with poor soil and not suitable for any sort of development and all claims to it either relaxed or abandoned. After the Lunar Fall, Mount Eris declared the strip of land she resided on “No Man’s Land” for miles in both directions as a buffer zone to Equestria. There was no one left to molest her for squatting.
The structure's roof had fallen in and the stones that made up the walls had begun to bulge outward as it sagged. It was overgrown with a mixture of moss, vines, and one old tree pressing into it as it grew. It was hard to even make out the house from the surrounding country from a distance. Repairs had been done in the form of rags or mud to patch as many holes as possible, setting up old discarded iron rods or bits of timber to prop walls, and nailing strips of wood over the roof holes.
Inside the house was a bit different. It had been made into something of a home, using discarded and secondhand furnishings, old yet suitable rugs and drapes, and collections of reclaimed flatware and cooking apparel around a tiny, wood-burning, iron stove—the biggest the owner had been able to bring in and put in the house under her own power. Nevertheless, it was just one giant room, and to account for all residents it too had many places for birds and mammals to recline, perch, or eat. There were more places for animals inside than there was for its sole resident.
The woman herself was moving around in it now. She was changed from her simply one-piece nightgown to her day clothes. She had no shoes but had dressed herself in a simple dress made from basic fabric she had scavenged and hand-stitched, and she had taken time to brush her long hair until the tips curled. With the sun out and the various creatures roosting, fluttering, or running about her, she was in a far better mood. She smiled pleasantly and sang to herself as she worked.
She eventually came up to an empty feed bowl. A piglet with a tiny purple splotch about the size of a pencil eraser head on her shoulder blade stood in front of it, looking up at her and grunting.
“Sorry, Olivia, but you already had your breakfast,” she smiled back. “You’ll just have to wait until lunch.”
The piglet grunted again, lowering her head and looking almost unhappy, as the woman moved on to a crude shelf nearby where numerous smaller creatures were dwelling. She leaned in closer to it. “Hello, little friends! It’s tidy time! Everyone together!”
As one, the creatures on the shelf looked up to her, before each one turned about and began to work in their nesting space. A squirrel with a little dark blemish behind one ear quickly picked up rinds of walnuts and other shells and placed them over the edge of the shelf, letting them fall to the floor. The woman immediately swept them up. “Thank you, Nutmeg!”
A pair of mice, each sporting a small discoloration on a different spot on their body, quickly worked in tandem; one of them picking up their newborn children one by one while the other rooted in the litter underneath for bits of old seed husks and dirty straw and placed them over the edge. She quickly swept this up as well. “Thank you, Mr. and Mrs. Pawsworth!”
On the next spot, a chickadee whose wingtip was darkly discolored quickly flitted about the air, nimbly sweeping over her nest to pick out bad materials and place them in a neat pile on the floor, finished up just as the woman arrived. The songbird landed on her nest and sung proudly; causing the woman to smile more as she cleaned. “Thank you, Carolina! You’re always so neat!”
She continued to make the rounds until each occupied space was cleaned up. Once she had all the dirt and refuse swept, she took up an old metal lid she used for a dustpan to gather it together and began to move over to an iron drum that served as a garbage can.
She reached for the lid only to freeze where she stood. A pair of snakes, both the venomous variety, were coiled up on the lid. As soon as her hand neared them, both reared up and hissed at her.
She didn’t look scared though. Instead her face flushed red in embarrassment. “Oh my…I’m so sorry, Sylvester… Sylvia… I wanted to get started on cleaning so soon I forgot all about you two.” Putting the dustpan to one side, she reached nearby for one of the floorboards. One in particular had an old knothole that had come loose but had been plugged again with a large piece of cork. With some effort, she grasped it and pulled it free, and as soon as it was both snakes calmed down and quickly slithered off the bin and into the hole one after the other; showing off a dark spot on either one's scales as they did. The woman would not allow either snake to eat any of the other “residents” of the house, so instead that served as a route under the home to the stream where they could move south and eat their fill of wild rats and voles.
No sooner had she finished letting them out when the back door to the house creaked. She turned to see the white rabbit that had slept with her rushing in. As soon as it reached her, it came to a stop and reared up; only then exposing a purple splotch on its own inner thigh. It let out a series of squeaking noises.
“Oh, the chickens are getting impatient? I’m sorry, Angel. I got carried away this morning. How many eggs today?”
He raised one leg and thumped it against the ground six times.
“That many? I’ll make sure to get them before I head out today. We’re out of corn and I think I can still get a few carrots.”
The rabbit curled on himself at that and let out another cry.
“Tomatoes?" She looked a little uncertain. "I don’t know… It’s a bit early in the year, and the patch is so far away…”
The rabbit cried again, louder.
“But I was going to go with Barry to look for huckleberries today.”
He cried yet again, almost sounding like a whine, and stamped his feet. The woman winced uncomfortably, but after holding out a bit she broke.
“Well…I guess I could take a look… Just so long as we leave soon…”
This seemed to satisfy the rabbit, as he calmed soon after and looked up hopefully. The woman herself quickly dumped the dustpan and set both it and the broom against the wall. “Just let me grab my basket… Now where did I leave it?”
A loud bird squeal went off in response. She looked and spotted a jay perched on the chair to her “dining room table” (nothing more than a small table with one chair) pointing to another shelf. It was lined with dried foodstuffs, not just for human consumption but animal as well. The basket was set idly on on the second rack from the bottom over a few sacks. The piglet was rooting around one that was empty.
“I’m sorry, Olivia, but we’re fresh out of truffles. We can go hunting for more tomorrow.”
The piglet snorted unhappily as she pulled herself out.
The grounds around the home weren’t much better farther away than when they were up close. There were a few grazing animals living there that kept the immediate grass on the property trim, but other than that there was little but an open, uneven field spreading out between rocky hills leading to the mountains on either side. Aside from the stream that ran from south to north, past her property and into the woods beyond, there was nothing more than an old path wide enough for wagon traffic running in the same direction.
On exiting the house, the woman did what she normally did most days: tried her best to ignore anything to the north of her property. She tried to avoid even catching it in her peripheral vision. Her focus was on a small outgrowth building adjacent to the slumping structure she lived in. At one point, it had been a wood bin, but she had converted it into a chicken hutch. Most of the time the chickens slept in the cellar with everyone else, in spite of the smell, but during the daylight hours they roosted in there. She now had her basket and was reaching into each nesting box, pulling out the fresh eggs one after another.
Most of the other animals were out and running around now. The sun was fully up and none of them feared the long shadows any longer. The area about the slumped house was filled with the sounds of foraging and birds singing. It was a cheerful spot in the No Man’s Land, because for miles in all other directions the land was silent. The animals that had resided there had long since left--willingly or unwillingly.
As she pulled out her sixth and final egg, she rose and turned to go inside. However, she halted whens he caught sight of one of the adult raccoons running up to her as fast as it could. As soon as he saw he had her attention, he reared up on his hind legs chittering furiously.
“Hmm? What is it, Smoky?”
The raccoon chittered louder, gesturing about with his small hands.
“Something’s wrong with Smoky Jr.? What is it?”
He balled his hands into fists and opened them wide in an “erupting” gesture.
The basket of eggs fell out of the woman's grip as she gasped. On landing four of them were smashed, but she didn't care. Her eyes had shrunk into pinpricks. “Oh no! Hurry! Show me where he is!”
The raccoon spun around and took off. She quickly followed behind. Fortunately, they didn’t have to go far. Simply running around to the front of the house was enough.
Several of the animals were already gathered around, whimpering and whining. That included another adult raccoon standing near a juvenile currently curled into the fetal position and spasming as if sick or in pain. The woman ran toward him as soon as she caught sight of him, and she let out another frightened gasp as she got close. A good portion of his back had been “stained” a dark blue, causing the fur to grow wild and scraggly compared to the rest of him. Worse yet was that it seemed to be spreading out before her very eyes, slowly crawling along the rest of his body and staining more of it.
She didn’t waste a moment. She learned the hard way with Mrs. Beaverteeth a year ago there was no time to waste on words. Once it “flared up”, you could have anywhere from fifteen minutes to fifteen seconds before the animal was past the point of no return. Soon she was on her knees at Smoky Jr.’s side.
His face was stretched and his teeth bared. It was no longer a sign purely of pain but of loss of sentience. She swallowed as she reached down for his head.
She cried out and pulled back a moment later as Smoky Jr. instinctively snapped at her hands. She cringed a moment, trembling not only in fear of what was happening but the danger to her that was rapidly increasing. Yet she clutched her cold, sweaty palms for a moment before reaching down again; faster this time. Before he could snap again, she placed her hands around his head and held firm.
“Look at me, Smoky.”
Smoky Jr. didn’t react beyond his fit throwing. Yet the woman pulled his head up so that that juvenile raccoon was looking her straight in the eye.
“Look at me.”
The raccoon fought a little, but his eyes cracked open and caught hers. The moment they did, they locked into them. She saw traces of a yellow light far back in the pupils, and her focus locked onto those.
In moments, the raccoon’s body began to relax. He stopped stiffening and resisting and eased into her hands. When he did, her own grip became gentler. She began to move her fingers slowly and comfortingly, gently petting the sides of his head as she continued to stare. She ignored her surroundings. She thought nothing of the rest of the raccoon’s family, the surrounding animals, the eggs, or anything else. Everything vanished into black about her except the young raccoon’s eyes. Her own body began to go flaccid, even numb, as she stared deep and long into them.
She saw only the yellow light. Knew only the yellow light. And as she stared on at it, she felt herself imagining a candle wick being quenched. One of the bits of yellow went out at that, but the rest remained. Yet her mind kept imagining wicks going out, and soon another bit went out. And another after that. In a few moments, all had disappeared.
The woman let in a gasp as dizziness came over her, and all truly did fade to black for a moment as her senses left her completely. It lasted only a few seconds, however, and soon reality fully returned. Her vision became a light blur again before focusing sharp enough to see the house and the animals around her, and she could once again feel sunshine and hear birds singing. Her hands had released Smoky Jr. unwillingly and she herself had almost collapsed to the ground, but her senses had come back in time to push back her lingering dizziness and straighten up.
The young raccoon was standing on the ground, looking quite normal and shaking himself off, before his mother and father came up and happily nuzzled him. Best of all, to her relief, the large patch of dark fur on his back had receded to only a small dot once again.
She smiled a bit weakly at the whole thing, in spite of how she felt. The other animals began to cry and chitter happily about her. None of them realized that her smile was forced. She had again driven back a flare up, but again the spot remained. Just like it did on all of them. She couldn’t even look at the other animals without having her eyes zoom to that spot on them some days. And there they would remain for days, weeks, months…two years was her personal record she had seen…before something like this would happen again.
And next time she might not be fast enough.
After a while, she finally got enough strength to rise to her feet again. There were more chores to do.
There had been a number of farms as well as townships before the area became No Man’s Land. The fallow fields served most of the woman’s needs as well as those of the animals. When the sun was high and there was plenty of daylight left, she did what she did most days and traveled to them. After seven years, most of them were highly overgrown and no longer productive, but they stayed fresher and viable longer than most. After all, there weren’t any pests around to eat from them.
Up and down through old fields of wheat and rows of corn she went; looking over one old ear or stalk after another and stripping it of kernels or seeds if necessary. She wore a large bushel backpack specifically for that, as grains made up the bulk of both her diet as well as that of all of her friends. After the hour it took to even walk to the field, she devoted three to filling it up. That done, she spent the next hour going for other vegetables. This was a more random bet. She didn’t know where all the fields in the area were yet, but often when she toured a new field she found nothing but a ruined, blighted crop. Every so often, however, she found one that was still viable. The carrot patch she had been tending for months was one, although at this point she had to pull three bad carrots to get a good one. She nearly headed back afterward before she remembered Angel’s insistence that morning, and devoted another hour to traveling to the tomato patch she had picked out and back.
By the time she saw her home again, the sun was still up and would be for hours yet, so she didn’t mind that her trip had taken longer. As soon as her feet touched the wide path alongside her house, she started thinking about how she needed to get lunch out before she could do a good cleaning of the dishes, and still wanted to gather some huckleberries before she needed to worry about dinner and setting things up for another night.
She was still thinking about it when she reached the house and began to put down her bushel and vegetables when she heard a tell-tale thumping along the path. Soon after, she saw Angel come around the corner and quickly rush up to her. Seeing his speed, she blanched. She remembered how fast Smoky had come running to her earlier and began to fear a similar event was taking place. If it had started sometime after she left it might already be too late…
“Angel? What’s wrong?”
The rabbit stopped and began to furiously stamp around and squeak at the same time.
“What?”
He even more insistently made the same gestures.
“Please, slow down! I can’t understand you when you’re talking so fast!”
The rabbit paused to take a breath before squeaking more slowly.
She blinked. “Olivia? What about her?”
He squeaked a bit more, and the woman looked shocked.
“What? By herself? But she knows better than that! There aren’t even any truffles around here to sniff out! Where would she go looking for them?”
The rabbit gestured again, this time up the path.
“Wh…what?!”
As scared as the woman had been earlier with Smoky Jr., now she went white as a sheet. About the only thing worse the piglet could have done aside from walking right up to a Light Eater was what Angel had just said.
The woman began to tremble as her eyes drifted up past Angel to the path. The forest that it vanished to north of her house led right toward the very reason this land was now abandoned. It sat on the borders of Equestria. Even now, no matter what time of year or day, she saw the darkness that hung over it. Not very far away at all, in eyesight in fact, the path went straight into the woods. And she knew from experience that one didn’t need to go inside more than twenty feet before it started getting darker. That had been purely by accident once, and ever since she had sternly warned all of the animals to never go anywhere near it. In that place, no birds ever sang, no bees ever buzzed, and the only life was the Nighttouched.
Olivia, however, was young and tended to think with her stomach. She may very well have been walking along the forest edge and caught the whiff of a truffle...
She stood there paralyzed for several seconds. Fear seized her heart. It took all of her courage even to make it through each night living out here. She wouldn’t have walked a hundred feet inside that forest for all the money in Greater Equestria.
This wasn’t about just her, though. It was about Olivia.
She had to take not one, not two, but three deep breaths before she finally felt stable enough to command her body to straighten. She continued to shake uncontrollably as she looked back down at the rabbit. “Angel, stay here and keep an eye on everyone else.”
The rabbit, as much as was possible for a creature like it, looked surprised at her saying that, but she didn’t give a chance for her resolve to waver. Commanding her legs to move, she began to walk down the path toward the forest. Angel squeaked back loudly, but she didn’t answer. Someone had to go in after Olivia and it might as well have been her. She heard his protests stop eventually as she kept walking, and she took yet another deep breath as she forced her feet onward.
She didn’t get much farther from the house and closer to the woods before she began to feel more nervous. The woods' edge was thick with undergrowth, and combined with the dark shadow looming over it night and day, she shook harder the nearer she grew. What started off as a forced walk was now a much slower stroll that was quickly turning into a creep. It grew quieter the closer she came. She wasn’t able to hear the slightest sound from her homestead or the others. The silence of the forest ahead seemed to swallow it up before she even stepped inside.
She came to the “threshold” of the forest entrance and paused. She saw the path stretch a short ways where the daylight still came through the canopy, but after that it began to look dimmer before the path turned. It was like staring into a basement or old building rather than a forest; the way the shadows encroached within. While in the light, the Nighttouched would remain hidden, but not far inside they could move freely. Especially with all of the shadows of trees to move around in.
Teeth chattering a little, she slowly opened her mouth. “O…Olivia?”
Her voice was practically a whisper. If Olivia had been right next to her she would have barely heard it.
“Olivia?” she called again; somewhat louder.
Still nothing.
“Olivia!”
That last one managed to have some volume, but it was no use. The forest was dead silent. She swallowed again; realizing there was only one option left. Cupping her hands to her chest to try and quell its fierce beating, she commanded her body to move. A moment after she slowly began to walk into the woods.
Even in the light portions, she was scared. It was too quiet and still. Everything seemed stuck in time. Yet the light portions quickly dimmed. Just as she remembered, she didn’t have to go far before the light around her seemed to fade. It was like the sun itself was an oil lamp that was slowly being turned lower. Even though the path was nothing but packed dirt, she could hear each one of her footsteps and each panicked gasp through her lips. As the path soon made its first turn and afterward continued to twist and curl, she realized that she wouldn’t be able to see the way back behind her…which meant she would receive no comforting look of sunlight and her home until she was nearly out again.
She tried calling again, but this time she couldn’t manage more than a whisper. She didn’t want to call out in here, especially as the shadows lengthened with the closing darkness. Shadowy patches began to fill the woods around her and she knew Nighttouched could be in them. She told herself Olivia would have broken off earlier in the path, staying in the light portions. However, she corrected herself soon after that. She knew the piglet was smart enough to stay in open spaces rather than wander off the trail. Besides, she would have heard her before if that was the case.
Finally, she reached a point where the light faded so much she was having a hard time seeing. At that point, her resolve began to ebb again. She tried to open her mouth to call out one more time, but she no longer had the bravery to speak. She didn’t want anything to hear her. Realizing she was getting nowhere, she resolved to turn around and head back…
The forest was so silent she heard the oink up ahead quite distinctly.
“…Olivia?”
She cupped her hands to her own mouth. The forest was so still that even speaking it was like shouting in a closed room. Yet there was no mistaking what she had heard. That had been a pig. There was a question of whether it was Olivia or something else…but before the thought could scare her too much she pushed herself to walk again.
Now the forest truly did grow dark. The last trace of sunlight vanished overhead. Normally this would have made the area beneath the canopy completely opaque, but the blackness was so great that stars and the moon began to come out. More of them came as the darkness deepened, and in spite of the unnatural night about her she could still see. That was a good thing, because soon the trail began to grow hilly and uneven as well as winding. Combined with the darkness, it was almost impossible to see where she was going. Her foot suddenly caught on a stray root, and, once again, she gave an involuntary cry as she stumbled. She managed to get her feet underneath her before falling but she froze at her own cry, listening around her. Only when she confirmed no reaction did she move again.
She made it for a few more twists and turns before she was forced to stop again. Although she could barely see it through the canopy and the moonlight, the trail ahead of her suddenly blanked out and gave way to rougher terrain. That confused her momentarily, but as her eyes adjusted she managed to make out signs of a massive washout ahead. The big rain from three years ago must have swollen the creek into spilling forth and rubbing out the trail. She could proceed no further unless she went into the newly made ravine.
However, stopping also revealed something else. The forest was no longer silent.
She could definitely hear sounds now. It was faint but distinct. Something was moving up ahead. She wasn’t sure what, for it didn't sound like any movement she had ever heard before, but it was definitely there and, more importantly, not far from where she was.
Before her terror could make her turn back, she heard a short squeal. Her head snapped to it at once as she realized it wasn't far from where she now stood. No more than fifty feet ahead in the woods proper. The only problem was it was closer to what was moving. If she had stopped to think any longer of getting closer to that sound, the fear would have locked her up. As it was, she made her hands into fists and actually closed her eyes before charging forward for the trees.
She made far more noise now as she ran into the undergrowth; her feet crunching plants and ruffling through leaves. The sound of the movement grew louder quickly but she kept pushing. She wasn’t able to keep her eyes closed long before forcing to open them again to see around the trees in front of her and avoid collisions, but she didn't stop. As her ears began to make out individual smaller noises on the movement, she forced her eyes open wider and looked to the forest floor.
No signs of anything but darkness, but no signs of small lights either. She kept her eyes open as she continued to run. Her toes stubbed another root, and she nearly faltered again as her bare foot stepped on a sharp rock, but she still kept moving.
Finally, in the pale moonlight streaming through the canopy, she saw a splotch of whiter color. Growing nearer, she made out the shape of a piglet. Olivia was cringing and trying to hide as best as she could in the undergrowth, but as soon as the woman was close enough to hear she wheeled around and spotted her. Giving a panicked squeal, she ran up to her as quickly as she could.
As soon as she reached her, the woman dropped to her knees and the piglet jumped into her arms. She quickly hugged Olivia tightly to her chest, both out of relief as well as protection. She nearly rose again, meaning to turn and not stop running until she was out of the forest.
Instead, she straightened up only a little before she stopped again.
She choked a horrified gasp.
The washout ravine was just ahead of her. It was filled with thousands upon thousands of tiny yellow eyes—the result of thousands of Nighttouched. They had to be things like mice, lizards, and other small creatures to be so clustered together so densely. They were all going the same way; clamoring over and under each other. There were so many that it looked like a living stream of yellow lights.
The air caught in her lungs. She didn’t know whether to run, rise, or even breathe.
Suddenly she heard the trees begin to creak before her, as something struck the ground so deep and heavy it shuddered. The sound of branches breaking rang out soon after, followed by another shudder…this one closer and more forceful.
Sweating now, shaking almost uncontrollably, she looked up into the forest to see the cause.
The pink-haired girl sang to herself happily as she bounded down the crude, unpainted, unfinished wooden stairs two at a time. She even made a little game out of it; picking a different way to hop down each set. She skipped down one, hopped with both feet down another, and tiptoed to yet another. The whole time, a cheerful, energetic smile was on her face and a glow radiated about her.
Her sunny personality was matched only by the way she chose to groom herself. Her clothing, while handmade and inexpensive, was full of bright colors and pastel hues. A sharp contrast to the gray, dull hardness of the house she was in. Even more shocking was her thick, voluminous mass of pink, curly hair that seemed to bounce up and down with her descent. It would have caught anyone’s attention from a block away if her own enthusiastic behavior didn’t first.
As soon as she hit the bottom, she merrily skipped across a dull, bare, and somewhat rotting floor for the back swinging door. She nearly broke through it at her full speed, but stopped herself at the last second and opened it carefully; minding the fact it was barely holding on by one hinge. As soon as she was out, she basked in the sun and took a deep breath, focusing entirely on the blue clear sky and not on the dismal, dead environment about her.
The “house” she had just exited was really a three-room shack on which two small rooms had been stacked on top of a third. It was meant originally only as a staging area for the stone quarry it was located smack dab in the middle of, but that had been before the Lunar Fall caused the workers there to pack up and leave. Now only the Pie Family lived there.
The matriarch of the family, an older woman with a bun in her hair and spectacles on her nose gathering dirt, was currently working up a sweat at the site’s water pump. The reservoir had nearly gone dry long ago so she was having to heave especially hard to get water to flow into the refining trough, but aside from showing a bit of discomfort from the strain she patiently kept at it. The pink-haired girl cheerfully bounded up alongside her.
“Hi mom! Where’s dad?”
“Your father is speaking with the social service official,” she answered in between slight expressions of strain. “The new moon is upon us and we have been given three new quotas to fill.”
“Okie-dokie! Tell him I headed over to the Cakes!”
The older woman closed her eyes and sighed tiredly. “Do have a care, Pinkamena.”
“You bet!” she cheered back before heading off. Her cheerful skipping soon took her past an assortment of abandoned pieces of equipment and digging sites. While the quarry seemed to have been quite active in past years, now it didn’t look much better than abandoned. The massive chasm it was in had lines for several different stone cutting and dressing sites that could have supported hundreds of laborers, but most of those had been left in favor of just one nearby the shack. And rather than a large team working it, only two gray-haired young ladies were going about the arduous task of loading up a single intact cart with finished stonework. Considering it was only two of them and that most of their equipment was old and falling apart, it took them both quite a bit of effort to move just one piece using a hand-powered crane and pulley system.
It didn’t help that the one with long hair covering one eye looked particularly shy while the other had a perpetually cross look on her face. “Pull harder, Marble! You want this slab to land on my foot?”
She meekly hummed a “uh-uh” as she pulled the rope a bit tighter, lifting up the slab enough for the other to get it over the cart. They slowly sat it down a moment later on top of another stone, and both paused to catch their breath as the pink-haired girl came up to them.
“Hey Limestone! Hey Marble! Just letting you know I’m heading over to the Cakes for the day!”
“Eh, who’s stopping you…” the cross one, Limestone, muttered, although the other one, Marble, looked more anxious just at the mention of that. “Just make sure you stay out of trouble, alright?”
“Okie-dokie-lokie!”
Limestone paused for a fraction of a second before looking up to her. “And I don’t care what mom and dad say. You don’t let anyone know you’re from here and you sure don’t let them know you’re a Gaiatian, you hear me?”
Her cheerful mood ebbed a little as she sighed; having heard this before. “Alright, Limestone…”
“I mean it! You could make trouble for the whole family!”
“Sheesh, ok… I’ll just swing by Maud real quick then I’ll be off.” She began to bounce along, but shouted over her shoulder as she went. “I’ll bring you all back cookies!”
Limestone frowned and turned back to her work while Marble winced once before doing the same. Undaunted by either reaction, she began to hum to herself cheerfully as she skipped along.
The path leading out of the quarry was fairly straightforward, making a series of turns up and out until level ground was reached. Many of the trees around the area had been cleared years ago and the main path, still looking like a main road even after eight years, went south and around a stretch of uneven, wooded country to get to town. The pink-haired girl ignored that completely, however.
Her attention was on a small work area near the foliage for more formal dressing of cut stones. Another gray-haired girl was there with a composed, if not dull, look. She slowly but methodically went about chipping away at her current stone; looking almost identical to how she looked the day before.
In spite of her virtual lack of emotion or acknowledgement, the pink-haired girl ran right up to her and waved excitedly. “Hi Maud!”
“Hello Pinkie,” she answered in monotone, continuing to work. “I got you those hazelnuts you wanted.”
She gestured to one side. Pinkie gasped in delight to see a burlap stack filled almost to bursting with hazelnuts. Moving like a flash of lightning, she snapped across the yard and was right in front of it, pressing her nose into the bag in delight. “Oooo! You got so many! Thank you, Maud! The Cakes are going to love these!” She wrapped her arms around the sack in a big hug and clutched it tightly to her. “We’re going to make this fantastic faux chocolate pie and I’ll bring you the first one out of the oven! Hey! That’s a great name! ‘Fantastic Faux’! I should call it that! Or wait! If we could put four different kinds of hazelnuts into it, we could call it a ‘Fantastic Four Faux’!”
“Pinkie.”
“And for short, we can call it the ‘FFF’! Nah…heh, that’s silly. Sounds like someone can't remember the name. Oh, oh! How about the Triple F?”
“Pinkie.”
“No wait! Maud, since you got us the ingredients, we’ll name it after you! Instead of a Mud Pie, you can pick up a Maud-”
“Pinkie.”
Maud’s very slightly higher inflection on her voice was somehow enough to make Pinkie stop in her diatribe. She turned and saw that the woman had stopped her work and was looking her in the eye.
“Pinkie, I think it would be better if you didn’t go to Sugarcube Corner.”
Her happy look deflated slightly. “Huh? Why not?”
“I have a bad feeling about today. If you still want to go, I won’t stop you, but I will tell you to be careful. You should listen to what Marble told you. And if anyone starts asking you about being a Gaiatian, you need to come home right away.”
“Aw…” she whined, “but it gets so boring here on the quarry…”
“Today it’s too dangerous. There are men from the capitol in town,” she answered as she returned to her work. “Dad was trying not to show the family he was scared when he left for the vouchers this morning, and you should be too. And remember what I told you if you run into any trouble.”
Pinkie kept frowning but unhappily nodded. “Yeah, yeah, I remember…”
“You better get going now, then. I’m sure the Cakes need the hazelnuts, and the earlier you get there the longer you can stay.”
She perked her head up. “Oh yeah! That’s right! Bye Maud!”
She turned and took off, not for the main road but rather straight for the forest. A footpath entrance poked just between a pair of trees. Day or night, most people in Greater Everfree wouldn’t be caught dead in a forest this close to Equestria anymore, but Pinkie merely cheerfully sang again as she hopped, skipped, and jumped right in.
Even with the sack over one shoulder, she didn’t have much trouble making her way along the narrow trail. She didn’t seem the least bit scared of how many shadows were in it, how rough and uneven it was, or how far away from any scrap of human civilization it was either. To her, it was merely a shortcut, and she was scared neither of the quiet parts, the dark parts, nor the silence as she cheerfully made her way along. The quarry was soon left far behind her, although it was impossible to tell before long as nothing but empty woods came around her and stretched in front. Yet as time went on and she still ran into nobody, none of it removed the cheerful spring in her step.
Seemingly out of nowhere came a break in the woods ahead, after she had gone a good two miles from the quarry. The open road lay just beyond it. Still humming to herself, she bounded right for it and though it…only to nearly run right into an older man on the road sporting a sour look, a shotgun under one arm, and a crude black hair piece over a bald spot.
He cried out in alarm at her suddenly popping out, and Pinkie herself went wide-eyed before stopping herself so abruptly it almost looked like she halted herself in midair to keep from running into him. Nevertheless, he still staggered back and fell on his rear end in shock, while she planted her feet soon after.
A moment later, she broke into a smile. “Oh, hi Cranky! Fancy running into you here! Or maybe that’s ‘fancy almost running into you here’!”
The old man frowned and grumbled a little to himself. “Hello Pinkie…” he half-muttered. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised you don’t use the road like everyone else either… You best stick to it today though, if you know what’s good for ya’.”
“Oh?” she asked inquisitively, even as she reached out a hand to him. He took it and allowed her to help pull him to his feet. “What’s special about today? Is there going to be a parade? Or a circus? Or International Show Love for Your Roads Day is today and I forgot?”
“Rabid dogs,” Cranky retorted.
She looked confused. “That doesn’t sound very fun. Not many people are going to take the road for rabid dogs.”
He sighed. “Not on the road. Some folks have been seeing a big dog foaming at the mouth wandering around out here. That’d be enough trouble for the youngin’s in town, but nowadays all we need is for it to wander to the borders of Equestria, run into a Light Eater, then come back as a Nighttouched. That makes ‘em more than twice as bad. I heard there was one over in Appleloosa that damn near wrecked half a town. I’m out here trying to put it down.”
“Really?” Pause. “Wait…how will calling it names help stop it?”
Cranky frowned again, before holding up his shotgun and gesturing to it.
“Ooooooh…” she cooed in acknowledgement. “Well, good luck with that Cranky! I’ll catch you on the way back!” She began to happily bounce along again.
“Stay on the road next time!” he shouted after her.
“Hey there, Coconut Cream!”
“Hi Pinkie! What’s in the bag?”
“Oh, nothing…but maybe you ought to tell your mom there’s gonna be a whole lot more faux chocolate at the bakery today!”
“Wow, really? Alright!”
“Hi Marigold! The new orchids come in yet?”
“Not yet, but I’m going to give them another week before I uproot and try again.”
“Stop by Sugarcube Corner on Friday! We’ll have more mint pudding!”
“Oh! Thank you!”
“Hello Matilda! How’s school going?”
“Harder and harder the closer summer gets, I’m afraid. I can barely get the kids to sit still a half hour before recess. Are you going to be making any more shortbread today?”
“A fresh batch of the soft baked tomorrow! I’m making it ‘specially for your birthday!”
“You’re so thoughtful, Pinkie!”
Considering the number of greetings that she exchanged as soon as she caught sight of the first resident of town, it took Pinkie another forty minutes after she finally arrived in the city proper. It too even longer to make her way through the streets to the urban area and, shortly thereafter, to the brown, yellow, and pink pastel “frosting themed” shop of Sugarcube Corner. It stood out as a bright spot among most of the surrounding buildings, as the new paint job had been applied after the first major war four years ago had left much of the surviving districts of Braystol stained with either smoke, dirt, or gunpowder haze—leaving it the only building in the main urban area not a muted gray color. She didn’t bother with the cupcake-styled front door but walked around to the back entrance and right in.
She emerged into the small yet well-equipped baking area. Mr. and Mrs. Cake were as busy as they were most days and, as a result, had brought their twins down and set them up in their crib in the hall connecting the baking area to the shop floor. From the looks of it, the large steam-powered mixer had broken down for the third time that week, and Mr. Cake was forced to use the hand-powered mixer to make his latest batch of dough (much to his overworked chagrin). Mrs. Cake, on the other hand, was working up a sweat trying to pull double duty for them both in getting everything else ready.
However, both looked up from what they were doing on her walking inside. “Oh, Pinkie Pie!” Mrs. Cake announced, before her eyes went to the sack. She nearly gasped. “Is that really…?”
“Yup!” she cheered as she walked to the counter and set it down; five of the nuts bouncing out of the bag when she did. “I told you Maud and I would get you all the hazelnuts you need!”
“Pinkie, you are such a lifesaver! Let’s get started on shelling them right away!”
The girl happily obliged by going to the nearest cabinet for a big bowl, and balanced it on her head as she grabbed a pair of stools and nutcrackers and brought them over to the counter. Mrs. Cake quickly worked to finish her current preparations as Pinkie sat down in one and began to dig in. “Ever since that embargo drove the price of cocoa up so high there’s no way we can keep chocolate in anything at a price anyone can afford. Thanks to you and your sister we’ll be able to make enough faux chocolate for a good long time. It looks like there’s two weeks supply here!”
“Well if you need any more, we have plenty around the quarry! Lots of trees that are both nutty and hazel-y!”
“Oh…oh no, I couldn’t possibly… It worries me sick that you even cut across that forest to get to Braystol. By the way, how much do we owe?”
“Oh, tee-hee!” Pinkie laughed, waving her hand at her. “No charge!”
This actually made Mrs. Cake pause in her work. “No charge? It had to have taken a while to get all of these hazelnuts…”
“Mom and dad said so long as I get to work for you, that’s payment enough!”
Now, Mr. Cake hesitated as well; both him and the missus looking uncomfortably at one another while Pinkie continued to happily fill the bowl with fresh-cracked hazelnuts. After a while, they smiled and looked back down to one another. “Well, we truly appreciate it, Pinkie. We’ve very grateful. This is a tremendous help to us.”
She giggled. “I know! That’s why I suggested it to Maud in the first place! If it helps you out, then it’s all worth it!”
“Let me just get this filling done and I’ll get the pans ready… Oh! The turnovers!”
About thirty minutes later, Mrs. Cake had finished her own tasks: removing and packing a fresh batch of blackberry turnovers the fire chief had ordered before finishing mixing a large batch of filling for the first third of a considerably large order of strawberry tarts. It was delayed longer thanks to the failure of the mixer, but Mr. Cake was busy combining the dough and filling for their larger oven by the time Pinkie had filled up the bowl with shelled hazelnuts. Three separate trays were loaded with them and put in the smaller oven while Pinkie and Mrs. Cake finished readying another three.
“Alright, this will do for now. Let’s get out the chocolate and start melting it on the stovetop.”
“Okie-dokie!” Pinkie cheered as she began to go for the saucepans next.
A hand-bell ringer sounded from the front of the shop. Mr. Cake looked up in a rather frazzled state. “Oh no, don’t tell me they’re early! We don’t even have the first batch in the oven!” He winced as he rapidly pulled off his apron, rose from his stool, and ran out of the kitchen for the front.
“I sure hope they aren’t early…” Mrs. Cake fretted. “I was hoping to sneak one more feeding in before we had to start packaging the first part… Pinkie, I may need you to finish off the faux chocolate.”
She had hardly finished setting the saucepan down when she wheeled to Mrs. Cake with a surprised gasp, before she lit up again. “This is the first time you’ve ever let me make the faux chocolate by myself! My first real batch! Oh…now I have to think of how I want it to be like! Do I want it block-like or a spread? Do I want it thin or creamy? Do I want it smooth or fluffy? Ah, so many things to decide!”
As Pinkie’s smile began to turn into anxiety at the choices she had to make, Mr. Cake reentered the kitchen. She wasn’t looking at him at the time, and therefore didn’t notice he was walking much slower, and that although his face was still anxious it was no longer in a rush.
Mrs. Cake was too busy with her own task to look up to him. “Was that Ms. Ruby?”
“Actually…” his voice was quiet, hesitant, and a bit stilted, “it’s…Mr. Brown again.”
Mrs. Cake slowed down in her own work. Her expression became much the same as his.
“He…brought a friend this time.”
For a moment, Mrs. Cake nearly cupped a hand to her mouth; barely stopping herself. Pinkie remained oblivious to all of this, still fretting over her first faux chocolate recipe. The older woman looked at her nervously and paused for a moment before she moistened her lips and forced a smile. “Um…Pinkie?”
“If I make it too dark, they’ll think it’s burnt! But if I make it too light, the customers will think we skipped on the chocolate, and they’ll go nuts! No…hazelnuts! Huh?” she abruptly looked up; her train of thought broken.
“Could you…deliver the blackberry turnovers to the fire chief?”
“Oh, sure!” In a flash, she abandoned her current work and shot over to the prepped boxes, easily scooping them up and balancing them on her poofy hair. “But are you sure? It’s just a block away…”
“Oh, but you know…we really shouldn’t be calling the chief away from his duty. And take your time while you’re at it! Say hi to some folks!”
“Hmm…” she rubbed her chin, “I’m pretty sure I already said hi to everyone on this side of town, but I’ll bet I missed one so ok!” Beginning to sing to herself, she started to walk toward the hall leading to the front.
“Oh, oh…the back door, please!” Mr. Cake quickly cut off, moving himself physically in the way. “You know what I told you about Mr. Brown! He gets nervous about new faces, heh!”
“Okie-dokie-lokie!” Pinkie cheered before spinning around and heading out the back.
This wasn’t the first time that Pinkie Pie had been sent off to deliver an order whenever Mr. Brown came to place one, although it did occur to Pinkie that day that she always seemed to be sent off to make a delivery every time Mr. Brown came by. However, this was the shortest one. Normally she’d be sent to deliver whatever order was as far away as possible out of all the current queue. However, even accounting for the time she spent looking around the neighborhood for anyone she hadn’t yet said “hi” to coming into town, it simply didn’t take that long. Within five minutes, she was already walking back to Sugarcube Corner.
As she neared it, she placed a finger to her chin and thought aloud. “Hmm…y’know, I’ve never actually seen Mr. Brown before. Maybe if I did and introduced myself, the Cakes wouldn’t have to be worried about me scaring him off! Maybe I can catch him while he’s walking out!”
Changing her path, she steered away from the back door and began to walk to the front. However, just as she reached the edge of one of the store-front windows for the bakery, she froze.
“But what if he’s still in there and I scare him off?”
She puzzled about this for a moment before she lit up with an idea. Reaching into her hair again and fishing around, she emerged with a cracked half of a compact she had picked off the ground last year while walking into town—specifically the mirror portion. Holding it out to one side of her, she angled it toward the window and looked at the reflection.
It took a moment to get the right perspective, but she soon spotted the front counter. Both Mr. and Mrs. Cake were there, still looking stressed and anxious. Mr. Brown and his “friend” were also there. They were rather imposing, dark-looking men in bowler hats and suits; definitely not the kind of person Pinkie was used to seeing in Brayton. They didn’t look too friendly either. Their eyes were stern and cold as they spoke.
“Hmm…they should have placed their order by now… I wonder what they’re talking about?” She thought again for a moment, before she snapped her fingers with another idea. Reaching back into her hair, she emerged this time with a small drinking glass. She smirked at her reflection in the mirror.
“Pinkie, you’re such a genius!" She told it, before she 'answered' for herself'. "I know!”
Placing the glass against the window as close as she could get without revealing herself fully, she put her ear against it and listened.
“…really thought about it.” It was Mr. Cake talking. “I mean, she and the Pies have lived in Trottingham for years. Before us even…”
“That wasn’t what I asked you.” A new voice spoke--one that Pinkie assumed was Mr. Brown. “Again, does Pinkamena Diane Pie currently have her legal residency documents?”
“We…” Mrs. Cake’s voice spoke up. “That is…we had a friend who knew another Gaiatian and sent her to apply for legal residency, but they told us she wasn’t eligible because she didn’t have a national enrollment card. And all Gaiatians are forbidden from receiving one of those because they’re declared non-citizens…”
“So the answer is ‘no’?”
“It’s…it’s just that the way the system is set up there’s no way for her to become a legal resident. In fact, it sort of looks like the government is making sure she can’t. Especially since…since our friend told us that there were people at the City Registrar who looked like they would arrest any Gaiatians who tried to apply…”
“If you have an issue with national ordinances, Mrs. Cake, the correct response is to contact your local governor; not to decide for yourselves whether or not you should obey the law.”
Pinkie’s brow furrowed. That didn’t sound like they were placing an order. In fact, it sounded like they were talking about her.
“For the third and final time, does Pinkamena Diane Pie currently have her legal residency documents?”
A long pause, before Mr. Cake quietly replied. “No, she does not.”
“Alright. Are you aware that no non-citizen who lacks legal residency documents is eligible for employment, local government assistance, charity, education, or medical care, and must remain 100 yards outside of all city limits for urban areas that contain a minimum of 500 residents?”
“She’s…she’s not an employee, officer…”
Pinkie’s eyes widened on hearing that last word. The same word that her father, her mother, Limestone, and Maud told her to avoid each and every time she went to town and to flee if she heard one was coming.
“She works here and collects a daily wage, does she not?”
“I’m only teaching her how to bake,” Mrs. Cake interjected. “There’s no harm in that. And may I ask who accused us in the first place of employing a Gaiatian?”
“I’m asking the questions here, ma’am, but suffice to say anyone who reports a Gaiatian violating federal law is insured anonymity. So you do not pay her formally or informally?”
“No, she doesn’t earn a wage.”
“That would be an example of formal. What about tips or off-the-books payments?”
“No, never.”
“What about charity? Charity is also illegal.”
“We’ve never given her so much as a penny, officer.”
Pinkie began to look uneasy, as she knew full well all of those things were untrue. She had worked there for a while and the Cakes had paid her every day out of pocket in cash. Yet she remembered how many times Maud had warned her never to tell anyone she “worked for the Cakes” or “worked for Sugarcube Corner”, and to definitely never tell anyone she had been paid by them.
“This is ridiculous, though!” Mrs. Cake cut in again. “Since when is giving charity to someone illegal?”
“Since the Amendment to the Homeland Act was enforced two months ago, ma’am. Now I take it that news of that might not have reached Brayton yet. As such, no previous violation of that amendment is considered a criminal act at this time. However, be advised, now that you are aware of it any future violations will be considered criminal activity. Among those is the association clause. Any individual who is found to be assisting a Gaiatian in the realms of employment, local government assistance, charity, education, or medical care and does so knowingly and willfully will be subject to a fine of up to 5,000 pounds and imprisonment for anywhere from 18 months to five years.”
Pinkie gasped. The Cakes themselves were rendered mute. The silence lingered for several seconds.
“I don’t think you two are being straight with me, so keep that in mind. We’ll be monitoring this business regularly from now on and interviewing some of the locals. It’ll be much easier for everyone involved if you simply comply with the law. Good day.”
Soon after, “Mr. Brown” and his “friend” left the front of the shop. It was a good thing they didn’t look to the side of the building where Pinkie was hiding, because at the moment she had slumped on the ground. The glass she had been holding against the window had been left to fall to the ground and out of her hands. She herself was on her knees with a hollow look on her face at all she had just heard. Even her hair seemed to have flattened somewhat and her pallor lost some of its bright “glow” about it.
She wasn’t sure what the Cakes did next or how long they stayed in the front of their own shop, or what they decided. She simply sat there for ten full minutes in that same position, before she finally let out a great sigh and rose again. Ignoring the shop completely, she turned around and began to make her way back home.
Pinkie’s trip back was a marked contrast to her one out. She didn’t skip or sing this time. When people greeted her, she acknowledged them with a half-hearted response, but didn’t call out to anyone new. She hardly seemed to notice them or anything else as she left the city and headed down the road back to the trail, and once she was back into the forest the trip took even longer. Where before she would have merrily skipped and hopped over any logs or dips in the path, even without the presence of her sack of hazelnuts her whole body felt heavier and slower. She only very gradually picked her way over each one. Her head remained bowed the whole way.
After a while, she weakly smile in a vain effort to cheer herself. “Well…being forced to leave the bakery under threat of arrest isn’t so bad. I mean, I always got the quarry. Yup…nothing but fun, fun, fun at the quarry. And we got all the rocks a girl could ask for. All sorts of things we can do. We can dig for rocks and cut rocks and sculpt rocks and sit on rocks and…load rocks on wagons…yeah… We even got rocks that…that…”
She winced and sniffled.
“Look like…hazelnuts…”
She sniffled again, wiping for her eyes as she entered a dip in the valley. She kept walking along a bit further, before she heard a growl just up ahead. In spite of her sad state, she slowly looked up to what had made the sound.
Not more than fifty away was a rather large dog. It had to have been one of the bigger breeds, but even one who wasn’t familiar with the largest dogs would realize something was off about this one. It was gyrating in short spasms while foam and drool dribbled from its mouth, which itself was hung open and baring all teeth. In addition, one of its forelegs was grossly misshapen and deformed, and the hair on it had turned into dark clumps. One could almost hear a creeping sound as the discoloration slowly spread up and over its shoulder joint.
Pinkie regarded the whole scene dully. “Oh. You must be that rabid dog Cranky was looking for.” Her voice was practically as monotone as Maud’s.
The rabid animal, obviously, didn’t respond; save to look at her and begin to growl in its throat.
She idly glanced at his leg, then back up again. “It looks like you went too far north and into Equestria too, just like he was afraid of.”
The canine’s growl became a snarl as it started to turn toward her.
She sighed. “And by now I guess you want to tear me to pieces or whatever…”
As the dark color crept into its back and torso, the snarl became more monstrous and distorted. It took a step toward her.
Pinkie glanced to one side and through the trees. She could tell just about twenty yards to one side of her the forest opened up. “Well, the road’s just over there, but I don’t think anyone’s around to see or hear anything…”
The beast dug its nails in as it reared back, ready to lunge right for Pinkie’s neck.
She looked back and shrugged. “I guess that means Maud won’t mind if I ‘show off’.”
With a monstrous roar, it leapt at her.
About twenty minutes later, Pinkie, looking a little better than before, emerged out of the woods into the quarry. She began to walk back down the hairpin turns; a little of the spring in her step back although still looking a bit downcast.
It didn’t take her long to reach Maud, who was still shaping rocks. It almost looked like she was still shaping the same one. She looked up and quickly assessed the girl based on her appearance. “What happened?”
“Oh,” she answered quietly, coming to a stop next to her, “nothing. Just…I don’t think I can go to Sugarcube Corner for a while…”
Maud was quiet a moment. “Did policemen come there today?”
“I think so… The Cakes told me to go make a delivery, but when I came back I overheard them say they’ll punish them if they let me keep working there… So I left and came home without going in.”
“You should have at least told them you were leaving, Pinkie. They care about you.”
“I know…I should have. I’ll go back and do that tomorrow. It’s probably best that I stay away for the rest of today, though…”
“It won’t be forever, you know. They're good people and you're their friend. They wouldn’t do that to you.”
She looked up and smiled slightly. “Yeah…I know it won’t be forever. I finally realized that coming back home. I just kinda wish forever was right now and not a couple weeks from now…”
Maud turned back to her rock. “Did anything else happen?”
“Oh, I ran into a Nighttouched on the way back. Well, he was turning into one anyway.”
The older sister paused. She looked back up at Pinkie and glanced her over. She noted there wasn’t a mark on her.
“…No one was around, were they?”
She smiled wider and shook her head. “Come on, Maud. You taught me better than that.”
“What…what the…?! What in b-b-blazes…?!”
Cranky, unfortunately, couldn’t express any better response than that an hour later when he finally found his quarry. The rabid animal or, more appropriately, what was left of it was inside out, folded in half, and left hanging from a tree limb at the side of the road by its own broken hind legs tied into a bow.
The gavel smacked down hard on the table top, emitting a resounding clack.
“The 14th Trottingham Interim Congress is now in session,” a woman with dark-purple hair, pronounced glasses, and a rather joyless look on her face stated as she set the gavel down. She was seated at the head of a wide, long, rectangular table in a rather ornate and well-maintained room. Between the room's style, with high ceilings and large windows, the choice of décor, and the older, warmer-looking furnishings of wood and cloth rather than iron and padding, it looked like it was set in a royal palace rather than the more colder, utilitarian types of rooms that modern society embraced.
Stretching in front of her, all the way along either side of the table, were an assortment of people who looked about as mirthless as her. They were a mixed variety, and some of their dispositions were less friendly and casual than others, but all were dressed in suits or other attire of state. The ones closer to her were of a different sort than ones seated further down, however. They seemed to be more of the secretarial or bureaucratic type.
She adjusted her glasses before taking up a pen and looking at a ledger open in front of her. “Let’s start with role call. Lady of Mancanter?”
“Here,” one of those at the table spoke up.
“Lord of Braystol?”
“Here.”
“Lady of Oxenford?”
“Here.”
“Lady of Portssnout?”
“Here.”
“Lady of Derby Downs?”
“Here.”
“Lady of Swan’s Sea?”
“Here.”
“Lady of Trottin’-On-Tees?”
“Here.”
“Lord of Reinbridge?”
“Here.”
“Lady of Whinnychester?”
“Here.”
She paused for a fraction of a second. “Lady of Queen’s Lynn?”
Silence from the table. For a moment, the woman’s eyes looked up and drifted to a seat on her right far at the end. It was vacant--the only seat at the table that was so.
She let out a muted sigh, as this was something she was used to. Making the final note in the ledger, she placed her pen to one side. “As always, we shall start this Congress with matters of defense and military. Afterward, we shall move on to-”
“Regent Cinch.”
The woman went silent; her eyes narrowing a little at the interruption. She looked up and down the table to find one of the ladies on the far side looking back at her just as sternly, if not more so.
“I believe we should start this Congress with discussing matters of the interior. In particular, the economy. I have some findings I believe you will find very interesting.”
The older woman gave her a stony glare for several moments. “I tend to believe that matters of defense, considering the fact that they determine not only our nation’s sovereignty but survival, should take the most precedence, Lady Swan’s Sea.”
“Lord Speaker, I tend to believe we won’t have much to defend or to provide for defense if we ignore the wealth and livelihood of the nation.”
The silence over the table was palpable. The other members looked intently back to the Regent, waiting to see how she would respond. For a long time she didn’t move, just stared at her fellow peer, before she simply adjusted her glasses.
“We have our precedent schedule, and we are in a time of war. Furthermore, I am Lord Speaker, and therefore I shall set the agenda. You will have to wait, Lady Swan’s Sea.”
She didn’t look away or change in her expression, but she slowly eased back into her seat. The Regent looked to one of the individuals nearer to her. “First and foremost, how goes the war effort?”
He cleared his throat. “The ground forces remain at a stalemate at the border. No new pushes were made from the Dragonlands on the infantry front in the past month. The admiral reports continued success on our attacks, but there have been increased reports of buildup along the borders of defenses. We’ve having to push higher and higher to launch our own sorties and refueling is becoming an issue.”
“And to the Southwest?”
He looked uneasier. “The general does report that, following the last reported incident of a Nighttouched attack, that Appleloosa is being stretched thin. Nevertheless, he said that we cannot hope to carry out an offensive with only two divisions. They are poorly equipped, poorly fed, and twenty percent of the trenches are riddled with disease. At the bare minimum, he requests airship relief.”
“Every last man, woman, and child in Trottingham is having to tighten their belts, minister.”
“With all due respect, Lord Speaker…that’s the same answer we’ve been giving him for five months.”
She barely suppressed rolling her eyes as she exhaled, before turning to the speaker’s fellow minister. “How likely can we satisfy the general’s request?”
“Completely impossible. All four shipyards are understaffed and suffering from resource shortages as it is.”
“How about the armors?”
“Right now 90 percent are guarding the No Man’s Land between Trottingham and the Dragonlands. We might be able to pull some away, but if they notice…”
“New armors then?”
“We’ve sunk most of the treasury into the shipyards. Even if we did have new armors, we wouldn’t have the manpower to use them.”
“Not unless we issued a draft of the girls along with the boys…” the Lady of Oxenford muttered with an eye roll.
The Regent sighed and adjusted her glasses. “How about training existing soldiers?”
“Half of the soldiers are so raw they’ve seen less than two years of service as infantrymen. Running our larger armors is a task that requires a trained engineering crew…”
“Ugh...I don’t mean to interject,” the same representative spoke up, loud enough to get everyone’s attention, “but it looks like all we're doing is the same thing we’ve been doing for nearly eight years now: seeing if we can find any more rocks to squeeze blood from.”
“And I don’t think I need hardly remind you that we’ve done quite well with that policy you so dismally assess,” the Lord Speaker responded coolly. “Far better than Cloudsdale and Mount Eris, to be sure. Innovative Independence has carried us past the aftermath of the Lunar Fall to be on the cutting edge of technology.”
"Oh right! We've been doing just absolutely fantastic!" the Lady of Mancanter spoke up in a perky, cheerful voice, before it instantly reverted into a sullen scowl. "If by 'absolutely fantastic' you mean we're so broke we can't afford anything."
“The Regent talks of technology and her ‘Innovative Independence’ policy as if they are practically constitutional values to uphold," the Lady of Swan's Sea spoke up again in a bitter monotone. "Frankly, I think over the past two years almost every pound sunk into our innovation has been misapplied. In my district we had a major project to build mass refrigeration. Eighteen months later, we have warehouse-sized compartments that can keep hundreds of tons of produce fresh, and no produce to fill them with. We invest millions into upgrading the shipping industry and docks and we haven’t a single partner in Greater Everfree with which to trade. All it’s gotten us is an unprotectable set of shipping lanes for black marketeers to bring in every good we can’t provide.”
“And it's getting worse,” the Lady of Portssnout spoke up. “We've been getting by eating cereals and sugar beets for three years now. People will pay 20 pounds apiece for things like melons, spices, and even potatoes by now. Not to mention we can't get decent cloth, porcelain, or tea anymore now that we can't import it. This Innovative Independence thing may have kept us going after the Lunar Fall, but now it's kind of worn out its welcome.”
The Regent paused for a long time before she folded her hands in front of her and straightened in her chair. She now had three of the representatives staring hard and critically at her, but the others were also keeping their eyes on her intently waiting for her response.
At last, she focused fully on the Lady of Swan’s Sea. “And I suppose you believe you have a solution to all of this that you wished to share and that you’re simply not wishing things were better?”
“I do,” she readily answered. “Trottingham need to increase its wealth at once. We need trading partners.”
“Oh, we do now.” Her voice was measured, as if humoring a child...not too much of a stretch considering the Lords and Ladies were less than half her age. “And who, might I ask, is there to seek a partnership with? Appleloosa? The ones who placed soldiers on their borders when the Dragonlands made their first move to ensure we wouldn’t be pushed into their land? Mount Eris? Perhaps there are some survivors yet in the rubble of the capitol who have nothing better to do than sign contracts. Or the Manehattan-Fillydelphia alliance, perhaps? The very ones who stand the most to see us torn apart by Dragonlord Ember. Perhaps we should share our innovation secrets with them upfront so they have even less reason to humor us.”
The representative frowned, clearly not liking the push back. “If we cannot trade with the major parties, we can trade with the lesser ones. Ones like Hoofheim. Or across the ocean-”
"Ah," Regent cut her off with a smirk, "so that is your grand solution to our current dilemma. Simply trade with whoever we can. Why not? I’m certain Appleloosa and the Manehattan-Fillydelphia alliance will think nothing of us sailing through their waters to Hoofheim and anywhere else to grow rich and more powerful at their expense. And across the ocean, you say? You’re thinking of trading with the Zebralands, I take it? Well, why not?” She snorted. “What’s the current exchange rate for ‘wampum’ and bushmeat? Please, don’t stop there, representative. Are there any other remote possibilities you can think of that we haven’t dismissed long ago?”
The Lady of Oxenford stiffened her jaw and straightened in her chair. “There are much simpler routes to take to get to trade partners. Ones that don’t need rely on the sea.”
The Regent's smirk vanished. “I don’t believe I follow you.”
“We have the means to take roads that no one else can use…”
The older woman's look grew dark as her own lips pursed. “That is an option completely off the table. Our defense needs all the airships we can muster with that capability if not more.”
“Then I think we should put some of the technology that has been used exclusively for the military to more domestic matters.”
At once, the Regent's face tightened and she slapped a hand on the table hard enough for the nearest ministers to pull away. “Absolutely out of the question. This technology is a matter of national defense and I will hear none of it.”
“And what good does that do if we collapse from being poor and starving? We've got an edge that no one else in Greater Everfree has!”
The Regent’s face remained firm as she leaned back in her seat. “That’s enough, representative.”
“Why shouldn’t we use it? Why should the Military’s Research and Development hoard everything to themselv-”
“I said that’s enough.”
The sharpness of the last word was enough to render the whole room silent, although both the Lady of Oxenford and the other representatives continued to look at her darkly. Some of them even looked frustrated. However, she remained calm as she folded her hands again.
“As I have stated time and again, due to resource limitations and the need for secrecy, all Military Research and Development will be kept to the strictest of need-to-know conditions. I myself am not privy to the secrets behind this technology so I am in no way less in the dark than the rest of you, but I trust our developers and I trust them when they say they cannot risk these secrets getting out.”
Two of the representatives eased a little at this, although the others remained terse.
“I don’t think I need remind you all that Trottingham possesses, and will continue to possess, a unique status. We are the only nation on Greater Everfree that has nothing to fear from the Light Eaters. Now then, this Nighttouched attack as of late…” She turned back to the ministers. “They believe this is a sign of a greater attack coming, do they not?”
There was a moment of hesitation, before the minister nodded. “Yes. All indications point to another surge. This one on Appleloosa.”
“There, you see?” She turned back to the representatives. “It is simply a waiting game. We let Appleloosa and the other nations weaken, identify their most vulnerable spots, and then strike. And with the routes we possess we can always outflank them. All we need is a little patience, and with any luck we can seize the Dodge Peninsula. And once we have it, all of our agricultural production problems will be solved.”
Silence from the table. More of the representatives eased back into their seats, as this seemed to pacify them, until only the ones from Swan’s Sea, Oxenford, and Portssnout remained. After a time, the latter of the two joined the others, although both of them still looked hesitant. Finally, never ceasing from staring at her darkly, the Lady of Swan’s Sea leaned back.
“Now as I said before I was interrupted,” the Regent went on, “we shall start with military business…”
Four hours later, the Regent had removed her glasses and was rubbing the bridge of her nose as she walked down a different hall of the Royal Palace of Trottingham. This one still had the decorations of suits of armor, coats of arms, and portraits of the past kings, queens, and princes--every last one of them quite obsolete but an indication that the hall hadn’t been converted to an official purpose yet. While there were three aides flanking her from behind and members of the guard at every end and turn, it was far more private here and therefore an easier place for her to collect her thoughts after such a tension-fueled meeting.
Her thoughts were still brooding over what had transpired when she turned the corner, but as soon as she did she slowed in her step so much her aides looked puzzled as they were forced to do the same. She didn’t notice. Her eyes were on the end of the hall.
She had been headed toward the door to the royal study in order to properly unwind. However, as soon as she saw it, she noticed a familiar figure clad in official ornamental armor with a gleaming, brassy finish. An equally archaic spear was posted to his side, and his eyes were set perfectly forward from underneath his brushed galea.
He was the only member of the mostly-disbanded official Royal Guard who still subscribed to official dress. And wherever he was, she was never far away.
“Leave me at once,” she spoke to those behind her without turning. “I’ll call you when I need you.”
The aides had heard this request before, especially when the Royal Guard member was there. Not only did they immediately comply, but the other guards posted in the hall left their stations and withdrew as well. Only the man with the spear remained standing there. It wasn’t until all others were gone that the Regent drew herself up, smoothed out her attire and hair, and walked the rest of the way alone. Her eyes glanced at the Royal Guard member, but he kept his own forward the whole time.
On reaching the door, she exhaled once before opening it up. She quickly stepped inside and shut it again before looking forward.
It was the warmer time of year in Trottingham and she hadn’t started a fire that day. Nevertheless, the fireplace in the study was blazing brightly. Seated in one of the two chairs nearest it, turned almost into a shadow by the glow, was the figure of a woman with voluminous, flowing hair, a custom-tailored uniform of the Trottingham Aerial Navy that incorporated a good amount of black leather, and her head turned toward the fire. On the arm table nearby was a drink she had helped herself to and largely finished. Her legs were crossed, one idly bouncing up and down on top of the other.
“Have a good meeting, Regent Cinch?”
The casualty of the tone made her visibly stiffen before she began to walk forward; far more slowly than before. “I expected to see you there. You are the Lady of Queen’s Lynn now.”
A light chuckle. “Now don’t tell me that you actually wanted them to see more of me in the palace.”
“If they knew you were here and you didn’t attend, you would undermine my authority as Regent. Especially if you were here the whole time sipping tea and curled up in an armchair.”
“Just enjoying some of the perks of my position, Regent. After all…”
She slowly turned away from the fire.
Cinch slowed on seeing her vivid cyan eyes in the dim light. Framed against the fireplace, her hair’s equally-fiery-colored tone appeared to radiate. The woman’s lips curled into a cool smile.
“You know all about enjoying the perks of a new position. And the Lunar Fall was kinder to both of us than most, wasn’t it? I’d even say,” Her teeth flashed in a grin. “We both came out further ahead for it, didn’t we?”
Cinch said nothing, although her jaw clenched just a little. She finished walking in silence over to the chair across from the young woman and sat down in it. “Someone in your position and title has certain obligations to the head of state. Failing to do so is a sign that my authority is undermined. That’s the last thing I need right now.”
She snorted. “And this is the thanks I get after all I’ve done for you?”
“Done for me?” she scowled back. “You haven’t lifted a finger to help me with the current economic crisis. Or with the Dragonlands.”
“You don’t really expect me to clean up every one of your mistakes, do you? I gave you security on the border to Equestria from everything except the occasional Nighttouched. I gave you the power to traverse Equestria itself without fear. I even gave you a handful of magical weapons. What else do you want from me?”
“What you promised!” Her volume rose as she snapped. She took a moment afterward to reassert her self-control, then continued in a more measured voice although her face remained tightened. “I need it now more than ever. The representatives are breathing down my neck.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” she coolly responded, reaching into her outer jacket. She emerged with an envelope on which the seal had already been broken and casually tossed it into Cinch’s lap, a bit to her surprise. “Read that at your own leisure, but I’ll summarize. Three of your representatives requested that I join in with them on a coalition to start overriding your authority; leaving the option open to depose you through a vote of no-confidence.”
Cinch went wide-eyed. She snatched the envelope up, nearly ripped the letter inside out, and quickly glanced over it. She scowled even further as she set it down. “After everything I’ve done for them, this is how they respond. Stabbing me in the back.”
The young woman shrugged as she reached into her jacket again, coming out with a cigarette tin and flipping it open. “Perhaps you should be thankful I didn’t attend today’s Congress. You’re right in saying you’re running low on time, but you did dig yourself into this hole. I only gave you technology. It wasn’t my idea for you to poke your nose in where it didn’t belong in the Farmland War and turn every country left on Greater Everfree against you.”
“That was the only decision that could be made,” she snapped bag with a hint of anger. “Dragonlord Ember wants to see me destroyed and Trottingham with me. The world is a different place after the Lunar Fall. Now it’s every man and woman for themselves. I wasn’t about to risk letting the world think we were so weak and staggering that they could just sweep in and finish us off. I was not going to let what happened to Cloudsdale happen to Trottingham. I’m trying to make decisions that ensure our sovereignty and those children of dead nobles in that Congress are complaining the people can’t get potatoes.”
“I don’t really care for your reasons one way or another, Regent. I just know that you stayed in power and now the economic condition, to say nothing of the military one, is in your hands and on your neck.”
“And I expect you to help me do something about it. I expect you to keep up your end of our arrangement. I’ve helped you in every way you’ve requested. You have your position in the military, the lands and titles of the deposed Lady of Queen’s Lynn…which I might add I also helped in…your personal resources, your ability to come and go as you wish… Even those very ‘magical weapons’ you pointed out belong only to those under your command. I expect more back.”
The fiery-haired woman had a cigarette in her mouth by now and produced a match to light up. Cinch’s nose wrinkled in disgust, obviously not caring for her smoking, but not able to say anything about it as the younger woman took in a long drag and blew the smoke directly in the Regent's direction. “And what did you have in mind?”
She took a moment to waft the smoke away before glaring at her again. “Something. Anything. Applying your technology to commercial airships. Enhancements for our armor. More magical weapons. Whatever can give us an edge on the military or recover the economy.”
“Heh, I had no idea I was your genie all of this sudden,” she took another drag. “Besides, you’re lying. That’s not what you want.”
Cinch raised an eyebrow. “Oh, it isn’t?”
“No.” Her voice lowered as she looked Cinch straight in the eye. “What you want is what I have, and you want the ability to use it and give it to anyone you please. That’s what you wanted ever since I demoed it and offered it to you, isn’t it?”
Cinch’s face eased. Her expression grew a bit more uneasy just at the thought of it, but also with a hint of a covetous gleam in her eyes. She spoke in a whisper; both for a desire for secrecy but also with a note of reverence.
“Magic.”
The young woman nodded. “Magic.”
“Real magic.”
“Not a fairy tale. Not a children’s drawing. Not a parlor trick or a magician's sleight of hand. Power to change the world. Power to direct the world.” She smiled wider. “I told you from the start that this wouldn’t come cheap.”
Cinch’s momentary reverence broke, her frown resuming. “And exactly how many more price tags do you expect me to pay before you share with me those secrets?”
“Patience.”
“I’ve had patience for six years!” Cinch snapped, again losing control of her temper.
Before she could continue, the young woman held up a hand to stop her. “I’m serious this time. First, however, I need to know something.” She leaned back in her chair again, taking another drag. “There was another attack recently, wasn’t there? That’s what has the western half of Greater Everfree all abuzz?”
Cinch looked even more vexed that she was changing the subject but she forced herself to be calm and leaned back yet again. “What of it?”
“There’s a rumor going around,” she idly answered, looking at the fingernails on one hand while she took another puff. “Rumor that an actual Light Eater came through with this one. Rumor…”
She paused a moment, turning her hand over. It wore a leather, studded, fingerless glove over it, but her eyes focused on the back of her hand for two full seconds.
“…that something killed it. Or rather someone.”
Cinch raised an eyebrow. “As a matter of fact, that rumor has been going around. At first I dismissed it as nothing, but apparently something happened if such an outlandish claim is circulating. Personally I find it impossible to fathom.”
“And…is there any other information about who this person supposedly was?”
The regent hesitated. In spite of the young woman’s normally smug and confident look, she picked up that this was clearly a subject of interest to her. And as she thought of it, she began to realize something else...
“It’s just a rumor that it happened in the first place. You can’t expect any hard facts from hearsay. That being said, the more detailed ones mention a young woman. It occurs to me…” She folded her hands in front of her. “If there was any young woman in the world that would be able to destroy a Light Eater single-handedly, I’m looking at her.”
The fiery-haired woman was quiet for a fraction of a second, but then smirked once again to herself. It took her a bit longer to turn back to Cinch. She took another drag as she straightened up. “Well then…I believe I am ready to make good on my word to you. That is…after I receive one last favor from you.”
“And what favor that would be?”
“In addition to the Rising Sun, I’ll need two fully outfitted airships and two additional battalions.”
The regent nearly sputtered. “Two more airships? And battalions?”
“That’s not all. I’ll be needing your leave for International Operations. In other words, I use our routes through Equestria to come and go into other nations as I please.”
“To what end?”
“Mass assassinations.”
“Are you out of your mind?!” Cinch shouted, no longer able to contain herself as she snapped forward again. “As strained as I am you want me to not only give up resources but give other countries reason to have grievances with me? The audacity of asking for two more airships and crews is more than enough! To take them across the border for covert military operations? I’m still trying to find an excuse for giving you your own private airship!”
She shrugged indifferently. “Well, it is your decision at the end of the day, regent.” She took another puff as she leaned back, flicking her cigarette ashes off the arm rest. She didn't care at all that they landed on the carpet. “But I know what you’re thinking right now. You’ve thought I was, more or less, unique until a little while ago, but you know full well the only way anyone could kill a Light Eater would be if they were someone like me. And you know, if there are more like me, exactly what that means for your plan to be the only one with magic in Greater Everfree.”
Cinch eased a little at that, her angry look giving way to a grimace.
“I can give you all the magic you could ask for and more, but it won’t do you much good if your latest ‘innovation’ is copied by every other country. The world can’t be directed by more than one steering wheel. If you want to be the only one with magic, then I’m afraid you don’t have any choice but to make sure there aren’t any other individuals out there who have it…one way or another.”
She smiled slyly.
“And here I am offering to do the job for you, just so long as you give me the means to carry it out. Who else should it be besides me? Someone who not only is almost a ghost in Trottingham to begin with, but has the power to make sure the job is done right?”
Cinch didn’t answer, although she leaned fully back into her chair. Her former angry look had also faded. Her eyes turned to the crackling fire and stared as her mind ran over this.
The fiery-haired woman patiently waited, with a look so confident it had to already know the answer.
It wasn’t until the main hatch of the Rising Sun was sealing behind them, and the scent of metal and oil and the sound of boilers and steam were about them, that the Royal Guard addressed the fiery-haired woman at last.
“How did it go?”
“Exactly as I knew it would,” she smugly smirked as she kept leading the way. “People are easy to predict when you know exactly what they want. Control only requires a little more effort at that point.”
The two continued to walk down the service corridor toward the bridge area. The lower deck was filled with various engineers and soldiers under the fiery-headed woman’s command. Each of them stopped what they did and saluted her when she came; often with a burst of speed indicating anxiety or fear. Normally she would have relished in that, but today something far better had put a smile on her face from ear to ear.
She did, however, react when she passed by two individuals in particular. A pair of higher-ranking soldiers, yet still in the “grunt” class, had been coming down a horizontal hall and nearly run into her when they froze in their tracks. Neither appeared to be too terribly intelligent. One was tall but lanky and the other was solid but squat and rotund.
She slowed to a stop and looked at them. “You two. You made sure those letters I wrote will be ‘found’ by the proper members of the Regent’s staff, right?”
Both of them smirked and saluted. “Aye-aye.”
“You can count on us, Sunset!”
Her smile waned as her eyes narrowed.
“Uh…Lady Sunset!”
She didn’t smile again as she reached into her pockets and came out with a small set of lumped clay halves. “Souvenirs from our little stop at the capitol. I made the clay mold while I was in the regent’s study.” She tossed it to them, causing the squat one to fumble as he caught it. “Have it cast and use it to seal the letterhead I already gave you. Make sure those inquiries into dissolving the council get placed in the right departments.”
It took the two a moment to get what this meant before the two smirked devilishly and went off to do the task. Sunset continued to lead the Royal Guard forward.
“You got what you want, my lady,” he spoke up again after a few steps. "Is that necessary?"
“I’ve been working them for a solid four years. Why stop now?” she smirked again. “I thought you of all people would look at the world and see the best way to come out ahead is to make sure everyone else is too busy fighting among themselves. Besides, it doesn’t matter to me anymore if Cinch and the representatives eat each other alive and burn Trottingham down in the process. I’ve got what I want.”
Beneath the visor plate of his helmet, the Royal Guard grimaced but kept following.
A minute later, they were emerging onto the spacious, glass-windowed bridge of the Rising Sun. Framed in the view were the aerial docks of the main city of Trottingham, and beyond it the cityscape lined with smokestacks and soot clouds for another busy day. Beyond that, however, the sky was clear and the setting sun had turned the day red. Most of the crew was already there on stand by, and as soon as Sunset came in they all quickly snapped to life, especially the one nearest the entrance. He quickly stood tall with chin high.
“Captain Sunset Shimmer on bridge!”
As one, everyone quickly rose to their feet and faced her at attention. She kept her confident smirk as she strolled up to the staging area for the CO. She ignored the seat for the moment and instead grasped the bracing rail surrounding the front of it.
“We’ll be assembling into a fleet formation with the Prodigy and Legacy. As of now, I will be acting as Fleet Commander. Make all preparations for departure immediately. We will be setting a straight course for the Fillydelphia-Equestria Border. All ground units should make necessary preparations for combat. The day we’ve been waiting for is here.”
The crew scrambled to execute the order. She smiled wider as she took her own seat, holding her hand in front of her again. She flashed her teeth as she looked at the back of it.
“It’s finally time to get what I should have received eight years ago…”
“Alright, there’s the signpost. Which way do we go?”
Braeburn began to tense up. “Uh…”
After a few moments of nothing but that mutter, Applejack began to slowly look away from the road and to him. “…Braeburn?”
“Uh…um…”
She groaned. “Golldurnit, Braeburn! If ya’ wanna ride shotgun, ya’ got ta’ keep on the map!”
“I’ve never been ta’ Mount Eris, coz! I ain’t got a clue ‘bout this map! It’s older than dirt and it’s got applesauce stains all over it!”
“It ain’t like we’re goin’ so fast you can’t use the map, Applejack…”
“If ya’ ain’t drivin’ the wagon, keep yer mouth shut, Apple Tart! Braeburn, gimme that map…”
As Applejack moved her hands around to half-take, half-snatch the map from her cousin sitting alongside, the rest of the Apple family along for the trip either sighed or grimaced uneasily. The road since leaving home had been a rather long one and they still weren’t to their destination. They arrived just outside the port town of Seaquestria two days ago and had ended up held over longer than they wanted. In retrospect, it was a bad idea to try ferrying down the river and cutting through Mt. Eris; something Applejack hadn’t considered before leaving. Obviously, the remains of the neutral country didn’t like the idea of Appleloosans moving through it. Fortunately, as they weren’t enlisted, they were able to get by on a technicality after the layover.
Now they had to make up for lost time, and in their rush it was becoming increasingly likely that they had taken a wrong turn. They were stuck in the middle of nowhere with nothing but open fields and spotty forests as far as the eye could see on a dirt road that looked about as well-traveled and maintained as the common path to their homestead.
They had just passed a signpost after hours of traveling on a winding, unbranching path increasingly wondering if they should turn around. It was long-since faded, but it indicated a turn was up ahead at least. Of course, now it was a matter of which choice, if any, would get them to where they needed to go and which would get them more lost.
Applejack pointed at the map so hard she nearly put a hole through it. “There! Stay north! Clear as day!”
“But…but coz, are we even headin’ north now?”
“Sure we are! Sun’s on one side and not the other, ain’t it?”
“But that signpost only had two ways, east or west…”
She paused. “Well, uh…then, um…we’ll head east, of course. Back toward Appleloosa.”
“Ain’t that gonna take us back into the foothills?”
“Well we ain’t going west and inta’ Equestria!”
“The road kinda looks like it turns to the north, though…”
“Lemme see… I don’t see it.”
“Right there. We turn north at the next town.”
“Ya’ sure that ain’t a bit o’ apple core? Over there’s ah big road goin’ north.”
“Coz, I think that’s somethin’ one of the youngin’s scribbled on it…”
Applejack gave a cry of disgust and nearly ripped the map in half as she looked up, then paused.
The crossroads up ahead had a single person standing at them: a younger woman with lavender hair and a pastel pink streak, and a purple-and-green dog and traveling case at her side.
At once, Applejack smiled and crumpled the map up before tossing it over her shoulder into the wagon; hitting Apple Brioche right in the face. “Eh, who needs ah map? We’ll just get directions from that woman up ahead. She looks like she’s on the road, same as us. And from her duds she’s ah city folk, so I’ll bet she knows her way around.”
Braeburn didn’t look entirely convinced, as well as nervous at how Applejack damaged the already poor-conditioned map, but he held his tongue.
It didn’t take long for the procession to reach her. She looked up as soon as they neared, seeming as if they were the first people she had seen in hours. Applejack pulled the cart to a stop just as they reached the crossroads and tipped her hat to her.
“Howdy.”
The young woman looked a tad surprised that she was being addressed at all. “Oh, um…hello!”
“Ya’ happen ta’ know which way it is to get ta’ Fort Chestnut? We’re all in a hurry ta’ get there.”
“Did…you say Fort Chestnut? You mean, in Appleloosa?”
She nodded. “Yup. That’s the one.”
“Oh, what a coincidence! I’m actually trying to get there myself!”
She beamed. “Great! So, ya’ know how ta’ get there?”
The young woman was quiet momentarily before blushing. “…No, actually. I was kind of hoping, um…someone who came along could point me in the right direction.”
A chorus of groans came from both in the wagons and outside them. Applejack instantly pounded her fist against the canvas. “Pipe down back there, Apples!” The young woman herself recoiled slightly at the reaction before the farmer groaned loudly and turned back to her. “Alright…how ‘bout this? The road we’re on now leads ta’ Seaquestria. Which road did you come down?”
For a moment, all she did was blink. “Seaquestria? I ended up all the way in Mount Eris…?”
Applejack quirked her brow. “Eh? Come again?”
The young woman blanched as if she had just leaked a secret, and quickly shook her head. “I mean, uh…um…sure! Yes! I came from Seaquestria myself, so…I’m sorry, I don’t know which way to go!”
At once, Applejack leveled a hard stare against her. It was enough to make her actually shrink back a little.
“If there’s one thing ah can’t stand, it’s lyin’."
The young woman swallowed.
Soon after, however, the farmer shrugged. “But it ain’t none of my business, so I guess I can let it slide. Alright…” She looked up and to either road; sighing at last. “Now we all know if we were ta’ go on west we’d eventually run right smack into the ‘tail’ of Equestria, and there sure as Hell ain’t no more roads that go thataway. On the other hand, if we head east we’ll run into the mountains before we hit Appleloosa. So I reckon the road going west must be the one that turns up north at some point or it’d be closed, so we’ll take that one.”
There were a few mutters, but of ascent. That logic was as good to everyone else as any.
“Alright then.” She turned back to the young woman. “Ya’ can head west too if ya’ wanna, but in any case ya oughta head on back ta’ yer own caravan or whatnot. It’s gettin’ late.”
“Er…late?”
Applejack had begun to turn back to the reins, but paused to look back at her oddly. “Ain’t ya’ ever been in this part o’ Greater Everfree before?”
She looked uneasy. “Um, no…”
“This here is right in the ‘crook’ of the tail of Equestria. Equestria’s to the north and west. That’s why it fell so quick after the Lunar Fall. Ain’t nobody out here now except robbers, Nighttouched, and other unsavory types. Single city girl like you, runnin’ out by yerself on an abandoned road, all by her lonesome? Yer the first kinda mark one of ‘em would take.”
Now the young woman looked very uncomfortable and afraid. Even her dog seemed to whimper and cringe a little.
Applejack nearly turned to get the horses going again, but paused once more when she saw her reaction. She stared at her a while, her own face growing a little uneasy. After a moment more, she turned back.
“How’s about I give you one more chance?”
She blinked. “Huh?”
Her eyes leveled on her. “Ya’ didn’t really come from Seaquestria, did ya’?”
The young woman hesitated, looking uncomfortable again. However, she seemed to realize she was caught and bowed her head, grabbing one of her arms with the other. “…No.”
“Alright then. Where did ya’ come from?”
“I…” she half-stammered, “I…I can’t tell you that. And that’s the truth.”
Applejack sat silently and studied her a moment, seeming to assess if that was the case. After a time, however, she nodded back. “Alright then. Not tellin’ the truth ain’t quite the same as lyin’, ‘least not always, so that’s good enough. In that case…” She smiled. “Long as yer headin’ the same way we are, how ‘bout taggin’ along with us?”
The young woman looked up in surprise. However, probably the only thing that seemed to make her more surprised than Applejack’s offer was the fact that almost every member of the Apple family she could see appeared to agree with her. The only exception, unseen by Applejack at the moment, was Braeburn, who looked slightly hesitant. “You…I mean…really?”
“Why sure! Apples ain’t the type ta’ leave folks stranded, an’ travelers could always use a little more company.” She turned to the group. “Ain’t that right, Apples?”
A murmur of assents, some louder and more boisterous than others, sounded out. Braeburn leaned in a little. “Um, coz…”
The young woman didn’t seem to notice him. “I…I don’t know… I don’t want to impose…and, well…” She began to look even uneasier than before.
“Aw, shoot. We don’t mind more company. And it’ll be safer for ya’, ‘specially if ya’ don’t even know yer way ta’ the nearest town.”
“Coz…”
“Ya’ can hop right inta’ the wagon ol’ Great Uncle Apple Strudel’s drivin’. Give yer legs and yer dog’s legs a rest fer a bit. What d’ya say?”
“Cousin Applejack…”
Again, neither the young woman nor Applejack seemed to notice Braeburn’s mild protest. The traveler thought about her offer, looking around the countryside and seeming to silently evaluate her options. Finally, she looked back and took a deep breath. “Well, I…suppose it’d be faster and safer to get to Fort Chestnut like that…”
“That’s the spirit!” Applejack cheered back. She held out her hand. “Name’s Applejack.”
The young woman hesitated again before she tentatively reached out and shook. “Twilight Sparkle.”
“Welcome to the Apple family, Twilight! Just hop on inta’ the wagon and we’ll be on our way. Come along now, we gotta make apples while the sun shines!”
The cheery attitude and smiling, friendly faces seemed to be at least somewhat infectious, as the young woman finally managed a weak smile as her anxiety ebbed. “Alright. Thank you.” Taking up her case, she beckoned to her dog and started running toward the back of the second wagon.
“Give me a holler as soon as yer in!” Applejack shouted behind her.
“Cousin Applejack!”
At once, the farmer wheeled on Braeburn with a much angrier look. “Golldurnit, Braeburn! What was up with ya’ givin’ the cold shoulder back there? Ya’ know Apples don’t treat stranded folks like that!”
“But coz, how’d she get out here if she doesn’t know where the nearest town is?”
“She’s a city folk! They don’t know nothin’ ‘bout travelin’! You ain’t suggestin’ she’s a bandit and is trying to ambush us, are ya’? Her against twenty of us? She ain’t even got any meat on her bones!”
He sighed and looked forward again. “I know, but…but…”
“But what?”
“There’s…I dunno…somethin’ about her that just doesn’t sit right with me. I just got a gut feelin’…and one I’ve never felt before ‘bout anybody… It’s just not right deep down inside me…”
“Aw, maybe it’s just yer stomach actin’ up. There ain’t nothin’ to worry about. Just relax.”
“Well…alright…” he half-muttered. As he turned in his seat, his left hand absent-mindedly shifted to his right and scratched the back of it.
Applejack’s logic seemed to work out. The road did eventually turn north a bit later in the afternoon. Unfortunately, they never reached any other towns, houses, or other signs of civilization the rest of the day. And when the sun went low, even the party of twenty plus one had a harder time keeping noise and spirits up out in country none of them had ever been in. And as no one traveled in the dark anymore, they were forced to pitch a camp for the night.
They started early enough to get a fire going and then burned to coals before they cooked their meal, so that only the faintest glow was still visible by the time night finally fell. It was a warmer time of the year, but everyone huddled in around the coal pit they had made when suppertime came regardless. No one wanted to sleep that far apart. Even Twilight, who had been rather quiet and shy the entire trip, seemed to huddle in closer to the rest of the Apples along with her dog.
Fortunately, they had bowls to spare along with a bit of extra food, so Applejack served her up the same as the others, a bit to her surprise, by plopping one of those bowls with a wooden spoon in her lap. “There ya’ go. Apple family recipe’s own apple-maple flavored beans.”
Twilight looked a bit taken aback by the name, and by the time she tentatively took her spoon and began to pick at it the farmer had already taken a seat alongside her. Not nearly so shy, she began to dig right in.
Rather, she would have if, just as she was about to spoon some into her mouth, she didn’t frown.
“Braeburn, would ya’ stop itchin’ already?”
Applejack's younger cousin was seated across from her and sandwiched between two larger Apples. He hadn’t touched his own food yet and nearly dropped his spoon on being accosted. “Oh…oh, s-s-sorry coz… I just…just keep doin’ it.”
“Ya’ look like ya’ve had a ‘bout with poison oak, is what.”
He frowned but said nothing, before turning his eyes up and staring at Twilight again. Twilight herself was too preoccupied with her food to notice, but Applejack frowned at the gesture. He had been continuously staring back at the second wagon all afternoon, and ever since they stopped he kept looking at Twilight. Not the kind of look one would expect from infatuation either…
A distant wolf howled. Twilight dropped her spoon into her bowl and went rigid as her dog perked his head up. Applejack looked to her and smirked. “Sheesh, yer awful jittery. Ain’t ya’ ever been on the road before?”
“Uh…all the time, actually…” she hesitantly muttered as, shaking a little, she went back for her spoon. “Just usually the more well-traveled ones. Are…are we going to be safe out here if we can’t build a fire?”
“Aw, shoot,” she chuckled, “ain’t nothin’ out here, Nighttouched or otherwise, that can lick a team of Apples. Ain’t that right?”
A chorus of assents from around the fire.
“You ain’t got nothin’ ta’ worry about.” She spooned her first bite of beans in. Twilight calmed a bit more before looking to her own bowl. She stared a bit longer, before she finally took a much smaller spoonful and somewhat nervously put it in her mouth and swallowed.
Her eyes widened a little. “That was…pretty good. I don’t even normally eat beans.”
“Heh, ya’ don’t have to act so surprised, ya’ know,” Applejack joked as she elbowed her…perhaps a little too roughly as it almost knocked Twilight into the Apple on her other side. “Homemade with fresh Apple family apples. Granny Smith’s own recipe.”
Twilight smiled, a little weakly, back as she leaned up again and had another bite.
“So, now that we’re all hunkerin’ down for the evenin’, what’s takin’ ya’ to Fort Chestnut?”
The young woman paused momentarily in mid-bite, looking caught again. “Oh, um…well…uh…” She swallowed her current mouthful. “I’m…just moving on, I guess. I’m a street magician by trade, you see. Never stay in the same place twice.”
She snickered as she had another bite of her own bowl. “I can understand that, but why Fort Chestnut? Don’t imagine many folks there are interested in street magic.”
“Well, I don’t either. It’s more of what I’m getting away from. I was in Fillydelphia last.”
Applejack let out a whistle. “Say no more. I imagine a lot of folks wanna get the hell outta there. From what I’ve heard, they’re expectin’ the next big Nighttouched surge to come in ‘round there somewhere.”
“But you and your family are headed north to Fort Chestnut.”
“Durn straight, we are. We’re gonna link up with the Appleloosan Army and enlist. Soon as we join in the fightin’, our home’ll be put under the Home Soil Act and it’ll be ours. Then the government’ll let us stay on it ‘til Hell freezes over, just so long as someone in the family is still out there fightin’. And if we can lick any Nighttouched that come up on the farm, we can take anyone from Griffonstone.”
This seemed to confuse her. “Wait, Griffonstone?”
Applejack gave her a bit of a puzzled look in response. “Well, yeah. Maybe Trottingham, although they got their own problems to worry about and this ain’t gonna bother them. Somethin’ wrong with that?”
She still looked confused. “No, it’s just…I thought you were all getting together to fight the Nighttouched surge.”
“Well, we may be ‘fore this is all over,” she whistled. Seeing that Twilight still looked confused, she raised her eyebrow. “Ya’ don’t really know how things work on the borders nowadays, do ya’?”
“I, um…suppose I don’t…?”
“Don’t know where ya’ve been…” she muttered to herself. “Fact of the matter is once the Nighttouched come across it don’t matter if ya’ throw an army and every cannon in half of Greater Everfree at ‘em. Once the Light Eaters show up, there ain’t no way to fight ‘em so ya’ gotta pull back. They’ll end up takin’ more land, and so whoever lost land is gonna try and take it from somewhere else, and whoever lost land last time is gonna try and take it from whoever got the worst of it. So dependin’ on where that surge comes across, we gotta be ready to fight off whoever comes after it.”
“Oh…” She quietly answered, going back to her beans. “That makes sense, I guess…”
“Ya’ sound almost disappointed.”
“I mean…I thought it would make more sense to try and fight the Nighttouched, but what you said makes sense…”
She half-chuckled. “Well, don’t ya’ remember right after the Lunar Fall when all them folks did try takin’ back Equestria?”
She winced a little at that. “Well, the truth is the day of the Lunar Fall was…well…a really bad day for me. I’m guessing I’m probably the only person in Greater Equestria who was having such a miserable time she didn’t notice what was going on for a couple weeks.”
“Whoo-whee…that must’ve been some bad day,” Applejack whistled, turning back to her own beans. “Just the same, fightin’ back did no good. All it did was send a lot of folks to an early grave…” Her own upbeat and friendly demeanor waned a little as she said this. Her eyes flicked to one side. “A lot of Appleloosans among ‘em…”
Twilight looked up at Applejack, before wincing a little. “Oh…I’m sorry.”
“Ah, don’t be,” she waved off, her tone picking up again. “At this point there ain’t nobody who ain’t lost somethin’ ta’ what happened after the Lunar Fall. The way I reckon it’s like a twister. Ya’ can’t hate it…it just is what it is. Ya’ just gotta deal with it and move on as best ya’ can. ‘Sides…”
She turned to her.
“Ta’ be honest, I almost wish we were headed out to fight the Nighttouched too.”
“Really?”
“I can’t stand any onery Griffonstone or Mount Eris folk thinkin’ they can mosey on over our border, ‘specially when Mount Eris folk think they’re so high and mighty and Griffonstone folk are all mean sons-of-bitches, but I know they ain’t the real problem. This is all just a waste o’ time and kickin’ the can down the road. So long as Nighttouched keep comin’ out, we’re all just scramblin’. We’re stuck makin’ the best of a bad situation and…well, it stinks, ta’ be honest.”
She smirked once again as she set her bowl down, reached behind her, and pulled out her claw hammer. She showed it to Twilight. “See this?”
A bit confused as to what the significance was, she only tentatively answered. “Yes…”
“This was my pa’s. Day after the Lunar Fall we all saw our first Nighttouched come on the farm. He went right for it and buried the head of this right in its head. I know it ain’t much of a real weapon, but I kept it ever since to keep a bit of pa with me.” She shrugged. “And ta’ tell the truth, sometimes I daydream of what it’d be like to knock the block off a Light Eater with it.”
On hearing that, Twilight looked at the hammer with a bit more appreciation. There wasn’t much to it. It was, at the end of the day, just a sturdy work hammer worn around the handle. Yet Applejack handled it not only with an air of familiarity but even ease and comfort.
She shrugged and put it back. “Anyway, enough yappin’. If granny were here she’d be yellin’ that our food is gettin’ cold. Let’s eat up so we can sleep fer our watch.”
“Um…‘watch’?”
Twilight found out the hard way that one of the things expected of her if she was traveling with the Apple family was that she’d take a turn of her own staying awake to keep watch during the night. She didn’t complain and managed to stay up for it, but an hour before dawn she still ran into trouble when she was found still curled up near the coal pit with her arms around her dog like a big stuffed animal. Apparently she wasn’t used to early mornings nearly as much as the rest of them, considering everyone else was already alert and getting things ready to move.
Applejack, never being one for subtlety, used the toe of her boot to poke her in the middle. “Hey down there! Rise an’ shine!”
Her voice was so loud and resounding that, combined with the clamor of the rest of the family, she let out a moan and cracked her eyes open. “Wh…what?”
“Up an’ at ‘em! Yer gonna miss breakfast ‘fore we head out! Traditional favorite for travelin’ Apples: apple-flavored flapjacks!”
She let out another moan and rubbed at her eyes. “This…this early?”
“Early? Heh, why shoot. It’d still be dark back at the farm. We actually slept in a mite.”
Twilight let out a moan as she let Spike go, who was more than happy to run off. As for Applejack, she leaned back up and turned to the others, who were already getting fresh coals turning and setting up the hot plate to start churning out the flapjacks as fast as possible. “Apple Bumpkin, ya’ can drive the wagon today. I’ll walk alongside. Red Delicious, hurry up with that batter! We got time ta’ make!”
The Apple family member immediately doubled his whisking speed while the others quickly got about setting things up, but Applejack’s eyes soon drifted to one member in particular. Braeburn, who had been tasked with tending the horses, was off to one side scratching furiously at the top of his palm.
Applejack frowned as she walked up to him. “Landsakes, Braeburn, ya’ got chiggers or somethin’? Either go down to the creek and get that washed up or get back to feedin’ the horses. We got a long way ta’-”
Abruptly, Braeburn snapped up from his itching and moved forward and past Applejack toward the sack of oats they had brought. That alone wasn’t what cut Applejack off, though. It was how he not only did it without a word, and not only pushing past Applejack in such a way to nearly push her aside (something he hadn’t been bold enough to do since he was a youngster), but the look on his face. She only caught a glimpse of it, but his eyes were focused, his jaw was clenched, and his mouth was turned down.
He looked angry.
It was enough to make Applejack stand still for a few moments as she watched him silently go about feeding the horses; staring at him. Braeburn was one of the more good-natured Apples in the family. He rarely lost his temper over anything. Yet even if he wasn’t, what in the world would have gotten him so upset?
She soon pushed that away and began to get angry that he had just shoved by her without a word instead, but rather than try and chew him out about it she decided to let it slide for now. As much as they tried to deny it, the trip was a change for all of them. It made sense some of them wouldn’t be acting right.
“Sure wish he’d quit itchin’ himself…” she ended up muttering as she turned to her own chores.
Braeburn’s behavior hadn’t improved by the time they set out, or for the rest of the trip that morning. In spite of Applejack’s preoccupation on getting them to Fort Chestnut as soon as possible, she couldn’t help but fixate on that. Braeburn was easily one of the more talkative members of the Apple family. She often had to practically cover his mouth to get a word in edgewise. That day she didn’t hear a peep from him. He just sat in his corner of the wagon or walked silently.
The only time he registered anything was when Twilight got near him and he gave her a look. At this point, it was no longer just a benign stare but almost, to Applejack, a cold one.
Even a hateful one…
At any rate, they did eventually reach a town that morning. It was more of a village than anything, but it did have people living in it to ask for directions. They only went a short distance into it to find many were already making ready for a potential armed conflict by stockpiling and barricading their respective homes. Although Applejack was walking alongside the wagons, she still took the initiative to ask one passerby about their road. She was pleased to find that her intuition had been right—the road would indeed continue north and eventually turn off to the east back for Appleloosa once the hills broke, and from there to Fort Chestnut.
“Got any other news ‘bout what’s happenin’?”
“Not much,” the local answered. “Most of the news out here comes from train, horse, or occasionally carrier pigeon. Nearest telegraph is still all the way in Seaquestria. Been a lot of travelers like you on the road, though. They keep saying the next surge is going to happen around the tri-country area. That’ll drive three different nations wild at once.”
“I’ll say… Any idea where?”
“Not a clue. The last surge was in Fillydelphia, though.”
“Yeah, I heard that much.”
“There’s this real wild rumor going around though.”
“Oh?”
“A fistful of folks say they saw a Light Eater come across on this latest surge. There’s a rumor someone killed it.”
Applejack raised an eyebrow. “Ya’ mean some group of the Fillydelphia Army killed it?”
“No-no…the rumor is it was just one person. Had some kinda crazy new weapon. No one saw what but it made a bunch of light.”
She frowned. “Sounds like pig swallor ta’ me. The kind I don’t like. I lost too many family members to them bastards to have a taste fer it.”
The caravan moved along soon afterward, but in spite of Applejack’s dismissive reaction she couldn’t fully loose the idea from her mind. While she thought it was a load of nonsense, most people in Greater Everfree continued to entertain the idea that somehow, even after eight years of failure, some new weapon or science would come up with a way to hurt or even kill Light Eaters. She was no stranger to tall tales and she knew when to avoid most of them, but this particular one tickled her interest in a way few other stories had.
Enough to where, at last, she moved over to Twilight and Spike while they were walking along and fell in next to them. “Say Twlight?”
“Yes?”
“Ya’ said ya’ came from Fillydelphia, right?”
A pause, in which she looked slightly more uneasy. “Y-yes…”
“Did ya’ happen to hear any rumor ‘bout anyone actually killin’ a Light Eater by themselves?”
Two shades of color drained from Twilight’s face. The air seemed to catch in her throat for a moment. “Uh…I…that…that is…um…”
Applejack frowned. “Shoot, Twilight. What got inta’ ya’? I was just askin’ if ya’ heard ah rumor.”
“Y-y-yeah…yeah, I know, but…I mean…that is…no,” she stammered. “I mean…heard a rumor? No, I haven’t heard any rumors…”
Applejack reminded herself never to peg this traveler for a poker partner, because there was no way she wouldn’t give everything away from her facial expression. It was abundantly clear to her that asking Twilight had upset her in some way, although she had no idea why it would. What would it matter to her either way?
“Ya feelin’ alright?”
“Wh…what? Me? Sure! I feel fine!”
“Well, ya’ sure seem shook up over that.”
“It’s…well…it’s just…I…” She paused. “Um…it’s another one of those things I…don’t like to talk about.”
She shrugged. “Alright, I can appreciate that. A lot of folks don’t even wanna hear people joke ‘bout killin’ Light Eaters. Not after what they’ve seen…”
“Yeah…”
While the caravan did spot one other village in the distance in early afternoon, by the time the evening approached they were once again out in the middle of nowhere. It was a bit worse that day than the one before as the road took them through a stand of forest. Forests were, as a general rule, things to avoid. Aside from being hard for watches to look around in, they provided lots of shadows and crannies for potential Nighttouched to hide. Yet after riding an extra hour to try and get clear from it and only having it get darker faster as a result of being deeper in the forest, Applejack finally groaned and called the team to a halt.
“Alright, alright…might as well stop here fer the night.”
“You sure about that, cousin?”
“It’s gettin’ too dark, Apple Tart. We don’t set up camp now in half an hour we won’t be able ta’ see enough ta’ set up at all.”
Once again, the Apples began to dismount and start setting things up for the evening, including by bringing out their bits of gear and food for the night. Some of them went to tend to the horses while others tried to find a good spot for setting up the fire pit. Applejack herself took off her hat long enough to wipe her brow before putting it back on her head, then turned for the back wagons.
Twilight herself stood to one side with her dog, looking uncertainly from one way to another at the Apples moving around. “Um…excuse me?”
Applejack looked at her.
“You all have been nice enough to let us tag along and feed us, so…is there anything we can do to help?”
She smiled a little. “Sure thing. How’s about you grab yerself one of the lanterns and get it set, then ya’ can help Caramel Apple find us a creek bed to fetch some water.”
“Ok.” She began to get up from the side of the wagon.
“Be quick about it, now,” she called after her. “Once the sunlight starts goin’, we ain’t keepin’ any more lanterns lit, and we don’t want anyone breakin’ their legs comin’ back from the creek.”
As Twilight moved off to the back of the first wagon, one of the men, an uncomfortable look on his face, walked up to the farmer. “Hey cousin?”
“Red Delicious, what ya’ doin’ lollygaggin’ around here? It’s yer turn to chop up some bits for some coals!”
He winced, looking anxious, and gestured over his shoulder. “Braeburn’s got the axe right now.”
“Well, get it from ‘im!”
Now Red began to look afraid. “I…I couldn’t… Applejack,” He swallowed, his voice lowering. “Braeburn’s…actin’ real funny. Somethin’ ain’t right…”
That only made her frown. “Aw Hell, this bull has gone on long enough.” She half-growled, pushing her hat down and walking past Red. “I’m gonna set him straight like I shoulda this mornin’. Boy must have cat-scratch fever with the way he’s itchin’…”
“Ap…Applejack, I’m warnin’ ya’… He don’t look right…”
“I’ll handle it. Just go find us a dried log ta’ chop up.”
The axe was in the back of the second wagon, so Applejack didn’t have to go far. Yet even before reaching it, she soon noticed Red Delicious wasn’t alone in his reactions. All of the Apple family members, both younger and older, were shying away from the back of the wagon. Two of them looked nervously over their shoulders as they did. It didn’t help that, the way the sun was setting, the shadows were growing long in that direction. By the time Applejack reached the backside of the second wagon, she couldn’t help but feel a little uneasy herself.
Especially since the only Apple left standing there at that point was Braeburn, back to her and the others, and brandishing the double-bladed axe in his hands.
It was enough to render her mute for a moment, but only a moment. She frowned soon after. “Braeburn, I don’t know what’s gotten inta’ you today, but we’re settin’ up fer the night and we need some coals for supper, so hand over that axe.”
Silence. Braeburn didn’t move.
She frowned a bit more, pushing down a hint of unease rising in her own gut. “Braeburn, I’m gettin’ sick an’ tired of this. Quit messin’ ‘round and give me that axe.”
Finally, he turned his head. This time, Applejack couldn’t help it. Her own look became uncomfortable when he stared at her. That look in his eye was nothing she had ever seen before. Braeburn didn’t have a mean bone in his body, but this was something else. It was more than a reaction she had never seen out of him.
It was like there was someone else completely behind those eyes.
It was a full two seconds before she spoke: “Braeburn…”
His eyes suddenly looked to the side. At once, the pupils shrank and his eyelids narrowed. He looked like an animal zeroing in on prey.
“You…”
Even the voice didn’t sound like him. All of his normal softness and upbeat tone was gone. On realizing he was looking at someone, Applejack turned to see who.
There stood Twilight, lantern in one hand and rooted in her spot on seeing Braeburn staring at her.
A moment later, Braeburn turned fully around and began to advance on her.
“Braeburn!” Applejack called out. He didn’t stop or look at her. He fully focused on Twilight, and he hefted the axe as he did. “Braeburn, stop right now!” She shouted. While her voice remained firm and cross, inside she was now starting to feel scared. Braeburn was doing more than not acting like himself. Something was wrong. Seriously wrong. And with the look in his eye and the axe in his hand…
She reached out and seized the axe handle, meaning to yank it free. “Brae-”
She cut herself off with a cry a moment later as he twisted his arms sharply, actually wrenching her arm to tear the axe away from her. She stepped back a moment, but as she did her eyes glanced over and saw the hand he had been itching.
It looked like scratches had been made it into it at this point, only they weren’t from regular itches. It almost seemed like a symbol. Worst of all, though, was there was one spot on it that stood out.
It gleamed like a burning hot coal.
Seeing what was going on, the other Apples soon reacted. As Twilight began to nervously step back, Apple Brioche stepped forward in Braeburn’s path. “Now coz, what d’ya think her doin’ with-”
He was cut off as Braeburn, never looking away from Twilight, reached up and forcefully shoved him to one side. That was no small feat in itself as once Brioche planted his feet it was hard for anyone to push him around, but he was shoved away so fast that he was thrown to the ground. Quickly, Red Delicious stepped up next.
“Braeburn, would ya’ just-”
Without a word, Braeburn removed a hand from the axe, made a fist, and backhanded Red Delicious across the face with such violence that his head snapped one way and smacked into the side of the wagon. He instantly fell to the ground in a limp pile, and the surrounding Apples gasped in alarm. Twilight’s dog began to bark at Braeburn as she began to back off quicker. In response, Braeburn hefted the axe higher and picked up his pace.
This was the last straw everyone needed to know something was wrong, and Applejack quickly moved. In a flash, she ran up behind him and slipped her arms under his to put him into a full nelson. For a brief moment, she yanked back and pulled him off his feet, stopping him cold. “Someone get that damn axe away from him! And help me hold-”
Applejack was cut off as Braeburn swung his head back into her face so hard he nearly broke her nose. As it was, it felt like a mule had kicked her in the face, and her lip instantly split. If she wasn’t so dazed, she would have been stunned that Braeburn had managed to actually hit her that hard. Her grip loosened just as two of the other Apples reached him. One managed to grab the axe handle, but he twisted it free and smashed her in the face to knock her away, before, to everyone’s horror, he actually swung the blade out at the other. Thankfully, she managed to pull back, but even so the end of the blade sliced open her overalls. The other Apples quickly pulled back, seeing as he was now actually using his weapon, and now free he quickly barreled in a full charge to Twilight.
The young woman gasped and quickly turned and ran just as he reached her, swinging the axe out for where she had been. The blade whizzed past her fleeing body and sank into the ground instead. It took him a moment to pull it back up, and in that time Spike let out a snarl and seized him by the wrist, digging his teeth in. Braeburn’s face twisted, turning not only cold but angry now. Yet he didn’t even seem to notice the dog biting him hard enough to make him bleed. He simply removed a hand from the axe and punched him in the head. Spike was knocked off of him and sent for a slide and a whimper, and Braeburn quickly took up the axe in both hands again and charged for Twilight at a speed faster than any of the Apples had ever seen him move. He caught up to her as she was at the side of the first wagon and swung the axe out for her again.
This time, there was nowhere for her to run, and she cried out as she dropped to the ground. The axe whizzed over her head and embedded in the side of the wagon so hard it sank in to the shaft, but as a result it was wedged there a moment, and he struggled to yank it free.
The Apples leapt on him again. Three were brave enough to try and dogpile on him, reaching over to seize his arms to try and wrench them off of the axe and pin him down. For a moment, they seemed to have the upper hand, as he couldn’t pry the axe loose and fight them off. Then, giving an angry grunt, he swung his head around and smashed into the head of one of them, knocking them limp, before lashing out with his boot to kick another one off and elbowing another aside. Twilight tried to scramble back in the meantime, but when her eyes caught a glimpse of Braeburn’s hand she froze--staring at it in wide-eyed, immobilized shock.
Braeburn just began to pry part of the blade free, however, when Applejack, lip bleeding down her chin, charged in and swung her fist out for the side of her cousin’s head. It connected solidly enough to jar it right into the side of the wagon, smacking it a second time after the first impact. At last, it was enough for him to loosen his grip on his axe, giving Applejack the moment she needed to wheel around and seize him by his collar.
“Alright, ya’ sonnuvabitch! Ya’ wanna lickin’? I’ll give ya’ one!”
Applejack’s fist smashed into Braeburn’s face with three resounding cracks. The first two barely moved his head back, but the third had all of her might put into it and finally dislodged his grip off of the axe handle and sent him falling back onto his rear end. By now, there weren’t any Apples around to try and jump on him, though. They were either injured from previously or too afraid to get on him. At any rate, he got back on his feet in a snap—his eyes now locked on Applejack.
The farmer’s look stayed hard and fearsome, but inside she couldn’t help but feel increasingly nervous. There wasn’t a member of the family she couldn’t drop with one punch. Even Big Macintosh. Braeburn was from the side of the family that tended to yell “uncle” as soon as she made a fist. She had just hit him with the kind of force she reserved for Nighttouched boars or bears and other than knock him off balance a moment it only seemed to tick him off…
“It’s happening at last…”
Hearing Twilight say that, Applejack turned her head. “What now?”
That was a bad move. Braeburn charged her a moment later bare handed, which was more than bad enough. She felt the air get knocked out of her as he smashed into her gut and ripped her off of her feet, then continued to carry her and tackle her by smashing her into the nearest tree. Strong as Applejack was, that was pushing it even for her. She coughed violently from the impact as pain radiated throughout her back. The trauma was nearly enough to render her limp, yet somehow she forced herself to let her dangling arms go over Braeburn’s body. Gritting her teeth, she laced her fingers together and tightened to form a double-fist, then raised it and smashed it down on Braeburn’s back. It was much weaker than her last blow, but she hoped it let him know she was still a threat.
Somehow through the struggle, she saw Twilight slowly getting back up to her feet, but her eyes were to the ground and a hand was at her temple. “She told me this would happen… She said to use it…”
“Ugh…” Applejack growled. “Just run, will ya’?”
Braeburn surged forward, smashing her into the tree again. It wasn’t as hard as before, but she wasn’t as strong either and this time she went flaccid. Her arms slid off of his body, and he began to peel away from her.
“That spell…what was that spell?” Suddenly, Twilight’s head snapped up to her. “Keep him busy!”
“What in tarnation ya’ goin’ on about…?” she groaned through clenched teeth. Just as Braeburn was about to pull himself free, she took in a deep breath and forced her body to life; throwing herself back on top of him. As he turned around, she put her arms over his back again, and this time brought one arm around his neck. She grasped it with her other and tightened while her legs went up and laced around his middle. She pulled as hard as she could, trying to put him into a sleeper hold.
“I can stop this but I’ve got to remember how! I need to think!”
Applejack had no idea what Twilight was babbling about, but at the moment stopping Braeburn was first on her mind anyway. She kept pulling tight, hoping that it would be enough to knock him out. Unfortunately, it was a simple matter for Braeburn to swing his body backward and against the same tree. The farmer managed to hold on for the first blow, but the second one made her cry out as she felt her ribs bruise. After that, she went limp and second time and fell off of Braeburn all together.
Twilight was backing off and away from the axe, but Braeburn was no longer bothering with it. He tightened his own hands into fists and walked straight toward her. One of the remaining bold Apples took up one of their cast iron skillets and ran up to the side of him. Using both of her own hands, she swung it about and smashed it into the side of his head. He actually did bend over a little at the hit, but unfortunately that was all. A moment later, he snapped up, reached out to seize her by the face, and half-flung her away and into another tree trunk before snapping back to Twilight.
She wasn’t running off, but rather was trying to move around in a circle in the general area; trying to remember something based on the look on her face while she did. Braeburn again moved toward her, but was stopped again as Spike once more got up and this time went for his ankle. Rather than seize his pant leg, he was digging in to try and bite down on the tendon. He seemed to work for a moment, as that made Braeburn falter on his initial bite. Yet he hardly had time to dig in before he wrenched his leg out of the dog’s mouth and kicked him even harder than he had struck him last time. The dog let out an even louder yelp when he went flying after this strike, and on landing he didn’t get up immediately. As for Braeburn, he now had a limp in his walk, but as a result of that he only went a few steps before he stopped trying to walk after Twilight. Instead, as soon as she didn’t look where she was going and got herself stuck in a position between a fallen Apple and a tree, he broke into a charge and reached out to seize her.
Applejack, through her own spinning senses, saw that no one else was available to get up and try and stop him. As a result, she once again bit back her own pain and soreness and forced herself up to her feet. Half-staggering and half-lunging, she forced herself into Braeburn’s path and reached out to seize him by the wrists just as he reached Twilight, then used her own momentum and unbalance to yank him off of his feet. Both went to the ground and into a sideways tumble, rolling over each other several times before stopping with the worst position Applejack wanted: her on the bottom and him on top.
Whatever had gotten ahold of him was again focused on her, and in an instant he wrenched his hands free of hers and seized her by the throat. They turned into iron vises as they crushed inward. Applejack didn’t even have time to gasp as he throttled her hard enough not only to cut off her air but her blood vessels. Her eyes widened in shock. Even if she was at her best she wouldn’t want to be in this position. She wasn’t strong enough to throw him off of her, and he could easily kill her like this. She tried to seize his hands and work her fingers underneath them, but it was no good. He was too strong for that. And in his position, there was no way to roll him either. He was already getting on top of her chest to make sure she couldn’t. She had to think fast. Things were already starting to get fuzzy…
Through it all, though, she felt the hard lump at her back side…
One of her hands left Braeburn’s hands and shot down to her hip. An instant later, she pulled up the claw hammer. For a brief instant, the idea went through her mind to use the head on Braeburn, before she swept it around and laced the claws underneath his fingers instead. With a prying motion, she ripped them off of her neck--letting a rush of blood and air come in. As soon as she had it, for lack of any better option, she swung the claws around and drove them into his upper forearm. It wasn’t meant to be a serious or crippling blow…just enough to wound him to let her get free. The prongs sliced through her shirt and tagged his arm on the other side, opening a gash. While Braeburn was barely reacting to pain, it seemed to be enough to loosen the arm's hand, and quickly she used the moment to raise both hands and brace the shaft of her hammer across his neck. With another cry, using up most of her remaining stamina, she shoved his head back and forced him up and to one side.
As his body rolled one way and she managed to get leverage over it, for a moment she thought she had him…
Suddenly, he let out an angry grunt of his own and kept rolling over, going with her motion all the way to fling her back to the ground and put himself back on top of her again. This time, however, he didn’t try to throttle her. One hand reached out and seized her by the skull in a clenching grasp while the other reached out and seized her hammer. Applejack’s eyes widened as she realized what he intended to do, especially when he tried to twist it free a moment later. She braced herself for it, but weakened as she was and with his strength it was almost too little. Her wrist felt like it nearly sprained from the first twist alone, and soon she had to bring her other hand up just to keep it from being pulled fully free. The two struggled for a moment, but he responded by pushing her head down harder and grinding it against the dirt as if he was trying to crush it. Her grip rapidly began to loosen as he pulled and twisted harder.
Finally, the hammer snapped free from her fingers and he raised it into the sky. His eyes focused on hers with a cold, murderous glare. Her air caught in her throat…
An instant before the hammer could fall, Twilight’s body came over hers. Her right hand was out, the first two index fingers extended and placed together, and they rapidly formed a pattern of straight lines, points, and curves in mid-air. It took the span of less than a second, before she drove both fingers forward and slammed them against Braeburn’s forehead.
To Applejack’s shock, light like purple electricity traced through the air. It was like Twilight had been drawing an invisible symbol in thin air, and now something had caused it to ignite like a match on kerosene. As it blazed forth, Braeburn’s own eyes went wide. The same purple light resonated within them as it lost all hardness and coldness, instead just staring blankly forward. The pupils enlarged; focusing on nothing and seeing beyond the sigil, Twilight, the forest, and everything else.
A moment later, the light died out, and with it so did Braeburn’s strength. His eyes glazed over as his muscles relaxed, and a moment later he moaned once before he simply collapsed and fell off of Applejack all together.
The grove was silent save for the sound of Applejack and Twilight’s heavy breathing. Spike gradually picked himself up and began to move over to his master, and the rest of the Apples slowly started to rise as well. Only about half had seen the actual incident take place, with the other half incapacitated for one or more reasons. Applejack herself stared at the space above her, replaying what had just happened in her mind a few times to determine if she had actually seen that. No one moved much for a full minute, at which point people didn’t know whether to stare at Braeburn or Twilight.
The lavender-haired woman herself finally leaned back and off of Applejack, allowing the farmer to lean up. She stared at her, but Twilight showed nothing. Her hand lowered and she bowed her head. Her face was like someone caught in the act of stealing, but she showed nothing else and said nothing else. At last, Apple Brioche came over to Braeburn’s side. He leaned down next to him for a moment.
“He’s breathing, but he’s out cold.”
“He’ll be fine.”
Everyone looked up to Twilight when she spoke. On realizing all eyes were on her, she shrank back a little more. “He…he just needs some time to wake up…at least he should…”
“What did you do to him just now?” Apple Tart called; her tone slightly accusatory.
She nervously exhaled and ran a hand through her hair. “You won’t believe me if I tell you… Just…know that he won’t act crazy like that again.”
“What d’ya mean he won’t act crazy like that again? What in tarnation just happened anyway? And how did-”
“She’s right,” Applejack suddenly spoke up. “He won’t act like that again.”
The Apples turned to her next, even more confused. However, Applejack’s eyes were now resting on the top of Braeburn’s hand. She could clearly see the markings on it now. Just as she had thought earlier, there was some sort of symbol on top of it etched in his skin. She doubted he had done that by scratching, though. Even carving it in with a knife wouldn’t have been that precise. However, the one marking that had gleamed like a red coal was gone.
A moment later, Applejack turned back to Twiilght. “What just happened?”
“I…I don’t know…”
“Bull,” she spat. “I heard ya’ back there. Ya’ said ‘it’s happenin’ at last’. What’s happenin’?”
She looked twice as nervous on realizing Applejack had heard her. “I…I can’t…”
“What just happened to my cousin? Come on, spit it out!”
“Look…I don’t know why Braeburn suddenly started to act like that. All I know is someone once taught me something to make someone ‘sane’ again.”
She frowned. “Now that don’t make no sense. How’s about-”
“Listen, I’m serious about this!” Twilight suddenly spoke up, in a rare show of force that was enough to make Applejack back down. “The less you know about this the better off you’ll all be, but I’m telling the truth when I say I don’t know why he started to act like that. Look…” She paused to take in a deep breath. “The same person who taught me how to do what you just saw told me one day lots of people everywhere around the world were going to start acting like he just did. One of the last things she taught me to do was how to stop them using that binding sign. She also told me the more people know about how this can happen, the more people it will happen to.”
“Say what? Are you tellin’-”
“Look!” Twilight cut off. She paused to stabilize herself again. “If…if you all don’t trust me or you’re suspicious of me, just say so and Spike and I will leave, but that’s all I’m going to say about it.”
The family was quiet for a moment. Applejack herself kept her glare leveled at Twilight. It didn’t sit well with her that she knew more about this than she was letting on, even if it wouldn’t explain exactly what had happened to Braeburn.
She finally straightened a bit and looked around. “Alright…let’s get everyone bound up and get this camp back in order.”
More than a few surprised looks turned to her. “Say what, coz?”
“Yer just gonna leave it at that?”
“Twilight says she don’t know why Braeburn started actin’ like that an’ I can’t do nothin’ but take her word. Reckon my head would look like a smashed apple now if she hadn’t done what she jus’ did, so I’m willin’ ta’ give her the benefit of the doubt fer now. At least ‘til Braeburn comes to and tells us his side o’ the story. The way I figure, ain’t none of us were gonna stop ‘im if it weren’t for whatever Twilight did jus’ now, so that means we all owe her.”
While everyone may not have liked it, Applejack’s logic did make sense. Twilight herself looked rather surprised that the farmer was backing her up so easily. However, she had another reason for doing so. Twilight did know more than she was letting on, and Applejack had never seen or heard of anything like what had just happened happen before. The only way she was going to find more about it was by sticking with the traveler; not driving her off.
“Come on now, it’s gettin’ dark. We still gotta find a creek.”
Somewhat reluctantly, and with no small number of uneasy looks toward both Braeburn as well as Twilight Sparkle, the group began to pick themselves up. Caramel Apple herself made sure Red Delicious was starting to come around, and not long after Apple Brioche started to get under Braeburn. Twilight herself gave a nod of thanks to Applejack before she started to get up; no longer worrying about helping with chores as she went for Spike. The farmer continued to watch her for a moment from her own spot on the ground.
She finally frowned and got up as well; not noticing that she began to absent-mindedly itch the top of her hand.
By the time Rarity had gotten to the train station, she only had time to prepare, what she considered, the “essentials”. That included changing into a stylish traveling dress complete with hat and accessory parasol, rearranging her hair style, retouching her makeup, and packing only two bags with enough clothing and accessories for four changes at the most. Nevertheless, her faithful employees had gotten the train ticket and she was soon off for Appleloosa.
The earliest train that she could get was seats only without sleeping arrangements or even private compartments, and the displeasure on her face from trying to sleep in her seat that night was more than evident, but she made the best that she could of it knowing that beggars couldn’t be choosers. On the good side, the train was only half full. Not too many people were wanting the line she was taking and even fewer would risk it at a time like this. She had a whole seat row to herself the entire trip.
The next morning found her mostly in the same neat, prim, and proper state she had been in that day before. She had one of her small books of poetry open and was reading it over as she waited (and hoped) that she would be able to catch breakfast by the time they arrived. Missing meals was terrible for her waistline and she preferred to be at her best before discussing business.
Yet as she kept reading, she became aware of the train slowing down. She thought little of it at first, figuring it was a narrow turn, but it slowed further than that, and was soon running the slowest it had been since they left the station. By the time she lowered her book and removed her reading glasses, the train was just about to halt. She looked outside at a rather simple, wooden, and run-down station as the locomotive gave out a hiss of steam to signify it stopping.
She blinked in puzzlement as the door to the front opened. The conductor walked in. “End of the line, folks. All off.”
Most of the other passengers in the car seemed to be common laborers or homeward bound. Many of them gave grumbles or sighs as they slowly began to stand up to get their things. Rarity alone remained seated. It was true she rarely took these smaller lines; definitely preferring the more luxurious expresses when she could afford them. As a result, she didn’t know exactly how they worked. She glanced outside again at the sign on the station and looked confused, and turned back to the conductor; who was already hurrying people out so he could join them.
“Um, pardon me sir, but…I couldn’t help but notice that the sign on the station out there read: ‘Neighagra Falls Station’.”
“That it does, miss,” he answered without batting an eye.
She blinked once. “But, you said it was the end of the line…”
“And so it is. On that note, you need to get your things and clear out.”
“Um…please forgive me if I’m mistaken, but…I heard that this train was going all the way to the Macintosh Hills…”
“That was before the latest telegraph from the Appleloosan army. We were passed the message when we crossed the last waystation. They believe the next wave is going to come somewhere through the country ahead. Effective immediately, all rail and road traffic this close to Equestria between here and there is shutting down. This is the last stop.”
Rarity’s pupils turned into dots. She was nearly struck dumb. “L…Last stop?”
“Yes ma’am. Please get off. We have to get this to a rotary station to make it back to Manehattan.”
“But…but-but-but it can’t be the last stop!” she half-cried. “I have to be in the Macintosh Hills and back in six days! How far did we still have to go?”
He shrugged. “Seventy…maybe eighty miles.”
“Eighty miles?!”
“Sorry, lady. Happens all the time this close to Equestria. Now are you getting off?”
By this point, one of Rarity’s eyes was twitching and she was looking progressively more disheveled. Taking a moment to compose herself but still rather frazzled, she began to get out of her seat. “Um, good sir…I don’t think you quite understand. When I said I have to be in the Macintosh Hills and back in six days, I meant I HAVE to be in the Macintosh Hills and back in six days. Is there any way, any way at all, you could make an exception?”
The conductor frowned. “Look missy, I already told you this train is turning around. The government is shutting down these tracks. It’s completely out of my hands. You’ll just have to deal with it.”
“How am I supposed to deal with it?!” she hoarsely cried, before she quickly composed herself again. “I mean…that is…are you certain there’s no other way to get to the Macintosh Hills?”
The man looked like he was getting annoyed with this conversation, but he sighed again. “Why don’t you get out and see if you can hire a Huntsman to take you? There’s plenty passing through the area.”
“…‘Huntsman’?”
He frowned. “You must be from Manehattan… The Huntsman Guild. Mercenaries that act as hired hands. Officially licensed in most countries so long as they’re prohibited from committing federal crimes. For the right price, one of them will do whatever you want. Are you going to disembark or not?”
“Just one more question…where would I find these ‘Huntsmen’ around here?”
“Good grief, Rarity. What have you gotten yourself into?”
The station at Neighagra Falls looked empty enough, but it wasn’t long after huffing and puffing her bags and parasol off of the train that she saw such wasn’t the case. The entire surrounding area was rapidly filling up with refugees from the East and stopped passengers from the West. Not just people, either. Farm animals, wagons, one or two steam-powered carriages, and entire freight cars worth of cargo. It was a mad house and she found herself bumped and jostled several times as she made her way through it. Not the most pleasant of experiences, because in addition to being a dusty and underdeveloped part of the country lacking the niceties of plumbing, gaslighting, or even paved roads many of the people in the area were rather unsavory looking. Several tried to intentionally “bump” into her to relieve her of her bags, and many others gave her none-too-pleasant leers and stares.
She was grateful that the Huntsman Guild had set up a temporary waystation not far from the platform because she wasn’t sure how far she could walk between the crowd, her load, and her heeled dress boots. Amid a large pile of scattered freight from train cars piled high almost in a series of walls or pillars, a large banner had been set up with the emblem of a pair of brass single-shot rifles. According to the conductor this was the spot.
As she wandered in, in spite of the thinning of crowds she didn’t feel much better. The various Huntsmen, each one wearing badges matching the banners and lazing about on crates, standing around in small groups chatting, or making the occasional deal with another citizen, were all rather unpleasant, dirty, and rugged looking. Definitely not the kind of people she was used to dealing with and, in many cases, worse than the crowds she had just pushed through. It didn’t help that a lot of them had weapons on them.
She had to take a deep breath before she walked into their midst. Considering that she was dressed clearly better and cleaner than all of them, she garnered many stares. One Huntsman in particular, a hunched over, wide-mouthed one with a sickening green tint to his eyes, gave her a leer she wasn’t at all comfortable with. She made straight for the nearest group that looked reasonably clean, although she balked a bit when they looked up and spotted her coming.
“Pardon me,” she managed as she came to a stop. “I am looking to hire a Huntsman from this…fine guild.”
The nearest guild members continued to stare at her without expression. The green-eyed one continued to leer.
She cleared her throat. “It’s for a trip to the Macintosh Hills. Starting today. I need to be there and back in six days.”
Several of the guild members broke out in snickers at that. Others rolled their eyes and turned away. In moments, the rest were going back to their tasks, whether it be cleaning weapons, chatting, or simply lounging.
“Please, it’s very, very important!” she immediately insisted. “I’m willing to pay handsomely!”
“Lady…”
She turned, seeing one of the guild members—a thick-jawed and intimidating one with tinted lenses on his glasses—nearly covering her with his shadow as he addressed her.
“You’re asking someone to take you across country to the Macintosh Hills without transportation right when this part of the country is about to either get overrun by Nighttouched or, barring that, Griffonstone soldiers. Maybe Trottingham ones if they decided to join in. Right now, everyone is moving away from here, not toward it. The Macintosh Hills are on the other side of the off-limits zone that Appleloosa set up. No one’s crazy enough to try and go against three governments and a hoard of monsters just to take you 80 miles.”
“But I simply have to! It’s a matter of my company’s survival!”
Hearing that only made the big man snort and turn away, while a few others muttered and moved away from her to try and drown out her requests. Not giving up, she continued to look around imploringly. “If I don’t get out there and back within this week, I’ll be ruined! I thought I heard that a Huntsman will do anything for the right price!”
No response from anyone. Most were back to their own little worlds.
She nearly let out a cry of agony. “Isn’t there anyone willing to help a desperate young lady in her time of need?!”
“None of these joes.”
Rarity looked up on hearing someone respond, but on glancing around herself she saw that no one was paying attention to her anymore. Nevertheless, the voice called out again.
“They’re all just interested in the ‘easy’ jobs.”
Realizing it was actually coming from above her, Rarity looked up.
One of the towers of freight containers was nearby, piled up in a tall stack. Lying across the top of it, arms behind her head and legs crossed, enjoying the air and breeze, was one of the shoddiest-looking Huntsmen she had seen yet. Nevertheless, she could make out the badge on her loosely clad, old jacket, and her rainbow streaked hair stood out shockingly from the rest of her.
Her eyes were closed but a smirk was on her face. “Now, me, on the other hand… I’m what folks like to call the ‘best of the best’. Kind of a celebrity around here, really. I do the jobs no one else will do with a smile. Your little trip to the Macintosh Hills? Heh. Easy peasy, cider squeezie.”
Rarity blinked. “Um, excuse me, but…who are you?”
She grinned, eyes still closed. “Who am I?”
To Rarity’s surprise, she uncrossed her legs, kicked them up in the air, and then used the reverse momentum to swing herself up and onto her feet. As she landed, she pumped a fist in the air with bravado and at last opened her eyes to beam down on the lady.
“Only the fastest, toughest, and most dependable Huntsman there is! Who laughs at danger, sneers at doom, kicks peril in the balls, and leaves hopelessness naked and running home crying to its mother! You’re looking at the one, the only, Sonic Rainboom!”
At once, she leapt off of the top of the crates, causing Rarity to gasp. However, the woman did a nimble forward flip three times over herself while twirling through the air, before sinking to the ground in a straight dive. Rarity quickly pulled back in alarm, but right before landing, the Hunstman snapped around one final time and touched down in a perfect squat, lowering to put one hand to the ground and smirking dangerously the whole time.
She held there for about three seconds, leaving the Manehattanite in total awe, before her smile faded as she turned a little green. “Ugh…” she moaned, rising much more slowly and unsteadily and putting a hand to her head. “Still hung over…” She got to her feet, only to immediately stumble backward and into the crates. She was soon leaning on them to support her weight. “You can call me Rainbow Dash, though…”
For a brief moment, Rarity stood a little perplexed at this sudden turn in behavior, but what she had said soon made her forget all about that. “Pardon me, but just so that I’m perfectly clear…did you just say that you were willing to take me to the Manehattan Hills?”
It took Dash a moment or two, but she finally stood up and, with a bit of effort on her part, smiled once again. “You bet. I’m your Huntsman. I’ll get you where you need to go along with my personal guarantee: I never quit a job until it’s done.”
Rarity sighed in relief and began to smile. “Oh, what a lifesaver… Thank you. Thank you ever so much. You truly are a godsend.” She began to draw herself up, readying to go. “Shall we be off? Like I said, I am really pressed for time…”
“Uh,” Dash held up her finger. “Just one sec… You said something else a little while ago too, didn’t you? Something about being willing to ‘pay handsomely’?” She shrugged. “Not like I do this just for the money or anything, but I got bills to pay just like everyone else.”
“Oh…” her smile ebbed a bit. “Yes, yes, of course. I’m a businesswoman myself. I understand perfectly.” She set her bag down and began to reach for the side pocket of it. “Now, how much will it be for your services?”
“Mmm…about fifteen.”
Rarity blinked, then let out a small airy laugh. “Oh, come now, darling. I appreciate you understanding my plight, but there’s no need to knock off so much from the price for that. Surely your services are worth more than fifteen dollars.”
Dash crooked her eye at her. “I, uh…didn’t mean ‘fifteen’ dollars. Huntsman Guild members charge a bit more than that.” She held up her hands and pinched her fingers to her thumbs, creating a pair of zeroes in midair.
Now Rarity’s smile really did fade as her pupils began to shrink again. “Fifteen hundred dollars..?”
Dash, looking a bit uneasy about how this was going herself, shrugged. “Well, I only got two hands…not four.”
Rarity’s jaw nearly unhinged. “Fif…fifteen…fifteen…” her voice suddenly turned into an overwhelmed cry. “Fifteen thousand dollars?!”
Another shrug. “Hey, I don’t like it much myself, but it’s supply, demand, and I unfortunately got a lot of debts to pay.”
By now, Rarity was clasping her mouth in horror; not only at the price tag but the fact she realized she shouldn’t have yelled that last amount surrounded by mercenaries. Several were staring at her now, so she quickly stepped up to Dash. “I don’t have fifteen thousand dollars on me!” She whispered harshly. “Just because I dress in style doesn’t mean I’m silly enough to bring that much money on a trip to the countryside!”
“Oh, no problem. You can owe me,” she coolly answered. “Just so long as you come up with 10% up front. Standard Huntsman Guild policy.”
“Sta…stand…?!” Rarity was nearly aghast at this point.
“You said you have your own business, right?”
“I can’t come up with that much money!”
Dash shrugged. “Sorry then. Can’t take you.”
Rarity suppressed the urge to scream. “I have to get to the Macintosh Hills! This is a business deal! If I can secure this contract, I’ll be able to pay whatever ridiculous price you want! But I have to get there first!”
“Well, I’ve got to see fifteen hundred first. I’m broke myself. Take it or leave it.”
Rarity flustered a moment, extending her hands in a gesture as if she was ready to strangle the rainbow-haired woman in front of her, before she relented and groaned. “I suppose it’s too much to ask if you have an account with the Manehattan Exchange that I can wire my business to transfer the funds to, isn’t it?”
Dash stared at her puzzled and scratched her head. “I’m not even sure what you just said.”
“I’ll take that as a ‘yes’. Listen…” She bent down next to her bag, unzipped it, and pulled out her handbag. She soon went into it for her fountain pen and checkbook. “All I have at the moment is 300 dollars for food expenses and the train ticket I planned to buy to take me back to Manehattan. I can write you a personal check for your fee and then-”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Dash put her hands up. “Uh-uh. I don’t do checks. Way too much trouble for a Huntsman Guild member. Cash only.”
“Oh, come on!” Rarity half-whined. “This is all I have!”
Dash shrugged yet again. “Guess we don’t have a deal then. Later.” She turned back to the tower of crates, and after a moment moaned and scratched her head. “How did I get up there again…?”
“Well…well…” Rarity stammered, trying to think of some way to salvage this. None of the other guild members were giving her the time of day. “What if I made it out for the whole amount…?”
Dash ignored her as she reached up and tested the edge of one crate. She half-pulled herself up before she moaned, looking dizzy and going back to the ground. “Ugh… Last night must have been really wild…”
Rarity winced anxiously, trying to think of something. In the end, only one painful idea came to mind. She closed her eyes and half-choked out: “I’ll make it out for twenty thousand!”
Dash stopped trying to climb the crates. She slowly turned around to Rarity, looking in a bit of disbelief. “…Really?”
She sighed as she pinched her temples. “I am desperate to get to the Macintosh Hills. My business will be sunk if I don’t secure this contract. Right now, I don’t care if armies, Nighttouched, or even Light Eaters stand between me and there. I have to sign. I’ll do anything for you to get me there. Will you please accept my offer?”
The Huntsman turned fully back to Rarity and crossed her arms, looking her over and seeming to consider it for a moment or two. Finally, she smiled. Her arms uncrossed and she put out her hand.
“Ma’am…you gotta deal!”
Rarity sighed in relief, although not nearly as much as she would have if she had not just lost twenty thousand dollars she truly hoped she’d have after the contract was finalized, and put out her hand to take Dash’s. After a moment of hesitation, on seeing the exposed parts of her fingers were rather dirty and grimy, she maintained politeness and shook before trying to locate a surface to wipe it off on.
“Just need to get a thing or two and we’ll be on our way. Macintosh Hills, here we come!”
She instantly ran off into the guild crowd, almost immediately tripping and falling on the first crate that was in her way, but picking herself up soon after and running on with undiminished enthusiasm. As for Rarity, she let out another strained sigh and reached for her pocket handkerchief to dab her brow.
She barely had it out when she heard a mutter from nearby. “Poor dumb out-of-towner…”
She turned her head, and saw a number of guild members with their backs to her in a small group. However, they were speaking loud enough for her to overhear.
“She must be from the city if she didn’t hear about the ol’ ‘Sonic Rainboom’ before she got here…”
“Going east? I bet this time she gets her client killed and eaten by Nighttouched…”
Rarity’s look grew uncomfortable all over again, and she began to dab her brow a bit more rigorously.
Rarity may not have been nearly as tough-skinned as the people around her, but she wasn’t so out-of-touch as to think she would somehow be able to get away with dragging her bags eighty miles. With a heavy heart, and having serious doubts as to whether she would ever see them again, she left all but the bare essentials for the contract (transposed to a handbag) by the layover office at the station. However, that didn’t stop her from being woefully underprepared. Both sets of shoes she had brought had some form of heels, and her “traveling dress” was more for the traveling aesthetic than to actually be practical. She was already trembling at the thought of the dirt stains when she finally met up again with Rainbow Dash.
The “thing or two” she had spoken of apparently wasn’t getting any sort of luggage at all save one item…assuming you could consider it. She had fetched a rather large flask and, after making the rounds about several of her fellow guild members (many of whom, at least to Rarity, appeared to chase her off), she finally managed to talk up to the green-eyed one into filling it up from a large jug. Again, Rarity wasn’t so separated from lower social classes to not know liquor when she saw it, and the fact that by now she realized Dash had been hung over when they met began to make her wonder if she had hired an alcoholic. That did nothing to comfort her growing unease about this arrangement.
“Are…you quite sure that is all the, ahem, luggage you require?” she asked when she met back up with her.
“Ha!” she laughed, patting the flask. “This is just a little something for the road. Don’t need all that heavy gear weighing me down. A real Huntsman knows how to get by with nothing but the clothes on her back. ‘Sides, it’s only eighty miles! Not a problem!”
Rarity rolled her eyes at the thought of “only eighty miles”, but said nothing. She gave a bit of a start a moment later as Dash clapped her on the back roughly.
“Now come on! We can stick to the road for a little bit, but then we’ll be roughing it across country!”
She took off, leading the way. Rarity glanced behind her one more time, seeing the green-eyed Huntsman grinning at her, and quickly gulped and turned to follow.
Dash was right about them not staying on the road for very long. There was a fairly well-maintained path running right along outside the station parallel to the tracks, but they didn’t spend more than a half mile on it, still well within the ranges of crowds surrounding the station, when they saw the roadblock up ahead. It was maintained by a tank, of all things, as well as a garrison. From there, Dash turned and led them off the road. That was bad enough as they went right through a drainage ditch for starters, permanently ruining Rarity’s boots. She moaned at the thought of what the next few days would be like.
An hour later, and Rarity’s feet were already killing her. She made a mental note to herself to definitely emphasize practicality in future footwear purchases. The worst part was that they weren’t even in a particularly rough part yet. Dash had led them to side roads for the most part, until they were finally forced to cut across already-abandoned farm fields. Rarity had expected that they would be as even as she always saw them from trains, only to realize that they were full of soft soil and quite ridged from plowing on reaching them.
“Corn certainly looks flatter from the rails…” she moaned aloud as they kept walking. “Um, excuse me, Ms. Dash?”
She was ahead of her, taking the whole thing rather casually. “S’up?”
“How far would you say we’ve gone? Five miles? Ten?”
“Huh? You kidding? Maybe three.”
Rarity moaned.
“I hear that,” Dash echoed back. “Nothing but boring country around here.”
She looked up. “Pardon me, but did you say ‘boring’?”
“Yup. Nothing exciting out here. None of the bandits or highway robbers have moved in. A bunch of farms with no wild animals around. Country’s nice and open. Don’t worry, though. We’ll be getting into much rougher territory before nightfall.”
She grimaced. “Rougher?”
She spun around on her, smiling almost devilishly as she walked backward. “Oh yeah… Some real rough stuff. Just a few more miles ahead and we get to the forests. All sorts of animals in those. Some of them rabid. Some of them maneaters. And some of them? Nighttouched hiding out while the sun is up. You step in one wrong shadow and a Nighttouched’ll pop out and bite off your leg!”
She gulped.
“And get outta that alive? That’s where the roaming bandit gangs have moved in. They’re the ones who eat their victims do they don’t leave any traces.”
The color drained from her face.
“Then the country gets rough. Got to watch out for twisting your ankle, cutting yourself on rocks, putting your hands on nettles or poison oak, and of course all the spiders, snakes, and big bloodsucking horseflies! Wouldn’t even matter if you had repellent. You just sweat it right off! All the bites lead to so much blood loss you get loopy and start losing your way. And the humidity? Oh, it’s a killer! Like you’re drowning in a swamp!”
Rarity wasn’t sure which she hated more in that statement, but her mind kept turning to thoughts of her white traveling dress permanently stained a sickly yellow…
Dash grinned further. “And then comes night. That’s when the Nighttouched come out roaming…stalking…looking for the teeniest, tiniest bit of light…and as soon as they find it, it’s all over!”
Rarity swallowed again. “Yes, and…on that ‘cheerful’ note…what precisely will we do if we happen to encounter a Nighttouched? I happened to realize you didn’t seem to have a weapon with you, Ms. Dash…”
“Weapon? Ha!” She made a fist and flexed her arm. “I am a weapon! Trained by the best! I’ll have you know the ‘Sonic Rainboom’ is the one and only Hunstman in the guild who can take apart a Nighttouched with her bare hands!” She swiveled around. “I only hope we run into a nice big one so I can show you how awesome it looks…”
“I think that’s one lifetime event I can wait a few more years on to check off my ‘bucket list’…” Rarity muttered under her breath; glancing around as she did so as to not let Dash hear it directly. However, on looking about, she stopped in midstep.
Dash noticed she had halted and looked behind her. “S’up?”
She didn’t answer at first. She looked behind them, into the fields of corn they were moving through. Her face was uneasy.
“Nothing, I suppose… I just…thought I saw something. Or someone.”
“Heh, let ‘em come. I’ll set anyone straight who tries following us.”
“Yes, well…what if they have a firearm?”
“Huh? Oh yeah…that might be a problem…”
The Manehattanite moaned as she trudged along.
Unfortunately for Rarity’s feet, the country only got worse as they left the farm fields behind for meadows of open country. That’s when the insects started to buzz and bite, making her uncomfortable all over. Around midday, she got another shock when she asked if there was any chance they could stop for lunch as she hadn’t had breakfast. She expected Dash to show her fishing, trapping, or maybe picking some wild berries.
Instead, she found the nearest rock and pried it up, revealing multiple insects interspersed with fat grubs.
“Perfect! Lots of protein in the big green ones. I once lived off of those for three weeks!”
Needless to say, nausea soon caused Rarity to lose her appetite.
In early afternoon, the two reached a forest planted on the edge of a township and began to make their way through. The way was worse than ever now. Rose vines with hook-like thorns that tore the hem of her dress and deep, rough ravines cut through it, and Rarity was soon mumbling to herself about the “things she did for her profession”. Worst of all, however, was that she kept thinking she saw things behind them every time her head glanced around.
“Eh, relax,” Dash waved off her latest one as she reached for her flask. Taking it up she began to unscrew it. “Nothing to worry about so long as you’re with me.”
Rarity frowned uneasily as Dash took a swig. “I’m not quite sure it’s late enough in the day to start drinking…”
“What, this? Ah no…I never get real sauced on the job. This is just to ease the hangover a bit. Plus I can never say no to cider season.”
Rarity sighed again but kept walking. She only got a few more steps before Dash called behind her again. “So, you’re headed all the way out here for your job, huh?”
She exhaled as she stepped over the latest root in her path. “Yes.”
“I have to say you’re the first person I ever saw who thought getting killed by Nighttouched was worth saving some clothing store.”
Rarity quite visibly frowned at that; although Dash couldn’t see it. “First of all, it’s not a ‘clothing store’. We are a large scale outfitter. We provide custom designs of the latest and most artistic fashions on both the individual and large-scale level. We ran one of the bigger establishments local to Manehattan proper, but recently we expanded to try and go throughout all of the province. However, the upgrade cleaned out our bank accounts. We need to secure this contract in order to keep our business afloat long enough to woo new investors and to gain legitimacy on the market.”
Dash scratched her head and looked behind her. “Making some deal with some Podunk farmer out on the east side of Appleloosa is going to keep some shop in Manehattan afloat?”
She was incensed yet again at how Dash blew off her establishment, but she held it back and remained calm. “This is a deal with a material supplier. We need their fabric to secure the real contract, which is to be the outfitter for the Manehattan Armed Forces.”
This actually got Dash to turn her head around more. “Wait…are you saying you’re going to make uniforms for the Manehattan army?”
“Why yes,” she answered, feeling a bit pleased for the first time now that she had opportunity to boast. She reached into her handbag soon after and pulled out a folded up sketchpad. “These are only my earlier concepts, but some of them approach close to the final design. Have a look.”
Dash finished stopping her flask and put it away, then walked over as Rarity cheerfully showed her the designs. For a few moments, she merely looked them over.
Yet after a bit, she saw Dash’s lips curl up. They pursed as her cheeks grew. She snorted once or twice before she burst out laughing. And not just a little. She actually grabbed her middle and staggered back all the way against a tree trunk laughing her head off.
Rarity was rather confused and even just a little uncomfortable. “What…what’s so funny?”
“Aw man! I should’ve known! Look at that ridiculous getup!” she roared. “That’s just perfect for someone from Manehattan!”
That last part actually struck a bit of a nerve in Rarity. “Excuse me?”
“What’s that on those shoulder pads? Or up and down the middle? And those hats? They look like they belong in a marching band, not an army!”
Rarity’s jaw tightened as she took a deep breath and held her head higher. “I’ll have you know this is just the dress uniform for officers, and that I take immense pride in making sure that my designs are not only fashionable but durable and motile for the customer’s needs. Furthermore, this design was approved by the Manehattan military heads themselves. The trim on the right shoulder is seventeen tassels, representing the-”
“Well of course they would,” Dash snickered, cutting her off as she leaned up again. “They don’t plan on fighting in those uniforms. Everyone knows that Manehattan’s a bunch of gutless cowards.”
Rarity’s eyes widened. She nearly let the sketchpad fall from her grip as she forgot what she was saying.
Dash crossed her arms behind her head and casually went on. “I mean, look at you. Rest of the world is scraping by with whatever they can get, while Manehattan lets Fillydelphia deal with everything so folks like you are free to wear fancy dresses like that and worry about dumb stuff like clothes.”
Rarity’s eyes stayed wide, but one of them began to slightly twitch.
Dash closed her eyes and shrugged. “I mean, I don’t judge. If you think some fancy, schmancy uniforms you’re making for your sewing shop are worth going over some war zone that’s gonna be flooded with monsters pretty soon, so long as you’re paying me I don’t care. It just cracks me up how Manehattan’s living in a different world from the rest of us.”
At once, Rarity’s jaw tightened. Her hands balled into fists. She began to stomp right up to Dash as she continued to casually stand there. “Alright…that is enough!” she shouted with a surprising lack of previous restraint. “Just because an outfitter and the livelihoods of those associated with it clearly mean nothing to you…who, I might add, is hardly in a position to judge considering the leather rags she’s wearing…does not mean that I don’t take a great deal of pride in my work and my business!”
Dash just kept standing there, eyes closed and smirking. It only made Rarity more livid.
“I may not be a fighter or mercenary or suffer from an incredible lack of tact and cleanliness, but I do my job incredibly well and I’ve worked incredibly hard to get it where it is! Considering that this ‘sewing shop’ is what’s going to be paying your exorbitant bill, I would show a bit more respect!”
Dash still didn’t change. Nearly turning red-faced, Rarity got right in hers.
“And furthermore, you haven’t the slightest right to accuse me of being detached from what’s going on in the world! You don’t know anything about me or what the Lunar Fall has done to me and my family! Who do you think you are for daring to suggest such a thing? At this point I’m almost tempted to walk the rest of the way to Macintosh Hills by myself! If you still want that money then you are going to have to apologize this instant! Do you understand?”
Rarity’s last word slowly echoed through the forest. There she stood, glaring daggers at Dash, and there Dash stood, still smirking, still eyes closed, and still standing there.
At long last, it broke. Dash let out a long nasal snore.
The designer recoiled; anger turning to puzzlement. “What?”
A moment later, Dash completely collapsed to the ground like a puppet that had its cords cut. It was so abrupt, it made her leap back and cup a hand to her mouth. Yet she hardly had a moment to think about what just happened when she heard a twisted, high-pitched snicker behind her.
“Hee-hee…stupid Fillydelphian!”
Rarity snapped around in fright. She really did gasp soon after.
Directly behind her was the green-eyed Huntsman from before, looking just as hunched over and creepy as last time. He had two friends with him that were taller but didn’t look much better. They likewise were grinning as they approached.
“She’d take drink from outhouse if say it’s cider!” the one on the green-eyed Huntsman's left cackled.
Rarity didn’t have time to put two and two together. She was exclaiming in fright instead as she saw the woods around her come alive with an entire squad of goons. Each one was ugly, smelly, heavily armed, and unpleasant to look at, but apparently all had been hiding in ambush waiting for just this moment. Cringing, she began to step back, but there was no escape. Even if she could run in her current footwear, they had been planning on the two coming this way and had them surrounded on all sides. Now all were closing in at once.
Her only hope was Rainbow Dash, but on spinning around and looking at her she saw she wouldn’t be helping anyone anytime soon. The smirk was still on her face as she snored away on the forest floor.
“Time for your nap too, pretty lady!”
The designer heard the voice of the biggest of the three right behind her, but didn’t even have a chance to turn around before something heavy and hard struck the back of her head and all went to black.
“Uh…”
It was the sound of her own voice that awakened Rarity some time later. She was brought fully back to her senses, however, by realizing she felt rather constrained and in pain at the moment. And not just from the soles of her still-throbbing feet. A rather radiating and tender pain was in the back of her head, but she pushed through it and slowly opened her eyes up again. It took some time for her vision to clear and for her brain to remember where she was, but as soon as she recalled her last memories her vision revealed her situation had not improved.
They were still in the clearing, only now she found it filled up with the rough men from earlier. They were so dirty and uncouth the area actually stank from them crowding together in it. The three she had initially spotted were ransacking her handbag while the others looked on with weapons exposed. As for Rainbow Dash, she was still snoozing away against the trunk of a tree nearby. She hadn’t gotten there of her own accord, however. They had actually chained her to it.
And it didn’t take her long to realize she wasn’t in much better condition. Just inhaling a bit deeply made her feel a pain across her chest, and on looking down at herself she saw she was similarly tied to a tree. They had only used ropes with her, but they had tied her hands behind her as well as bound her chest and waist separately. Her anxiety immediately began to rise. She gave her bonds a pull, but even if she was the sort of person to put real effort into a struggle she couldn’t have budged. They were far too tight. Furthermore, she only got to try for a moment before she heard an angry yell. “Bah!”
In alarm, she looked up and spotted the green-eyed Huntsman throwing her bag to the ground in disgust. “No money! Stupid Manehattan woman only have paper book!”
The bigger of the two others, the one who had apparently knocked Rarity out, spoke up mildly. “You mean checkbook?”
“Checkbook like money,” the third one shrugged.
“Fool!” the first snapped back. “Paper can bounce!”
The two stared back at him curiously, neither quite grasping what he was saying. After a moment, the smaller of the two reached out, took up Rarity’s checkbook, ripped out one, crumpled it into a ball, and then dropped it to the ground; as if indeed expecting it to bounce.
The first hissed before smacking him over the head. “It mean not worth anything! Stupid Manehattan have no money and no jewels! Waste of time!”
“That not true,” the third one spoke up again. “Got rainbow-headed girl. And Manehattan woman real looker, right?”
The big one glanced at her. Rarity let out a gulp on seeing him stare, but he did nothing but evaluate her a moment before turning back to the others. “She don’t see better than us.”
The third growled. “I mean she get good price!”
The first thought this over for a moment, then began to smirk. “Yes…Manehattan woman is very pretty. Good shape too. Maybe worth more than money.”
“Maybe…” the third one ventured, sounding almost hopeful. “We get to use her first? Goods only…slightly used?”
The other two stared at him in puzzlement. He winced.
“Er…low damage? One size fit all? Two hands?”
The first one smacked him again. “Stop saying stupid words!”
Rarity, by now, had more than the gist of what they were saying, and she was completely aghast to hear it. She would have thought of telling off the conductor for ever getting her involved with these mercenaries if she wasn’t petrified about what they were talking about doing to her.
In spite of this threat, however, her mind couldn’t help but pick up on other details.
One was that the three men who were currently arguing seemed to hold some sway over the others in their group, who were doing little more than standing around and staring at them as they argued.
What more, based on their near infantile level of speech and accents, they were from a variety of the smaller city-states and provinces that had been overrun from the Lunar Fall, but most of them didn’t speak the languages of the others. They were having to rely on the Manehattan dialect for commonality and none of them were that well versed in it. And the fact they were so easily being confused, and even more easily getting irate over it, meant to her they weren’t exactly that intelligent.
Finally, she glanced to Dash. She had put enough together at this point to realize the only reason the green-eyed Huntsman gave her any cider was to drug it for the sole purpose of ambushing them once they got there and that was the reason for her passing out. However, she was no longer snoring. As she looked at her now, her nose wrinkled once; perhaps catching the scent of the men around her.
She had no idea if all of her boasting was nothing but idle words, and even if it wasn’t how that would do against chains and a dozen men, but the very fact she was chained instead of tied meant they had to fear her. With that in mind, Rarity decided on her gamble and hoped it paid off.
She looked back to the three men, trying to think of this like any other affair where she had ever had to deal with someone “difficult”. “Ex…excuse me? Gentlemen?”
The three turned to her in unison, although only the leader seemed to realize what “gentlemen” meant.
“I couldn’t help but overhear just now… You don’t truly mean to sell me into some sort of slave ring, do you?”
This made the lead one grin wider. “No…no slave ring. They not pay nearly as much as underground bath house…”
Rarity felt her blood curdle a little at that, but somehow managed to keep her normal business demeanor as she looked a bit astonished. “I don’t suppose I could persuade you to rethink this, ahem, business transaction, could I? I mean, I am someone of means and I have connections in Manehattan. I might be able to make letting me go free more worth your while.”
The biggest one snorted. “No lady! A bush in the bird is worth two in the hand!”
“Quiet!” the first one snapped back, having looked immediately intrigued by the proposal. He quickly grabbed the big one by the ear as well as his companion and spun them around. As soon as he made sure Rarity couldn’t see him, he began to mutter loudly to the others, but even if he hadn’t had to eventually raise his volume so high she could get what he was saying she knew full well they didn’t plan on releasing her. However, they clearly thought the possibility of even more money shouldn’t be discounted either. No doubt the green-eyed one overheard the price she sounded out earlier and thought she was loaded.
They finally wheeled around. “Ok, Manehattan lady. You pay us.”
“Oh, thank you. I’m ever so grateful we could make that arrangement,” she answered properly. “Now then, just how much do you believe my freedom is worth to you?”
“Everything.”
She looked puzzled. “Excuse me?”
“You get us all your money, Manehattan lady,” he answered with a wide grin. “Or we find other way to get more from you.” He licked his lips at this part.
Again, Rarity was forced to suppress her revulsion. She glanced to Dash but saw no other change. Sighing mentally, she nodded. “Well, I suppose if that’s the way it has to be, then that’s the way it has to be. If you would be so kind as to give me my checkbook-”
“No paper!” he cut off with a sharp sneer. “Paper bounce!”
“Um…paper not bounc-”
“Stop talking, fool!”
Rarity was quiet a moment before making a fake sheepish smile. “Oh…oh yes, of course.”
“And if you only have paper…” he began to respond, grinning again and holding his hands up as he advanced toward her.
“T-T-Then again…I could always telegraph my associates back in Manehattan to wire you the funds!” she quickly interjected, getting him to stop again. “I only need to write down some proper authorization and you could take it to the nearest telegraph operator and you’d have your money in less than twelve hours!”
That was, of course, blatantly false, as none of the ruffians had a bank account linked to the Manehattan Exchange to get the money, but as Rarity had guessed they were too stupid to know any better. After a moment, they looked to each other hopefully. Rarity cast another glance at Dash but saw, other than another nose wrinkle, she was still out and suppressed a sigh.
“Fine, Manehattan lady,” the lead finally spoke up again. “You write telegrams.”
“Yes, yes, of course. Um…” she paused, before wriggling a bit in her ropes. “I’ll be needing my hands free…”
He narrowed his eyes at her a moment, but fortunately looked to the big one among them and nodded. Soon after, he came stomping over, went behind her tree, and unbound her hands. Her upper and lower torso remained tied, but she got enough room to let her fingers flex and move again, as well as was able to hold them in front of her. However, after that, she paused while the thugs stared at her.
“I’ll…also be needing some paper of some sort.”
The lead huffed and looked to the third. He, of course, was clueless. He had to make the rounds to all the rest of the thugs searching them for any paper they could find. All the while, Rarity continued to look at Dash but saw little improvement. It wasn’t until one managed to turn up a book that one of the lesser thugs had swiped, even though he couldn’t read, that she noticed Dash wince again, this time a bit more strongly than before, but slumped idly soon after.
As the book was presented to her, she looked up once more. “And…a pen?”
The leader yelled in frustration before they began to rummage among themselves again. However, when he yelled, Rarity managed to catch Dash momentarily wincing again. Apparently, as smelly and rough as the ambushers were, they were being at least quiet enough for her to continue to sleep undisturbed. If they were to make a bit more noise, however…
Rarity’s own pen from her handbag being nearly thrown into her chest interrupted that thought, and soon the shadows of all three main ruffians were hanging over her.
“Now write, Manehattan lady! Now!”
She hesitated again before taking up the pen. She quickly glanced around one more time, looking over those in the group and mentally counting that there were a dozen even. With that in mind, she smiled slightly and took up the paper to start writing.
“Yes, yes, of course… Now then…” She began to start scribbling. “I have 130 thousand available to dole out, and I see one, two, three… Oh dear.” She put the pen to her lips in a thoughtful expression. “It seems we have a problem. There are twelve of you and 130 thousand simply doesn’t divide that easily.” She looked up to the leader.
“It would be an absolute beast to try and split across all of you. My associates at home would never understand what I was getting at. How about I write out ten thousand to eleven of you and whoever deserves it the most will get twenty thousand?”
None of the thugs, as expected, paused to challenge this assumption. Their minds focused only on the twenty thousand versus the ten thousand. It only took moments for their leader to smirk. “Easy. I get twenty thousand. All my idea.”
At once, the third one frowned. “Hey! My idea to use drug cider! You have to deal with rainbow head if not for me!”
“Bah!” the lead sneered back, jabbing at his own chest. “I’m the one who give stupid rainbow head the cider!”
“I also follow them out here!” the third protested further, stepping forward toward the lead. “You get lost at first tree!”
“You not even be here if not for me!”
“Hey,” the big one spoke up mildly, “I bring chain…”
The first snapped to him with a glare. “So?”
He frowned back. “I tie stupid Fillydelphian up!”
“She asleep, fool! Your chain don’t matter!”
“I tie up Manehattan woman too! I do all the work!”
“Bah! Any one of blockheads could tie up!”
Several of the group around the three clenched their teeth at that insult.
This made the third one grow thoughtful. “Hey…why all them get ten thousand?” he muttered, gesturing around. “They do nothing! They just spares!”
Now the group around them truly got incensed. “What you say?”
The first one ignored them, looking up. “You right! They not need ten thousand! Five thousand good enough for them!”
“One thousand good enough for them!” the third corrected.
That was the last straw. At once, several of the other thugs began to snarl and step forward. “You try to cheat us!”
“You don’t get ten thousand for no work! You just follow us! You all get one thousand…” He wheeled on the big one nearby. “You get two thousand…” Finally, he turned back to the third. “And we decide what to do with rest!”
“Sound fine by me!”
The other thugs began to close in now, and the big one growled. “I have to pay for chain and rope! You pay me back what I owe!”
“Idiot! Chain and rope only cost-”
He was cut off as the big one shot out a hand and seized him around the neck. His other hand went out at the same time and seized the other by his own neck. The big one’s teeth clenched as he began to look very angry.
“You pay me ten thousand…or we going to have to dig two holes.”
A chorus of clicks rang out soon after that--the sound of caplocks. The three looked up and around and saw six of their former companions now had their respective firearms up and were aiming at the three of them. The rest were drawing whatever hand weapons they had.
“You pay all ten thousand…or we going to have to dig three holes.”
The big one was surprised by the move and let his hands loosen. The other two seized that opportunity to snap free. At once, the leader drew a couple of glaives with hook-like claws from his sides, while the third pulled out a pair of caplock pistols. “Put guns down now or I claw throat out!”
“Nobody backstab me!” the third yelled.
The second, now recovered, flexed his muscles—not even bothering with a weapon. “I take you all down!”
“Ugh…what’s all this racket…? Can’t a girl sleep off a hangover…?”
Everyone in the thug’s group froze simultaneously, while Rarity rolled her eyes and sighed in a gesture that could only mean “finally”. They all turned and looked and saw Dash’s head was up again. She was wincing and groggy, but her eyes were cracked open. She blinked and looked over herself.
“Aw man…did I get in trouble with the Appleloosan magistrates again…?” She moaned once more. However, after blinking a few times, full awareness of the situation and how she got there seemed to come back to her. She looked up and her eyes zeroed in on the green-eyed Hunstman.
“Rover…” she groaned. “I should’ve known… Never got over me taking the Baltimare job from you, did ya’? After I beat your butt black and blue, I thought you’d have learned.”
The green-eyed Hunstman snarled. “Still don’t sit right…” He grinned soon after. “But ha! Now you in trouble, rainbow haired fool! You chained this time instead of roped! Big contract out by rivals on you! You going to pay me back with interest!”
The big one scratched his head. “Interested in what?”
The third one smacked him over the head this time.
Dash, still seemingly a little out of it, smirked and snickered. “You went and made a contract with someone to take out another Huntsman’s Guild member? Now that’s against the rules, Rover. Not only are you out of the guild, I’m in my rights to take you down right now…for good, if you get my drift.”
“Ha! Twelve of us, one of you! And you can’t get free!”
Dash looked again at her bindings idly. She pulled against them a moment, showing some discomfort, but other than rattling them didn’t get very far. She gave up after a moment. Taking that as a sign of defeat, the gang began to grin and snicker at her.
A moment later, she closed her eyes and sighed.
“Well nuts…I got a client, which means I gotta use it again…”
Her eyes opened, and she looked past the grinning, cruel faces to Rarity.
“I wanted to do this at a really awesome moment so it’d look cooler, but…this is gonna have to do. I can’t get out any other way.”
This made Rover frown. “What you saying?” He looked between the two of them. “What you telling her? You passing code? It not matter! Nothing save you now!”
For a moment, Dash leaned back, her smile growing wistful.
“An old friend might.”
She extended one of her hands out, spreading the fingers wide.
“Come on out, Captain Spitfire!”
The last two words she spoke almost didn’t even sound like Dash’s voice, but something more powerful that actually shook the air and surrounding trees. Immediately, and to the surprise of everyone present, Rarity included, a blue aura began to radiate from all around Dash’s body. From beneath one of her gloves, a light burst forth like a wire frame that had been heated. It traced the image of what looked like some sort of hexagon, but with one of the points on it gleaming bigger and bluer than the rest of it.
As Dash continued to glow, faint rays of light, like sunbeams, streamed off of her body and formed over her into some sort of cloud or mist. Rarity couldn’t tell what it was exactly; although, for just a moment, she almost thought she saw it start to take shape into something. It broke before it could, but further changes came around Dash. Her shabby clothing suddenly tightened and mended slightly, becoming more form fitting and less baggy. Her hair, normally wild, was caught up in a wind that came forth from the blue light, and for a moment it looked like it tried to style itself in a different way. However, that too aborted soon after, although Dash was still left gleaming.
She didn’t seem to mind. She was now looking fully alert and, more than that, grinning dangerously. She took in a deep breath and tightened both hands into fists as the alarmed thugs continued to look on in surprise. Then she yelled out a sharp cry and flexed. With just the slightest resistance, the chain around her broke in four different places.
In an instant, Dash snapped up to her feet, and with a sharp turn of her heel brought her legs together and her hands up into a fighting stance; never stopping smiling.
She didn’t stay there long, though. She was off in a snap, and Rarity's jaw dropped at her speed as she shot right into the midst of three of the lesser thugs and buried her fist in the center one’s face. The sound making contact was practically a small thunderclap. His two companions didn’t even know she was there until they saw their friend, blood streaming out of his nose and eyes rolling back in his head, collapse like a ton of bricks. Just as quickly, her other arm’s elbow snapped out and drove itself in under the sternum of the thug on the left. Another resounding smack rang out, joined by what sounded like a rib breaking, and that thug gagged and bent over before falling as well. Finally, she snapped her first fist up by rotating her upper arm and let the upper knuckles embed themselves into the third’s forehead. Rarity almost swore she saw them sink in as he was knocked away head first and spread on the ground.
"Three down, nine to go!"
Still grinning, Dash’s eyes flicked up to the next nearest group. They were stunned at her sudden display of speed and power, but quickly began to get their weapons ready. Abruptly, she flung herself forward in a half-roll, half-leap, hurling herself into the air and spinning around on her own axis right into their midst. One of them gaped in astonishment at her sudden move, and as a result failed to defend himself as she came down, extended a leg, and slammed it on top of his head. The impact was so hard it was like a giant with a hammer had treated him like an oversized nail when he slammed into the dirt. She touched down a second later, but barely stayed put before she shifted weight to her other leg and swung her opposite one backward. Her timing was perfect. She caught the axe that one of the thugs was wielding as he tried to come up behind her and knocked it clean out of his grip into the air.
His partner drew a long knife of his own and quickly tried to bury it in her chest at close range. Dash responded with a snicker. Rarity wasn’t able to tell what happened next; only seeing the ruffian spasm in pain before dropping his knife and then the rest of him to the ground. In truth, Dash had moved so fast one of her fists went in just as the thug was readying his knife and punched him in the underarm. That stunned him long enough for her to give a second blow to his head to put him down. While he was still falling, she snapped her body around and faced the thug she disarmed; still dumbfounded at watching his own axe in midair. Her hands came around and powerfully boxed him across the ears, and while he was still rearing to gag from that her knee came up and struck him in the jaw. His head snapped upward, and soon after the rest of him sank to the ground in a heap.
"Gotta keep paying attention in this game, buddy!" she mocked as his axe finally clattered to the ground at his feet.
She turned her head to the others, at some distance, but hesitated for a fraction of a second. The next three all had their guns still out and were aimed right at her.
Yet rather than charge or dodge, she snickered again and simply faced them. “Never pulled this off from this close…” she muttered as her hands glowed a little more brightly.
All three gunshots went off one after the other. Rarity nearly looked away on seeing Dash standing right in their path, but the Hunstman herself responded by extending both arms and moving them even faster than she had before. It made it look as if her hands had been painted on a canvas and then blurred before the paint had a chance to dry. It lasted only a moment, until the last echo of the final shot had gone off.
Dash was still standing there; her hands extended but now clenched into fists. She chuckled again as she opened them up. Rarity gasped again on seeing three rifle bullets fall out of them.
“Don’t make bullets as fast as they used to, huh?”
Two of the thugs, the smarter of them, immediately threw down their weapons, turned, and bolted in terror. The third foolishly began to try and reload in spite of the fact he was still using a powder charge.
Dash ignored him, instead nimbly slipping to one side and right past the two swinging claws of Rover as he cried out, giving his position away, and tried to slash her from behind. The pistol-wielding one had also been taking aim at her back and fired at the same time, which wasn’t the best move in the world. She easily ducked and swiveled her head to one side to avoid one shot, but Rover’s shoulder had gotten right in the path of the other one and a small eruption of blood resulted as the bullet tore into it.
He cried out as that arm faltered and whirled around in rage. He began to rant at him, but Dash used the moment to advance. Her arms nimbly went out, braced against his good wrist with one, and then swung down powerfully with the other. The blow had such power that it snapped all three blades off of the glaive on his good arm and wrenched his wrist into a sprain. He wheeled around to her in shock and pain, and saw her right in his face.
“Didn’t your mom teach you not to run with scissors?”
Two rapid blows flashed out and batted Rover’s head around like a punching bag on a chain, before she drove a palm into his middle. All of the air rushed out of his lungs and his green eyes bulged from his head as he was flung away from Dash like a kicked tin can.
She spun around to the pistol-wielder, who was totally at a loss. His pistols were single-shot, so now his small brain couldn’t decide which to dump to free a hand to reload the other. He never got a chance to decide as Dash lashed out with one foot, hooked it under a loose rock, and knocked it into the air. She leaned back, raising one of her legs, and as it came down she kicked the rock and sent it smacking into the pistol-wielder's head. Another stunned cry later, and he went down as well.
As Dash straightened herself, the ground around her shook a little. She turned her head and saw the big thug approaching. He had taken the moment to rip his shirt off and show his muscle, which was considerable, and was lacing his fingers together and cracking them as he neared. He towered over her by a good nine inches when he finally pulled back his dominant fist as far as he could before taking a swing at her.
Her smile faded into a bored look as she easily caught the fist with one hand, and held without buckling despite the fact it was twice as big as hers. “Why is it you big meatheads never know how to do anything but punch?”
Sighing, she threw a single, non-frills punch into his middle. In spite of that, his eyes bulged even more than Rover’s had, and his mouth hung open and gagged for air as his strength left him. She simply released his hand and took two steps back, letting the rest of him slowly collapse to the ground.
She dusted her hands for a moment afterward. “Let’s see, is that everyone? Wait, no…one more.” She turned and looked to the last thug, who had only just managed to start putting powder into his rifle barrel. He was so nervous by now he was making a total mess of it and getting it everywhere. He continued to fumble with it as Dash simply rolled her eyes, walked right up to him, and snatched it right out of his hands.
“Seriously?” she asked as she crossed the metal barrel over her knee and, with another rapid move, drove it upward sharp enough to bend it at the middle.
Dropping his powder, the thug turned and took off after his two friends; yelping like a panicked dog the whole way.
Dash laced her own fingers together and stretched them over her head. Her glow died down and her clothes resumed looking looser and shabbier as her hair went wild again. “Man, what a waste… Wouldn’t have needed it if it wasn’t for those dumb chains…” She turned fully around and grinned at Rarity. “But that was still pretty awesome, right?”
The woman was still dumbfounded. She gazed around at the aftermath unblinking. “How did…? When did…? You just…? But…but…?”
“Speechless, eh? Well, the Sonic Rainboom does have that effect on people, so don’t feel bad about it.” She strolled over to Rarity’s side and bent down to begin untying her.
She was halfway through it before Rarity got enough of her bearings to speak coherently. “I…I never saw anything like that before… Did you, um…well, pardon me if being rude, but…did I just see you, ahem…glow?”
She shrugged. “I guess so. I kind of always see myself glowing in the middle of a fight, y’know?”
“That’s not what I meant. I could have sworn I saw something glowing beneath your glove bright enough to see through it… And that name you said… It was a ‘Captain Spitfire’…?”
Suddenly, Dash stopped in the middle of her untying. Rarity, puzzled, looked over to her, and saw she was staring back at her with total seriousness.
“Ma’am, as we have a contract I’ll stick with you no matter what…but I would really prefer if we don’t talk about what just happened again, alright?”
It was very subtle, but Rarity thought she almost heard a word of warning on that voice. Considering what she had just seen, it was enough to unnerve her just a bit. And considering the fact she was still tied, she silently nodded soon after. “Very well.”
Dash stared at her a second longer before going back to untying her. As the last of her ropes came off and she let out an exhale of relief, she seemed to become her old attitude again. Rarity herself got up and began to pull at her dress. “If any of those ropes caused a run in this blouse, I’ll be just beside myself…” After giving it a careful inspection, she turned to start recollecting her handbag, only to freeze on seeing most of the thugs were still there and writhing or moaning.
Dash picked up on this. “Eh, don’t worry about them. They won’t be causing any more trouble. When I hit someone, they keep feeling it a week later.” She raised her head a bit to the thugs. “I thought that would have scared someone like Rover off from trying a stunt like this, but apparently not, eh?”
Rover let out a weak snarl; all he could manage from the air he had recovered.
“By the way, fellas, don’t think I won’t forget about this when I hit the next guild branch. I’d start applying for new jobs, if you get my drift.” She turned to Rarity. “Just pick up your things and we’ll get going. Sorry for this ‘detour’. We got time to make up now.”
Rarity ignored that part as she quickly went around and gathered her items. As she was putting the last in her bag, she looked at the Huntsman uncertainly. “Is this…all that we’re really going to do with them? Just leave them here?”
“Don’t worry about it. It’s already mid-afternoon. As soon as they can walk they got to worry about getting back to Neighagra Falls or they’ll be out in the dark in country that could get surged any moment.”
Rarity glanced to Rover, who in the middle of his pain and breathlessness spared every moment he could to glare at Dash angrily. “While I can see your point, that one over there seems as if he has a vendetta for you and isn’t quite wise enough to know when to leave well enough alone…”
She shrugged. “Well, if he tries to attack me again, I’ll just have to beat him up again.”
“Yes, but…what if he gets the drop on you again? Or if he does another trick like he did with the cider but with poison-”
“Lady,” Dash suddenly cut off, her tone sharper as she crossed her arms, “what are you trying to ask me? Are you telling me to kill him so he won’t bother us anymore?”
Having it put out so bluntly took Rarity aback. “N-No! No, I mean…perish the thought! Sure, I am a little worried about him coming back to haunt us…er, you… I would just prefer if there was some way we could be sure he wouldn’t cause any more trouble. For us or anyone else.”
That only made Dash roll her eyes. “Look Rarity…I don’t know if folks in Manehattan are so out-of-touch they don’t know what’s going on, but Greater Everfree is kinda in the ‘Last Days’ right now. The Light Eaters are taking over the continent. Maybe only a mile one year and maybe a hundred on another, but they’re coming and nobody’s stopping them. As far as I’m concerned we’re all going to die pretty soon. Part of the reason I use my fists is I don’t really feel like saving them any trouble, get me?”
She spoke with such sudden conviction and force compared to her earlier devil-may-care attitude that it caught Rarity all over again. It even made her feel a bit ashamed for suggesting the thing.
Dash paused a moment before waving her hand, turning, and beginning to walk. “I’m not stupid enough to think the world’s all sunshine and good feelings, but you better stop and think the next time you want someone out of the way just to make yourself ‘feel safer’. Coming?”
Rarity hesitated. This last part made her pause and her expression turn a bit darker and more uncomfortable. “Yes…yes, of course.” Drawing herself up, she took off in a more rapid pace to catch up.
The grove was empty, quiet, and deserted. The half-full moon provided some illumination through the thinner branches, but it was still largely dark and covered with shadows. Crickets chirping filled the air. An owl hooted.
Celestia stood just within the tree line, concealed by branches and underbrush, and took a deep breath. She looked down to her hand, ignoring the hexagonal symbol and instead focusing on a gold bracelet with a single sapphire mounted into it. She looked up again, steeled herself, and began to walk out.
Nothing immediately responded as she emerged, but she continued to look one way and another. None of the shadows or the shapes within them moved. She heard nothing, but knew full well this was the spot and this was the time.
“I’m here, Sunset,” she called, breaking the silence at last.
No answer. Celestia’s face grew uncomfortable, and she looked around a bit more as she continued to walk to the center. Her step gradually did begin to slow at the continued lack of response, and her hand bearing her symbol and her bracelet began to raise in anticipation.
The sound, familiar to her, of magical runes being activated rang out around her. She saw light rise up nearby and quickly wheeled to it. However, she saw nothing ahead of her. For a fraction of a second she hesitated before she looked at her feet. A series of circular symbols were lighting up right beneath her. Gasping at the realization of her mistake, she quickly brought her other hand around to grasp her bracelet…
Too late. The runes completed and burst into full golden light, and in response the sound of chains whipping through the air erupted. A pair of shackles burst from the edges and tagged her wrists right before she could touch the bracelet, and with a sharp tug that made her cry out yanked both of her arms back. Two more quickly lashed against her ankles while another large shackle shot up beneath her and tethered to her waist. Those along with the wrist shackles began to both stretch her and yank her down to her knees.
She opened her mouth and got out three arcane syllables before another shackle clamped around her neck; yanking her down like a dog on a leash. She gagged, but when she recovered enough to speak again all chains and shackles binding her began to burn, forcing her to call off her spell before she could speak it. Soon she was stretched, bent, and barely able to keep herself from being ground into the dirt by the golden chains.
Celestia struggled against them, but all in vain. Her bonds only grew tighter and more painful for her attempts to break free. She was allowed to struggle for a full minute, in particularly to use the shackle on her wrist to push her bracelet off her hand, but to no avail. It was too tight to squeeze over her thumb.
A smug sounding voice came from the shadows. “So it’s true what your book said…”
Celestia paused in her struggles, looking up into the shadows to her right. They parted enough to reveal Sunset Shimmer. In spite of her homeless status, the teenager seemed to have done very well for herself since she had last seen her. Her face and hair were clean, her clothes were new, and she looked twice as arrogant.
“Chains made of adamantine can bind even a god.”
Celestia’s eyes widened. “Adamantine?! That’s impossible! There’s none to be found outside of Canterlot!”
That only made Sunset smirk more. “Let’s just say I borrowed a little more than what you had in your private library before I ‘dropped out’. Getting enough brass to make a look-alike chain wasn’t easy, but obviously you never bothered checking to make sure.” She took a few more steps forward. “I take it by now you’ve realized I didn’t have any interest in ‘talking’, although I thank you for being stupid enough to come just the same.”
Celestia’s surprise dimmed as her eyes narrowed. “What do you want, Sunset?”
She frowned. “You know exactly what I want, princess. What you promised me. What I earned. What I deserved. What I was born to be.”
“And did you think chaining me would change the answer I gave you last time?”
“No,” she smiled again, “but fun fact: the Adamantine Chain wasn’t the only thing I swiped from your relics.”
She reached behind herself and emerged with a bizarre, eighteen-inch-long dagger. It took seemed to be made out of stone, but it gleamed like bronze with a long, tapered, and spiraling tip. The quillon guard splayed out and fit over the top of the wielder’s hand.
On seeing it, Celestia’s pallor turned pale.
“Oh? You recognize it? I thought you might,” Sunset grinned as she quickly walked up to her side. Celestia actually struggled a little more, but the teenager took her time as she knew by now it was futile. “Rare as adamantine is, I doubt there’s any orichalum anywhere else in Greater Everfree or under it. I can see why you had this locked up. It’s such a nifty little relic. Now then…”
She reached Celestia’s side and quickly lashed out and seized the hand with the hexagon. She tried to wring it free, but even for a teenager Sunset’s grip was strong--driven with the passion of a madwoman. She looked Celestia right in the eye and seemed to relish her anxiety, for she simple stared at her for a moment.
“What’s the matter? No lectures? No morals? No ‘Sunset, please stop’? ‘You don’t know what you’re doing’? I’m actually disappointed. I’ve gotten so used to hearing your nagging I actually miss it. But I’ve already waited two years too long for this, so let’s just get on with it.” She reared up the knife.
“Stop!” Celestia finally shouted.
Without hesitation, Sunset drove the tip of the dagger halfway through Celestia’s palm right at the edge of one of the hexagons. Immediately, it gleamed like it was an iron, starting at the tip, and Celestia yelled in agony as a light within her hand erupted. Sunset nearly recoiled at the sight, but forced her grip to stay steady and kept the tip in even as the light traveled down the blade, over the quillons, and into her own hand. Her own eyes widened in pain and she had to grit her teeth to keep holding on, but hold she did.
A ball of light gleaming more radiant than the rest of the dagger separated itself from Celestia’s hand. The mere act of it manifesting itself caused a small tempest to whip around them within the grove. Slowly, it passed over the blade and the hilt and finally into Sunset’s own hand.
Finally crying out herself, she snapped back and let Celestia’s hand go. Blood was pouring out over her palm from where she had been stabbed, but Sunset herself winced and gasped at her own hand which was now smoking. Nevertheless, she held it up and looked at the back of her palm.
Until a few moments ago, it had a hexagon of its own that was empty. Yet now, she saw a single larger rune etched over one of the corners.
Her eyes lit up with an almost mad gleam. She gasped in delight before she began to laugh out loud. “Yes, yes, yes! Finally! One of my own! Ugh…it sure hurt like Hell, but it was worth it! I feel stronger already! This is what I’ve been missing? It’s incredible! I can’t wait to try it out!”
After gushing over it for several moments and letting the pain subside a little, she turned back to Celestia. Her own teeth were grit, both from agony as well as horror and regret at what had just happened. Sunset smirked at her.
“I’m really tempted to just keep this one and get used to it, especially with how much that hurt, but…I came here to ‘finish my education’ tonight. I think I can bite through five more. Let’s keep it going, shall we?”
“Sunset, don’t-”
Celestia was cut off with a scream as Sunset nearly dove on her hand this time, seized it, and drove the dagger into the second corner. The same scene repeated. Sunset screamed as well this time, but it was one of wild, resounding, masochistic joy rather than anguish.
She nearly staggered back as the second spot was etched into her hand, out of breath with gasping and nearly dropping the knife. Yet she held her hand up and marveled at this one too, more ecstatic than ever. “Now this is power! I didn’t think I’d get such a rush from just two of them!”
Celestia, on her part, was now bleeding freely from two places with her fist tightened in pain.
“Don’t worry, princess. This is hurting me too, after all. Just think of it as needing four more of your teeth pulled…” With that, she drove the dagger in again.
Three more times the scene repeated, and each time Sunset couldn’t help but laugh and practically dance with each new emblem etched into her hand. Celestia, on the other hand, was being tortured both by the strain of her chains and the bloody wounds being left in her hand. It was dripping into a puddle on the ground at this point and slathered all over the back of her hand. Through her pain, however, she began to hold her palm upright; letting the blood slide back over her bracelet…
As soon as Sunset finished marveling over the fifth emblem on her hand, she looked back to Celestia yet again. “You’ve been oddly quiet, princess. I honestly thought you’d have more to say.”
The woman didn’t answer. By now, she was having to breathe rather hard to stymie her own pain.
“Come on now. Anything to say to me before I leave this mortal body behind?”
It took Celestia a moment, but she finally managed to raise her head and look into Sunset’s eyes. Her gaze wasn’t angry, anxious, or fearful.
It was, of all things, sad.
“I’m sorry I let you down, Sunset.”
For the briefest instant, Sunset’s smile ebbed and her wild glare softened slightly. However, it just as quickly reverted as she snorted. “Thought you’d be above begging and appealing to pity, Celestia, but apparently I was wrong. Oh well…” She walked up to her again and once more seized her hand with a smile. “I’m feeling particularly happy today, so I just might let you live after this is done. It’d do you some good to live like the rest of the non-magic mortals. Here we go.”
Taking the tip of the bloody dagger, she drove it into the sixth and final corner of the hexagon.
Nothing.
Sunset’ s smile faded, replaced with confusion. She drove the tip in again, making Celestia wince, but no good. Beginning to look cross, she drove it in again, this time making Celestia cry out as it went all the way through to the other side. Still nothing. Half-scowling, she ripped the dagger out and rose from her side, walking away and holding up her hand again. There were only five larger runes on it. The sixth corner remained empty.
“What’s going on? Why am I not getting the last soul?”
Celestia, in the middle of her fresh agony, held her hand up. She began to let the blood flow down over her wrist again; this time enough to pool on it. As soon as she had what she felt was enough, she held it down and began to furiously move her fingers.
“Is it this knife? Does it ‘run out’? Damnit, I’m this close to being complete! Don’t run out on me now you damn…”
She paused. Celestia, noticing this, worked even harder. It took some effort, but as she held her hand down and the blood slid back over it, the bracelet slowly began to inch over her thumb muscles.
“Wait…” she wheeled around on Celestia, who immediately paused in her work. The bracelet remained half slid over her hand. “I don’t even sense it anymore in you. And you didn’t have this knife. That means…”
Her eyes widened in realization.
“You passed it on. You gave it to one of your brats before you came out here. You probably gave it to that one...”
She stood there silently a moment, before her hands tightened. Her teeth clenched. New fury came over her.
“You gave what was mine to someone else!”
In an instant, Sunset stormed over to Celestia and bent down. She seized her by her iridescent hair and yanked it back, nearly pulling some out. The knife went up and pressed against her chest enough to start drawing more blood. Sunset was so focused on her she didn’t see Celestia hold the hand with the bracelet down and the accessory continue to slide over it.
“Tell me who! Tell me who you replaced me with! Who has it?” The tip pressed in a bit more. “Or will I just end up taking yours instead?!”
Celestia winced and moaned in pain, but her hand kept working, and slowly the bracelet finished sliding over the fattest part of her thumb. She shook her hand sharply, finally getting Sunset’s attention. She looked over and, as she did, the bracelet fell totally off of her hand and began to fall to the ground.
Before it could, Celestia’s hand reached out and seized it and quickly moved her thumb over the jewel. Sunset’s eyes widened, realizing what it was, and tried to shout a protest. Celestia's thumb pushed the jewel off, and immediately it burst in a flash of diamond light.
Celestia’s agonized body seemed to be swallowed in that same light, until it became an outline of the same diamond dust in midair before, like the sapphire itself, it was blown away into the night. Sunset stumbled forward as her grip on Celestia’s hair and the resistance of her chest to the knife vanished. The chains slumped to the ground, no longer holding anything, and soon after the golden sigil disappeared along with them. In just a matter of moments, all that was left was Sunset, the knife, the grove, and a small pool of Celestia’s blood.
Sunset slowly picked herself up and looked around but saw nothing. As angry as she had been before, her anger soon tripled as she screamed obscenities into the night. Her hands made fists and tore furiously at the ground, wrecking her runes as she fumed and ranted. In between her endless curses toward Celestia, only two coherent phrases were screamed out.
“It was mine! All of it!”
She continued to rage and rant for a full minute, before she finally relaxed. She sat there on the ground, knees bent, catching her breath. She stared forward expressionlessly save for lingering hate and anger.
It didn’t last much longer, though. She finally let out a weak chuckle before smiling.
“Alright Celestia…that’s how you want it?” She shrugged to no one in particular. “Ok. That’s how it’ll be.”
She slowly began to pick herself off of the ground. Once standing, she looked to her hand and smirked again.
“I got a decent consolation prize, and I need the practice anyway. I’ll go do that now.”
She turned and began to walk the way she came.
“And after I’m done, I’m going to hunt down and kill each and every one of your students until I find the one who has my final spirit.”
Sunset stared at the back of her ungloved hand as she reclined in her seat. After eight years, it still bore a hexagon with five sigil points, and always her eyes focused on the one empty spot that still remained. On this particular voyage on the Rising Sun, she almost did nothing but stare at it, although her face didn’t turn cross or irritable as it usually did. She only smirked every now and then.
“Lady Sunset?”
She looked up at the bridge. The navigator had spoken.
“We will be crossing into Fillydelphian territory within the next ten minutes.”
Sunset looked at the windows. Even if they weren’t flying over Equestria it would have been night at this hour, and they were shrouded with nothing but darkness all around. The only lights came from the sky in the form of the stars and moon, in spite of the fact they were nearing inhabited territory. That made sense. Following the last attack, Fillydelphia doused its lights up to a hundred miles from the border every evening. However, that’s what navigators were for.
She straightened up in her chair. “Put us down in the outskirts, just outside their barrier. We’ll go on foot from there.”
Several members of the crew looked a bit uneasy at that, but none of them defied her. As for Sunset, she rose completely and began to replace her glove.
As Sunset and her accompaniment made their way across the Fillydelphia border, the signs of the last movement of the Nighttouched were all too clear. In the darkness, they had to somewhat carefully make their way around large divots in the ground from cannon fire along with the occasional split tree trunk, and on passing that made their way through several torn, shattered, or simply abandoned barricades. The stench of both gunpowder and ash was still thick in the air, the former from the fighting and the latter from the pyres that cleaned up the remains. Blood still stained the ground, much of it not from Nighttouched, although it was impossible to see clearly at that hour.
They reached the boundary wall not long after. It had been breached but had since been temporarily patched with palisade stakes until a more formal solution could be made. It offered only a momentary barrier, as there was an iron gate being used as a temporary opening while work continued outside the wall during daylight hours. Nighttouched, after all, weren’t quite smart enough to deal with something like that.
On passing through, Sunset took note of the abandoned cannon batteries, one having been completely destroyed and torn apart, as well as the lingering signs of damage. The fighting had been the heaviest here. Large piles of rubble waiting to be drawn away had been organized everywhere, and the entire first line of homes beyond it were either ruined from the attack or abandoned.
She also noticed a number of armed Fillydelphian troops were waiting for them. Not surprising. On a dark night like this, they had to have seen their airships coming. Considering how dark it was, it was impossible to make out the full number, but at least three times the number she had in her own group.
She only advanced until everyone was within the wall before she held up her hand to signal the others to stop. They did so, with the royal guard stepping up to her side and tightening his grip on his spear. She, on the other hand, was far more casual. She crossed her arms and smiled.
“Hi.” Her voice was almost overly friendly. “It seems you had a bit of a rough time lately, haven’t you?”
“You are currently in violation of the Standing Cessation, Trottinghamites,” a rather cold, sharp, and much-less-friendly voice retorted. “Throw down your weapons and get down on the ground.”
Sunset made no move whatsoever to do so, although when her own group began to raise their own weapons she uncrossed her arms and once again held out a hand to stop them.
“No need for all of that. I’m just passing by. Looking in on the situation. After all, Nighttouched surges are everyone’s concern, not just who gets hit by them. I’ll be out of your hair before you know it. I just wanted a handful of questions answered.”
In the shadows, she saw numerous shifts of shoulders as firearms were aimed at them.
“I ordered you to throw down your weapons and get on the ground. Everyone here is on edge. We aren’t going to waste bullets with warning shots. This is your last chance.”
Sunset smirked on hearing this. It was good that the soldiers couldn’t see her face clearly or they may have noticed a rather cruel grin forming. She shrugged casually.
“You know…I like a good evening outing as much as the next person. Especially this close to a nice, big, spacious forest. But if I’m going to be having a conversation at night, you know what I like more than anything?”
One of her hands performed a few gestures with its fingers as she whispered out some arcane words. In response, like kerosene lit up with a spark, a ball of fire materialized over her open palm in midair.
The Fillydelphian soldiers were illuminated only to show expressions of shock and alarm at what she had done and they recoiled in surprise. That was exactly the delay she needed. She snapped her hand out to a rubble pile between her group and the soldiers the fling the fireball into it. On striking it, it instantly ignited in a burst of flames.
“A campfire.”
The group of Fillydelphian soldiers, now well illuminated, didn’t remain shocked by the fact that Sunset had made fire out of thin air for very long. They focused instead on the fire itself, as if a wild bear had suddenly popped in front of them. They rapidly began to look nervous. Several of them looked away from the intruders and to the forest; seeing if anything was reacting.
Sunset kept smirking at all of it. “There we go. A nice big fire so we can call get a good look at each other and see all around us. A little fire sure does go a long way. Did you know that the threshold for human sight is so potent that in totally dark conditions one can actually see a single candle flame from ten miles away? Of course, most of the creatures that are out at night can see much better than that. They have to.”
By now, at least half of the soldiers were looking past the group to the forest, and their lead officer was sweating. Some were beginning to back away and lower their weapons.
“You heard about how Whinnyapolis got turned into a graveyard six days after the Lunar Fall, right? The whole thing was caused because one little old lady insisted on lighting up an itty-bitty oil lamp to read by. Flames weren’t much bigger than a candle. But this? Much nicer.”
The confidence and decorum of the lead officer began to crack. The others around him were breaking far faster. The fire flashed in Sunset’s eyes and traced her wicked grin as she took a step closer.
“You know what’s even nicer than a small campfire, though?”
She held her hand out, fingers extended and palm upward. She slowly began to move it upward. As she did, the soldiers gasped on seeing her small fire quickly build in intensity and raise higher, going from a few feet high to six feet to ten feet to fifteen…
“A bonfire. A nice, big bonfire that the whole forest…heh, I mean town can see and enjoy. How’d you like me to leave you with one of those so you can see just how exposed and vulnerable your broken wall is at the moment?”
One of the soldiers suddenly dropped his gun, turned, and bolted for it. Three more looked moments from doing the same, while others were growing fearful and starting to murmur among each other. All looked quite panic stricken by now.
Sunset let it linger a moment before turning her hand over. “Or…” She slowly began to push down. In response, the bonfire began to diminish again. It shrank past the flames it was before and lowered to only a foot high, with the edges diminishing all the way into embers. “If I don’t have reason to stick around, I could extinguish this little blaze and be on my way.”
She stopped her hand, letting the fire keep burning but softly. The nervous soldiers kept gazing at the flames fearfully. Like she said, even a candle flame was a serious danger.
“But I came here for information, and I won’t leave until I get it.” She fixed her eyes solely on the lead officer. “There’s a rumor going about. A rumor that there was a woman in your town who killed a Light Eater. Perhaps even a rumor that she could do something like this.” She gestured to her own hand. “That rumor wouldn’t have made it all the way to Trottingham unless there was some truth behind it. What happened?”
“Look, I don’t know!” the officer nearly sputtered, not able to contain his anxiety. “I don’t know anything about it beyond what the other lieutenants pass around!”
“Really? And what are they passing around? Talk fast. I’m feeling a little chilly.”
“A dozen or so people say they saw some street magician actually use some new weapon or something to fight the Nighttouched!” he shouted back. “One person said she even killed one of the little Light Eaters!”
“She?” Sunset echoed back. “And a street magician? Good. We’re getting somewhere. Where is she now?”
“I have no idea!”
“Hmm…let me get a bit more light so I can have you look me in the eye and tell me that…”
“I swear I don’t know! I wasn’t involved in the search!”
Sunset’s eyes raised. “Search?”
“When enough people started passing around the rumor they notified the road patrols and gatekeepers to be on the lookout for street magicians!”
“And have they turned up anything?”
“I said I don’t know!”
Sunset sighed, looking around to the rest of the fearful soldiers. “Does anyone else know? Think hard before you answer. When people make me mad, I tend to do things out of spite…”
“I had a buddy who was a guardsman on the Eastern Road!” one of the soldiers immediately yelled back. “He knew a guy who knew a guy who said they spotted a street magician and a dog traveling eastbound! They tried to stop her and she bolted for it! They almost got her but then he says there was this big flash of light and she got away! Now put out that damn fire! Please!”
The woman stood quietly. She looked thoughtful for a few moments. Her free hand tapped its finger against her hip a few times. Finally, she shrugged and lowered her hand the rest of the way.
The fire dimmed all the way down, but some glowing embers were left behind from the flames. However, that was enough to make the soldiers immediately spill forward. They ignored Sunset and her group all together and instead frantically began to do anything they could to snuff out the rest. Kicking dirt, dumping their canteens, or even stomping on the still-hot coals with their boots.
Sunset on her part turned around and motioned to the others that they were leaving. She took two steps before she paused and looked back over her shoulder.
“By the way…if I so much as imagine I hear a cartridge being loaded, I’ll set the entire edge of your town on fire and watch as every Light Eater for five hundred furlongs eats you alive.”
Turning away, she resumed walking back the way she had come.
It wasn’t until they were back at the Rising Sun that the guard addressed her. “Are you sure that was enough information to go on?”
“We haven’t the time to go around the town trying to shake a physical description out of them. We have everything we need for right now anyway,” Sunset replied as she headed for the open loading ramp. “We’re looking for a female street magic performer who has one of these,” She pulled off her glove and showed the back of her hand to the group around her, now that they were in a more well-lit area. “On her hand, except where I’m missing a sigil she’ll have one and only one. I know you all have seen this emblem enough times to recognize it. You may find other people who have emblems on their hands without the sigils. So much the better. I was planning on getting rid of them eventually anyway, so go right ahead and handle them when you see them.”
The stout soldier looked uncomfortable. “But…Lady Sunset…this one sounds like she has your kind of powers…”
“She even killed a Light Eater…” The lanky one added nervously.
Sunset froze and snapped around, shooting both of the soldiers a glare. Instantly, they and everyone else around them halted, although the two of them shrank back a little.
“Would you rather deal with someone who only has one sigil, or would you rather deal with me and my five?”
They instantly withered and gulped. “Um…one, ma’am.”
“I gave you all magical weapons. Use them. Just remember: she gets taken alive. Kill any others.”
“We still don’t know exactly where she went,” the royal guard pointed out.
“She’s gotten too much unwanted attention, apparently. She wanted to go east, and there’s only two ways she can go further east without crossing country: the river or the trains. I’ll take the Rising Sun and follow the tracks. You lead the other two ships up the river. We’ll work our way along both routes until we converge in Appleloosa. If we haven’t found her by then, we’ll move to the central highland bluffs to regroup and then formulate a new strategy from there.”
“The whole country is going on military alert. They’ll be mobilizing-”
“I want that woman; not complaining or whining. Just get it done.” Spinning away again, she began to make her way up the ramp. “I’ve already waited more than long enough to get the last part of my inheritance. I’m not letting it get away this time over something so trivial as starting a war.”
“Durn it, coz… Feels like someone tried ta’ split my head open with ah fryin’ pan…”
“I will split yer damn fool head open the next time ya’ don’t stop when I tell ya’!”
“But I told ya’ I don’t even remember that!”
Two days after the incident, Braeburn had resumed alternating his position as shotgun, although he spent a lot time cowering from dirty glares whenever he wasn’t walking off injuries. While the beating he had gotten two nights earlier hadn’t seemed to stall him much at the time, now he was in more pain than any of them. He was also quite clueless about the entire event.
The Apples weren’t traveling nearly as easily as they had been before. Some of the family members, especially the ones he had hurt, continued to give Braeburn uneasy looks. However, Twilight got the worst of it. Although it had been their relative who had gone mad and attacked, all of the Apples seemed to think the mysterious girl, by stopping it, was somehow responsible or at least holding out a crucial bit of information on them. Applejack herself leaned toward the latter, but nevertheless not only continued to give her a berth but made the other family members do the same.
She had done her share of walking alongside the wagon over the past two days, but was now back in the driver’s seat along with her cousin and able to talk more intimately. By now, they weren’t too far from their destination. They had crossed through Hill Valley and the road had not only gotten bigger but had signs directing them to Fort Chestnut. Unfortunately, neither Applejack nor any of the others looked too thrilled in the wake of what had happened.
She looked up and behind them. Nervous and somewhat drawn in on herself, Twilight walked alongside her wagon and struggled hard not to notice the stares of the surrounding Apples. However, she was also out of earshot.
Turning back to her cousin, she spoke quietly. “Awright now, come clean, Braeburn. What happened that night?”
“I already told ya’ I can’t remember! All I remember is wakin’ up feelin’ like apple mash!”
“That don’t help none! Do ya’ remember tellin’ me that you didn’t feel good ‘round Twilight?”
“Well yeah, I remember that much…”
“Ok then…what do ya’ remember from then until wakin’ up?”
Braeburn hesitated, thinking over that question. “Well…it’s really odd, cousin. After I said that to ya’, I couldn’t stop thinkin’ ‘bout Twilight. And not inna elementary school way or nothin’ neither. I just kept thinkin’ ‘bout her and gettin’ angry…”
“Why?”
“That’s just it; I dunno why. I just got real angry…and then I got hateful… Got to where I couldn’t think ‘bout anythin’ else. Started forgettin’ my chores…forgot to be neighborly… I think I thought at one point I couldn’t even remember where we were goin’ an’ why, and I had to work ta’ even care we were headin’ for Fort Chestnut. Even when I tried thinkin’ of somethin’ else, I kept seein’ her. And then…”
“What?”
“And then…here’s the real weird part…I didn’t want ta’ think ‘bout anythin’ else. I almost feel like I wanted ta’ just get angrier and angrier at her… And…and, well…” He grimaced and lowered his voice. “The last thing I remember is real weird like… Ya’ know how sometimes when yer havin’ a dream you find yourself thinkin’ things that you’d never think if you were awake? That’s kind of what it was like. Like…like…”
He again trailed off. Applejack leaned in close and pressed it. “Like what?”
“Like…someone else’s thoughts were in my head and bein’ thought of…if that makes any sense.”
She looked rather uneasy at the entire thing. Again she turned her head back and glanced at Twilight. This time, unfortunately, she was looking up and saw her glance back to her, but Applejack was the sort of person who didn’t care too much about potential rudeness at a time like this, and looked back at Braeburn soon after. “Is that it? Nothin’ else?”
“Nothin’ else…’cept maybe one thing.” He held up his head a little, looking uneasily at the mark on the back of it. “I don’t remember this thing poppin’ up on my hand, but I sure as heck remember itchin’ and itchin’. Got to the point where all I could do was just sit there and itch and not even know I was doin’ it. And it itched real funny-like too, so I was scratchin’ all funny-like as well…”
“Funny like how?”
“Funny like…” he looked up and thought a moment, drifting his eyes back over to Applejack. Suddenly, he pointed. “Like that.”
Applejack was confused for a moment about what he just said, until she looked to where he was pointing.
The back of Applejack’s hand was exposed, and her other one was methodically itching it. She hadn’t even noticed, but she realized as she had sat there talking she had been absent-mindedly itching the back of her hand the entire time. Not only that, but she realized her fingers were itching around her hand in a pattern in six different straight lines.
Outlining a hexagon.
It took a lot to startle Applejack at the worst of times, but at that moment she nearly jumped where she was and tried to throw her own hand away like it was a piece of filth. It was such a start that all of the nearby Apples turned to her, but quickly she stifled it and sat down again. It didn’t change the fact she was now sweating nervously.
At that moment, it seemed to click with Braeburn. “Um…say cousin, you ain’t…I mean, you-”
“N-No!” she nearly shouted back, before quickly reining it in. “I mean…I…I…I put my hand in some poison oak lookin’ for firewood last night! That’s all!”
Braeburn looked at her a moment uneasily, then to her hand, then back to her. Applejack, on her part, was already grasping the reins and keeping her eyes forward on the road again. “Ya’ sure?”
“Sure I’m sure! Let’s…let’s just focus on makin’ good time! We’ll be at Fort Chestnut tomorrow!”
Her cousin continued to look apprehensive a few seconds more before looking forward. As for Applejack, she bit the inside of her lip and spent the rest of the afternoon glancing at her hand repeatedly. Every so often, she had to consciously keep from scratching.
While the Apple caravan had made their way past the hills and back into more populated country, it hardly mattered at this point. This close to the border, most of the countryside had cleared out or taken refuge in the cities with walls. The next small town they came upon was practically abandoned; assuming there was anyone there at all. While in more modern times, the tradition of letting travelers stay in the town square had gone by the wayside, rules had become more lax in the post Lunar Fall world. As a result, the Apples set up on the grassy patch there for a somewhat more secure evening.
Twilight, as on the night before, had not settled down that well. While on the first night the Apples invited her to lay down among them, the following nights it had been clear none of them wished for her to be that close, and so she drew off with her dog in her own well-worn sleeping bag at a distance. Even then, she lay awake longer than most of them, feeling the eyes of a few family members on her. It made her nervous but eventually they all nodded off. Only then did she finally roll over and close her own eyes.
An hour later, however, and she was still fully alert and restless. She had tossed and turned several times, disturbing Spike more than once, but still kept her eyes shut trying to get to sleep.
And as a result of this, it only took her moments to react when she felt a hand suddenly clamp over her mouth.
Her eyes shot open, but she couldn’t make out anything in the darkness. Only that there was a figure standing over her. She tried to flail out, but not only had Spike relocated, unable to sleep with her own shifting around, the figure quickly put its other arm around her and began to forcefully drag her out of her sleeping bag. She tried to shout, but the hand was clamped over her mouth too tightly. Normally the slightest noise would be enough to get Spike’s attention, but either she was having bad luck or the dog was more tired than usual, for he didn’t stir.
Suddenly her upper body was pulled off the ground and she heard a sharp whisper in her ear.
“Keep yer voice down or you’ll wake the whole family!”
Twilight stilled at that, recognizing Applejack’s voice, but the farmer didn’t waste time. She quickly yanked her all the way to her feet and, once there, quickly half-pulled, half-dragged her back with her while keeping her mouth covered. She didn’t get far before it occurred to Twilight to try and struggle, but physically she wasn’t the slightest match for the woman. She was being pulled back so forcefully that she realized Applejack could sling her over her shoulder and drag her the rest of the way if she wanted. Not only that, but who exactly would she call for help? Spike couldn’t take the entire family.
As a result, she soon found herself drug all the way to the edge of the square. There was a large, public outhouse there that had been used for special events at one point, and Applejack pulled her right inside. Only once she was in, the door was shut behind, and she was whirled away from it such that Applejack now stood between her and the exit when she released. Simply getting free made her stumble a bit, but now she was in total darkness and stuck in there with the farmer.
“What are you-”
“I said keep yer voice down!” Applejack harshly whispered back. A few moments later, sparks came out from a bit of flint and steel. It lit up a bit of tinder, and soon after the flame went over and lit up a candle. Twilight soon realized why she had been drug inside there—to avoid exposing the light. Now that she could see she quickly made out Applejack’s features and saw that she was sweating and looking nervous. Almost frantic. Between her rough way in which she had gotten there and the look, Twilight began to look uneasy as well.
“What’s going on?”
“What’s goin’ on?” Applejack echoed back as she set the candle down nearby. A moment later, she advanced right in Twilight’s face, almost making her back up to the nearest stall. Yet before she could, the farmer thrust the back of her hand right in her face.
Although the shadows spilled over it, she could make out a hexagonal symbol.
“That’s what’s goin’ on! Yer explainin’ whatever the hell this thing is and yer doin’ it now!”
Twilight was so caught off guard she had to blink a few times to even recognize what she was seeing, but on doing so she gave a sharp exhale and cupped her hand to her mouth. “Oh…”
“Yeah, I know! Now what is it and how do I get rid of it?”
Twilight nearly stammered, still cringing in on herself. “I…I…”
She nearly leapt back as Applejack shoved a finger against her chest. “And none of that bull about not bein’ able ta’ say nothin’! This is the same weird symbol Braeburn had and you saw what happened ta’ him! He’s still got his! Now what is it? Spill yer guts!”
“I…I can’t!” she finally spat out. “I told you I can’t tell you!”
“And I’m tellin’ you I wanna know!”
“But this is what I was talking about before! I was afraid something like this would happen if I told anyone about it! Now you have one too!”
This made Applejack hesitate, and some of her anger abated. However, after only a moment or so she stood her ground. “Well, it don’t matter how I got it…what matters is I got it. And I reckon it can’t get any worse fer me now. It’s just the two of us in here.”
“Applejack…”
“I wanna know what happened to Braeburn and what’s gonna happen ta’ me! I wanna know if my whole family is gonna be in danger ‘cause I could go crazy like he did!”
Twilight was silenced by that. The way Applejack spoke wasn’t the voice of someone angry or demanding, but someone who was quickly growing afraid and desperate. Her face, previously tight and furious, was now softening with fear for her family’s safety.
She looked Twilight in the eye more imploringly. “Please.”
That last word softened something in the lavender-haired girl. She stared at the ground for several seconds, clearly torn. Her eyes closed and she sighed.
Idly, she shifted one of her hands over the other one and began to rub against the back of it. Applejack saw something come off as a result, as if it was some form of foundation-like cosmetic. She rubbed for only a few moments before Applejack gasped. A hexagonal symbol just like the one on her hand was revealed…only, like Braeburn’s from the day before, there was a larger sigil on one corner.
She held it up for Applejack to see clearly. “This is called a Promethian Sigil. Only some people in the world can have one, and even fewer of them actually have it develop. What it means, more or less, is that your own body and spirit are capable of housing and using spirits or souls that aren’t its own.”
Applejack’s jaw hung. “Wait now…what? What’dya mean I can ‘house’ souls that ain’t my own? Or ‘use’, fer that matter?”
“Like I said…the more I tell you the more risk there is, but aside from that I don’t fully understand it myself either. My old teacher was just starting to tell me about it when…” She paused, looking uneasy. “…when something happened to her. She did tell me, however, that there would come a time when people around Greater Everfree would start seeing these appear all over the place. And when that happened, she warned me that most people who would get them would lose their minds and they would try and attack other people with these sigils, including me. That’s why she taught me the Household Seal only a little while before she died along with a handful of other spells. She said that one was the most important because it’s the only way to stop someone who goes crazy like Braeburn did without killing them.”
That last part really stunned Applejack, realizing what that would have meant last night if Twilight hadn’t been there. She swallowed once before she quickly put her hand forward. “Alright then, do that seal thing right now on me.”
She winced. “I-I’m sorry…I can’t.”
“Why not?!” she nearly shouted.
“It won’t work right now. The spell only works if the sigil starts to manifest itself like it did with Braeburn.”
Applejack reared back and nearly threw her hat on the ground in frustration. “Damnit! How the hell did this all end up happenin’ ta’ me? And what’s all this damn fool talk ‘bout ‘spells’ in the first place? Ya’ ain’t a witch or somethin’, are ya’?”
“No! I mean…” she paused and thought. “Well…not exactly… I mean I don’t think… Er…”
“Aw, to hell with it!” Applejack cut off. She put her hands on her hips and fumed for a moment in thought, before finally looking up to her again. “Awright, here’s what. Ya’ gotta stick with us from now on.”
Twilight looked surprised. “Huh?”
“At least until I start acting loopy! Then once ya’ seal me, ya’ can move along.”
“But…that might take a long time! Not everyone even has a reaction! I could be waiting the rest of your life!”
“You could be wait-?!” Applejack began to shoot back, more alarmed than ever, before she groaned and let out an expletive. “Look, just…stick with us fer now, ok? At least until I figure out what I’m gonna do!”
“But I really can’t stay!” she protested. “I mean, it’s been nice traveling with you this far, but I was going to move on once we hit Fort Chestnut!”
“Well, what for? The whole country’s in a tizzy and that’d be safest!”
She hesitated; her voice growing softer. “I don’t want to stay in any one place too long.”
Applejack raised an eyebrow. “Why is that?”
Twilight grimaced, realizing she had said too much, and began to bow her head.
The farmer groaned. “Yeah, yeah, ya’ can’t say. But could ya’ at least spare me a couple days? I planned this whole dang trip because I meant ta’ save my farm, and right now I don’t know if I can even afford to stay with my family, let alone in the army.”
She hesitated, once more staring at Applejack and thinking this over while the farmer looked back at her imploringly. She finally exhaled.
“Alright…I’ll try to spare you a couple of days, but I can’t make any promises. If something comes up and I have to run, then…then I’m sorry, that’s the way it is.”
Applejack frowned, but realized she wasn’t going to get any better than that. She looked again at the mark on her hand and scowled. “Dagnabbit, why do we even have these things? Why did I have to get one?”
Twilight let out a sigh. “I wish I knew…”
She looked up puzzled. “Wait…ya’ don’t know?”
“I think my old teacher was going to tell me, but she never got the chance. She said to watch out for when they started to appear on more people though…” She looked up again. “And on that note, remember what I said. You have to keep this quiet, or it’ll get worse.”
Applejack kept frowning. “There’s one member of my family who deserves to know all this…”
“So we’re stuck with these weird…I dunno…tattoos? And you could go crazy-like any time?”
Applejack leveled a frown at her cousin. It was the morning after her brief evening ‘chat’ with Twilight. In spite of how much more annoyed she was at her situation, the farmer realized now that the only way she’d be safe would be to keep Twilight around, and so she had gone out of her way to not only be more welcoming again but to try and encourage the rest of the family to do the same. After that, she waited until it was her and Braeburn’s turn to head up a wagon again (the second this time) before she spilled her guts.
“I really don’t like thinkin’ ‘bout that part, Braeburn, but that’s how it is. Now remember…keep this quiet. Don’t know why I got mine, but if Twilight’s right and I got it ‘cause she blabbed ‘bout yours, then the less of the family that knows this the better.”
Braeburn looked down at her hands. Today she had elected to wear her work gloves, keeping anyone from seeing she had a newly-emerged symbol identical to her cousin’s. He also noticed one hand was grasping the reins while the other was holding onto her hammer.
“Ya’ really think ya’ got that jus’ cause she told ya’ a bit ‘bout mine? That sounds kinda off ta’ me…”
“Well, me too, but I don’t wanna take any chances. ‘Specially when I don’t know anythin’ ‘bout it.”
“I hate ta’ tell you this, coz…but…” He winced and pointed. “You’ve been holdin’ onto that hammer most of the day.”
“Aw, come off it, Braeburn,” she snorted back. “I ain’t been plannin’ on beatin’ anyone in the head with it all day, if that’s what yer thinkin’. I may be a bit upset at Twilight, but that’s only ‘cause she still ain’t comin’ clean. ‘Sides…”
She looked down at it, shifting her grip a little.
“To be honest…I feel kinda better hangin’ onto it.”
“Huh?”
“I’m serious. Last night I couldn’t sleep a wink. Kept thinkin’ ‘bout this thing comin’ out on my hand, and after that everythin’ Twilight told me. Got so frustrated I just grabbed my hammer with that hand to try and put my mind off of it and…and…”
She paused, her face softening.
“It’s…it’s real weird. I always liked this old thing ‘cause it’s somethin’ I have of pa’s, but…now it feels like more than that. I feel less antsy somehow. Like…like pa’s right here pattin’ me on the back and tellin’ me I’ll be fine.”
“Really?” Braeburn answered. “Huh… Wonder if I would’ve been fine if I had somethin’ from-”
He cut himself off and winced, pulling into his seat, as another wagon being pulled by a pair of galloping horses shot by on his side. He was so alarmed he nearly fired off the shotgun in sheer shock, but even after it passed the dust and wind continued to blow up around him and the other Apples walking alongside. He quickly adjusted his hat and closed his eyes until the dirt settled, then looked out and behind them to see the cart wagon speeding away.
“Now what in tarnation got that those folks racin’ away so fast?”
“I dunno, but I ain’t sure I wanna find out.”
Braeburn turned back to Applejack, who was now looking ahead with a worried expression.
“What do ya’ mean, coz?”
“They came from the direction of Fort Chestnut.”
That wasn’t the last wagon the caravan saw race by. Before giving up, Apple Tart called out twenty passing them by going the opposite way. There were a few more wagons, but some of them were simply riders on horseback in teams. The family was more nervous about the latter, especially on seeing their faces. The fact they were riding away without any loads and not even stopping to say why didn’t bode well.
The road eventually widened and became a bit better maintained, and a few miles later the caravan, at long last, saw Fort Chestnut up ahead. It wasn’t a terribly old fort, and considering the terrain and placement most would consider it an odd place for one, but that was only because the Lunar Fall had required all the countries bordering Equestria to rapidly rethink their defensive emplacements and structures like this had to be built. One of the larger railroads in Appleloosa ran nearby, with a single waystation set up behind it. About ten miles beyond it, across a broad stretch of prairie, were the thick forests of Equestria. Just like back home, the caravan could see the shadows hanging over it even in broad daylight.
The fort itself was built like a grand semicircle, with the flat portion facing the tracks. The circular portion had “spikes” emerging from it that protruded out all around with gun emplacements on top, designed to cover and attract the bulk of attacking forces. Those nodes were the most well-protected, with earthworks dug around them to provide trenches and uneven terrain and a double-layer of timber making up the palisades around it. The rest of the layout was similarly bordered with palisade wall reinforced at the base with stones and mortar. They weren’t cut but rather gathered from the landscape, leaving them rough and sharp in places. The wall surrounded it all about, but the central blockhouse’s second tier rose just over the wall enough to be visible.
Even as they approached, they saw the main gate, currently closed, start to split open. It didn’t get far before the sounds of gunshots echoed over the flat landscape. Soon after, the gates closed again.
Applejack didn’t need to be in the military to know that someone had just been stopped from deserting. Permanently.
Everyone in the family felt a bit more on edge as they approached.
When they finally reached the front gates, a number of Appleloosan soldiers came out on the wall. Each one was armed and looked over the side, but they didn’t draw the weapons on them. Unfortunately, they didn’t look too friendly either, or, as far as Applejack could see, in the best shape.
“Halt there!” one finally shouted.
Obediently, the Apple family caravan brought their wagons to a halt and looked up.
“State your business!”
“We’re volunteering for armed service! The whole lot of us!” Applejack shouted back from her own wagon. “There’s twenty of us here who can fire a gun and trudge through a muddy field with the best of them! Heard they were accepting volunteers here at Fort Chestnut!”
Silence from the wall. A few of the soldiers actually looked just slightly confused. The one who had shouted down to them, however, looked older and more seasoned. He eyed them a few moments before turning inside and disappearing over the edge. The group was left to stand and wait. Applejack, from her position on the second wagon, didn’t get as good a view of the people as those in front of her, but she did see that many of them looked rather tired and dirty to say nothing of anxious. Something was definitely up there.
Finally, the sound of wooden timbers being moved off of the gates began to ring out. As soon as it did, all those on the wall leveled their gun barrels—not at the Apples, but rather the inside of the wall. Remembering what she had heard a little while ago, Applejack swallowed as the gates were slowly drawn aside, and soon led her wagon in alongside the rest of the caravan. As she passed through the threshold, she looked behind her to see if all of the Apples were making it. She noticed that Twilight hesitated, seeming to not like the idea of being shut up in there, but eventually she obliged.
As soon as all were in, Applejack heard the loud creaking of wood as the doors were shut and barred behind them. She tried not to think about that as she led the carts in a short distance. There were several buildings erected inside the fort for various purposes, all surrounding a large square that looked like it had been set up as a staging area for the new volunteer recruits. Key word: “had”. It was a disheveled mess now. It had been run over by wagon wheels and horse hooves several times over and lay in unused disarray.
There were a lot of people inside the fort as well. Only a small number of them were Appleloosan soldiers, although all the ones who were soldiers were armed and studying everyone who came in. They, on their part, could have been volunteers, but a quick look around showed that wasn’t the case. For one thing, the other wagons that were currently crammed into the inner walls of the fort weren’t for transport with minimal supplies but loaded with all the belongings one could carry, and many of the “volunteers” had the elderly and children with them. It was clear that they had come for refuge, which made a number of the Apples nervous.
Trying not to pay it any mind, Applejack and Apple Strudel led their respective wagons to a good spot and parked them. Soon after, they all began to dismount. Applejack, on her part, had hardly set foot on the ground when she noticed a small troop of Appleloosan soldiers walking right up to them headed by an older officer with a broad, gray mustache and a weather-beaten look.
He halted in front of Applejack just as she was stepping out, giving her a nod along with all the others. “Folks, first things first. I’m going to have to ask you to turn over any weapons you have.”
All of the Apples, Applejack included, looked puzzled. They glanced to one another before looking back. “Pardon me?”
“If you’re really meaning to volunteer for the Appleloosan Civil Defense Corps, we’ll be happy to arm you closer to nightfall. Right now, however, you’re going to have to turn them over.”
“Like heck am I turnin’ over this shotgun!” Braeburn complained. “It’s my aunt’s! She’d whoop me if I came back without it!”
“And I trust my carbine over whatever musket you plan on putting in my hands!” Red Delicious shouted.
Applejack frowned as well. “Look, we brought some of our own weapons and ammunition along. What’s the harm in lettin’ us use what we’re familiar with?”
The officer frowned. “You came in here wanting to enlist. If you want to join up, the rule is you turn over your weapons. You may not be military folk, but I’m not in the mood to argue. Hand them over.”
Applejack frowned more. “And if we refuse?”
“We’ve got to save all the cartridges we can for the Nighttouched,” he answered back rather coldly. “Don’t make me waste any more than I’ve already had to today.”
The way he said that was dead serious enough to send a cold chill over the entire Apple family. The soldiers with him were just as stony-eyed, and all of them had such a tight grip on their own firearms it was clear they weren’t kidding. Applejack didn’t care for it, but realized this was one fight they weren’t going to win. Frowning, she turned and gave a nod.
Regretfully, and in some cases angrily, the Apple family handed over their respective guns, hunting knives, and pistols. When that was done, the officer still wasn’t satisfied and forced them to hand over their cooking knives, axes, and some of their tools. Twilight, currently roped in with the rest of them, earned a few stares on how different she looked, which in turn earned a few growls from Spike, but nothing else came of it.
When almost everything that could be used as a weapon was handed over, the officer noticed Applejack’s hammer. “That too.”
She ground a foot audibly into the dirt. “Ya’ ain’t gettin’ this.”
“I told you all to hand over all weapons.”
“It’s a hammer, fer cryin’ out loud.”
“A claw hammer. That counts.”
“This here hammer is the only thing I brought of my pa out here with me,” she retorted. “I swear I won’t use it, but if ya’ want it, ya’ better get yer powder ready. ‘Cause yer only takin’ it from my cold dead fingers.”
Her threat may have been ill-placed, considering the fact several of the soldiers began to raise their weapons to take her up on that, but the officer, who by now was eyeing Applejack rather intently, held out a hand to stop them. Apparently, he wasn’t willing to spill any more blood over a hammer. The rest of the weapons were handed to the soldiers and they took them away.
“Right now we got to keep weapons to a minimum. A lot of folks in this fort are starting to lose their minds and we don’t need people like that brandishing guns until they need them. Now then,”
He gestured to one of the structures.
“That there is building E. Right now, it’s mostly vacant, so pick yourselves out a bunk and set up there. You got about thirty minutes, and then we’ll start getting you all set.”
Without another word, he turned and began to walk away. The rest of the troop followed after him.
The Apples were left standing in some puzzlement. Applejack in particular may not have been too familiar with the military, but from the looks of the place, who was currently residing in it, and the brief interaction with that officer, to say nothing of the trip there, she wasn't satisfied with so brusque and introduction. She watched the lead officer walk away for a few seconds before she turned her head slightly to one side.
“Braeburn?”
“Yeah, cousin?”
“You and the rest of the family go on and do as he said and settle in. I’m gonna have a bit of a talk first…”
Adjusting her hat, she began to walk after him.
She didn’t try to “chase him down” in a sense. She had a feeling that would be going a little too far in a place like this where she was surrounded with soldiers. However, she did follow at a fairly rapid pace as he left the courtyard with his troop and marched toward one of the buildings made of more sturdy materials, where he ordered the soldiers to store the weapons. Some of them stayed to do so and others broke off with him for one of the stairwells built against the wall, allowing those stationed to walk to a gangway built around the top to patrol the palisade. At that point, he was temporarily by himself, and Applejack quickly seized her moment.
“Uh,” she called as she rushed in, “’scuse me, um, sir?”
“Since you haven’t officially joined the Appleloosan Civil Defense Corps, ma’am, I can’t reprimand you for not obeying my directives,” he answered as he kept walking without looking at her. “Instead you’re still a civilian, which means I’ve got nothing to say that concerns you and you’re in the way. Please wait at building E.”
Applejack didn't care for his dismissive tone, but she kept following. “I just wanted…I mean…I just was kinda curious ‘bout what’s goin’ on in the fort at the moment.”
“What do you mean, ma’am?”
“I mean…it’s all mighty unusual. The looks on people’s faces…how disorganized everythin’ looks… And I heard gunshots on the way in-”
“Have you ever been inside a fort before, ma’am?”
She paused, a bit taken off guard by that question. “Uh, no sir.”
“Then how do you know what’s unusual and what isn’t?”
Applejack, rather than be abashed by that as most might have been, frowned in response. Before she could say a word, however, he spoke again.
“It’s my understanding that you came to Fort Chestnut to join the Appleloosan Civil Defense Corps. Is that correct?”
“Well…yes sir, but-”
“Then you should know you won’t last long in this corps talking back to superior officers. Just because you’re a civilian doesn’t mean we tolerate insubordination or interjecting with stupid questions.”
Now Applejack really did frown, but she held it back this time. The officer’s comments had reminded her why she was there in the first place, after all. She couldn’t protect the farm if she got herself and the family kicked out over having a chip on her shoulder knocked off.
“That being said, the Nighttouched have been active over the past couple nights,” he finally answered, still walking. “Nothing too special. The whole reason that this fort was set up in the first place was because they tended to come out of the nearby woods at night. But since we’re expecting the next surge around here and last night was bad enough that the cannons went off a couple times, a lot of folks are on edge and a lot of locals have relocated here. It’s more likely now than ever that a surge will break on this fort, but it’s by no means certain. Odds are we’ll have need of you and your family soon enough, including the members who are overaged, but I’m not going to be working anyone up into a needless panic and I won’t let anyone else do the same. I’ve been out here for years and most of you haven’t. If that’s all, please head back to building E.”
Applejack slowed and fell back at that, as the officer quickened his pace and left her behind before passing into one of the larger buildings. This one was flanked by soldiers standing guard at the entrance, so she realized she’d get no further. Instead, she stood there and frowned for several moments before simply muttering to herself and turning around to head back.
She had barely gotten the length of two buildings when she heard a shout. “Hey, hey! You down there!”
She perked her head up at the sound of a soldier on the wall shouting, but quickly found out she wasn’t the one being addressed. She traced her eyes to the voice and saw one of the men near the gate shouting below it. She got a bit of a surprise on seeing a stunned Twilight standing there with Spike.
“Wh-what?”
“Gate’s closed! Stand away!”
“I…I’m just wanting to let him out to do his business!” she protested nervously. “I’ll only be a second…”
“He can do it on the yard! Stay inside!”
“But I…”
“Gate’s closed! Stay inside!”
Looking a little nervous but also relenting, Twilight turned away and began to walk back to building E. Applejack, on her part, eyed this situation with some suspicion. While she was initially a bit cross on seeing Twilight was headed for the gate, as it brought to mind thoughts of her trying to leave before she had performed the seal, she also noticed that the soldiers seemed rather adamant about people staying inside…
As tense as she was about this, she didn’t want to leave the family alone any longer. Still eyeing Twilight, she headed back the same way.
Considering the dire straits the Apple family had been in, Building E was almost an upgrade even if it was little more than some old barracks. They already had to share with another forty or so volunteers. A quick round of hellos revealed that they were mostly locals and, not surprisingly, volunteering under the Homestead Act as well.
In thirty minutes exactly, the officer walked in again, introducing himself more formally as Lt. Colonel Burnt Oak. Applejack noticed that a few of the older members of the family looked up a little at that, but they had little time to wonder as he jumped right in with evaluation. They had to go out to the yard to receive it. At this point, with so much ground to protect and a surge and/or invasion on the horizon, the Appleloosan Civil Defense Corps really couldn’t afford to be choosy. Nevertheless, Apple Strudel was in his mid-60s and two other family members were in their 40s, so he said the best those three could do was support duty.
The others, however, were brought in readily. Considering how strong the Apple family as a whole was, they more than passed any physical trial they had to go through. Only about half of them had experience with firearms, however, and at a time like this they couldn’t really afford target practice. He ended up splitting the family into two companies. One would need to at least be drilled with unloaded guns first. The second would start being drilled on proper conduct in the military.
Applejack was in the second group, and couldn’t say she cared for it. Even expecting this all along, she wasn’t the sort of person who liked being ordered around by someone who wasn’t an older family member. Fortunately, there wasn’t much to go over before it started getting late. Just the basic rules. They had to line up for inspection every morning, speak when spoken to, answer every question “yes sir” or “no sir”, and generally do whatever the lt. colonel ordered them to do. As they were only Civil Defense rather than Army, the rules and discipline wasn’t quite as stringent, but they all had to act as one when necessary.
By then, it was nearly sundown, and so the group got a basic rundown of rules in the fort before they were adjourned for the night. Each was allowed to hit the mess hall before they would need to turn in so they could be up an hour before dawn. The hours were nothing to Applejack, as she was more than used to them back home, although she didn’t care much for the mess hall’s fare compared to Apple family cooking. What she did dislike, however, was how they were re-armed at sundown. Rather than get their old weapons back, they were passed Appleloosan stock-issue rifles with only three paper cartridges apiece. Worse yet, the family members not accustomed to firearms were not given any. Applejack was rather disgusted by that and wasn’t alone. She actually complained that they get their old weapons back, but the comment was dismissed and they were stuck with it.
The only good side about all of this was it got Applejack’s mind off her current problem and focused on the issue of being in the military, and as she disobeyed yet another first day command and stepped out to get some air she began to wonder if this was going to work out at all. Even then, however, she knew she was more well off than the others because she still had her hammer. With the sun going down, she had actually taken time to loosen up even more. Her gloves came off and, for the sake of familiarity, she actually had a bit of rope from the wagon tied at her hip. The hammer, however, was the biggest godsend of all. As the sun finally dipped under the horizon she felt more at ease than ever to have it at hand. Just keeping it out and hefting it made her feel more secure than any gun or palisade wall.
She didn’t try to go far once out, though. Like everywhere else in the country, the fort had lights out well before dark. As unfamiliar as she was, she knew she’d easily get lost even among the few buildings if she wandered around, and in the dark she wasn’t eager to offer an opportunity to get shot at. She confined herself to pacing around behind the back of building E for a bit before she decided to head back in before she could get the ire of anyone on the wall.
Yet just as she was turning around, she heard a voice call just above a whisper. “Applejack!”
She turned back and saw a shadow advance on her. There was still just enough light to make out Twilight’s hair style.
“There ya’ are,” she sounded on seeing her. “Where you run off to? Settlin’ in with the rest of the townsfolk, I reckon?”
“Applejack,” she continued as she came to a stop, lowering her voice. “We need to leave this fort as soon as possible.”
The farmer looked confused. “Wait, what?”
“We never should have even stopped here. If I had known I would have told us to move on…”
“What’re you talkin’ about?”
“This place isn’t safe!" Her voice raised, showing its anxiety. "Not for anyone! And if what I heard is true, I’m not sure if we can even afford to stay here tonight!”
“Now just hold on!” she almost shouted as she held her hands up. “What in tarnation is all this? What’s safer out here than a fort?”
“Any fort other than this!”
Applejack groaned. “Ya’ ain’t makin’ any sense!”
Twilight flustered a moment before she spoke quieter again. “Come here…”
She turned and beckoned. Applejack rolled her eyes and sighed again, but couldn’t let her get far before she’d lose track of her in the growing darkness, so she followed. Twilight led her straight up to the fort’s wall and began to walk alongside it.
“I asked around and heard that the Nighttouched have been running around in the countryside lately. But when I talked to the people hiding in here, they said they’d been running around the fort walls at night.”
“So? Jus’ means they couldn’t get in, right?”
Twilight paused and suddenly hit her fist against the side of the palisade wall. Since the timber used to make it was so solid, it was akin to her hitting a rock, but she simply moved along afterward and hit it again a bit further on with the same result. She continued to do so as she led Applejack on.
“Early after the Lunar Fall, there was a town south of Hoofheim that tried to take the ‘fight’ to the Nighttouched by using mortars to shoot firebombs into Equestrian territory. Not only did it not work that well, but the bombs flushed out something worse.”
Applejack crooked her eyebrow. “Worse?”
“Most of the Nighttouched we see are the ones that were corrupted recently. They hang out near the edges of the forests and can tolerate looking at dim light. Older ones that were corrupted earlier, though…they’ve changed a lot more. They don’t even look like what they were originally anymore. That one town ended up flushing out some kind of insect swarm that got heavily altered into things we called ‘Parasprites’.”
“What the hell is a ‘parasprite’?”
“I’ve only seen the remains of one but I've heard all about them. They’re a swarming creature that buzzes around like a fly but has a mouth like a termite. The good news is they don’t seem to eat anything organic that isn’t dead…you know, like people. The bad news is they eat almost everything else. They seem to change their diet at a whim. They devastated that town. They destroyed all the buildings and left it open to attack from another swarm of Nighttouched.”
Applejack admitted she didn’t like the sound of that. She had experience with pest swarms as a farmer, and the thought of pests that were Nighttouched were even worse. “Awright, but what’s that got ta’ do with this fort?”
“Like any Nighttouched, you can only make out their eyes. The people here couldn’t see what they actually were. They only said they kept seeing them going around. What if they weren’t going around? What if they were just seeing random ones looking up? What if most of them were right where they wanted to be?”
“I don’t follow…”
“This is an open field in the middle of nowhere. A good distance from the forest. So if anything wanted to eat wood, this is the only place to get it.”
Applejack frowned. “Sounds like a lot of supposin’ ta’ me. And the last thing anyone needs is ta’ be worked up over nothin’. I don’t suppose ya’ got any evidence at all ta’ back this-”
She cut herself off. At that very moment, Twilight drove her fist into a new location, and she watched as she punched a hole into the supposedly solid log as if it was made of nothing more than dried out crackers. Her jaw dropped as she pulled it back out, revealing flimsy, eaten-out bits of wood that tunneled deep into the wall.
She turned fully to Applejack and pointed at it. “There’s my evidence. Who knows how much of these walls look like this now?”
She took only a moment to compose herself, swallow, and readjust her thoughts before she quickly fell in accord. “Awright…I’m with ya’ now. How ‘bout you run back ta’ the barracks and tell the others while I rustle up that lt. colonel and-”
For the second time, Applejack was cut off. This time, however, both she and Twilight went rigid, and soon many other people in the fort, both civilians and soldiers, did the same. Over the wall, at what had to be some distance, a loud horn suddenly grew in volume and blasted out a long note.
The response was fast. The soldiers on the wall instantly began to shuffle about. Those on the ground perked up before quickly rushing to the palisades. Orders were shouted out calling for the gunnery teams as rifles were drawn.
Twilight turned back to her tensely. “I think it was a screamer.”
“A what?”
“A spring loaded mechanism designed to create air-pressure differentials when snapping loose trip wires-”
“I asked ‘what’, not ‘how’!”
Twilight sighed. “Since everyone has to fight Nighttouched in the dark, they can’t use flares or even lights on fortifications. Instead they set out these ‘screamer mines’ on the fields around them that emit sirens every time a Nighttouched sets one off to know where they’re coming from.”
By now, all of the civilians were up, especially when a second ‘screamer’ joined the first. Most were emerging from their various buildings. However, by now most of the soldiers had jumped to the walls and the voice of the lt. colonel sounded out over the entire square.
“Everyone remain calm! Stay indoors and let us handle this!” He turned to another part of the wall. “Gunnery spikes northwest and north, train your barrels on those sirens! Do not fire until I give the order!”
The sounds of hand cranks moving to reposition the large cannons began to clatter and clank while the soldiers on the wall lined up and got their rifles at the ready. Yet while they were still taking aim, another siren rang out. Another quickly followed, and so did another after that. Soon they were beginning to sound out over each other and grow into a din of unintelligible noise.
And as they did, a slight tremor rippled over the ground and up the palisades.
“I…could be wrong, but…those alarms sound like they’re getting closer quickly…” Twilight muttered nervously.
“Alarms nothin’. I used ta’ help out ma’ aunt on a ranch…” Applejack answered, looking at the ground as it quivered and beginning to sweat. “I know what causes that…”
Before Twilight could ask what, the order was given. “Open fire! Open fire!”
A chorus of gunshots erupted. The men on the wall immediately began to reload, but the deafening gunfire was quickly drowned out in the interim by the sounds of more sirens and increasingly strong tremors. As the men on the wall more frantically put in their next cartridges, both Twilight and Applejack heard the sounds of hooves slamming against the ground begin on grow distinct the other side of the palisade.
“Cannons! Hurry up and open fire!” The lt. colonel shouted; his voice getting louder as the soldiers quickly fired again. As another round of gunshots went off, the wooden wall right in front of Twilight and Applejack suddenly exploded.
Both women cried out and pulled back as a form with pale yellow eyes smashed a hole through the palisade. In the light of the flashing gunpowder, they were just able to make out the head of what Applejack assumed had once been a cow. It was larger and distorted now, taking on almost pig-like features as the horns grew broader and more curled. With the wall weakened from the parasprites, its charge had enabled it to smash its head right through the logs. And now that it was there, it gave one heavy grunt before beginning to twist around madly, trying to push itself the rest of the way in.
Applejack was immobilized in shock for just a moment. Yet as the Nighttouched bull began to force its way forward and splinter off more rotted wood, in a snap she hefted her hammer and acted on impulse. With a fierce cry, she drove it forward and brought the head down right on top of the bull’s skull. While it was tougher than it would have been normally, her strike hit true and bludgeoned it. It gave out a pained snort, but she quickly struck two more times, pulling back blood and scalp with the final strike. It went limp forever soon after.
Breathing a little hard, she hesitated a moment before quickly pulling back, yanking up her boot, planting it on the remains of the bull’s head, and, using her power as well as leverage, started pushing it back out the way it came. She only shoved it about three inches when loud noises struck the rest of the wall about her: the result of other Nighttouched slamming their heads into it as well. More quickly followed, and splinters and spurts of rotted wood began to erupt all over it. The body of the bull was shoved back forward into the opening by something striking it from behind, bulging the palisade even more and forcing Applejack to stagger back momentarily. As she quickly stumbled and regained her footing, she readied herself to shove back.
Before she could, a pale blue glow briefly illuminated the smashed bull’s head out of nowhere. She froze in her spot and gaped soon after as ice crystals followed it; forming out of midair around the head and quickly thickening and expanding. In moments, an amount of solid ice had sealed the hole using the dead bull’s head as a stopper.
She couldn’t believe her eyes, but the wintry chill she felt coming off of it was all too real. She nearly reached out to touch it in disbelief, before she started to think of who could be the source. Only knowing one person, she turned around. Twilight was still standing there--one hand holding flat while the other finished a gesture. The light about her hands was the same color as the pale blue glow.
Applejack stared dumbfounded as she lowered her hands again, while Twilight, on her part, looked nervous at being “caught in the act”.
“Ya’ got any other tricks ya’ didn’t tell me about?”
Twilight didn’t have a chance to answer. She yelped instead as cracking went out all over the palisade. Applejack swung back around and saw four new holes had just been punched into the wall, along with the heads of four new Nighttouched. One of them had shoved forward enough to actually get its shoulders through as well, and it was furiously snorting and snarling as it tried to wriggle the rest of the way in.
“Ferget ‘bout that… Any way ya’ can do that trick again and…uh…faster and bigger?”
Twiilght winced and was silent for a moment. She glanced about herself once, looking nervous, before she finally slumped and sighed. “I guess I really don’t have a choice. Just…please try to not make a big scene out of this any more than I already will…”
She turned back to her. “What are ya’-”
“Member of my house, I command you to come to me! Master of Sorcery—Starswirl the Bearded!”
Now Applejack almost felt her eyes roll out of her head as Twilight erupted into such a lavender glow that she could make out all of her details even in the dark. The soldiers on the wall, who by now had not only fired a third time but discharged their cannons once, for all the good it would do to enemies already at the palisade, as well as every soldier and civilian who was still on the ground likewise turned and gaped as light streamed over her head and briefly formed the image of what looked like an old wizard before breaking over her. Moments later, the wind picked up and Applejack staggered back as she saw Twilight’s clothing morph into a wide-brimmed hat and cloak as her eyes began to shine.
As soon as it was done, she quickly stepped forward, bent down, and snatched up one of the loose rotted timbers the Nighttouched had knocked out. The aura spread over it once it was in her hand, turning it into, for lack of a better phrase, an elaborate and well-crafted wand. She quickly performed a different gesture, this time drawing a glowing icy blue symbol on the air. In response, everyone around the wall could feel the cool breeze as massive ice crystals erupted along the breaches: freezing the bulls in place within the very holes they had punched into the palisade.
She lowered her wand once it was done and looked around her. Both the guns and the cannons had gone silent. The hoard of Nighttouched were practically forgotten as all eyes were now on Twilight. Although almost all of her features were hidden, she still lowered her head and let her wide-brimmed hat cover her face all together. From her angle, however, Applejack could see not only a high amount of embarrassment but also fear.
She gaped as much as any of them, but in the end she turned and looked back to the wall; now mixed with ice. The Nighttouched that were trapped weren’t dead but wriggling even in their half-frozen state. More impacts continued to strike it. Some hit the solid parts but others were breaking more pieces loose.
Finally, she clenched her jaw and looked up and around. “What the Hell is the matter with y’all? We got a hollowed-out wall ta’ defend! Stop gawkin’ an’ get back ta’ fightin’ them monsters ‘fore they break in!”
There was nothing but silence for a moment as only half of the people seemed to even hear her, but fortunately one person in particular responded.
“Get the cannons reloaded and keep firing!” The lt. colonel shouted. “Palisade company, clear the breached area and look out for more weaknesses while returning fire! Square company, mount up and get ready to shoot anything that starts to break in!”
That was enough to shake the rest of the soldiers out of it, even if some were reluctant. They returned to their defenses. As for Twilight, she looked up soon after. Considering how her eyes almost looked like a pair of candles in the darkness given her current attire, it was a bit unnerving to have her look at her, but Applejack bore through it.
“Thank-”
“Save yer thanks ‘til we get through tonight alive. If ya’ got any more of that magic or whatever in ya’, keep usin’ it!”
Even as she said that, the wall began to buckle in any places that weren’t already broken. Snapping back to it, Twilight winced a moment before she quickly made more gestures to generate additional ice crystals. Even then, the Nighttouched already frozen in the wall continued to fight madly to try and break free. It wasn’t long before they were breaking through the ice around them and starting to wiggle loose.
Applejack wouldn’t let them. Quickly, she dashed to the nearest one and swung her hammer down with another fatal strike. She did the same to another nearby. She was working on the third when the guns went off on the wall again, followed by a pair of cannon shells. As soon as it died, she heard another yell.
“Cousin Applejack!”
She wheeled around, just in time to see a team from the square company with rifles at the ready begin marching toward the wall breaches Twilight was struggling to seal. They were standing a bit off, however, in light of seeing, for lack of a better word, a wizard casting spells. However, Applejack's focus wasn’t on that but rather the outline of Braeburn and several Apple family members running up behind as well.
They held off on seeing Twilight as well, but Applejack quickly dashed past her and up to them. “Braeburn! What in the Hell are ya’ and the kinfolk doin’ out here? There’s Nighttouched cattle out here! Get the family and the rest ta’ a building with an upper floor!”
“Coz, they’re breakin’ in on the wall over yonder!”
Applejack froze before turning her head to where she saw Braeburn’s shadow gesturing. Unfortunately, that part of the wall was shrouded in darkness. Over the noise of the mounting battle it was impossible to see or hear anything. However, a moment later a flash of gunpowder ignited in that direction. For a brief moment, she caught the outline of Apple Strudel’s signature hat firing his rifle, and with it the monstrous head of a Nighttouched breaking through the palisade.
She swore and wheeled to the incoming soldiers. “Durn it, get over there!”
The company was a bit surprised to hear the civilian giving them an order like that, but they didn’t stall long. They caught a glimpse of the same monster, and half of them broke off and quickly rushed over. They were obviously used to this kind of fighting, because in less than five seconds they were lined up, taking aim, and opening fire. Rifle bullets tore into the Nighttouched’s head. The rest of them nearly turned to the ones still poking through Twilight’s wall.
“One’s breaking through over on the west side!” a voice screamed in between cannon shots.
At once, the remaining company members and who seemed to be their lead officer hesitated. She stopped and looked about, and saw the rest of the corps stationed in the square were already splitting up to handle other wall breaches. That left them. She clenched her jaw, but finally sighed and looked back uncertainly to Applejack and Twilight; especially the latter.
“Can you two…handle this spot?”
Twilight was too busy casting spells to do much more than stammer, but Applejack tipped her hat. “Got ya’ covered. I can wrangle a couple bulls.”
The soldier didn’t look too convinced, but at this point the attack was growing so severe that even the veterans were starting to break and she didn’t push it. Quickly, she motioned the others to run to the west side and handle the breach.
Applejack winced as the cannons boomed again, then wheeled back to the wall and bludgeoned a fourth one. “Ya’ holdin’ up?”
“Yeah!” she shouted back as she finished her final casting. As one last ice crystal grew, she wiped her head. “I can’t do this forever, but I think this end is good…”
“Great! I’ll finish up here! You go and start pluggin’ up-”
She suddenly cut herself off.
“Now what in Sam hill…?”
Being the closest to the wall, Applejack heard it first, but it wasn’t long before Twilight as well as any others nearby began to pick up a new noise. Amid the gunpowder and struggling of beasts and men alike, there was a scratching, crunching sound coming from the wall. Much like the sound of the stampeding hooves had, it rapidly began to grow louder, until Applejack realized it was coming from within the wall and right next to her. Quickly, she moved back and brandished her bloody claw hammer; facing the wood and waiting for what came through next.
A moment later, in the faint flashes of gunfire going off around inside the wall, she saw the wood in front of her seem to erode. It looked like foam being rinsed away by water as the beam in front of her disintegrated before her eyes. A hole emerged beyond it, and from it came the sounds of a multitude of cheeping noises followed by the rustles of insect wings. Soon after that they pushed their way in.
Applejack couldn’t make them out clearly, but she could see their tiny, beady, glowing eyes as a dozen of them pushed their way in, before a dozen pushed those out of the way to move in, and another two dozen pushed those aside. Not only that, but the little monsters were working their way into the wall like termites from Hell. They were eating it away right before her eyes.
“Oh no…” Twilight moaned.
The wall erupted in another spot soon after, followed by three more after that. Hundreds were pouring in now, quickly growing to thousands. Applejack looked about in shock and disgust. “What the…? What the hell are they?!”
“Those are parasprites! There’s a whole swarm of them now and they’re starving! They’re going to eat the wall away right in front of us!”
Applejack was left immobilized a moment, staring at the sickening site of them pouring all over the palisade devouring as they went. Pieces of it were beginning to fall off from their voracious appetites, threatening to make the whole thing come apart. Finally, gritting her teeth, she stepped toward one that had fallen off and was scurrying on the ground.
“Here’s how we deal with varmits like this back home…” she snorted before stomping her boot down on it with a loud crunch.
“That won’t work!” Twilight shot back.
“Huh?”
As she said this, she pulled her boot back, further disgusted on seeing bits of material from the crushed bug pull back and off with it. It almost seemed to rise from the dirt when she did. However, no sooner had she stepped down again when she realized it wasn’t her boot. The pieces were rising. Specifically, the two crushed halves of the creature swelled and protruded off the ground right before her eyes, before expanding their severed halves outward to reform the other half of their bodies along with wings. Moments later, both new parasprites fluttered their new wings once before flying up and to the wall to rejoin the hoard of now-thousands.
Applejack’s jaw hung loose. “How in the…?”
“You can’t kill parasprites like that! Any time you do, two more grow out from ones you kill!”
“Well that’s just fantastic!” she yelled in exasperation. “Whatda we do? Once they eat this wall we’ll get ripped ta’ bits by those cattle!”
Twilight thought a moment before holding up her hands again. “Get back!”
Applejack quickly complied. Moments later, Twilight performed a new gesture with a new word at the end of it, before she made one of her palms flat and put her impromptu wand on top of it at a right angle. A sigil as bright as fresh fire erupted in it, illuminating both of them, before, to the farmer’s surprise, a jet of flame erupted from her hands like she was a living incinerator. She quickly moved up to the wall and laid into the parasprites.
The insect swarm screeched in agony as hungry flames rolled over them, lighting them up in a mere flash. Many of them scattered and tried to fly, but she swept the fire over them and engulfed them before they got far. Their wings were dissolved in moments and their flaming bodies left to fall to the ground and writhe in misery. Soon they stopped moving forever as they were fully consumed. She continued to sweep the flaming jet over them all, hitting each and every place they tried to emerge. Soon the majority were on fire, and the few that weren’t enflamed quickly retreated to save themselves.
She cut off the spell soon after, panting harder now as she stepped back. Thousands of flaming insect carcasses were left in its wake.
In spite of her unusual power, Applejack couldn’t help but whistle at Twilight. “Whoo-hoo! Ya’ sure licked ‘em good! Why in the world didn’t ya’ start with that?”
Twilight’s face sank as she sighed hopelessly. “Because I probably just doomed us all…”
Applejack blinked. “Say what?”
At that moment, the wall they were guarding was slammed with such force that a massive breach was instantly punched through it. Three Nighttouched bulls burst forth through the hole with a dozen more pushing them from behind. Applejack gasped as the monstrous animals immediately bore down on them; only realizing at that moment that Twilight, in saving them from the parasprites, had created the brightest light for miles. Every last Nighttouched was now attracted by the sight of the flames through the hole in the wall to attack that one spot.
Quickly, Twilight brandished her wand and cast another spell so fast and intently that she actually cried out in a bit of pain from the effort, but the fragments the parasprites had knocked loose immediately were enveloped in a purple aura along with the broken shards of the wall before sweeping back and toward the very breach that had just been made. Two of the monstrous bulls were caught up in it and pushed back out before the debris covered that part of the wall and held; maintaining its purple light.
One of them, however, managed to dash forward enough to get free before it could be swept out. As Twilight struggled to hold on, it charged right at her, lowering its horns to gore her…
It didn’t get the chance. Realizing Twilight was struggling to hold the barrier, Applejack leapt into action. Charging as fast as she could, she crossed in front of the bull in a mad move even for her and seized it by the horns, yanking it to one side as she pushed back. It was enough to deflect the bull away from going straight into Twilight, but it instantly snapped its head up and tugged Applejack into the air with it. Her arms were wrenched so violently she thought they would dislocate, and her body was freely flung into the air as it kept charging.
In spite of the vertigo and pain, Applejack grit her teeth through it and twisted in midair, such that she ended up landing on the back of the rampaging Nighttouched instead. Instantly, she was in for the worst rodeo of her life as it furiously tried to buck her off; more violently than she had ever been flung before in her life. Even holding onto the horns, of which she only had a good grip on one, was pain for her as she was jostled about. Somehow, through the chaos and attempt to rattle her loose, she kept her other hand on her hammer and brought a blow down on the head of the thing.
Now that she was being bucked around, it was too much for her to land a solid hit. She ended up giving glancing strikes instead until, by sheer luck, she nailed it around the eye socket. Breaking it was enough to make the monster pause, and she quickly buried her hammer head in its skull. That made it only go madder a moment, but she followed up with three more strikes to get it to stop, and one more after to finally get it to fall. She drove it in two more times for good measure before being satisfied it was dead.
She got off the bull as quickly as she could after that, but not as quickly as she liked. Her body was sore and strained now. She had no time to rest, however. No sooner had she gotten up and turned around than she found a second steer had already broken through Twilight’s ramshackle barricade. This one went right for her. Before she could react, it was already slamming its head into her midsection.
Applejack had fought with charging Nighttouched before, but even she had a hard time remembering the last time she had been hit so hard by one. The only thought she managed before the agony overcame her was a hope that she hadn’t heard ribs snap as the wind was knocked totally out of her. Her hands went flaccid and the hammer slid out of her grip as the monstrous bull took her off of her feet and barreled straight for the nearest building. She was still managing her first gasp when it slammed her against it, sending more pain radiating through her back and head. It was only due to the fact her body ended up in between its horns that she didn’t get her chest compressed. As it was, the thing angrily swung to one side and flung her across the yard.
The woman tumbled several times before landing, and she considered it impressive even for her that, after doing so, she somehow managed to push herself on to all fours. Her entire chest felt like an open wound with the blows she had just took and any sane person would have said for her to stay down. Through the pain, however, she not only forced herself to become aware but saw she was missing her hammer. She tried to look for it, but before she could the Nighttouched tore out to try and trample her. It was all she could manage in her state to roll to one side and let it shoot by. Fortunately, the thing was so mad that it kept right on barreling in a straight line until it reached another building side, then smashed itself right in before it stopped.
As people taking refuge inside screamed in panic and the monster began to yank itself free, Applejack quickly fumbled around her waist for her length of rope with somewhat sluggish movements. After a moment she got it out and quickly unfurled it to the ready as she glanced about. By the time the Nighttouched fully yanked itself out and spun around to her, she managed to catch a glimpse of the fallen hammer, head down and shaft in the air, in the light of the flames.
Quickly, she whipped her rope up as the bull broke into another charge. She snapped the end out, seized the hammer by the shaft, and snapped up as it lowered its head right for her. Gritting her teeth, and wincing through the pain to her back, she snapped it around like a ball on a string. The hammer sailed through the air and embedded itself, claw first, in the side of the bull’s neck. Still wincing, she stepped to one side as the monster charged past, letting it just tear her shirt with one horn, and she quickly pulled tight on the end of the line.
A wet squelch was heard soon after as the claw tore right through the side of its neck, opening a gaping, and mortal wound. As it cried out and stumbled, going into its death throes, Applejack yanked the rope back to snap the hammer up to her, then snatched it by the shaft out of the air.
No sooner had she regained her footing and looked back to the wall when another part of it began to pry loose. She glanced back at Twilight, but she was now audibly grunting and visibly sweating as she struggled to hold the barrier together. She couldn’t spare any more power. In moments, another monster began to push through. Panting herself now, Applejack wiped her brow before she half-ran, half-stumbled forward. As the steer put its head and shoulders out and tried to wriggle the rest of itself through the new opening, she swung her hammer around to try and stop it before it could.
The hammer connected, but she was too tired and too sore. It did more to enrage it than anything, and a moment later it violently snapped its head around at her. This time, the tip of the horns slashed a gash across her arm before the rest smacked her away and back to the ground. Grunting angrily, the Nighttouched began to splinter the wooden palisade and yank itself forward more fiercely.
As for Applejack, she looked in visible pain on slamming into the ground, but letting her own ferocity and temper dictate her actions, she glared at the Nighttouched, grit her teeth, and shot back to her feet. As its front hooves came through, she surged at it again, seized it by one horn, and then drove the hammer down on the back of its skull. This time, it sank in enough to blind it, and instantly it threw a fit as it pulled itself the rest of the way through from nothing but agonized rage. Applejack felt the muscles in her arm nearly tear as she was yanked after it before her body was dragged alongside of the monster, dangling by her grip on one horn.
Crying out herself now from the increased trauma, she forced her other arm up and around and drove her hammer into the side of its knee. With a wet crunch, it bent inward and the monster faltered and collapsed to one side. She barely yanked herself free of the falling monster before its bulk slammed down into the dirt, but as she landed on her own knees at its side she put both hands on the hammer shaft, raised it high, and drove down a more powerful blow. This time it hit true.
Panting, mottled with cattle blood as well as some of her own, dirty, and exhausted, she wiped at her nose. She wasn’t used to trying to take on so many big Nighttouched at once and alone. She looked up and around, but her heart sank at the sight. Twilight’s wall was quickly coming apart. At least three more were breaking in at the moment and the entire barrier looked moments from collapse. Applejack doubted she could take out even one more. No one could help them, for they were busting in other walls all around the fort. One was already inside and soldiers were furiously shooting at it to try and kill it before it trampled half a dozen people, while those on the wall were desperately struggling to stem the tide.
Twilight glanced to her, seeing her pitiful state, but other than look afraid and nervous could do nothing. Her own strength was giving out. The farmer realized it was hopeless.
Nevertheless, she tightened her face in a defiant look. Gritting her teeth, she clenched her hammer more tightly as she started to push up from the ground again…
Something happened when she did. No sooner had she re-solidified her grip on the hammer when a ripple of light emitted from it. Stopping in mid-rise, Applejack glanced at it just in time to see a faint light start at the tip of her hammer and run down it, like a sunbeam shimmering on water.
What would have truly surprised her, however, was what she never saw. At that moment, her own eyes did the same thing in synchrony.
“Huh…?”
“No way…”
Applejack looked up, hearing Twilight speak again. In spite of her struggling to hold the wall together, she had noticed the same thing the farmer had seen. And while it had surprised Applejack enough, she looked even more so. In spite of the fact she seemed to have turned into an actual magic-using wizard, she was the one gaping now at Applejack and the hammer.
“It can’t be… Can it? I mean…I guess it was possible, but…”
“What’re ya’ talkin’ about?”
At that moment, the Nighttouched charged into the wall again, knocking loose several timbers that Twilight was holding. Two more joined the three already shoving through to start pushing past it. Twilight and Applejack both looked to the wall and realized it had less than a minute. The former stared at it a moment, biting her lip and thinking, before she finally spun back to Applejack.
“Alright, listen to me!”
She spun to her. “Huh? What-”
“There’s no time to argue! I have no idea if this is going to work, but you have to just do it and not ask any questions!”
“What in tarn-”
“I said no questions! Just do it! And believe in what I tell you to say!”
The farmer was overwhelmed. “What’s goin’ on now? Ya’ tell me ta’-”
“Just do as I say!” she practically screamed. It was so fierce, so insistent, and so desperate that the stubborn woman was actually silenced. “Hold that hammer in the air right now!”
Applejack stared back in puzzlement a moment, but considering the fact Twilight had apparently known more than a few things she didn’t, and made that abundantly clear over the past couple days, she decided to go with whatever was going on. Frowning a little, she held it over her head. “Like this?”
“Now say this exactly, and with force and belief! ‘Valiant spirit, my household opens its doors to you!’”
She lowered the hammer and gawked at her. “The Hell? ‘Household’? ‘Doors’? ‘Spirit’? What’s-”
“Do it!”
Sighing, Applejack half-heartedly held the hammer in the air. “Valiant, uh…spirit…my, um, homestead opens up its doors to ya’…”
The wall surged again. The heads of the Nighttouched pushed through and zeroed in on the two of them, snorting and fuming. “Applejack, I can’t hold this much longer…”
She groaned once, looking a bit stubborn, but held the hammer high again. Taking a deep breath, she spoke more boldly. “Valiant spirit, my household opens its doors to you!”
Applejack remained frowning for only a half a second longer before gaping in shock all over again, for at that moment the entire hammer lit up with the same shimmer that it had before. She nearly dropped it in alarm, but what happened next froze her in her spot.
A voice, a familiar one, sounded forth from the hammer over her.
“I, Bright Macintosh, Bastion of the Fields, pledge myself to the House of Applejack.”
The woman nearly paled. As weakened as she was, her knees almost felt like water. It wasn’t just the voice, but the actual feeling coming from the hammer now. Emanating from it like a warm fire and washing over and down her arm. Almost breathless, she whispered one word.
“…Pa?”
“Finish the incantation!” Twilight shouted back to her. “‘The binding is done; may our souls be as one!’”
Applejack couldn’t answer. She was too stunned. She blinked in only half-recognition.
One of the bulls, with a mighty grunt, finally broke through and, once in the square, instantly went into a charge. The wall, weakened as it was, quickly allowed two more to follow behind it.
“Applejack!”
She startled once, then found herself only half-consciously saying it.
“The binding is done; may our souls be as one.”
At once, the same light that radiated from the hammer erupted from not only Applejack’s eyes but from her entire body. Stunned and still trying to wrap her brain around what had just happened, she could do little but gaze in wide-eyed marvel as, just as it had with Twilight, an aura came out from around her and began to shoot off streaks of light. The only difference was hers was a burning orange as opposed to lavender.
And just as hers had done, the lights emanating from Applejack streaked over her head and traced out a pattern that looked like a man. This time, it wasn’t an old man with a long beard, but a much younger man, long haired, roughed by a country living and a rural life style, and wearing the very same hat that was on Applejack’s head. Recognition painted Applejack’s features, but she had little time to respond before it burst and flowed over her.
The effect was instantaneous. On touching her, a wind whipped up around her which carried her hat off of her head before stripping off the top and turning the rest into a simple length of cloth. Her hair was swept up and tied back by it, before it lashed around like a headband to keep it that way. The rest of her simple clothing thickened and hardened while tinting into new colors, until instead of farming attire it had morphed into a breastplate with pauldrons and faulds. The rest became lighter yet rough and durable cloth, save for a pair of vambraces leading to rough, boiled leather fingerless gloves. Her boots became heavier and thicker, while expanding outward in grieves to cover her shins. All turned the same reddish color: the color of the old knights of Appleloosa.
The light died down, and Applejack was left standing there as still as a mannequin. It took her a moment to blink before she recovered enough to look over herself. Fortunately, her change had caused its share of distractions. Not only did many onlookers turn to her in surprise, but the same Nighttouched that were charging were momentarily distracted on seeing another new light next to the one that Twilight had made. The farmer herself held up her hands and turned them over, seeing herself now armored. She reached up for her head, and almost winced on feeling her hat was now changed into a headband of sorts. However, from the way she moved and now held herself, she realized something else that was not so readily apparent. She wasn’t panting anymore, and she wasn’t nearly as sore now.
The Nighttouched recovered, and giving out a snort they began to move again. However, they had halted once now, and it took them a moment to get going. Their hooves stamping the ground caused Applejack to look up to them again. Now far more composed and ready, she instinctively held up her hand bearing her hammer, only to give another start. Gone was the claw hammer from before. Now she was wielding a heavy war hammer with a curved spike on one end of the head, and weighing a good twenty pounds. Yet in spite of the beating she had taken, she noticed she was hefting it easily in one hand.
Not looking the gift horse in the mouth, her eyes went up to the approaching Nighttouched. Her brow creased and she frowned before she took off for it. Despite the armor and heavier boots, she was on it just as fast as when she started. Shifting the new hammer so that the handle was now in both hands, she swung it behind her and brought it around, swinging it to meet its head as it came.
Applejack always knew she was stronger than most of her family, but even she nearly dropped her weapon in alarm as the hammer connected and nearly snapped the Nighttouched’s head clean off of its body. The sheer power was enough to flip the monster to one side and spread it out on the ground.
“Holy…!”
In spite of the blow, the other Nighttouched were undeterred and kept charging. Their attack caused Applejack to snap out of it, and as another came in she quickly hefted the hammer and instinctively swung it around to smash into it headfirst. She gasped again on seeing how easily she pulverized its skull. The third quickly moved in at her side, but this time she got enough of her bearings to try something different. Swiveling the bloody hammer around, she produced the spike first, and then swung around and buried it into the side of the mad bull. Rather than keep tearing into it, she used it as an anchor and dug her feet in. The Nighttouched before was strong enough to snap her around like a toy, but this time her feet planted into the ground and held, and she proceeded to guide the charging monster around in a semicircle before letting it go and to charge right back into its coming companions. The force was strong enough to make them collide with a bone-crunching noise, and stop the flow of the incoming monsters for a few brief seconds.
At this, her surprise finally faded. Instead, Applejack began to grin. “Now that’s more like it!” Hefting the hammer, and without the slightest fear, she charged right at the discombobulated herd.
Seemingly tirelessly and twice as strong as before, Applejack laid into them. She shifted her hammer to one hand and swung upward at the next one to charge at her, shattering its jaw and knocking its head skyward to snap its neck in the same strike. She shifted her grip to both hands to strike down two more on either side as she barreled in. A fourth managed to charge into her, but she saw it coming, planted her feet, crossed her arms, and, to her own surprise yet pleasure, actually managed to stop the monster in its tracks and fling it to one side. Once on the ground, another blow from her hammer finished it. At one point, she actually decked one of the monstrous cattle in the face with nothing but her newly-gloved fist, and she still found herself knocking out one of its teeth. And the more she fought, and the more she saw how easily she was taking them apart, the more enthused and furious she became.
The battle quickly shifted in the fort’s favor. With the fires still burning, most of the attacking cattle tried to pour in through the breach on Twilight and Applejack’s side. Applejack dealt with most of them, and the few that managed to attack her did little other than stun her temporarily before getting a fatal blow. When they swelled to become too much for her, Twilight, no longer needing to hold the wall together, shifted to use new spells. Bolts of lightning snaked from the heavens and struck them down one after the other. The light attracted more Nighttouched but, for once, that seemed to be an asset rather than a hindrance as they funneled through the bottleneck to Applejack’s waiting hammer.
Eventually she did begin to huff and tire, and as bulls kept charging her fatigue and pain started to mount up, but by then the rest of the defenders had gotten a hold on their own defenses. Many of the holes were timbered up and soldiers freed themselves to double-up on other breaches, until at last the square was secure save for the major break. The cannons continued to thunder along with the rifles of the wall defenders, and those in the square fell in behind Twilight and began to fire at the remaining Nighttouched trying to pour inside. None could pass between them and the two defenders.
At last, the herd thinned out. The cannons ceased and the wall protectors fired a few more shots before quitting. A mound of dead cattle, reverted back into their original forms following their death, now formed a new ghastly barricade. Only three remaining beasts had managed to get inside, and a new volley of gunfire tore one apart. The remaining two charged Applejack together.
By now, she was panting and sweaty, and had a few more bruises and cuts, but from the eager look on her face it was clear she was still feeling great. She charged toward the closer of the two to meet it, bracing the shaft of her hammer in front of her and driving it right into its mouth. She kept pushing and used that to wrangle it, forcing it backward. She kept her eye on the other as it came, and just as it moved in to strike she snapped her arms one way to cause the right horn of the monster she was grappling with to jut out. She gave a grunt, planted her feet, and sharply twisted her body to shove the head of the monster to one side and drive her attacker’s horn right into the neck of its partner. It pierced in several inches, causing it to spasm and gurgle before it fell to the ground flopping.
Still pushing, Applejack used its falling leverage and kept twisting to snap her attacker’s horn clean off its head before flinging it to the ground on top of the one it pierced. It struggled to get up again, but she gave one last yell as she yanked her war hammer back and swung it down one final time. With one last sickening thud, audible over the now quiet cannons and rifles, it fell forever.
Aside from the sounds of heavy breathing, a few flame crackles from dying embers, and the bits of wall settling, the fort was now silent. Applejack herself slumped a bit, using the shaft of her hammer to support herself, and wiped her brow again with a tired whistle. She looked up and behind her to Twilight, and saw the woman looked ready to fall over. She was barely holding onto her footing and had already dropped her wand so she could plant her hands on her legs to steady herself.
After a moment of composing herself, Applejack looked up and around. Every last person in the entire fort had now emerged, and they were all staring at the two of them. Some looked fearful. Others looked suspicious. All looked astonished. It was growing dark again, but she couldn’t make out a single set of eyes that blinked. The entire fort was silent.
Adrenaline fading, Applejack’s look began to grow uncomfortable, especially on realizing she had transformed just as Twilight had, and that she had no idea how or what exactly she had done to trigger it. Twilight herself looked more uneasy than ever; like she wanted to crawl into a hole somewhere and hide.
She nervously exhaled. “I…guess they’re all going to want a more detailed explanation…”
Applejack let out a half-snort. “What d’ya’ mean they?”
As soon as the Huntsman pushed aside the last few branches, the country opened wide in front of them again. Just ahead was a road that started being paved a kilometer ahead, and beyond that were the first few rows of an Appleloosan town. Unlike all the other ones that they had passed, this one still had smoke from a few chimneys, dust down a few roads, and the distant sounds of steam engines and wagon wheels.
Dash stepped out the rest of the way grinning and wiping her brow. “There we are! No sweat! Heh, told ya', I'd get you here!”
An instant after, looking a bit dirty, torn, and with her excellent coiffure half-fallen apart as well as her makeup worn off in several different spots, Rarity tiredly staggered out of the forest in a half-limp (due to one of her heels being broken), looking like she had been through more physical activity in the past few days than she had in her entire her life combined. After taking a few deep breaths, she got enough of her bearings to look forward and see the same sight.
She sighed massively in relief. “Oh, thank heavens…the Macintosh Hills at last!”
“Huh?” Dash echoed back, before chuckling. “Oh, we’re nowhere near that yet. This is just Flaxonville, but we should be past the bad leg of the trip.”
Rarity took this in for a moment but then nodded back. “Well, that will do. So long as it is a town that’s still inhabited, then I know there is at least one thing we can get…”
“A stagecoach?”
“I was going to say ‘a bath’… We look wretched after the past two days.”
Dash frowned, looking at herself. She lifted an arm and smelled under it before shrugging. “No problem to me. My last one was only about two weeks ago.”
Rarity’s eyes widened. “T-T-Two…?” Quickly composing herself, she shook her head and smiled uneasily; now making sure to shy away from Dash a little. “Let’s…let’s just head into town.”
The trip into Flaxonville was reasonably uneventful, especially on the road that Dash and Rarity had emerged on. The roads on the north side of town were a different story. While they had reached the other side of the blockade that Appleloosa had erected, they were still so close to it that the town was rapidly filling up with people fleeing in the opposite direction.
As such, on entering the main streets, Rarity found it to be about as cluttered and bustling as the stop she had made where she met Dash. Fortunately, as this was a real town, it was a bit more organized. There was a garrison of Appleloosan soldiers-turned-magistrates deployed there who were helping keep everything under control, and aside from large crowds standing around outside various stores with general goods and services involved in food and travel, to say nothing of many traders and merchants being forced to leave large stacks of their crates on every road and street corner, it wasn’t that bad.
Things grew a bit thicker the deeper they got into town, however. The town’s population had swollen so much that the public square looked like a busy fairground, with many crowds spilling over into the streets. Rarity found the journey little better than the forest as she was forced to push through and around people in her struggle to keep up with Dash.
Finally, it got to be too much for her. After the third time of nearly losing her in the crowd, Dash led them over to the nearest corner where they could pause for her to catch her breath and gain their bearings. Unfortunately, as Rarity soon found out, the only place where she was free to have a front step to sit down on was directly across from a rather loud and obnoxious sight.
A good part of the sidewalk nearby was taken up by a sizable theatrical cart that had deployed a small stage off the back of it. A white-haired and rather smug-looking street magician with a wide-brimmed hat and cloak covered with stars was on it; peddling her trade to whoever would listen in a rather loud, obnoxious, and booming voice.
“Come one! Come all! Shock and be amazed at the Great and Powerful Trixie’s amazing feats!”
She punctuated the statement of her name (rather frequently, as Rarity had not heard her use the “I” pronoun once since sitting), by firing off a chain of fireworks. While bright and colorful, they were also quite loud and on a narrow street. Not only did they spook several horses nearby, they deafened Rarity before dumping eye-burning smoke everywhere.
“The Great and Powerful Trixie,” on the other hand, only grinned all the wider. “Behold! A straitjacket from the finest sanitariums in Manehattan! Absolutely, one-hundred percent, guaranteed to be escape-proof! Now, if I could have a volunteer from the audience…”
Rarity groaned at the trick. It was the first one she had seen on sitting down, and the street magician had tried to escape from it within the span of a single smoke bomb usage. However, that had failed, and she had used a second while the first one was still burning her eyes. She turned around to Dash. “I think I am quite ready to get on my feet again. Shall we head to the train station?”
She shook her head. “Sorry, no can do. The train station is the first place that’ll be booked solid. I'm sure they already jacked up the prices and are loaded up like an oversized cattle car. We want to get out to Macintosh Hills, we'll have to do the last leg by stagecoach.”
“Well, so long as it keeps me off my feet, I won't mind. Where do we go for that?”
“Eh, I'll handle it,” she shrugged. “You take your time and get that bath you wanted, then meet me back on this corner in about three hours.”
Rarity blinked, looking nervous. “This is my first time to Flaxonville… I am not so sure I can find my way around…”
Dash stared at her dully, before jabbing a thumb in the magician’s direction. “You really aren’t going to be able to hear her from anywhere in this city?”
“…Fair point. Three hours it is.”
Dash nodded and turned to head off, and Rarity, ruing getting on her broken shoes again, rose as well. She glanced around for a moment before she picked a direction that seemed less crowded and started walking away.
As she did, she passed a pair of other travelers watching the street performer and chatting to one another.
“I think her greatest power is going onto a crowded street and making her audience disappear…”
“Y’know, there is a rumor going around that out west this one magician killed a Light Eater?”
“Pft. Yeah right. What's your point?”
“You don't think…?”
“The people out west are a lot denser than around here. City folk will buy into anything.”
Rarity rolled her eyes at the very idea as she walked past. “The day that braggart kills a Light Eater is the day I turn into one…” she muttered.
Luckily, the crowds thinned out close to the outskirts of town, where residences and buildings became fewer and farther between. Rarity had a moment to enjoy the surroundings and countryside, which, despite all of the chaos going on in the world, was indeed rather pleasant. It did not offer too much to satisfy her current desires, however, until she managed to run into a local that pointed out a place of interest. A bit farther and she finally came upon her destination.
Down one of the older roads in town, where enough trees were growing to turn the skyline of the central part of Flaxonville into just an outline, there was a three-story building. Not quite enough to be one of the larger urban structures from Manehattan, but still far too large to be simply a grand house; although the outside looked that way. As Rarity came up to it, she saw an arched arbor placed over a footpath leading to the front steps of the building and read off the name: “Emerald Coast’s Inn and Breakfast.”
She paused, thinking aloud. “Now where have I heard that name ‘Emerald Coast’ before…?”
After a moment, she shrugged it off and walked up the path.
On reaching the top of the steps and crossing the threshold, she was greeted by a foyer done up with a mounted front desk and a twisting stairwell leading to the upper floors, as well as side openings leading to a hall and a dining room. It was very cozy and quaint. Between the rugs, the crackling fireplace, the vases with fresh flowers, and the small waiting table and dish cupboard, it was almost like walking into someone’s house, and one would have mistaken it for such if not for the ledger and rack for keys over by the mounted desk.
Considering how crowded the town was, Rarity thought it was odd that not only was the front foyer empty but some of the keys were still hanging on the rack. Nevertheless, she approached and tapped the handbell.
As quiet as the inn was, the chime traveled easily. However, after several seconds, she heard nothing and chimed again. She waited longer this time, but still, there was no answer. On the third one, she heard an angry voice from a back room. “I'm coming; I'm coming!”
Moments later, an older woman, somewhat hunched and slow-moving and with a scowl and all-together unpleasant look that made Rarity wince a little, made her way out and to the front desk. She leveled a glare at her as if she had done something wrong. “All right, who are you, and what do you want?”
Rarity was taken aback by that sort of greeting but coughed. “Um, yes, …as you can probably tell, I have had a rather rough trip. I'm just passing through town, and I was wondering if I might use your bath or shower.”
“Did you see anything on the sign outside that said this was a public bath?” she half-snapped back.
“Er, no…”
“If you want to use the showers, you pay for a room like everyone else.”
“I am a little short on money at the moment, and I don't think I can afford a whole room…,” she nervously answered. “Maybe if I could pay by the hour…?”
“I don't charge by the hour; I charge by night,” she retorted even more angrily. “Now if you're done wasting my time, get out of here.”
Before Rarity could say another word, the woman wheeled around and began to return to the back room. She was already there before Rarity could even begin to stammer at what had just happened. Nevertheless, after hanging her jaw a second, she nearly concluded that she was out of luck when a voice called from the stairwell.
“…Rarity? Is that you?”
She turned and saw someone had begun to come down the stairs but had stopped in mid-descent. A middle-aged woman with rose-tinted purple hair in curls, her bag in one hand and a hand on the banister with a bandage over it, was staring at her. Rarity herself paused as her eyes widened in recognition.
“Ms....Ms. Cheerilee?”
The older woman broke into a surprised smile. “It is you, isn’t it?” she laughed, beginning to descend the rest of the way.
Rarity smiled in turn and quickly moved to meet her. “Yes, and I imagine quite taller than you remember,” she laughed back. Both met at the foot of the stairs and put down their own bags long enough to hug each other.
“Oh, it's so good to see you again! I never imagined I would see you this far outside of Manehattan!”
“I could say likewise! Has it been at least…what? Five years?”
“At least!”
The two hugged a bit longer before parting but continued to smile at one another. “Whatever are you doing out here?”
“Oh, I live in Appleloosa now. Southeast of here. I wanted to live someplace quieter after…” A shade passed over her face momentarily, before she shook her head and brushed it off. “Well, you know. However, what about you?” She looked the younger woman over; her smile turning a bit uncomfortable. “Pardon me for saying so, Rarity, but you look awful.”
Even at the worst of times, that was pretty much the phrase Rarity hated to hear more than anything considering the tradtional amount of care she gave her appearance, and it took all of her effort to weakly smile in response. “I've…had a few…bad days. Let's just say I am on a business trip, and it has not been going as well as it could have.”
“I can imagine…” She looked up, brightening a little. “I overheard what you were saying downstairs. I'm sorry about Emerald. I'll tell you what…” She quickly glanced to the back room, making sure the proprietor was not in earshot, and then leaned forward and whispered. “I haven't checked out yet. Why don’t you use my bath to clean up?”
Rarity’s glum attitude evaporated. “Oh, could you? You would be an absolute godsend…”
“It's no problem. Let's head back up before Emerald notices.”
Rarity felt like a new woman by the time she was out of the shower. Between the lovely, homey interior of the inn and the feeling of clean water, soap, and towels on her skin, it was almost enough for her to forget the more unpleasant parts of the trip so far. The only part that made her cringe was that she was forced to keep wearing the same outfit, especially when she felt how stiff her undergarments were from her sweat.
Nevertheless, when she emerged from the bathroom into the main room where Ms. Cheerilee was staying, she got yet another pleasant surprise. She was holding out a pair of old yet casual shoes to her.
“I noticed we were about the same size. I might be a little bigger, but I imagine it would be easier to walk on these than a pair with one broken heel.”
Rarity almost felt like crying in gratitude. “You don't have to do that…”
“No, it's quite all right. I've had these for years. They'll do you much more good than me.”
“I don't have any way to pay you back a fair price right now…”
“It's fine. Just take them.”
After holding a bit longer, she finally accepted the footwear, then walked over to the bed to sit down and start changing her shoes out. “If you ever make it to my boutique in Manehattan, anything you want is on the house.”
“So, your business is doing well?” Cheerilee answered as she moved to the room’s desk chair.
“Well, more or less at the moment, but better than it was five years ago.”
“I'm glad to hear it,” she answered as she sat down. “Your parents would be happy.”
“That is what I keep telling myself some mornings… Although the business might be in trouble if I cannot get to the Macintosh Hills and back fairly soon.”
She continued to remove her old shoes for a moment until she realized that Ms. Cheerilee had gone silent. She looked up and saw her looking uneasily at her. “Rarity…you know about what has been going on in the country lately, don’t you?”
She exhaled. “Yes, yes, I know…”
“It's just…well…I won't say anymore. You know what I'm implying-”
“Yes, I do.” Her voice had turned a bit sharp. “And I thank you for your concern, but this is a necessity. It is not just my livelihood but the livelihood of my employees and my hometown.”
Ms. Cheeriliee opened her mouth briefly but shut it again.
“Enough about me,” Rarity brushed off as she pulled on a shoe. “How have you been? I haven't heard anything from you in ages.”
“Oh, me? Still teaching.” She punctuated with a short laugh. “Much smaller classes too, which has been a big help. I'm not as young as I used to be. I can't quite chase after the small ones like I did ten years ago. Although, to be honest, I have been considering retiring.”
She looked up. “Retiring?”
“Well, perhaps that's a strong word. More like…a new career. Trying to do something else.”
“Really?” She smirked as she went for the other shoe. “It's funny… I don't think I've ever pictured you as anything other than a teacher. Then again, I was one of your students. I'm pretty sure I feel that way about all of my teachers. It probably wasn't until I was high school age I stopped to think that they go home rather than wait for children to come back at the end of summer.”
Ms. Cheerilee laughed. “Yes, I think I've had my share of students who thought that. I haven't fully decided yet although…I will say I'm leaning toward it. Being in such a different part of the world changes your perspective. I'm so used to steam engines and smokestacks. Out here, so many things are still done by hand and with horses.” She snickered again. “I'm shocked at how far some of the students walk to get to class.”
“I think I could quite do without thinking about walking long distances for a while…,” she sighed. “Especially if I knew how rough the hospitality was in this part of the world. Although I suppose I can't blame the inn proprietor. With all of the types coming through town, she must be at her wit’s end.”
“Oh?” Ms. Cheerilee looked up again as Rarity finished tying one shoe. “You mean Emerald Coast?” She held a moment; her face turning a bit downcast. “Well…try not to mind it. She's not at her best at the moment.”
Rarity paused as she was about to tie the other. “That's so strange… There it is again: Emerald Coast. I know I've heard that name before somewhere…” She looked up. “How do you know her?”
“Oh, Emerald and I go way back. We knew each other in grade school, although she came back here after she was done. That was back when it was more normal for everyone to go abroad if they did higher education. I ended up heading out to Manehattan and never left, while she stayed in her hometown and ran the family inn. She never did much more than that. I'm guessing you may have heard of her family, though.”
“What do you mean?”
“Have you ever heard of Sapphire Shores?”
At once, Rarity sat bolt upright. “Have I!”
This surprised the teacher in turn. “Oh? You do know her?”
“Why, Sapphire was the client we had that helped the boutique get back on its feet after what happened to mom and dad! I was working on posing a new jewel-themed dress right there in the main foyer that I had just made trying to get my mind off of everything, and she walks right in; looking twice as fancy as everyone in the entire neighborhood. I can barely say a word, but she takes a long look at that dress, and then she finally says she had been looking around the smaller designers in town trying to find a newer style to suit her next performance, and she thought mine was perfect. I…that is, my business…ended up covering her next two tours. We were going to do a third but she canceled, but between how handsomely she paid as well as her reputation it helped us get through the next eighteen months until we could get new clients.”
By now, Rarity was smiling a little, but she leveled off soon after. “It has gotten progressively harder to keep in touch with everyone…but are you saying Emerald Coast is related to her?”
“I would say so. She was her mother.”
The one word caused Rarity’s smile to fade, and a pale look came over her.
“…‘Was’?”
Rarity couldn't recall the last time she had been to a cemetery; mostly because she lived in a big city. This one, however, was very pleasant. It was surrounded by trees with birds singing. It was calmer here. The echoes from the city could not reach it. The parts where the grass was growing were quite green and soft for that time of year. The only problem was there was not as much grass there as there could have been considering the number of plots.
One tombstone out of all of the others stood out—not for its size but the response it garnered. It had to be several months old by now as the dirt had settled, but it still was almost buried under flowers. That was even more unusual considering the writing on the stone. The date of death was about five years ago now.
Both women stood before it somberly for some time, with Ms. Cheerilee letting Rarity take it all in before she finally spoke. “Fillydelphia finally started to act on an arrangement to transport some of the non-citizens who died in Cloudsdale back home. At least the ones who…” She winced. “The ones who could still be identified. She was one.”
Rarity continued to stare at the stone. “It was only her manager who sent the letter… I…I thought it might have been her, but I knew the tour would not start for at least a month…”
“Emerald told me she made a quick visit to plan the concert because it was a new venue, and it was at the wrong time. Since many people knew who she was, they were able to bring her remains in about three months ago and have her buried here. I heard Emerald has been like this ever since.” Her head bowed. “I thought it would have brought some closure to her life, but…it seems it was more like reopening an old wound.”
Rarity advanced a few steps, looking down over the flowers. There was an arrangement of sorts there, likely whatever mourners found to be pretty, but half of them were her favorite blossom. The same she picked her signature colors from. She reached out and touched one, staring at that particular color she had tried so hard to match.
“I never knew…”
“It would have just been one more mourner Emerald didn't know if you had. I know her business meant a lot to you, but ‘dress-maker’ probably was not very high on what she would have considered one of her friends.”
Rarity said nothing to that. She only felt the fresh petal and looked over the tombstone.
Ms. Cheerilee walked forward to her side, putting a hand on her shoulder. Her look grew dark as she stared at the stone. “I think if one of my students were here, he would say it best: ‘it's not fair.’” She was quiet for a moment after that. “I have a hard time not saying that myself some times. She lived through the Lunar Fall, the Nighttouched, the Light Eaters, and everything else. What ends up causing her death?” She frowned. “Other people.”
Rarity still said nothing. She kept staring.
Ms. Cheerilee squeezed her shoulder before pulling off. “I'll be over there. It's only been about an hour and a half. You have time.” Without another word, she turned and began to walk back to the footpath; giving the two of them their privacy.
She continued to stare at the tombstone for a while, still reaching out and feeling the petals. After things were quiet for some time, she pulled her hand back and smiled wistfully at it.
“Been a while, hasn’t it Ms. Shores?”
The silence was the only response.
“To think I didn't even know the truth…or thought to look into it. Just one more thing I have to regret now, isn’t it?”
She took a deep breath.
“I guess both of us learned to be more scared of people than monsters, didn’t we? Maybe that's the reason I wasn't scared to come out here. But as for you? I didn't think anything ever scared you.” She smirked. “Except maybe clashing colors. I guess that is why you weren't afraid to visit Cloudsdale not once but twice.”
She exhaled as her smile faded.
“I am sure most of the flowers here are from admirers. I wish I had some of my own to give to you right now…because I guess I'm one of them. I'm not sure if for the same reason, though… No matter how much the world changed, you always stayed the same. You kept treating it like another day. I know some people thought that was callousness or frivolity, but…” She exhaled. “You knew. You knew full well what was going on. You just wanted people to act like how it was before. When they weren't afraid to turn on the lights at night or looking for what weaker country they could gobble up next…or maybe before we all realized, sooner or later, we're going to join you wherever you are.”
She smiled again.
“You helped me think that way, and it helped me when I needed it. I don't know if I was ever anything more than a hired hand to you, but…to me, that made you a friend.”
She paused a moment, before leaning over and touching one of the flowers. She plucked off a single petal.
“Please don't mind, darling,” she said as she brought it back and put it in her pocket. “I want to make sure I don't forget you so easily again. I will pay you back in full the first chance I get. I promise.”
Taking one last look at the tombstone, she turned away and back to the path. Ms. Cheerilee was standing there, waiting for her, and she began to approach.
She only got a few steps before a louder noise echoed over the landscape, coming from the sky. She had heard that noise many times before living in Manehattan, but hearing it out here caused enough puzzlement for her to look skyward. Sure enough, she saw that an airship was not only passing overhead but was descending on the town.
“Very odd…,” she remarked to herself, looking away without focusing on its colors or standard. “I didn't think there were any landing areas in this locale. Perhaps they wanted to move people along faster…”
As she mused this last point and reached Ms. Cheerilee’s side, she crossed her hands in front of herself and absent-mindedly began to itch the top of one.
The two were still catching up when they reached the busy parts of town again, although Rarity hardly noticed it this time with her improved footwear and an old friend to walk with. Nevertheless, it did start to get noisier and harder to hear, not to mention harder to ignore the banter of the city folk as they ran by.
Two people, in particular, walking past them caught her attention.
“Hey, did you see that street magician?”
“Kind of hard to miss with those fireworks… What about her?”
“She’s claiming she’s the one who took out the Light Eater over in Fillydelphia!”
“Do you believe everything you hear on the street? That didn’t even happen! She probably made up the rumor to look good!”
Rarity rolled her eyes and groaned at the thought of that performer exploiting the situation. Many people didn't care to hear someone joke about being able to kill Light Eaters, and she was one of them. She tried to ignore it as she turned back to Ms. Cheerilee. “We're almost to my corner. It's just another block this way. Thank you for walking with me.”
“Oh, I am happy to, dear. Nothing else to do but see if I can find a coach to take me west or at least southwest.”
“That reminds me… I do not think I heard why you are traveling yet.”
Ms. Cheerilee hesitated. Enough for Rarity to notice and turn to her. After a moment, however, she held up her bandaged hand.
“I'm...sick with something.”
This piqued her curiosity. “Sick with something? With what?”
“That's just it...I don't know. Nobody locally can tell me either. I was walking around one morning, and something showed up on my hand.”
Rarity’s eyes went to the bandage as she continued.
“It's really strange, whatever it is, but word went around that two other people had gotten these as well. One of them…” She winced uncomfortably here. “Ended up going wild and attacked several people. He…he actually killed two before he was shot to death.”
Rarity let out a small gasp in alarm, immediately covering her mouth afterward as she realized the connotation. “Oh…Ms. Cheerilee, I-”
“It's all right,” she cut off, forcing herself to smile again. “I feel fine right now. I just...just need to figure out what caused it and why. I am hoping doctors in Manehattan know better.”
Rarity continued to look regretful. “This isn't why you're thinking of giving up teaching, is it?”
“Oh no. I will admit I have wondered about whether I would be a danger to students, but I could say the same for anything I ended up doing.” She shrugged. “No, it is just that…that…” She trailed off soon after, looking forward again. Her smile once again faded away.
“Just what?”
She silently walked forward a few more steps before exhaling.
“I think I'm a bit of a coward, Rarity.”
She blinked. “A coward?”
“I saw Sweetie Belle and two other students the day they left. Wished them goodbye. And when I got the news…that's when I packed up and left Manehattan. That's when I moved out here. And for a few years I felt better. Things were good. That far away from the border, I almost forgot that there was even a problem with Equestria. But it only lasted until I saw my first class I had out there get old enough to join the military. And then…”
She slowly exhaled, and silently walked forward a few more steps.
“And then that's when I realized there is nowhere to run from it. Whether it's Nighttouched or other people, in the end, it's always the same thing. The same feeling.”
Rarity looked at her more intently. “What feeling?”
“The feeling that all I am doing for any of these children is letting them play make believe at having a life before they die.”
The designer winced, but Ms. Cheerilee’s face remained somber and looking forward.
“What point was there to my being a teacher if that's how things ended up for them? What's the point…of anything, really? That shadow is growing. Maybe it will take ten years, or maybe it will take a hundred, but it's not going to stop. And one day, it will cover everything…”
“Ms. Cheerilee…” Rarity tried to interject, not knowing whether she was trying to comfort her or stop her from mentioning the fact that everyone was trying their best to not think about.
However, she sharply inhaled and shook her head before turning and smiling at Rarity. “Oh, don't mind me. Just getting more pessimistic in my old age. I'm just really happy you're still moving forward, Rarity. It's important for people like you to be in the world. It's important…”
She trailed off and looked forward, spotting something. Rarity turned as well and was surprised to see Rainbow Dash quickly approaching them.
What surprised her most of all, however, was that this was the first time she had seen her looking nervous.
She didn’t stop, but put a hand on Rarity’s shoulder and began to turn her around. “We gotta go. Now. Right now.”
Rarity resisted for a moment. “Wait what? What’s going-”
“Talk on the way. Move.” She said as she forced her to turn and began to walk alongside her.
Ms. Cheerilee blinked. “Rarity, who is…?”
“Oh, this is Ms. Dash. We're…” she tried to call out, but could not get out anymore as she was forced along and pushed to leave her old teacher behind. She looked back to the rainbow-haired woman with a frown. “Ms. Dash, that was rude. I was just about to intro-”
“I said talk on the way! Pick up the pace!” she said as she pushed harder. “We need to be out of here!”
At last, the insistence in Dash’s voice made Rarity start to realize she was truly afraid about something. After a moment, while continuing to let Dash lead her on, she spoke more quietly. “What's going on?”
“Didn’t you see that airship land?”
“I saw an airship, but I thought it was strange. There is no place around here for them to land-”
“Trottinghamites make their own places to land.”
Hearing the name of their nationality made Rarity pause; some tension flowing into her features. “Wouldn’t the local magistrates or even the army respond to them landing?”
“Who says they didn't? You do not know very much about what happens when they decide to waltz into a country, do you?”
“What…what would they want here?”
“Who knows? But whenever they come around, they always take it. And nowadays, they usually get it. Especially if I recognize that ship…”
She blinked. “What…what's so special about that ship?”
“It doesn't matter. All that matters is we get out of here. The stagecoach is ready to go. We need to get there before…oh no.”
Before Rarity could ask what she meant by that, she ground to a halt and pulled her along with her.
The crowded street in front of them was parting. People were readily backing up to make way for a group coming down the street. Even without immediately recognizing their emblem and colors, it would have taken very little for Rarity to realize she was looking at the very individuals in question.
Living in the better parts of Manehattan had almost entirely isolated Rarity from ever having to look at a modern Trottingham soldier, but she knew enough that conventional weapons and arms had been eschewed for their new line of “steam soldiers.” Most of the individuals in the group were wearing gear that looked like a combination of old armor and technology, particularly around their arms, legs, and bizarre weapons they were holding. They didn't look like any standard rifles she had ever seen. They didn't even look like they were meant to shoot bullets.
The biggest standouts were the two in the lead. They were clad from head to toe in armor that had a compact steam engine built right into their backs. From the way they were shaped, one seemed thin, tall, and lanky while the other was short and squat, but it was moot considering the fact both looked and sounded like they were made of iron as they stomped down the street looking from left to right through their visored helmets. They were quite intimidating to behold despite not having any visible weapons on them. Their armor was menacing enough, especially since the forearms on both were severely enlarged. Definitely meant for something more.
As the splitting crowd made their way to Rarity and Dash, she suddenly yelped as she found herself dragged away to one side with them. As soon as Dash had her back, she whispered sharply in her ear. “Don't draw any attention to us. Just let them pass, and we'll get out of here.”
Rarity didn't argue. Most of the other people soon did the same; pressing up against her and keeping quiet too.
The group continued to march forward, giving the crowd dark looks but also searching them. Rarity realized they had to be looking for someone. As luck would have had it, they stopped almost directly perpendicular to where she and Dash were standing when the squat one let out a groan. “Man, I hate walking around in this thing… This town looked a lot smaller from up in the air!”
“Say Snips…,” the lanky one spoke up. “You don't suppose we're gonna have to search every town like this one, will we? ‘Cause that'll take a while…”
The squat one groaned at the thought. “Enough of this!” He helmet swiveled around, scanning the crowd a bit before he singled out one person. “Hey, you!”
The man recoiled at being put on the spot. “Wha…wha, me?”
“Yeah, you! Have seen a magician around here?”
“A street magician,” the lanky one added.
“Yeah, yeah, a street magician!”
By now, Rarity had a hard time believing half the city had not heard that ruckus from Trixie, although she was wondering why in the world these people would be interested in her. At any rate, the man was so fearful and put on the spot he was only able to stammer. “I, uh…uh…um…uh…”
The squat one groaned and looked to the next one. “Ok, what about you?”
“Who…who me?”
“Naw, your cousin Patty! Yeah, you!”
“I…um…I think there was one…closer to the center of town…”
“Ok, then, which way is that?”
“Uh, Snips?” the lanky one interjected. “I think we're in the center already…”
He wheeled on him. “What are you talking about? If we were there, we would have seen her!”
“But what if she left?”
“What if she…GAH!”
“Hey!”
The two armored Trottinghamites turned forward again. As they did, the ones behind them quickly raised their weapons and aimed, for while the two had been talking a pair of magistrates had come out from the crowd. Rarity imagined them either very brave or very foolish, because they freely brandished their pistols on their hips although they didn't reach for them, and they squared their jaws and stared them down.
“What do you think you're doing here?” one of them shouted. “You can't just cross the borders and come into Appleloosa wherever you like!”
“Eh, pipe down, Granny,” Snips snorted, waving his hand at her. “You ain’t even worth the effort.”
She didn't back down. “Think just because the army is not breathing down our necks you can waltz in here like you own the place? Well, the Appleloosan 16th Division will be making the rounds to Flaxonville within the hour so if you know what's good for you the lot of you will pack up and clear out of here unless you feel like starting a war!”
This seemed to catch the squat one’s attention. He slowly turned toward her until he faced her fully. “Oh? Izzat so?” His voice grew more challenging with a darker edge. The soldiers with them kept their weapons up and drawn. A moment of silence passed.
“Say Snails?” he spoke up before he pointed at the one alongside the magistrate. “What's that on that deputy’s shirt?”
Caught off guard by that question, the magistrate turned and looked at her partner.
She caught only a glimpse of her before a bolt of electricity, looking almost as broad and potent as a bolt of lightning itself, snapped out of the barrel of one of the Trottinghamite’s weapons and smacked her in the chest. Her body was instantly electrified, smaller bolts erupting from her hands and legs before it was sent flying like a missile into the surrounding crowd. Between both the attack and the impact of her body smashing into the onlookers, several people, Rarity included, broke out in a scream. Some were rooted to the spot in terror while others turned and fled for it.
The magistrate herself looked wide-eyed at what had just happened, seeing black smoke now coming from the semi-cooked body of her partner before she began to wheel around. A hand went onto her pistol stock…
She froze on seeing Snips standing right in front of her, his arm extended, and a very long and curve-tapered blade extended from his gauntlet and hovering near her throat while emitting a humming noise.
“I wouldn't do that if I were you,” he sneered in a snarky voice.
Sweating a little now, the magistrate removed her hand from the weapon and slowly raised both it and her other one.
“Hey, you're smarter than the bunch we torched who tried to impound our airship!” he laughed. “And since you're so smart, hows about you help us out? We're looking for a street magician. Tell us where she is, and we'll be on our way.”
The magistrate stared back silently; her mind was racing.
Snips advanced and pressed the weapon a bit closer. On simply touching the lapel of the magistrate’s uniform, it seemed to cut of its own accord.
“Think hard, granny. Because our boss is gonna be here soon. And trust me …you would rather deal with us than her. If you know what is good for your whole town and everyone in it, get my drift?”
She let out a shudder but finally spoke through clenched teeth. “She was performing in the street without a permit. She's at the station by now getting fined.”
“Station, huh? Sounds great. See? Nice and easy.” He pulled the blade away from the magistrate, who quickly backed off, and turned to the others. “All right, boys and girls, we're heading to the station.” He turned back and began to take one step when he suddenly froze. “Now…where is that anyway?”
He paused before his fist clenched in frustration.
“Damnit!”
“Uh, Snips?” his lankier friend suddenly spoke up.
“Not now, Snails! I am tryin’ to think! Wait…what am I doing?” He began to look back to the crowd. “Hey! Granny! Get back here!”
“Snips!”
Growling, he wheeled to the other. “What?”
“Look over there!”
Rarity gave a start a moment later, for she realized that Snails was looking and pointing right at her. Snips turned and looked as well, causing her to cup her hands to her mouth in alarm. She looked to her right and left, but already other people around her were backing off from her and Dash. “Uh…um…are you referring to me?”
Snips turned to his friend. “Yeah, what about her?”
“Look at her hand, Snips.”
“So? Big deal!”
“Didn’t Lady Sunset say she wanted us to knock off anyone who had one of those symbols on their hands?”
Snips turned and looked again. He paused a moment. “Oh yeah…yeah! I knew that!”
Rarity blinked. “Pardon me, but…but did you say…” She swallowed. “‘Knock off’? As in…?”
“And yeah, she's got one right on her hand! All right, then!”
Rarity swallowed again on seeing the rest of the soldiers turn to her and begin to shift their weapons. “I…I beg your pardon, but…you must be mistaken… M-My friend here just injured herself in a, um…hiking accident and-”
“Ha!” Snips cut off. “Think we're dumb? We ain’t talking about your friend, lady!”
Now she really did look confused. “Who...m-me? Why...why, that's ridiculous. I mean, I certainly do not…”
She trailed off. She had been turning her hands over as if to show herself that she had nothing on them, but she went rigid as soon as she did.
The very hand she had been itching on walking away from the cemetery had changed. There were now, unmistakably, deeper lines etched into it. Not the result of just her scratching alone, and as straight and angled as if they had been drawn with a ruler and compass.
“But…but-but…that’s …that's not possible… I just… I…”
“Ok fellas, you know the drill,” Snails announced as he stepped back. The weapons raised toward her.
Rarity was too baffled to speak or react. She could only stand there, stammering in confusion and shock. As the arms raised and clicked their barrels, fear began to snap her out of it. She held her hands up defensively. “Wait…wait! I…I don't know what's going on, but…however, I assure you this has to be some mistake!”
“Let her have it!”
“No! No, wait, ple-”
She was cut off as she felt her body pulled back by the shoulder. An instant later, Dash stood in front of her as a human shield. All of the soldiers hesitated at that.
“Get lost, you walking scrap piles,” she sneered confidently. “You want my client; you go through me. Also, you pull a gun on my client, and you got to the count of ten to turn tail before you never eat solid food again.”
Snips snickered. “I got a better idea, rainbow-head. You run out of there and go get yourself a pot of gold to point to, ‘cause otherwise, we're gonna shoot right through you to get to h-”
He couldn't finish his sentence. With a dozen weapons pointed at her, Dash wasn't waiting for them to get the first shot. While Snips was still issuing his threat, she took off right for the nearest soldier. She panicked on seeing herself charged and nearly raised her weapon to fire, but before she could one of Dash’s arms was swinging out and knocking her barrel skyward before driving her other fist into her face.
The soldier still managed to squeeze the trigger as she crumpled under the blow, but the shot went high. It didn't fire lightning this time but instead a bright, searing ray of heat. It sailed right over the heads of the crowd and impacted the masonry on one of the buildings beyond, but on touching it the bricks and mortar gleamed like pieces of magma for a moment before they exploded. Immediately, two more of the soldiers swung around to shoot at Dash, but by now her first target was on the ground so she ran forward over her. The shots fired where she had been instead, one rifle singing the ground with another bolt of lightning and the other shooting a blue ray that caused razor sharp icicles to erupt along the ground where it touched. As soon as they did, Dash pivoted and pushed off the ground with one foot to drive her leg into another gunner’s side. Despite the battle gear, his body still twisted around the blow.
The other soldiers quickly readied their weapons, but as Dash moved in and quickly knocked out the lights of the injured one before running to another, they hesitated. Rarity couldn’t see exactly what happened next because, at that moment, the crowd around her broke and fled in a panic. The missed shot was sending bits of flaming rubble falling to the ground, pushing tension to the breaking point. Rarity herself was swept up into the mess as people ran all around her. Even if she had the presence of mind through her shock and bafflement at what had happened to her as well as the soldiers attacking, to say nothing of Dash jumping at them, she couldn’t have gone anywhere. When the crowd finally parted, Dash was putting out the lights of a third soldier, but still they hadn’t fired at her. Enough of her wits registered to realize why; their weapons were too strong. If she was going in head-to-head, they couldn’t risk shooting.
Snips noticed this as well and produced a whine-like growl. “Bruisers! What’re ya’ waiting for! Get in there!” He wheeled to his partner next. “Snails! Get ready!”
Rarity didn’t pay much attention to what they were doing next, instead watching as half of the soldiers broke off from the ones who were shooting and began to rush right at Dash. Their own firearms were still stored, but they drew long combat knives instead and shifted them into underhanded grips as they advanced. Rarity also noticed that their weapons seemed standard, but they looked a bit better armored in gear than the others. Dash turned to the nearest one as he rushed at her. A moment later, she ducked under his knife swipe at her head and gave him an uppercut.
For a brief moment, Rarity saw what seemed like the space around the man’s chin seem to actually bend inward a little before the hit connected. To her surprise, it did almost nothing to the soldier. His head barely shifted, and Dash had to quickly recoil as he brought the knife back around. It got worse a moment later when another soldier moved in from the side with a stabbing gesture. She twisted her body around it and slammed the back of her hand into her face, but, once again, the space bent a little and the soldier wasn’t even stunned before she swept the knife back. This time, she cut a gash in Dash’s clothing with it, before both began to advance on her together. When a third came from her other side, she was forced to deflect the blow downward with one hand and again tried to attack, this time using that arm for leverage and pulling herself up to give two kicks to the side of her head, but to no avail. Instead, the first two soldiers before drove their weapons at her together and nearly caught her in a scissor grab. To escape from her precarious position, she had to throw her body back and out of the way before either blade could stab her in the eye; making her lose her balance and fall to the ground.
The three quickly advanced as she snapped on all fours; scrambling back in a crab walk. By now, Rarity saw the tension on her own face on seeing her attacks doing no good. It lasted only a bit, however, before she grit her teeth and hissed. “Having to use it twice in a week…” she sighed before raising her own marked hand. “Captain Spitfire!”
It was just like last time. Once again, her symbol lit up, along with the same light around her.
“What the…?! She’s one too!” Snips shouted. “Hurry up, Snails!”
“I’m trying!” he yelled back, banging away on his own gauntlets. “I think it got stuck up!”
The encroaching soldiers also froze in their tracks, looking just as surprised as everyone else as the aura broke over Dash and again made the changes about her. Yet while they were still forming, she snapped back up to her feet in a flash and charged at them. Crying out, she drove her palm straight into the chest of the first one. There was a momentary rippling of space, before her hand went all the way through and smashed into part of the device strapped around his chest. His eyes widened a moment as he watched it be crumpled like a tin can before the rest of his body was cast violently away.
Quickly, both of the soldiers on either side struggled to drive their knives into her, but she answered by snapping both of her arms out and catching both by the forearms. For a moment, she was perched in between the two, holding both steady as they both were stunned at the speed of her block. Before they could get their bearings, she quickly dropped to the ground and swung her leg out, catching one by the side of their knees. She cried out as she was immediately dropped to the ground, allowing Dash to snap back up, swing her head to one side to avoid the falling knife, and then drive her head forward, through the barrier she protected herself with, and into her forehead.
“Graa!” Snips finally shouted in frustration. “Enough!” Brandishing his own weapon, he left the struggling Snails behind and charged right at Dash. As soon as the third soldier was dropped, two of the gunners risked taking shots at her. The weapons they fired shot the electric bolts from before, forcing her to snap back and away to evade them. Unfortunately, that put her right in the path of Snips, and he greeted her by driving his blade forward for her chest.
Without time to react to anything else, she quickly snapped back and away, narrowly evading the tip. However, he continued to advance on her, not going for her chest again but driving the blade out for her knees and upper legs. As bumbling as he had seemed before, it was a good move; forcing her to keep moving back and never getting the leverage to counter. The gunners again were forced to hold off, but the remaining ‘bruisers’ quickly got ready to move in when they could.
As she kept moving back, Dash stepped over one of the discarded rifle barrels. Quickly, she lashed out with her toe to hook under it and knock it into the air. She meant to use it to deflect Snips’ blade away, but she got another surprise when the metal of the barrel easily sliced apart against his gauntlet-mounted weapon. The blade, apparently, was enhanced to split anything it touched without force. She winced afterward as Snips used her momentary distraction to snap his sword up and slice out for her neck. Her eyes widened, before she quickly snapped into a backward cartwheel to avoid him following up with a killing strike. Even not knowing much about swordplay, Rarity gasped on seeing it. The squat one might have been foolhardy, but he was definitely not a slouch with those blades.
Things got worse the moment Dash snapped out of her cartwheel, because the other bruisers used the moment to move in. She heard one of their heavy footsteps and spun around just in time to see one slicing out for her face. She quickly pivoted to one side, but that only put her right into the path of another, who aimed an upward slice across her neck. She quickly sidestepped this one too, but the third time was a charm as another soldier dashed in and quickly belted her across the face with an iron knuckle. Rarity gasped again on seeing her head snap back and she staggered nearly into the path of Snips’ blade. He quickly rushed forward and aimed a slash at her, but just as he brought it around she regained her footing and dodged to one side, letting the weapon slice by. Quickly she backpedaled to the other side into an opening on the street. She was trying to get clear for her next attack…
At that moment, however, Rarity saw Snails was done fiddling with his gauntlets. He raised them up and pointed at Dash, only now revealing there were some sort of tubes attached to them running to his back.
“Ms. Dash!”
She looked up from her fighting, but the warning came too late. All it served to do was make her stand still for the moment Snails needed to fire. Unlike the shots from the rifles, a stream of viscous liquid shot out. Rarity gasped as it hit its mark and pasted Dash across the back; thinking it was acid, poison, or any other of a host of terrible things. However, something much different happened instead.
Dash reacted to being hit by it…very slowly. She stumbled forward very slightly, and then only slowly turned her head around to look over her own shoulder. When she spoke, Rarity was surprised to hear her voice. “WWWhhhaaattt iiisss ttthhh-?”
She was silenced as Snails, who had taken off as soon as he was done firing, ran at her and smashed her in the face with one of his gauntlets. Her head snapped and she was knocked backward, but she nearly fell over completely as her legs only slowly got underneath her to brace her. And once she was on her feet, she only slowly seemed to realize she had even been struck, which in turn nearly left her open as the three bruisers were already moving on her. One was already slicing out for her neck, and while she tried to move out of the way it was slower than before she even called on whatever power the symbol on her hand gave her. This time, the blade sliced not only through her clothes but Rarity saw a trickle of blood fly up from her chest.
The other three quickly moved in, slashing and stabbing at her again. She managed to pull away and dodge them, but Rarity could see her movements were slower this time. She realized whatever that stuff was she had been tagged with it somehow was slowing her down. Whatever power she had that allowed her to move like a blaze before was now only making her move slightly slower than she had before she used it. She dodged two different slices at her head only to get another stab slicing across her forearm. She tried to deflect another knife moving in from across her, only for her slowed counter to not have enough power to block it fully. As a result, she barely got her head out of the way to avoid a knife that went for her eye, and had to wrap her arm around to intercept another knife headed for her ribs. That, however, just left her open for another punch, making her stagger back again.
And as she kept staggering and struggling against the three attackers, Snips snapped his other arm to side; causing a second blade to pop out and join the first. After that, he quickly began to move in behind the others…
Rarity cupped her hand to her mouth and shook all over. She glanced about, but whatever people hadn’t already fled were cringing and holding back. The only edge at the moment was all of the soldiers that were still up had their weapons trained on Dash, but none of them were firing as she was in the midst of their comrades. None were looking at her. She held fearfully a moment more, before she looked at her hand. That symbol was still there, and looked a bit more complete than it had minutes ago. She glanced back up to Dash and back to it.
She may have barely known her, but she had saved her life twice now…
Thinking she had to be insane, she helplessly shrugged to herself and held her hand out. “Um…er…Captain…what was it…Captain Spitfire…?”
No reaction. Nothing changed around her.
“Cap…Captain Spitfire? Captain Spitfire!”
Still nothing.
Dash suddenly cried out. Rarity looked out and gasped again. While she had been struggling to throttle one of the soldiers, another had moved in. She had tried to twist her body out of the way but was too slow. The knife had plunged into her side.
Agony was now painting Dash’s face along with beads of sweat. Her clothing was rapidly being stained. Somehow she managed to throw the one she was throttling off of her, but as she staggered back the soldier ripped the knife back out. She gave another aborted cry, and Rarity, for a moment, thought she would drop dead on the spot. She had no idea how deep the knife had gone in but she definitely saw more blood fly as she pulled back, and immediately one of her hands went down and clamped it as tight as she could. The soldiers kept surrounding her but didn’t move in. They knew Snips was coming in behind them, and they instead began to part out of the way to let him move.
Rarity’s eyes were pinpricks as she gasped in fear. However, she knew there was no other way now. She held off a bit longer before she finally took a deep breath and made her dainty hands into fists. Then, she took off right for Snips. Just as the soldiers finished parting and he raised both of his weapons, she tried to think of the most serious, strongest blow she could possibly imagine. Something that could really knock him for a loop.
In the end, she gave a mild cry as she lashed out with her boot and gave him a tiny kick to the ankle, causing an almost imperceptible “ding”.
Between her charge out and pathetic attack, all of the soldiers stopped and turned to her instead. That included Snips, wheeling around to her with both blades still humming. It instantly made her step back, especially since she was now close enough to see his eyes through the visor zeroing in on her.
There was a moment of silence as Rarity’s small resolve disappeared. Cringing, she took another step back before smiling sheepishly. “I’m…sorry…?”
She heard a click from her side. She didn’t even need to look; remembering Snails was standing there. She knew what was coming. Instead, she quickly backpedaled. Sure enough, she saw two streams of the thick liquid shoot by where she had been, but she cried out none the less as she tripped and stumbled on some pieces of road broken by the earlier attacks. She was still stumbling when Snips waited only long enough for the streams to die down before slicing out at her with one of his humming blades. Crying out, she stumbled off her feet all together and landed on her rear.
She hardly had time to catch her breath from the surprise when she heard the humming draw near her head. She looked up and paled; seeing Snips already aimed his weapon at her nose.
“Thanks, lady,” he snickered. “When the rainbow woman jumped in, I almost forgot you were the one we wanted ta’ start with. Good thing you reminded me, huh?”
Rarity could only gulp, petrified with fear at seeing the tip of the sword dancing an inch in front of her head. Her panicked mind tried to think of what to do as he pulled it back…
“Hey, who are-UGH!”
The sound of Snails crying out made both Rarity as well as Snips turn around, but the latter got the worst of it as a woman cried out before smacking him alongside the helmet as hard as she could with an iron pipe. The blow was solid enough to jar it askew part of the way, revolving around the squat man’s head. As a result, not only did he stagger back but was left blind and stumbling. He stumbled confused for a moment before he tried to reach up to his head, only to find his blades were still out and preventing him.
“What…? Uh…ugh! Snails! Do something!”
Rarity glanced and saw that Snails wouldn’t be helping anyone at the moment. The first blow from the pipe had knocked him alongside his own head with enough force to send him to the ground and he was still dazzled. However, most of her attention focused on her savior standing fierce and brandishing the pipe like a spear. Her hand, unbandaged, was blazing along the lines of a rune similar to Rainbow Dash’s.
“Ms....Ms. Cheerilee?!”
“They’re coming out of the woodwork!” one of the gunner soldiers yelled, snapping his weapon up. “Kill her!”
Several others quickly did the same, causing her to snap to them. She hesitated; the look on her face showing she had mostly acted out of instinct and panic. However, a moment later, she gave a cry and flung the iron pipe like a missile for the soldier who had shouted. Rarity doubted this was the intention, but as it sailed at him he instinctively crossed his weapon in front of him to protect himself, and as a result the pipe pierced some sort of tank on the side that must have been used for ammunition or fuel of a sort. As soon as it did it erupted in a splash of liquid-like flames. The soldier himself was engulfed and cried out in agony and shock; dropping his weapon and running for it. Yet the resulting splash bathed the area around where he had stood in raging fire; causing the other gunners to pull back.
The three bruisers, however, were still on the other side and spun on Ms. Cheerilee. At that point, however, Rarity finally got enough of her wits to act. She looked around herself frantically for a moment, trying to find any weapon she could, and noticed that, not too far from her, one of the gunners Dash had disabled had dropped their weapon. Not knowing what it did exactly or how to use it, she nevertheless forced her panic down and threw herself forward at it. She seized the gun, yanked it up, pointed it as best as she could at the three as they neared her old teacher, and pulled the trigger.
It ended up being another lightning one, and it snaked out a bolt that narrowly missed hitting Ms. Cheerilee before hitting the nearest soldier. Instantly, her body went rigid as portions of her skin singed from the electricity coursing through it. Rarity actually gasped at the sight and released the trigger, letting her fall to the ground limply. Fortunately, it did the trick. The two remaining bruisers, seeing she was armed with one of their weapons, glanced at her once before turning and running for cover. A good thing too, because she wasn’t sure if she could have done that again.
She remained on the ground panting hard and still holding up the weapon as Ms. Cheerilee took a moment to catch her bearings, before spinning to Dash. She was still conscious and holding onto her side, but blood was oozing around her fingers and she didn’t look capable of standing. She could only give out a ragged gasp as Ms. Cheerilee crouched at her side. The older woman extended her hand to take up a shard of cobblestone, then reached around her back. At first Rarity thought she was trying to pull, but after a moment, as Dash began to move a bit faster, she realized she was wiping Snails' material off.
“Get up…get up…we have to get out of here…”
She shook her head. “Just…just get her to the edge of town… Stagecoach’s waiting…”
Ms. Cheerilee didn’t answer as she started to pull with the arm around her back instead. Her other hand went out and pressed itself against Dash’s own bloody hand, making her wince. “Come on, get up… You can do it…”
She shook her head as she grit her teeth. “I can’t…”
At that, and as Rarity finally got enough of her own wits to try standing, she got another surprise. Ms. Cheerilee pushed her hand in harder, closed her eyes, and began to murmur something. She couldn’t make out what it was at first, but the result was unmistakable. After only a moment, Dash stopped gritting her teeth. She still looked in pain, but the agony seemed to lessen. A moment more, and she was breathing easier. After that, she began to lean up.
By now, Rarity was on her feet as well and moving toward them. Only then did she hear her.
“All better, all better, all better, all better…”
The woman’s brow quirked. That was only something she used to say to small children whenever they got a scrape or a bump. She remembered her saying it to her before, and it had no special power other than that which children gave it. Yet it seemed to be actually working now…
As Dash began to get up, Rarity looked back to the flames. They were still burning steadily and blocking a good part of the road, but the panic that had driven off the soldiers was subsiding. Several of them were regaining their bearings and trying to counterattack. What more, with two loud “shiks”, Snips managed to retract his blades. He was reaching for his head now to try and spin the helmet back. She realized they had to run…
“Rarity!”
The sound snapped her out of it and back to Cheerilee and Dash. The latter was still being somewhat supported, but was getting her feet moving as she ran over to her, beckoning for the weapon she was holding. “Give me that!”
The woman flustered a moment before nervously extending the barrel out to her. “Do you, um, know how to use that?”
“No idea,” she answered as she seized it and brought it over in front of her. “But I’m hoping it does something like the last one did!”
With that, she held a knee up and slammed the weapon down on it around the base, snapping it in half. It started to snap and sizzle, but she flung it in the direction of the bruisers to the side of the roaring flames. Soon after landing, it began to snake out bolts of electricity all over the area, staining the ground black and shooting out with enough force to melt glass on a nearby building window. The gunners and bruisers alike began to recoil from that, leaving that end of the street effectively blocked.
“Now run!” she shouted back, spinning around pushing on Rarity’s shoulder, and forcing her away. “Go!”
With as much adrenaline as was coursing through her now, it didn’t take long for Rarity to comply. Dash picked up speed as Cheerilee slowly removed her hand from her back to run with them. While the street around them was quickly getting torn up, there was a narrow alleyway just ahead. Even if they could push free, the soldiers would be able to only follow single-file. The three of them would have an easier time getting ahead. If they could just make it…
Rarity’s feet touched the sidewalk, and she was only a few feet from the alleyway, when she heard another noise. Out of the corner of the eye she saw someone suddenly fall behind.
Freezing in place, she spun back around.
Dash was pushing on forward, but Ms. Cheerilee, her own eyes widened in surprise, seemed to run in slow motion. Behind her, Rarity could see that Snails had just got enough of his bearings to raise one of his weapons and shoot, and he had gotten her in the back. Unlike Dash, who had the benefit of her faster speed, the older woman was now moving like she was wading in gelatin.
Rarity gasped, taking a step toward her. “Ms. Cheerilee!”
Dash’s hand seized her by the trailing wrist and yanked her back. A good thing too, for Snails had tried to fire at her as well and the liquid barely missed. As for Cheerilee, in spite of how slow she was moving, she saw what happened. For a moment, her wide eyes locked with Rarity’s. Her face, tightened with her own adrenaline and panic, was motionless. Rarity looked back at her. It was only a moment, but it felt like an entire minute passed between them.
Finally, she mouthed something slowly.
Just run.
Rarity stammered. “No…no, Ms. Cheerilee…!”
She was so focused on her she didn’t already see what was happening. Ms. Cheerilee’s body was acting as a shield now, blocking Snails from getting a clean shot, but he was getting up. Snips finally adjusted his helmet, and now looked angrier than ever. Both of his blades deployed again. Meanwhile, more shots went out, and the flames began to subside nearby; the result of the gunners that had ice-based weapons using them to clear a path. They’d be on them soon.
Rarity felt herself being pulled back by Dash. She resisted, but the Huntsman, even injured, wasn’t taking no for an answer. She yanked her back enough to put an arm around her and then pulled her body.
She saw, even slowed down, the woman’s face change to a smile as Dash pulled her into the alley. After that, she saw her turn around, moving to face the others. As soon as she did, however, Snips was on her, and he brought the blade across.
A splash of red. Gravity overcame Cheerilee’s own speed as she fell to her knees. The last Rarity saw was his other weapon rise again before she was yanked around the corner.
Rarity’s cry was smothered by the sound of a second Trottingham airship arriving at Flaxonville; coming in for a landing.
Celestia raised her head on hearing her door open. The moment it did, she caught Sunset Shimmer walking in, almost with a strut to her step, making her way directly to the chair across from her desk. As was normal now, she no longer wore her full uniform. She had swapped out her tunic for a looser coat and changed out her footwear for newer shoes; both despite the fact she should have had no access to getting new attire. Her hair was no longer tied back in any of the academy styles but was far looser; accentuating her flame-like coloration.
When she reached the chair, she practically reclined in it and crossed her legs, as if Celestia's office was no more than a lounge. "You wanted to talk to me?"
Celestia stared at her a moment. “Sunset, I believe the academy rules clearly state you are to knock prior to entering the Headmistress’ Office, but nevermind that.” She leaned back in her chair. “Do you remember when I called you in four weeks ago?”
“Yeah, I remember.”
The casual, dismissive tone made Celestia’s eyes narrow momentarily. “Yes…well, in that case, I suppose you remember full well what we discussed. About your behavior, both in terms of your treatment of other students as well as, frankly, your attitude.”
“I don’t understand what the problem is. I’m just trying to push the other students along.”
“And how exactly did hanging one student by a tree branch 30 meters in the air help ‘push her along’, as you say? Or trapping three students in a corner surrounded by flames?”
She shrugged. “They should have mastered telekinesis and freezing spells by now, right? I’m just giving them a bit of real-life experience.”
“What it sounds like you’re doing, Sunset, is being a bully.”
Sunset’s casual smirk turned into a frown as, to a bit of Celestia’s surprise, she leaned up in her chair. “I’m not being a bully…I’m being bored. I’m tired of being in the same classes as them. I surpassed them all over two years ago, yet I'm still stuck with kids who can barely pull off cantrips on command. I’m afraid I’m going to start forgetting the more advanced spells the longer I’m in there with them.”
“I see. Well, just because ‘you’re bored’ doesn’t give you an excuse to treat other people that way. Especially not in situations that could have gotten them hurt or left them feeling humiliated or scared.”
“Then how about you do your job and challenge me with something new?”
The sharpness of her voice, to say nothing of the insubordinate tone, was enough for the headmistress to break her position-of-authority appearance for genuine surprise. “Excuse me?”
“I’m tired of relearning lessons I have already mastered. I’m sick of acing every exam and practical. I’m doing nothing in this academy but wasting my time. You told me I was meant for more. I want more. What I’ve learned so far can’t be anywhere near it, or I wouldn’t still be here. Where’s the real magic? Where’s the material you really want me to master? How much longer am I going to have to make-believe being as pathetic as the others?”
Celestia stared; her mouth slightly ajar. Sunset stared right back without changing her expression. The clock in the room slowly ticked away a few seconds.
Finally, the headmistress closed her mouth. Taking a moment to compose herself, she resumed her previous appearance as she touched a series of papers on her desk. “That’s actually part of the reason I brought you in here today. I’ve had some plans on what direction you should take your next semester.”
At this, she pushed the papers across to Sunset. Her eyes flicked down upon them. As Celestia leaned back, she reached out and held them up to start looking them over.
She only got a page before raising an eyebrow. “A semester abroad?”
“I think you’ve been working a little too hard at the academy. You say that this material is a waste of your time, and I keep telling you that you aren’t grasping the true nature of the lesson.”
Sunset didn’t answer. She continued to slowly flip through the papers. They included tickets, brochures for fancy hotels, pictures of lovely cities and monuments, and just about everything one could possibly want in a long excursion across Greater Everfree.
“I think you’re missing the forest for the trees, Sunset. You’ve been focusing so much on your normal routine of studies that your thinking has locked in. You haven’t even set foot outside of Canterlot in years, and this will be a great opportunity for you to both broaden your horizons as well as refresh yourself. It will all be paid for, of course. You’ll be staying at some of the nicer cities in Manehattan, Fillydelphia, Cloudsdale, Mount Aris… You’ll even have a chance to see some of the outlying places of the world. Ones that are wilder with more interesting people. You could learn a lot from all of this. More than you’d be learning here for-”
“What is this?”
Celestia froze. Her face had been growing warmer and smiling until now. Now it was immobilized, and slowly lost its enthusiastic look. Sunset, on her part, regarded the papers with the same look one might regard an unusual crack in a slab of pavement. She glanced back up to her.
“I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
“This. What is it supposed to be?” Sunset answered, her tone a bit sharper.
A pause. “It’s exactly what I said. A semester of studying abroad. Practically a continental vacation.”
“Alone.”
“Well, as you said, Sunset, you are the top student at the academy. I thought you were just saying how you didn’t care about the company of the rest of the students.”
Sunset’s look remained the same. After a moment, she blinked and leaned back in her chair. Her arms crossed.
“Is it not to your liking?”
“It’s a bit confusing.”
“How so?”
“You’ve been giving me nothing but lectures on how I’ve been treating the other students, being antisocial, and acting insubordinate every time I don’t wait for you to spoon feed me something. Now you’re practically rewarding me with a trip? Not to mention, this isn’t exactly what I asked for, is it?”
Celestia’s own eyebrows narrowed a little. “Well, you didn’t exactly ‘ask’ just now. You sounded more like you demanded it…”
She groaned. “The bottom line is I don’t see how this is supposed to make me better at magic. Or using the Promethian Sigil. I thought by now you’d be teaching me how to get an Anima Viri…”
Celestia closed her eyes and exhaled as she rose from her seat. “I’ve told you many times that there’s more to using this power than just being skilled at magic.”
“Yes, and at this point, I’m wondering why you just won’t tell me what’s so important…”
“That is the reason for this trip.” She began to walk around her desk. “Getting away from school might help you realize what when you’re not surrounded by books and lessons. When you’re back in a world without magic. The world where all of this is still fairy tales.”
Sunset looked to one side and frowned. “I still remember it well enough. Dirty, noisy, smelly, hard, cold, and covered with soot grime.”
Celestia reached her side and rested one of her hands on her shoulders. Sunset didn’t look up.
“This is important, Sunset,” she spoke more quietly. “I know you don’t always believe me when I tell you how valuable these lessons are, no matter how commonplace they might seem, but they are. You’ll see at the end of this.”
Sunset sighed. “This isn’t the first time you’ve told me that…”
“Please. Just try this out. Take some time to relax, and come back to us a new young woman.”
The girl kept staring to the side for a bit longer. Her eyes then glanced back to Celestia’s hand on her shoulder. She looked at it a moment before looking back to the papers. With a long exhale, she finally reached out and reluctantly took them from the desktop.
It was impossible for anyone in the hidden room to not hear the sounds of the stone pillar rotating from within the study. No security measure of any other kind would have been necessary as the seemingly immobile stone masonry swiveled about, opening a passage within the granite blocks that led into a descending spiral staircase. They would know someone was coming. Nevertheless, Celestia didn’t show any anxiety as she readily stepped into the opening and made her way down.
She saw a light at the bottom long before reaching it; flickering across the old, somewhat-warped, stone floors and walls. It looked like half of the lamps had been lit. It grew cooler yet, surprisingly, neither dirty nor musty despite lack of use. The only sound was the crackling of the tiny oil flames. On reaching the bottom at last, she turned to the threshold and walked into the chamber.
Being an interior room, the ceiling was much lower here. This part of the castle’s secret chambers was supported by numerous columns, which themselves acted as furnishings by having stone shelves mounted into them. Both them and the walls were surrounded by books. Most of the volumes, however, were nothing more than conventional literature and basic science. A precaution Celestia had taken long ago to help obscure the truly valuable ones.
One of the special ones, however, had been withdrawn and was open at the reading table in front of the fireplace. The fire itself was out, as the smoke in the chimney would have been a dead giveaway, but two oil lamps were placed on the table over it.
And standing behind it at her chair, looking not only unapologetic and unafraid but even angry, stood Sunset Shimmer.
Until that moment, Celestia's face had been hard and firm--the picture of her more authoritative and disciplinarian side. Yet the moment she saw the book and recognized its shape and volume, realizing exactly which book it was in her collection, her face momentarily flushed in true panic. In a snap, her hand performed a gesture, and she let out a quick spell from her lips. A golden sigil later, and the book instantly snapped itself closed and flew through the air right into her waiting hand.
“Nice to see you again, headmistress,” Sunset practically spat; ignoring her move.
“What did you just read from this?” Celestia instantly retorted; her voice cold, grave, and serious.
She snorted. “Why should I tell you? Why should I ever be honest with you again, when you were hiding so much from me?” Her eyes narrowed. “After you didn’t even have the decency to try and throw me out of the academy yourself? That you tried to trick me into walking out and changing the Glyphkey?” She crossed her arms. “I’m sure you’ve guessed by now that I never left to begin with. I’ve been keeping an eye on things here for the past month. It’s great to see how things work when they’re not worried about being hidden behind my back.”
Celestia stiffened a moment, taking a few breaths to maintain her composure before she slowly set the book down on a shelf nearby. “You have no idea what danger you just put yourself and everyone on this entire world in by reading from this book just now… I need to know how much you read.”
“I think you’re going to answer my questions first, Celestia. For once. Why did you try and get rid of me?”
The older woman took in a deep breath, forcing herself to calm further. “I didn’t. I meant what I said. The trip would have been good for you-”
“You tried to change the Glyphkey. You did the moment I left. I saw it.”
Celestia was silent at that--her face that of one caught red-handed.
“And that’s not all I saw. I’ve been listening in on you. You’ve been looking over the other students. You’ve been trying to find a ‘successor’…a new ‘star pupil’. And it sounds like you found one too. I even overheard you saying some of the same little nuggets you used to feed me.”
Celestia stiffened further, pursing her lips. As for Sunset, her teeth began to clench.
“So which is it, ‘headmistress’? Did you betray me? Or did you just feed me lies all along?”
The chamber was silent for a moment. Celestia closed her eyes, inhaled deeply, and slowly released. “No…it was never a lie.”
“Oh, I learned that much,” Sunset sneered back, uncrossing her arms. “Right from that book. You were preparing me for great things. Things that would change the world forever. Having me actually be a god. And then what did you do when it was time to take me to the next step?”
Her eyes blazed with anger as her hands curled into fists.
“You lied. You held me back on purpose. This book…all of this!” She gestured around. “There’s no telling how many secrets in here you still haven’t shared with me! After all the work I’ve put into this! After all the times I’ve done everything you’ve asked of me!”
Celestia exhaled again. “Sunset…”
“Haven’t I always aced every challenge you gave me? Haven’t I passed every bar you set higher? Didn’t I prove I was the best at magic? That if there was any power in the world out there for me to discover that I could handle it? You knew all along what I was meant for! What I was born for!”
“Sunset…”
“But you wouldn’t give it to me! And not only did you hold me back from it, you tried to drive me away! You tried to keep me from ever getting what was mine! What I was born to have!”
Celestia began to quiver.
Sunset started to step around the desk and toward her. “And on top of all that, you tried to replace me! You tried to cheat my own fate and have someone else take it from me! After everything you told me! Everything you promised me! You tried to take my life…my birthright…and throw it in the trash! You tried to ruin me!”
Suddenly, Celestia’s eyes snapped open, her face tightened in anger, and she wheeled on Sunset.
“Yes! I did!”
The girl was stunned into silence by the sudden retort, recoiling. Celestia’s eyes continued to blaze into hers.
“Do you want to know why I did? Because you test out control and torture charms on your classmates. Because you threaten and browbeat every student who starts getting grades close to yours. Because you tease and humiliate your peers in front of crowds. Because, to you, there are no other people in the world. There are only potential threats you need to grind down under your heel. I have no interest in your ‘birthright’, Sunset. I don’t care about what your destiny says. I care about what you are going to choose to make yourself. And as the years have gone by, I’ve watched as I’ve seen you twist and curl up inside into a coward and a bully who needs to be the biggest person in the room so that she feels good about herself. And while I blame myself, and I’m even angry at myself for letting it happen, it doesn’t change the fact that it has happened.”
Sunset’s anger began to return here; her body stiffening again.
“You mastered magic and power, but you never mastered anything that truly mattered. Empathy. Loyalty. Humility. Mercy. Simply seeing someone’s…anyone’s…welfare as more important than yours. That’s why I sent you on that trip. I thought there was a chance that maybe if you weren’t so focused on just getting better at using your power and instead focused on other people that maybe you’d learn to appreciate them more than yourself. That maybe you’d learn what the real purpose of your power was meant to be. You could have had that destiny you wanted, but you don’t deserve it. You haven’t earned it. And if you had fully understood what was in that book, you’d realize that’s why I can never let you have that power.”
The silence, far more tense and even cold this time, hung in the chamber. Celestia stared firmly at Sunset, whose own rage continued to build. Her face slowly turned into a sneer as her entire body tensed up. The Promethian Sigil on her own hand slowly began to gleam.
“Well, if that’s what you wanted, then you made one big mistake, Celestia,” she slowly growled as the sigil gleamed brighter. Her hand began to raise. “The fact that you tried to secretly get me to leave without just throwing me out means one thing: you’re scared of me. I think it’s time for me to show you just how much I've learned.”
Celestia’s face remained stony. Her own hand began to rise; her own sigil with all six emblems gleaming as well. At once, Sunset crossed her arms in front of her and began to trace them; performing what Celestia recognized as a defensive spell.
She simply shook her head at it. “No, Sunset. You’re the one who made the mistake. I honestly hoped that you wouldn’t ever reach this point…”
Only a single finger of her own moved.
Sunset’s casting was interrupted as she heard a ripping of fabric from her pocket. She looked down, but it was too late. There was already a hole in it. Shocked, she snapped her head forward just in time to see her Glyphkey sail right into Celestia’s waiting palm. She started to gasp on seeing the headmistress’ fist begin to gleam.
“But for some time now, deep down inside, I expected you to.”
Sunset’s eyes shrank into pinpricks. “Don’t-”
She was cut off as, with one last show of power, Celestia’s cast energy flowed into the Glyphkey and shattered it into a thousand pieces.
Sunset’s mouth still hung open, her hand reaching out in vain in front of her, when she found herself no longer anywhere in the study but in the middle of an empty forest. She blinked a few times, her mind getting her bearings as the close, cool feelings of the basement were replaced with those of an open, hot summer night. The silence was broken by cheeping of insects, and the moon shone down above through the tree branches.
She finally snapped around, looking about herself. There was nothing to see. Nothing but woods, grass, and rocks. She turned all the way about and saw she was on a bluff. She actually ran forward a few steps at that, trying to get through the tree line, but she stopped as soon as she saw a clearing. She truly hadn’t gone far at all. She was on the ridge that overlooked Canterlot Castle. Only there was no castle there now, nor signs there had ever been one. She saw it the same way everyone else in the world now saw it--as nothing other than what its master wanted them to see.
She stared at the empty valley for half a minute. Feelings of betrayal, hurt, and, more than anything, rage painted her features. Hot, hateful vengeance filled her eyes. Her teeth gnashed and her face tightened in fury.
At last, she arched her head up and screamed as loudly as she could at the valley; loud enough to echo for miles.
“I HATE YOU!”
Out of all five magistrates that were still conscious, only one of them wasn't huddled in terror. That one looked out defiantly and hatefully at Sunset as she stared at her. It brought a somewhat sad smile to her face at the memory it had elicited. As if she wondered if she had once looked the same way. However, she soon turned her attention away from that.
Sunset, her knight, and her retinue of steam soldiers had taken over the small jailhouse of Flaxonville. Most of the magistrates were lying in smoldering or frozen piles throughout the various rooms, having been systematically put down one after the other when they stormed in. The front doors of the building were gutted with fire, as were several of the doors inside the building proper. While one or two soldiers were treating themselves for grazing bullet wounds that had gone off and looked somewhat stressed, Sunset herself, as well as her knight, showed no signs of exertion.
She smirked as she placed her hands on her hips, gazing down at the current object of her full attention. She was standing just inside a holding cell; the bars of which had been melted into slag and were still gleaming. Cowering rather pathetically at her feet was a white-haired street magician. Sunset's mood seemed to be somewhat improved on seeing her cringing.
“So,” she smirked, “I hear you’re the one who killed a Light Eater over in Appleloosa. At least you’ve been bragging about that all day, haven’t you? The ‘Loud and Obnoxious Trixie’, wasn’t it?”
She could do nothing but take the insult as she swallowed. “Act-actually…it’s…th-th-the Great and Powerful…”
“I see. So, Ms. Great and Powerful…” She held up the palm of her hand. Beneath her glove, her sigil gleamed once before a ball of fire materialized into it. “Why don’t you show me some of that power you used to kill that Light Eater? Judging by the fact you look about to wet yourself, you got a good long look at what we can do when we came in here.” She snickered. “But that’s nothing to someone who killed a Light Eater, right? How about you teach me a lesson?”
The woman swallowed. The fireball began to grow larger.
“I’ll give you to the count of three to make the first move. One…”
She got no farther. “Ok, I admit it! Trixie is just a street performing magician!” the white-haired woman practically shrieked in panic. “I got really jealous that this other street magician was doing so much better than me and making my usual crowds get bored! I heard that people were saying they saw a street magician kill a Light Eater so I went with it to try and get more business! That’s all!”
The fireball dimmed a bit, but didn’t go out. “Oh? So you didn’t kill a Light Eater?”
“Of course I didn’t!” she screeched. “How in Greater Everfree would I kill a Light Eater?! With fireworks?! Nobody can kill a Light Eater! Come on! If I could kill a Light Eater, do you think I’d still be stuck pulling my own show cart all over the country trying to drum up whatever spare change I can get?!”
Sunset turned her head slightly, seeming to study her while enjoying the desperate, fearful look in her eyes.
“Well,” she finally admitted, “you certainly look weak and powerless. Not really capable of amounting to anything other than some loudmouth nomad. I’d say completely pathetic in every way.”
She could tell Trixie hated hearing that, but she could do nothing. Only wither under her gaze and take it.
After a moment, she snapped her hand and dismissed the fireball. “Of course…I don’t really need to be chasing red herrings. There’s always a chance you’ll take up boasting again and make things harder on me. Maybe I should just get you out of the way right now…”
Sunset grinned on seeing Trixie begin to shake like a leaf, drawing further into herself. She relished it for a moment before her hand suddenly snapped out. The magician cried as she found her hand roughly seized and snapped up, so that Sunset could get a clear look at the back. She almost snickered on seeing nothing but smooth skin.
“Then again, you’re really not worth the effort, are you?” She cast the hand aside like useless garbage. “There’s only one thing you’re good for now. This other street magician you mentioned.” She turned her own hand over and pulled her glove up slightly, so that Trixie could get a good look at the back of it. “I don’t suppose she had a symbol like this on her hand, did she?”
Trixie, just now getting relief at being spared, could only blink and stammer for a moment. “Well…I, uh…that is I think she kept her hands covered… At least I think so…um…” She began to look thoughtful. “Did I see a symbol like that? I thought I’d seen it before. Maybe I’m only thinking of one of my tarot cards…”
Sunset’s smile ebbed. She lowered the glove, then turned her hand back over to raise her palm.
“B-B-But she was about your height!” Trixie quickly cried. “And she wasn’t nearly as boisterous or impressive as Trixie! She had purple eyes and long, purple hair with just a streak of pink in it! She ran around everywhere with a dog! That’s all I know! I promise!”
The smile returned. “I believe you.” Looking into her eyes the whole time, Sunset reached over, plucked up the magician’s star-covered, wide-brimmed hat, and pushed it down on Trixie’s head enough to go over her nose. “That’s why you’re going to live to be loud and obnoxious for many other audiences for many years to come.”
She rose to her feet and turned around, not giving the magician on the floor another look. Instead, she began to walk for the exit, raising a hand and snapping her fingers to her group as she went. They quickly fell in behind her, especially her knight at her side.
On leaving the cellblock and entering the main room beyond, however, she saw several members of the other airship group. Among them, helmets off and looking both ashamed and afraid were Snips and Snails. Sunset's smile immediately faded on spotting them. She walked up to them both, causing either one to look down and take a nervous step back, before crossing her arms and frowning.
“I suppose I should have known better than to trust you two idiots with something; even if it was so simple,” she nearly sneered.
“S-S-Sorry, Lady Sunset…” Snips whimpered.
“At…at least we got one person who had a symbol on their hand, right?” Snails ventured with a hopeful smile.
“After letting two others get away and after getting a beating from a sigil-bearer who didn’t have a single Anima Viri to her name!” Hissing a bit, she rubbed her hand against her forehead. “I don’t know why I bothered giving you two those weapons. It’s like trying to teach pigs to sing…” Putting her hand back at her side, she looked up to both of them. “You two just make sure those descriptions of the two of them are spot-on so that we kill them on sight next time we see them. From what you said about the one with rainbow hair, she does have an Anima Viri. And if you two couldn’t get rid of her when she didn’t even know how to use it properly, she’ll crumple you up like a pair of tin cans once she finds out.”
“Um, yes sir…er, ma’am!”
“You bet, Lady Sunset!”
She glared at the both of them as they stood there, both saluting and staring at her. Her sneer returned. “Well, what are you two doing standing around here? Get back to your ship and keep heading toward the rendezvous!”
Both gulped together, and quickly put their helmets on so fast that both of them put them slightly askew. Neither seemed to notice as they turned and ran for the doorway.
As it turned out, they barely managed to make it to the threshold when another soldier came in the opposite way. They ended up waiting for her to pass before rushing out, only to squeeze themselves in the opening. As they struggled to push through, the new soldier quickly ran forward and saluted.
“Lady Sunset, we have a group coming to the station right now. I don’t think we can make it back to the Rising Sun before they get here.”
She crossed her arms. “Is it the Appleloosan 16th?”
“No. It looks like the mayor and another group of magistrates.”
Sunset paused a moment and thought this over before finally smirking. “Well, that’s handy.”
The soldier was confused at that. “Ma’am, we can wipe out this entire group without a problem if they try anything-”
“Get back out and tell your group to hold their fire.”
The soldier now seemed very puzzled, but only opened her mouth slightly before closing it again. She knew full well not to argue with her, and quickly turned to go and do as she was told; pushing Snips and Snails through as she did.
The knight turned his own helmet toward her. “You’re standing down?”
“This mayor is either being bold or foolish by trying to stand up to us after all we’ve done. I think rather than any more unnecessary doctor visits and potential corpses, we can make him work for us.”
Without another word, she began to stroll toward the entrance. The knight hesitated a moment before following in her footsteps, and the rest of the soldiers inside quickly began to form up and follow suit.
Crossing the outer threshold and descending the entrance steps of the sheriff's station, Sunset passed back onto the main road of the town. There were a few traces of melting ice crystals, flames, and a handful of spots stained black that had an almost burnt-fish-esque smell — the result of needing to disperse crowds when the local magistrates tried to stop them from walking in. Most of the people out there were her soldiers, rapidly lining up to either disembark (including Snips and Snails) or awaiting her command.
However, the group in question that had been announced was rapidly approaching. In true Appleloosan fashion, they were brandishing their weapons, squaring their jaws, and marching up boldly as if daring one of the soldiers to take a shot at them. They at least had a size advantage now. About 30 of them were all together, being led by an older man in glasses who already had his own revolver drawn—just enough to make them outnumber Sunset’s own group.
She never lost her smirk as she came down to meet him. They both halted about twenty feet from one another in the middle of the road. Sunset was bold enough when she stood there alone, but it wasn't long before the knight was at her side and shifting his lance to the ready. The rest of her force fell in behind her soon after. As for the older man, who she assumed was the mayor, he glared at her while the others behind him aimed their weapons, although they held their fire.
“Trottinghamites…” he practically growled. “If this was your attempt to start a war, you should have brought more soldiers. I don’t know why you thought you could just come in here and do what you want in our town, but if you thought we’d just roll over for you then you didn’t learn much from the last war. We’ve already got messengers running out to spread the word to the military. Your regent will be hearing about this very soon and you better believe Appleloosa will make her pay for everything you’ve done here. Now throw down your arms and get on the ground before we put bullets in your heads.”
The soldiers behind Sunset tensed at that, beginning to raise their weapons. However, neither Sunset nor her knight flinched.
After a moment more, however, her smile waned as her face grew innocent and apologetic, and she wrung her hands together. “Oh…I’m so terribly sorry. I know this doesn’t quite make amends for this, but we, and the entire government of Trottingham, apologize terribly for this entire fiasco. Please, this entire situation got terribly out of hand. While I will admit we overstepped our bounds on the current treaty, I strongly urge you to reconsider. None of us wants another war to start over this misunderstanding.”
The mayor’s eyes widened incredulously. “Mis…misunderstanding?! Is that what you call this? A ‘misunderstanding’? 28 people have been seriously injured and one is dead! Misunderstanding…did your little lap dogs just ‘accidentally’ take off that woman’s head? And who the hell are you anyway?”
“Oh, forgive me… Captain Sunset Shimmer of Trottingham, Lady of Queen’s Lynn,” she introduced, even throwing in a small curtsy on top of it. “And I do most sincerely apologize for what transpired. I specifically ordered my subordinates to not use their weapons on anyone unless fired upon first, although it has come to my attention that some of those under my command disobeyed. Rest assured, they will be dearly punished for such a casual attitude toward safety of civilians.”
By now, Snails was looking up from his group and appearing confused. He nearly said something, but Snips quickly elbowed him before he could make a sound.
“As for the victim who lost her life, am I correct in saying that she was confirmed to not be a citizen of Appleloosa?”
The mayor, caught by that, hesitated. “Well, no, she wasn’t…but citizen or not-”
“I’m sorry, I just wanted to make sure we were all on the same page before I started to explain myself. Didn’t want any misinterpretations,” she answered, throwing in a half-snicker. “Anyway, as I was saying, this was an important mission from our government. Normally I’m not supposed to let anyone in on matters of state, but, seeing as your citizens have been hurt and you’ve confirmed that the one responsible was not of your government, I suppose it’s only appropriate to let you know.”
She folded her hands again, looking just a tiny bit anxious.
“You see, over the past two years we’ve experienced insurgent attacks. Very large and very deadly ones. Ones that have claimed lives. Dozens of lives in some cases. And always committed by the same individuals: ones who bear this symbol on their hands.”
At this, Sunset leaned down to the ground. Some of the magistrates stiffened, but none of them did more on seeing her simply poke her finger into the dirt and debris on the road. She drew a hexagonal symbol on it, matching the one on her still-gloved hand.
“I don’t suppose you’ve seen this symbol on the hands of any of your citizens, have you?”
The mayor regarded it for a moment, but kept his jaw tightened. “Maybe I have and maybe I haven’t. Why should I tell you either way?”
“Oh, it’s not for our sake I point it out,” she innocently answered as she rose again. “People who have symbols like this? We’ve noticed random citizens with them in our country for some time, but no one thought to speak up about it. That is…not until they started going insane.”
The mayor crooked his eyebrow. “Insane?”
“Until they started killing everyone around them in acts of pure bloodlust. Then we all noticed them. Especially since those who tried to hold them down ended up having their heads smashed in or their throats ripped out. Especially since they ignored the bullets we tried to put into them. Especially since they did things that make all this…” She gestured around her to the damage all about. “Look like a missed catch breaking a window.” She shrugged. “We’re not really sure why they started showing up. Only that it seemed to happen around the time of the Lunar Fall. Our going theory is they might be related to the Nighttouched.”
A few of the people around looked uneasy, although most of them regarded Sunset with continuing suspicion and distrust. The mayor was one of them. “And what does that have to do with what happened here?”
“Well, while that was the going theory, another one was that it was some sort of new weapon. That somehow our neighbors had found a way to turn people into living engines of destruction, and were sending them back into our country to wreck havoc as insurgents. So we were sent to find out. Now, I believe if you examine the body of that woman more closely, you’ll find she was the only one we cornered. However, two more that we located escaped, and they’re nothing compared to the one we’re trying to track down.”
“What do you mean?”
“Remember what I said about dozens of lives? There’s one in particular who did just that. Completely leveled an entire town as well as the regiments we sent in to stop her. We found out she got away by masquerading as a street magician and fled the country. We thought she might have made it into Appleloosa. By now, I’m sure you’ve heard the rumors?”
The mayor paused; some of his composure cracking. “What rumors?”
“The ones that are streaming out of Fillydelphia, last I heard. About how someone supposedly killed a Light Eater by themselves? Supposedly a street magician? Sounds like it fits our description to a tee. Believe me, after seeing what she left behind…” Her face grew anxious as she shook her head. “There’s no one else who could have done it. That’s why we’re using all of this latest weaponry. We developed it specifically to handle the kind of threat these individuals represent. Anything less? Doesn’t stand a chance.”
Now the unease was visible on the group’s faces. Even the mayor was beginning to break. As for Sunset, she raised her hands in an almost pleading gesture as she stepped in closer, and by now the people didn’t react to her as before.
“I truly am very sorry for all of this, and I’ll make sure that whatever compensation you want for the damages, both to people and properties, is relayed straightaway to Regent Cinch as soon possible. However, if Appleloosa isn’t responsible for these people but you had them in your territory, then my guess is whoever is putting them out will soon be attacking your country as well. It’s very important that we find out who and where before then. So important that I’m afraid I’ll have to be departing by your leave or without it.”
A moment of silence passed over the group. Sunset never broke her pose as she looked back at the mayor.
“How did you know they’d let us leave like that?”
Sunset, her face having returned to her sly smirk now that they were nearly to the Rising Sun, let out a small chuckle. “If they had really thought they had the upper hand after what we had done, they would have just killed us. They wouldn’t have tried to get us to surrender first.”
The knight walked on silently after her a moment. “That makes sense. I know you normally keep everything you know about whoever has those symbols silent, though, even though those were half-truths at best. Do you think he’ll believe them?”
“It doesn’t matter. Only that word starts going around, and people act on it. One way or another, they’re going to realize that Trottingham wants people with that symbol on their hand. Either they believe what I said and start doing our job for us, or they don’t believe me but start rounding them up into more obvious places until they find out what we want with them. Either way, their make our lives easier.”
“I should have known better…” the knight muttered. “That sort of trick has you written all over it.”
“The last group in Greater Everfree that tried to act ‘honorably’ to their enemies had their country wiped out overnight. I’ll stick with what works. All that matters to us right now is we have two fugitives on the run and now we have a description of our likely real target. We need to hurry on to the rendezvous and hopefully knock out those two while we’re at it. And unfortunately after the mess that those two oafs made, we’re going to have to be just a little more discrete about it. Just because I want these people taken out doesn’t mean I want to have to blast through several countries worth of armed forces to do it.”
The two reached the gangplank and began to walk up and into the airship’s interior. The knight’s head lowered. “If even one was enough to give our forces some trouble, I’m not sure we’ll be able to take out two without causing more of a scene.”
“With those two handling it? I’d have to say you’re right.”
The door handle creaked, causing Applejack to instantly look up from her spot against the wall and see it start to swing open.
She quickly pulled up to a stance. “Hey there! Wait just ah minute! How long y’all plan on-”
She couldn’t get anything else out. The door had barely opened before a pair of trays bearing simple rations and water were shoved in through the doorway, so fast that half of the water was shaken out of one of the cups, before it nearly slammed shut again.
Applejack made a fist and growled at the now-closed door. She advanced on it a moment, looking like she meant to smash her fist against it, before she relented and spun around. “How’d ya’ like that? We go an’ save their necks last night and this is the thanks we get? Treatin’ us like we’re criminals!”
Twilight Sparkle, seated on the floor, knees drawn up to her chest and looking rather dismayed simply sighed. “I told you that more people knowing about this only causes more trouble…”
Applejack frowned and pounded her fist against a support. They were in one of the smaller buildings now. It had been used for storage but was mostly emptied except for a few smaller boxes of minor supplies, but it only had one door and high windows with bars to prevent anyone from stealing from it. Following what had happened with the wall, the lt. colonel had been at a loss about what to make of the two of them for some time, as had everyone else. Even some members of the Apple family were hesitant; not sure whether to be appreciative or fearful. At last, the lt. colonel asked if they could come to this building and wait until they had a chance to talk this over. Applejack had been upset at that, especially the insinuation that they had somehow done something wrong by saving the fort, but reluctantly complied. Now it was noon of the next day and getting hot, yet still no word.
She pulled her fist back and looked at the back of it. Following the fight, her new clothes, weapon, and, most importantly, power had disappeared fairly quickly. One new thing remained, however. She now had an emblem on one of the points of her hexagon just like Twilight. Looking closer at it, she could make out it was a bit more detailed and intricate than a spot, but right now she was just sick of new things popping up on her hand without her say-so on top of everything else. She winced a little as she started to walk back in the room. Her abilities had simply faded of their own accord shortly after the fight ended, but what really got her now was the fact that all of her bruises and soreness from before she gained that power were now back with a vengeance. Even sitting around was painful.
She finally looked up again to Twilight. Her dog Spike had been allowed to be in the room with them, as the people seemed as uneasy about him as the two of them, and he now lay at Twilight’s side along with her. “How much longer ya’ s’pose they plan on keepin’ us in here? I reckon after last night, I could just punch my way right through these walls if need be…” She grimaced after saying that, looking at her fist. “If I could figure out how that damn fool thing worked… Don’t s’pose you could tell me how?”
Twilight put a hand to the bridge of her nose. “Right now, we don’t know what they think of us. But if we try to just bust out of here by smashing through a building, we’ll definitely get on their bad sides.”
“They ain’t really thinkin’ we’re some kinda monsters ‘r somethin’, are they? I mean…sure, that was pretty crazy last night, but we defended the fort!”
Twilight looked to one side. “Nobody thinks too highly of anything unusual ever since the Lunar Fall… They may think it’s all got something to do with the Nighttouched, the Light Eaters, or anything else. Especially Appleloosans.”
Applejack frowned. “Now ya’ take that…” However, in the middle of speaking up, and even raising her fist, she cut herself off and frowned. She sadly lowered her hand soon after; clearly knowing it was the truth. She put her hands back on her hips and stood there silently. Twilight continued to look at the floor without moving.
Applejack finally looked back up. “Reckon at some point they’re gonna come in here and ask us ‘bout what happened.”
Twilight sighed again. “You’re probably right.”
“So…what exactly did happen?”
Twilight looked up at her, spying Applejack staring back with narrowed eyes.
“An’ please…none of that pig swallor ‘bout needin’ ta’ keep it a secret. Least not to me. I figure at this point I’m in it ‘bout as deep as I’m gonna get, and seein’ as I lent you a hand last night I think I deserve the full truth.” She crossed her arms. “Figure maybe if I know everything I won’t go blabbin’ nothing you don’t want me ta’ say ta’ the lt. colonel.”
Twilight hesitated, thinking that over. Finally, she slumped and exhaled, seeming finally resigned. She patted her side. “Sit down.”
Applejack crooked a brow.
“You want to know the whole truth or at least everything I know about it? Start by sitting next to me.”
The cowgirl stood still a second longer, but finally uncrossed her arms and walked over to her. A moment later, she was plopping down next to her on the floor.
“Hold your hand out. The one with the Promethian Sigil.”
Applejack was confused a moment before she remembered that was what Twilight had called it the other day. She did as she was told. Twilight, in turn, began to uncover her own hand. “Do you remember what I told you about this sigil the other day?”
Her confusion grew a bit more; her lips twisting. “Uh…um…somethin’ ‘bout spirits, souls, and somesuch?”
She groaned a little. “That it’s a symbol that your body can house spirits and souls that aren’t its own and use them. What do you remember about last night when you transformed?”
“Easy. I got bigger, stronger, all them fancy duds, and had a big hammer I could swing ‘round like it was nothin’.”
Another groan. “Do you remember something before all that?”
Applejack thought a moment. “Wait…yeah, I do. I remember…” She trailed off, pausing as the full memory came back. “I…I remember Pa. Ya’ told me ta’ call his name and say them words and…” Her pupils shrank. “That’s right…I thought I heard him call back ta’ me…”
“You didn’t think anything. You did hear him.”
She looked alarmed. “Wait…what? But…that ain’t possible. He’s been dead fer years!”
“I saw you holding that hammer the other day. You almost didn’t put it down after we talked. When you were holding onto it, you felt like he was nearby, didn’t you? Like he was somehow right there with you?”
Applejack’s jaw loosened. “How’d…how’d you…?”
“That’s the real power of a Promethian Sigil,” Twilight cut off. “That hammer of yours was your father’s, wasn’t it?”
“Well, yeah but-”
“It was his favorite tool, wasn’t it?”
“Y…Yeah…”
“And that’s why you keep it now, isn’t it? Because it reminds you of him?”
As uneasy as the conversation made her, Applejack nodded. “Yeah.”
“What happened when your father died is he imparted a piece of his spirit onto it. People do that sometimes with things that they had a strong attachment to in life. Usually it impacts places, but sometimes it impacts common objects. Once your Promethian Sigil appeared on your hand, it gave you the ability to resonate with those pieces of spirits. Last night, I saw your hammer start to glow. Your father’s spirit was reaching out to you. After that, all I had to do was tell you the words for the Binding Ceremony.”
She reached over and pointed to the new spot on one of the points of her hexagon.
“That symbol right there? That’s your father’s. His spirit is now bound to you.”
Applejack’s jaw hung lower. She held up her hand, staring at it and especially the point. Yet now, she grew even more surprised. Impossible as it was, even though she couldn’t read the symbol at all, something funny was happening to her. Just looking at the symbol and the strange emblems on it…somehow seemed to fit her father. Like it suited him in some way.
She blinked and turned back to Twilight. “But…what’s that mean?”
Twilight leaned back and took a deep breath. “The true power of a Promethian Sigil is that it allows its bearer to unite their own soul with that of others. When that happens, not only does the essence of the spirit flow into them along with their power and knowledge, it acts as a multiplier. Both the bearer and the spirit become stronger than they ever were on their own when it’s used properly. The bearer also takes on their own Role.”
“Er…roll? As in…rollin’ a log or rollin’ out a barrel? Or a dinner roll?”
Twilight grimaced a little. “No…Role. Here…look at this.”
She held out her own hand next to hers, so that the symbols were adjacent. “What do you see?”
Applejack looked them over and shrugged. “A pair of six-sided things with a point standin’ out.”
“Really? Look closer.”
She leaned in a bit more and looked them over. After a moment, she began to make out other details. The points weren’t exactly the same, the symbols weren’t turned the same way, and some edges were emphasized more over the others. After looking for a bit longer, she began to see how they might have been identical at a glance but were really quite different when one studied the details.
“They…ain’t quite the same,” she finally admitted.
She nodded. “That’s why we both looked different when we united with the respective spirits. They had something to do with it, but so did we.”
Applejack scratched the back of her neck. “But I didn’t do no fancy magic like you did. I just felt bigger and stronger.”
“That’s because your sigil is that of the Warrior,” Twilight explained. “Mine is that of the Caster. That’s why my teacher tried to teach me how to do spells even before I got my Anima Viri.”
“Uh…beg yer pardon?”
“It’s…another word for one of the souls you can use. That’s the easiest way to think of it. Anyway, she tried to teach me so that I’d be able to use my power more easily and safely when I got mine.”
The farmer leaned back against the wall when Twilight finally finished. She looked to the ceiling and thought. For several minutes, she simply sat there thinking about everything she heard.
“Y’know,” she spoke at last, “until now I was thinkin’ this here sigil was somethin’ spooky or nasty. But hearin’ all this and after last night?”
To Twilight’s surprise, she suddenly sat up and turned to her with a grin.
“Well, yee-haw! Ain’t this sure somethin’!”
The other woman recoiled in surprise sharp enough for Spike to look up. “Wha…huh?”
She gave another start as Applejack slapped her on the shoulder. “I mean, think about it Twilight! Last night, the two of us took on a whole hoard of Nighttouched by ourselves! Sure, I was plum tuckered out afterward and I kinda feel like gum under a shoe, but that was my first time! I reckon if I get better at it and we work together, why…I bet we can rid all of Appleloosa of them Nighttouched fer good!”
Twilight was rather alarmed at the suggestion, yet after staring at Applejack only a moment her face began to sink.
“Why, I’ll bet we can even take back the land they took!” She looked skyward and slapped her fist in her hand. “We can finally drive ‘em out! Well…or at least keep ‘em from ever comin’ back. The two of us ‘r as good as a whole gang of soldiers. This here sigil thing might be jus’ what we need! Heh, the funny thing is ‘til now I kept thinkin’ this might be some sort o’ curse, but after last night? Well then-”
“It won’t work.”
Applejack’s grin faded as she looked back to Twilight, seeing her head bowed low and rueful.
“Huh?” she echoed back, rather confused at her dismal response. “Well, why the hell not? I mean, look at what we did last night! That was nothin’ I’ve ever seen before!”
Twilight grimaced. “You really don’t think we can take on every last Nighttouched in Equestria, do you?”
She paused. “Well…I, uh…well, I’m sure it won’t be easy and it won’t be done in one night, but-”
“You saw those parasprites last night and what they did. Those are weakest of the fully transformed creatures in Equestria. There’s things a lot bigger and deadlier than them in there.”
Some of Applejack’s enthusiasm died. “Er…really?”
“And you’re not forgetting the Light Eaters, are you? So long as no one kills them, no one can take any territory back from Equestria. You know things like swords, bullets, cannons, and even hammers don’t hurt them, right?”
Now Applejack began to look uneasy as well, but then looked hopeful again. “Say, you don’t suppose that magic of yours…”
Twilight cut her off with a sigh. “I can kill little ones with it so long as I only have to fight one at a time…but there’s ones that are stronger or even gigantic. We have no idea how many of them there even are. Even assuming that you can find a way to hurt them too, only two of us against dozens? Or hundreds?”
Applejack winced, but snapped her fingers a moment later. “Wait a sec…Braeburn! And not just him! You said more people would turn up with these things! Maybe it’s a sign! Maybe-”
Twilight grit her teeth, beginning to look exasperated. “I already told you!” she nearly shouted, cutting the farmer off again and starting to sound angry. “Most of the people who develop the Promethean Sigil go crazy! And when they do, you either have to kill them or seal them! I sealed Braeburn, so that means he can’t possibly get an Anima Viri of his own or use his sigil in any way! So either way, whether they end up dead or sealed, other people can’t help! And Anima Viris don’t just pop out of the blue! There’s only a handful of them in the world and only a fistful of ways you can get one to join with you! I was shocked to see you resonate with one last night because that’s the first one I’ve seen since I got mine!”
Applejack was stunned into silence now, not only at the response but more so Twilight’s sudden surge of emotion. She glared back at the farmer a moment before moaning and turning back. She drew her knees up and wrapped her arms around them. Her voice grew quieter but also sadder.
“Do you think I haven’t tried thinking of a way to use my power to actually put a stop to all of this? I can’t even put a stop to it when they surge across the borders. It’s just no good. We’d need an entire army of us to be able to stop this, and the one person in the world who was trying to make one got wiped out the same night that the Lunar Fall happened. Now there’s no hope.”
The last part confused Applejack. “What’dya mean…”
She trailed off, though, before she could finish the question, and looked to the wall with a frown.
“What the hay…?”
Twilight, hearing the change in her voice, snapped out of her momentary funk. “What’s wrong?”
“Jus’ listen.”
Twilight was puzzled herself a moment before leaning her head closer to the wall. In truth, the walls weren’t the best at being soundproof and there had been a good deal of noise that day. The army was scrambling to resupply and the sounds of rubble moving and hammers pounding rang everywhere as they did their best to repair the gaping damage in the walls of Fort Chestnut. Yet now that they stopped and listened, they found out there was much more. The sounds of voices and moving about were drowning out the sounds of construction. A whole multitude seemed to be muttering.
The two continued to silently listen for several minutes, and they only heard the noises get closer and louder until they became a rather resounding din. Some of the sounds got so near they began to hear them directly through the walls, indicating whoever was saying them was standing right up against the wall of the structure. It started to move around them soon after, and judging by how many were there it became clear that it wasn’t just the resident population of the fort.
Applejack nearly questioned what this meant, when she heard the door turn again. This time, both women and Spike turned to it. It opened soon after, nearly knocking over the food that had been set inside, and swung wide enough to show a pair of Appleloosan soldiers.
Both still seemed a bit nervous to spot the two of them, but after a moment they beckoned on.
“The lt. colonel would like to talk to you two.”
If the two women had been meant to be escorted under armed guard, that fell through rather readily. Even a basic escort soon proved impossible. The two had scarcely stepped out of the building with the dog when they saw that Fort Chestnut was now fully overcrowded. More civilians than ever had poured into it, these ones looking even more hurried, dirty, and confused than the first batch. Most of them looked like they only had time to bring food and weapons, if even that, for some of the children were still in their nightclothes. They were crowded everywhere with more arriving all the time. It was all the current soldiers could do to watch over them while struggling to continue to repair the walls of the fort, which weren’t even fully barricaded yet.
Fortunately, Applejack knew the way to the officer’s barracks from yesterday, because they soon got separated from the soldiers and nearly separated from each other. She desperately scanned the crowd looking for anyone from the Apple family, but there were so many different people of so many different kinds it was impossible to make out anyone. There was one group that looked like a pair of families from the hills that seemed to be ready to kill each other just for being forced to occupy the same space. And somehow, over all of the noise and the din, there was what looked like a photographer, her assistants, and an entire wagon load worth of equipment compressed into a ten-foot-by-ten-foot square with her yelling out audibly over everyone as she struggled to get pictures of the entire event. (It didn’t work too well, considering how thick her accent was. Applejack couldn’t place the city-state.)
At one point, she yelled out something to what Applejack thought was her assistants, but with her volume it easily could have been anyone in the overcrowded fort. She turned to Twilight. “Uh…did she say somethin’ ‘bout ‘magic’ just now?”
“I think it was ‘magics’…but at any rate I don’t think she meant the stuff I do,” she answered shrugging.
“Applejack!”
The farmer looked up on hearing a far more familiar, and quieter, voice shouting through the crowd. She was just in time to see Braeburn, a hand clamped on his hat to keep from losing it, pushing forward toward her.
“There y’are!” he yelled as soon as he got up to her. “The rest of the kinfolk have been wonderin’ what happened ta’ ya’ all day! Uh…” He leaned in closer. “Ya’ do remember what happened last night, right? ‘Cause…”
She sighed. “Easy, Braeburn. I had my head the whole time.”
“Phew…saves a lot of explainin’. A few of the folk ‘r a bit nervous, but...ta’ be perfectly honest, cousin?” He suddenly burst into a grin. “That was amazin’! Whoo, I always knew ya’ could send any Nighttouched back packin’, but last night was somethin’ else! How did ya’ manage-”
“Uh, Braeburn,” she cut off, holding a hand in his face, “I’d really like ta’ catch up on that right now, but the reason they let us outta that there shack was ta’ see the lt. colonel, and we’re kinda in a hurry.”
He blinked twice before growing sheepish. “Oh…oh yeah, sorry ‘bout that. But…just hurry back real quick, ok? The family’s all wonderin’ how yer doin’. Or how ya’ pulled that off last night. Um…”
His eyes glanced behind Applejack for a moment, but she only needed to turn her head a bit before she realized he was looking at Twilight. He leaned in closer. “She, uh…she didn’t happen ta’ have anythin’ to do with it or nothin’, did she? Cast another one of them spells ‘r somethin’…?”
Even over the din, Applejack could hear the unease in Braeburn’s voice. She knew why now, but she didn’t answer immediately. She glanced back at Twilight, and saw her looking right back at her. Maybe she had heard Braeburn and maybe she hadn’t, but she thought about how she herself hadn’t trusted her until too long ago. And how she might still not have trusted her if she had been the only one who jumped in last night, in spite of what she did…
After a moment, Applejack’s face tightened, almost looking a little upset, as she looked back at Braeburn.
“Twilight’s totally on the level, Braeburn, and she helped save the fort jus’ as much as me last night.” Her voice didn’t have the slightest waver or give in it.
It made both Twilight and Braeburn alike look up in a bit of surprise.
“Now I’ll be along to see the rest of the family soon, but until then, you run on back and you tell them the same. Ya’ hear?”
Braeburn was put on the spot a moment, but nodded. “I…I hear, coz. Sure thing!”
He turned and began to push his way back into the crowd. Twilight, on her part, came up to Applejack’s side now that she was stopped. She stared at her a moment, before she finally ventured a weak smile. “Um…thank you.”
It took Applejack a moment, but she half-smiled back. “Well, I reckon I owe you my life after last night, and jus’ ‘cause this trip’s been one burr in the saddle after another don’t mean you haven’t been tryin’ ta’ help us through it. Sorry I didn’t act that way sooner.”
Twilight smiled a bit more at the encouragement, and soon the two were off again.
It wasn’t too much longer before they were able to push themselves to the officer’s barracks, although due to the thick crowds they had somehow lost Spike. Twilight seemed alright with it for now, and so was Applejack as they would be headed indoors soon. By the time they arrived, the soldiers were already there, but they simply framed the door and told the two to walk right in. As they reached the door and pushed inside, it was a surprising relief to them both to be back inside an enclosed shack. It beat being pressed on and having to almost shout to talk to each other. However, the inner room was nothing more than a few longer tables with chairs at them; obviously for multi-purpose with the officers. Two more soldiers were at the back at another door, and looked to both of them expectantly. As they both approached, they tensed a little, but in the end pulled open the door for them.
Inside was probably the only private room in the fort—the inner chamber or office for the lt. colonel or whoever was the CO at the time. A map and some markers were out on his desk, and the room had been cleared to make space for others to come in. It seemed there had been a lot of activity in it not too long ago, which only figured given last night. However, Burnt Oak was the only one in there now. He looked up as soon as they arrived.
“Come in. Have a seat.”
The response was neither too friendly nor hostile, but that in and of itself was an improvement over the other day, and so both stepped inside. Applejack turned back on seeing the soldiers shut the door behind them, but looked back more easily soon after. Twilight herself went for a chair, but the farmer stayed standing as she moved up to her, squaring her gaze on the older man.
He moved around the front of his desk and leaned back against it. He focused his eyes fully on Applejack, which the farmer wasn’t sure was a sign of hostility or not. He was quiet a moment before he finally spoke even more quietly.
“You’re Bright Mac’s kid, aren’t you?”
This caught her by surprise. “Wha-what?”
“I thought I noticed something about you yesterday. Didn’t see it clearly until that little lightshow you put on last night. You got to be his now that I’m taking a good look at you. He only ever wore that one hat.”
Realizing what this meant took her further aback. “You…you knew pa?”
He nodded. “Sure did. Lived only three miles down the road from him growing up. Pardon the pun, but it looks like the apple don’t fall far from the tree. You look just like him and Pear Butter smashed together.”
Applejack was astonished; struck mute for a moment on seeing one of her father’s friends right there in front of her. “Well…how come I ain’t never seen ya’ ‘round the house?”
“My family was in the firewood trade, but there weren’t places to cut it around where you lived once I got older. Besides, I wanted to see if I could find a different future for myself outside of just chopping logs. I ended up enlisting. I got out eventually but…” His mouth swished wistfully. “Between the Lunar Fall, everyone starting to use coal and boilers for heat, and it not being safe anymore to stick around forests chopping wood, I had to go back in. I’ve moved up since then, as you might have guessed.”
He frowned.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t in town for the funeral proper. I was stationed at another fort just like this one. I came by a month later to pay my respects, but I only managed to talk to a few of the older folks. Never got a chance to say hi to you, Big Mac, or Apple Bloom, and…”
Applejack’s own look dimmed. “Yeah…I know. We were too busy really to think about guests when the whole family started to move to the farm and we still had a harvest that had to get in…” She frowned as well. “Looks like everyone’s gotta be accommodatin’ for that damn Lunar Fall nowadays…”
Burnt Oak looked at the ground a moment before glancing back up. “Well…nothing for it now. At least we finally got a chance to meet up. Though I’m kind of wondering what you’re doing out here to begin with. And I’m sure you know it goes without saying that everyone is wondering what the hell that was we saw last night.”
Applejack paused. She glanced back to Twilight for a moment. The woman was wincing uncomfortably, saying nothing as she wasn’t the one being addressed, but giving the farmer an anxious look. Applejack, in turn, stared for a short while, looking likewise hesitant, before she finally turned back.
She exhaled. “I’m sorry…but for now, I can’t tell ya’. The important thing is we can do that trick and that we did when we needed to, and that’s all I can say.”
Burnt Oak looked a bit surprised at that remark, but Twilight even more so on seeing that Applejack followed her advice.
“As for why we’re here, well…” she grew more uneasy. “It’s the Homestead Act. They’re gonna push us off our farm. Say it’s too dangerous to keep protectin’. Figured if a bunch of us enlisted, we could not only keep it but keep it safe to boot.”
The lt. colonel eyed her a moment. It seemed he had picked up the order Applejack answered those questions and her attempts to cover her evasion of the first. “Well,” he finally spoke up, “I’d prefer a little more to go on than that, but seeing as you went and saved the fort I can’t really complain so I’ll let it slide for the moment. I don’t suppose you two could do that again if need be?”
The last question was unexpected by both women. They looked to each other a moment, then back. “Um, sorry, but…did you just ask if we could do that again?” Twilight asked. “As in…you’d like us to do it again?”
“If you can, I’d be mighty appreciative, and I’ve got a feeling the rest of my company would too even if they ain’t showing it at the moment. Fact is after seeing what you two did last night I can’t afford to ask too many questions or be too cautious. We need all the help we can get.”
The sound of that didn’t settle well with either woman. “What’dya mean?”
“Your farm isn’t the only place in danger of getting overrun by Nighttouched. Not anymore. You’ve gotten a good look outside, haven’t you?”
“Sure did. I can still hear that one photographer from in here…”
Burnt Oak straightened up from the desk uneasily. “That attack we went through last night wasn’t all of it. Thanks to you two, we managed to hold down the fort. We barely started trying to repair the walls this morning before we got a message courier on horseback. At least three other towns got hit last night along with another outpost. All of them are gone.”
Applejack went white. Twilight sat up and gasped. “Wait what? Did…did you just say three other towns? Plus an outpost? And all last night?”
Burnt Oak frowned as he looked back at his map. “We haven’t seen a surge like this in a dog’s age. Not since the first Lunar Fall. We were right at the head of the push, so the fact that we were able to hold them back here might have actually helped. Otherwise even more towns would have gone down. Now, most of them were evacuated already, but of those who were fool enough to stay behind, well…” He sighed. “We got what’s left of them holed up here now. There were more of those giant mites in the attacks and they got rid of any other shelter.”
Applejack remembered that all too well from the night before. “Landsakes…” she half-muttered to herself.
“Wait, not only were there more Parasprites,” Twilight interjected, “but you’re saying they intentionally destroyed any other shelters?”
Burnt Oak looked up. “Now, I never said that. Nobody’s got any clue what drives the Nighttouched. They always just seem to run out every now and then whenever a Light Eater’s ahead of them.” He frowned and crossed his arms. “Only there wasn’t a Light Eater with them this time, but they had those giant mites or whatever you called them headed out with them at the front. I’ve been blowing up these things for almost ten years. I’ve never seen them act like this before…like they knew what they were doing…”
“Wait, wait…knew?” Applejack echoed. “I’ve been fightin’ these things as long as you and hand-to-hand. They ain’t got a lick o’ sense between the lot of them. They’re just like big wild bulls. They ain’t never had any plan save trample in and attack.”
“I don’t think that’s true anymore.”
Applejack looked up to Twilight as well, and saw she was growing more uneasy.
“Lt. colonel, sir…I’ve seen parasprites once before, and they should be deeper in Equestria unless something drove them out. If it didn’t and they’re appearing on their own, not to mention if they were circling your fort for a few nights on purpose and trying to weaken the walls, then…” She swallowed uncomfortably. “Then things have changed for the worse. They know what they’re doing now. Or at least they’re getting the ability to make some sort of rudimentary plans.”
“That’s kind of what we’re afraid of…” he answered. “Appleloosa never really had much of a telegraph system even before we had to start shutting down. Following these attacks, it’s likely most of the country doesn’t even know about this yet. All morning we’ve been trying to spread the message via relays, but we can’t afford to wait. This fort is the only real protection for eighty miles in either direction.”
“We’ll lend a hand!” Applejack immediately volunteered. “Won’t we, Twilight?”
“Uh…um…” she fumbled.
“I don’t think even with your help we can keep the fort standing with all these folks in it.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a watch. Flicking it open, he looked at it a moment before collapsing it again. “We got about seven and a half hours until the sun goes down. Before that happens, I’m going to try and get a message out to the army that we need to risk lowering the blockade long enough to move one more train through. We got to move out most of these people. It’s the only way we can do it in the span of a day. Hopefully, we’ll start shipping them out before evening. Once they’re gone…” He exhaled. “We’ll see if we can still hold Fort Chestnut.”
“You’re going to stand your ground here?” Twilight spoke up again. “Even with the fort as damaged as it is?”
“Got no choice,” he grimly answered. “The army’ll reinforce us soon enough once they get the message and they find out what we’ve been finding out—namely that the Nighttouched are trying to push through here. Until then, we have to hold.” He leaned back against the table again. His eyes lowered and his voice dropped a bit. “Who knows? Organized or not, last night might have just been one of their normal surges. They may not come back at all, in which case we’ve got nothing to worry about.”
Neither Applejack nor Twilight looked comforted by that. It was true that surges usually happened only on one night and then not again for months, but Applejack remembered how Twilight had informed her that she heard the parasprites had been encircling the fort for a few days.
Before anyone else spoke again, though, the wood of the door to the room resounded with a rapid knock. All three looked up. “Come in.”
The entrance swung wide a moment later, with a tense-looking officer poking his head in. “Sir, we’ve got a problem.”
“What is it?”
“One of the civilians has gone wild. She started pushing into the crowd and attacking anyone who got in her way. I sent four men to stop her and she threw them off like rag dolls. She’s trying to push through eight of them right now to get to here.”
Applejack and Twilight alike both tensed up. They exchanged a glance with one another, then looked back to the officer.
“One of her hands doesn’t happen to be glowing, does it?”
The soldier turned to Twilight, rather puzzled she had addressed him at all, but after a moment he looked more confused. “Y’know, come to think of it, I thought I saw something on one of her hands like a hot coal, but I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me…”
Now the two really looked anxious. After swapping an even more nervous glance with one another, Applejack spun back to Burnt Oak. “Bur…I mean, lt. colonel, I know this is gonna sound freaky, but…ya’ got ta’ let me an’ Twilight handle this.”
He leveled a more probing stare at the two. “Why is that? What’s going on?”
“We really ain’t got time ta’ explain, but if ya’ don’t let us yer gonna be in big trouble,” she answered hurriedly.
He was quiet, and now gave the two a more critical look. Clearly, he realized this had a connection to what happened last night, and didn’t like that he was still in the dark about most of it. Applejack swallowed and shrugged.
“I mean, if she’s throwing off your men, then I’m the only one strong enough to hold her down anyway, ain’t I?”
“Sir,” the soldier spoke up again, “we got to do something about her soon, because we got other problems. The western watch spotted some-”
Burnt Oak didn’t let him finish. “Alright,” he stated grimly, “but after this, I’m not going to let everything slide anymore. I’ll want to know what you two know about what’s going on.”
That wasn’t what either one wanted to hear, but it was good enough for Applejack. She turned and went for the door, seizing Twilight by the wrist and pulling her along as she did. “Come on, now!”
“Wait, but…!” she yelped before following. In moments, they pushed past the soldier, through the door, and were moving through the room on the other side.
Since the soldiers that had previously been posted there were gone, Applejack started talking right away. “This is one of them crazies you were mentionin’ earlier, isn’t it? Like Braeburn was acting?”
“Y-Yeah…” she muttered as Applejack kept pulling her, “but…”
“Ok then. Just like before. I’ll hold her down and you do your mumbo-jumbo and everything’s fine.”
“Well, hopefully it’ll be that easy…”
Applejack stopped in her tracks. She wheeled to her with a critical look. “What’dya mean ‘hopefully it’ll be that easy’?”
She winced. “It’s just that…Braeburn was one of the weaker ones I’ve seen going wild…”
Her eyes widened. “Wha…‘weaker’? He almost killed me!”
“Let’s just see before we jump to any conclusions.”
Rolling her eyes and groaning, Applejack turned back around and led Twilight onward. Soon they reached the door and pushed it open. On stepping outside, they almost were pushed back as the crowd was already rapidly making an open space in the middle of the yard with the violence breaking out, and a furious scuffle was going on just ahead. Both women had to brace themselves and then push back through the widening group to look forward. Nevertheless, both forced themselves through the group until they got a clear view.
At that, Applejack jaw dropped. “Ya’ gotta be kiddin’ me…”
The photographer was currently surrounded by eight soldiers. Three of them were latched on to her but didn’t seem to be doing much good. Most of her clothing had been torn or roughed up by fighting already, which was shocking enough as she looked to be at least twice the age of the Appleloosans upon her. It was impossible to make out most of her features or where she was looking as she was wearing large glasses with tinted lenses for the sun, obscuring much of her appearance, but Applejack assumed her look was as soulless as Braeburn’s had been. And sure enough, as she seized one of the men grabbing her and flung him off by the back of his neck, the farmer made out the burning hexagon on her hand.
Twilight herself only looked a moment before also looking skyward, to the west. She reached out and pointed. “I think that’s an airship incoming. Maybe that’s what he was trying to tell the lt. colonel…”
“Forget ‘bout that, I’m more worried ‘bout what’s right here in front of us,” Applejack retorted. She reached behind her for her belt and, a moment later, pulled out her claw hammer. It had reverted along with her body the night before, but none of the soldiers were bold enough to try and take it from her. She held it in the air soon after and opened her mouth…
Only to close it and look back to Twilight. “Uh, do I gotta say that big long bit like last time?”
She rolled her eyes. “No. You can do it the same way I do it now that the binding is complete.”
“…Which is?”
She groaned. “‘Member of my house, I command you to come to me.’ Then you call on his title and name.”
She nodded, hefting the hammer again. “Member of my house, I command you to come to me!” Again, she opened her mouth, but was quiet. Her look began to grow anxious again. “Uh…”
Twilight slapped herself in the face with her own palm. “He said it last night! ‘Bastion of the Fields’!”
“Oh…oh! Right, right! Bastion of the Fields – Bright Macintosh!”
Everything immediately came over Applejack again. The same orange-hued light, the same transformation to her clothes, and the same feelings of her father being there with her. In moments, she was once again standing there in the full Appleloosan armor and hefting the warhammer. Exhaling, she lowered it and crossed it in front of herself, a bit overwhelmed at the second transformation, but then glanced about. Most of the crowd was now focused on her, including two of the soldiers trying to restrain the photographer, and they all now rapidly began to back away.
She grinned a bit sheepishly at them. “Heh…sorry ‘bout that folks. Shoulda warned ya’… Anyhoo…”
Setting her sights on the photographer, she broke into a charge right at her. It was good timing, for she was throwing off the last two soldiers just as she did so. Her head was pointed straight forward; what Applejack took to be a challenge. Nevertheless, she left her hammer in her lesser hand and readied her dominant one into a fist. As she broke into the clearing, she quickly started to build to full speed.
Yet she ground to a surprised halt soon after when the photographer began to mutter something and took a step toward her. At once, a whole “group” of photographers, each one identical to her, stepped out from her wake and quickly fanned out. Applejack blinked in astonishment, now seeing five different ones all breaking into a run at the same time.
“What…what the heck is she doing?” she called behind her.
“Oh no…she must be a Magician Role!”
“Well what in Greater Everfree does that mean?”
“It-”
Twilight’s explanation was aborted a second later as the photographers reached the two of them. Applejack was further ahead and braced herself as one barreled right at her, but the moment she struck her she simply disappeared like light on layer mist. The others quickly ran past her and into the crowd, and three of them instantly did the same on striking other random onlookers. The last, however, was quite solid and seized Twilight by the throat. With a grunt, she actually threw her to the ground and got on top of her, struggling to wrap her other hand around her neck as well while starting to choke her.
Applejack snapped out of her daze and looked back around; stunned to see she was already on Twilight. Quickly she turned and ran over to her, practically diving on the photographer on reaching her side. She seized her by the wrist before she could bring it around Twilight’s neck, then grit her teeth as she tried to pull her back. Even with her added strength, and the fact this woman didn’t seem quite as strong as Braeburn had, it was a struggle. Nevertheless, she managed to keep her other hand free, move it under her arm, and wedge it under the hand on Twilight’s throat. With some help from the lavender-haired woman’s own struggles, she managed to pry her fingers off and start yanking her arm back, causing the prone woman to gasp for air.
As soon as Twilight was free, however, the photographer spun about and began to claw for Applejack’s face. Even though the farmer was fortified by her new strength and constitution, the assailant was strong enough to actually hurt a bit as she scraped, and she explicitly scraped out for Applejack’s eyes on spinning about. That caused her to loosen her other hand, which now lashed out to try and seize Applejack’s own throat. That stroke was enough to leave the farmer fed up. Swinging her weapon arm around, she braced it against the woman along with her free hand, and in a lunge that forced her own body back to her feet she lifted her off the ground and flung her backward into the yard.
She landed roughly enough, and for a woman of her age that should have stopped her, but she almost immediately began to scramble back to her feet. Twilight was still gagging, coughing, and pulling herself backward along the ground away from them both.
Applejack risked glancing back to her. “Was that a spell just now? I thought ya’ had to learn ta’ use magic!”
Twilight rubbed for her neck as she tried to get her other hand up. “Do you want me to try and explain how it works right now or stop her first before… Oh no, don’t look at her!”
Applejack was puzzled at why she had yelled that, before a blinding flash went off from the photographer’s body. The farmer had still been facing Twilight the whole time, but nevertheless slammed her eyes shut and cried out as, in spite of that, the light radiated so powerfully that it hurt her eyes even not facing the source. Fortunately, it cleared soon enough, and as it dimmed she blinked and opened them again.
Twilight was now using her free hand to grasp her eyes, seemingly in pain. Not only her, but the rest of the people in the crowd were also crying out and clutching their faces.
“What the…? What in tarnation happened now?”
“She used a blinding spell!”
“A wha-”
Applejack was cut off yet again as she saw the photographer rush right past her from behind, dashing straight for Twilight while she was stuck on the ground. The woman couldn’t even see her coming, apparently, for she didn’t react, and neither did the rest of the crowd around her. Fortunately, Applejack snapped up to her and reacted in a flash. She reached out and seized her by the shoulder before she could fully run by.
Pain radiated through her face a second later as the photographer responded by driving her arm back and smashing her elbow into her face. Had she not been using her own spirit, Applejack realized the power would have been enough to make her lose some teeth. As it was, it made her angry enough to yank the woman back and spin her around toward her. Yet without missing a beat, the photographer snapped her other hand around and belted the farmer across the face.
While it wasn’t enough to put her to the ground, it still hurt and stoked her anger further. She quickly took a swing of her own, only to watch her fist go straight through the photographer’s head before her image broke into nothingness, much like when she split into copies. An instant later, much to Applejack’s surprise, the air right next to her seemed to do the same thing; only this time making her body appear out of thin air. An instant later, Applejack suffered a second blow from this one; strong enough to actually split her lip.
Gritting her teeth, Applejack finally used her other arm and snapped out the end of her hammer in a wide arc about her. It caught the woman and flung her back again, but this time it wasn’t enough to force her to the ground. She simply slid back several feet before planting her footing and quickly rising again.
“I can’t! She blinded me! Until my eyes clear I can’t even see where she is!”
She groaned. “Great…” A moment later, she crossed her hammer in front of her. “Guess I’ll jus’ have ta’ knock the fight outta her…”
“Wait!” she instantly shot back. “Go easy on her! With how much power you have now, you could kill her if you’re not careful!”
“What the… ‘go easy on her’? You nuts?! With her comin’ at-”
For the third time, Applejack cut herself off as the photographer muttered again, before splitting into ten copies of herself. Each one of them began to rush at her. The farmer let out a curse; realizing by now that the goal was again going to be distraction and keeping her busy. Quickly she snapped forward to meet them. She drove her fist into the nearest one, but it simply vanished. She quickly snapped around and swung the back of her hand into another, only for it to disappear too. Grunting, she charged forward and leveled her shoulder into a third, but went right through it.
By now, several of them had already passed her and were still going. Realizing this, rather than try to deal with any of the others, she looked up and behind her. At least three of them were headed right for Twilight, whose eyes were open now but clearly not seeing yet as she wasn’t even trying to shield herself.
Applejack grit her teeth a moment but finally made a move. Snapping her arm back, hoping that she was aiming for the “right” one, she hurled her warhammer in a spinning arc for the legs of the nearest copy to Twilight. The timing was a bit close, but she couldn’t afford to wait any longer or the hammer would have sailed on past and into the lavender-haired woman. As it was, the spinning shaft went about several times before meeting the legs of the photographer. This time, they got jammed up in her ankles, and a moment later she stumbled down onto all fours. As soon as she did the other images of her vanished into vapor.
“That’s one way of doing it!” Applejack shouted as she quickly dashed at her. Spreading her arms open wide, she leapt into the air. Her intent was to slam herself on top of the woman and leave her pinned until Twilight could finally finish.
Yet as soon as the farmer came down, all she did was hit bare ground before getting a mouthful of dust. She was surprised only a fraction of a moment before she realized she forgot about her other trick. Sure enough, a moment after landing, the air to her side again rippled before the photographer emerged, having rolled just out of the way. She quickly lashed out with one of her heeled boots and smashed Applejack in the face. The blow was solid enough to dazzle her even in her current state, and the power was enough to send her rolling onto her own back, before the photographer quickly began to scramble to her feet. Again, she was charging after Twilight.
“Damnit, fight me ya’ crazy idiot!” she snapped, before kicking her heels up, digging them into the ground so strongly that her boots cut into the dirt and packed it down like an angular springboard, and leapt off again. The photographer nearly reached Twilight when Applejack seized her by the middle in a tackle, and both of them tumbled into the ground over each other in a violent tussle.
Even then, Applejack could feel her writhing and struggling against her grip, so as soon as they came out of one roll she gave another yell before flinging her away. Between the momentum and Applejack’s own power, the photographer was thrown aside hard enough that she went flying into the crowd, which parted in shock in her wake, before smashing against a side of one of the damaged barracks. Her impact fractured the ramshackle fixes even more, knocking several poles being used as temporary supports loose, before she again fell to the ground.
Applejack quickly tried to get to her feet, but she was still rather dizzy from the roll as well as the few blows she had taken to the head. The photographer, at least, seemed somewhat slowed. It took her a bit longer to rise this time. However, she still beat Applejack to her feet, and as soon as she was standing she snapped out and seized one of the support poles she had knocked loose. Taking it up, she swung it down over a knee and snapped it in two; making a pair of sharpened stakes. She discarded one as she started to advance again.
As the farmer finished getting to her feet, she saw the photographer’s lips already moving. Before she could react she split again. This time, to Applejack’s great displeasure, one copy of her after another poured out until twenty of them were gathered. And the second the last one came out, each one hefted their respective stake and barreled forward for both her and Twilight.
Without her hammer, getting sore with all the running around, and her temper now getting the best of her, Applejack clutched her hands into fists and stomped forward as angrily as she could. “Aw come on!”
It ended up being a better move than she thought. Not knowing her own strength, she smashed her foot down so powerfully that, with her enhanced power, she sent out a small tremor over the entire courtyard. Several of the nearest onlookers cried out as they stumbled and fell back, but far more importantly the ripple instantly evaporated all nineteen false images of the photographer…leaving only the true one stumbling and trying to regain her footing. Applejack was surprised at her own accidental move, but only for a moment. Seizing the opportunity she charged for the woman again.
While she was still coming forward, however, the photographer regained her footing. She looked again at Applejack, and this time held up her unarmed hand and chanted again. The farmer nearly stumbled in her step, wondering what that meant and trying to think of everything she had pulled so far. Yet her more “bull-headed” nature wouldn’t make her hesitate more than a moment. Rationalizing that she was trying to pull off another illusion move, she simply closed her eyes, spread her arms wide, and yelled a war cry as she barreled forward even faster and tried to catch her before she could move far.
That, as it turned out, ended up being the better move, for a moment later a blinding flash went out from the photographer’s hand—another attempt at a blinding move. Yet Applejack, in her fury to try and push herself faster, had kept her eyelids shut. While it was still blinding and glaring, it didn’t stop her from continuing to move forward until the glare died down. She opened her eyes again and, through the beams of an after-image, just noticed the photographer crossing the stake over to try and impale her.
Before she could succeed, Applejack lashed out and grasped the weapon, then forced it back with her momentum across the woman’s neck before tackling her to the dirt. As soon as she slammed down, she moved quickly. Her feet tucked up and pinned themselves on either of the woman’s arms while her own limbs slammed the shaft of the pole down on her throat. As mad and painless as she was, there was nothing the photographer could do to free herself from that. It didn’t stop her from trying, however, by wiggling like mad.
“Right here!” Twilight shouted back. A moment later, she came running up to her side. It took her a moment to spot the woman’s head directly, but then she quickly dropped to her knees. The photographer seemed to go even wilder when Twilight got that close, enough to where Applejack had to struggle to keep her still again, but in moments she performed the gesture, drew the sigil on the air, and then slammed it into her forehead.
The photographer instantly went rigid beneath Applejack; the sigil on her hand flaring one more time before it rapidly dimmed. After it did, she finally went limp. The farmer sighed in relief as Twilight pulled back, slowly pulling herself off the woman’s neck and taking the precaution to remove the stake from her and toss it to one side. Once there, she tried to grab for her hat to wipe her brow, only to find the headband there from her new attire; causing her to frown mildly.
Nevertheless, she looked over the photographer a moment. Braeburn had taken some time to recover but, then again, they had given him quite a beating. As it was, it was only a moment before she let out a mild moan. Her head lolled slightly from side to side.
“Vat…vat…” she murmured. “Vy am I being sat upon…?”
Applejack gave a relieved sigh as she rolled back, finally stepping off of the woman’s wrists. She continued to lay there confused as she stood up from her. “Think that settles it, Twilight. Now we jus’ gotta worry ‘bout explainin’ all this…”
No response.
“Uh, Twilight?” The farmer looked up, only to realize that most of the crowd in front of her was no longer paying any attention to them. They were looking skyward. She turned around to Twilight herself, and saw that not only could she apparently see again but she was looking very nervously at the sky. Her dog had finally pushed through the crowd to join up with them only to start whining. Lastly, Applejack began to realize she was hearing the sound of rather large steam engines hovering overhead. Finally, she looked to the sky as well.
The airship they had spotted before had gotten closer. Much closer. It was now hovering no more than 200 feet above the fort. Fort Chestnut was built to deal with the threat of Nighttouched crossing into Equestria. Even if they hadn’t been so disheveled and disorganized with then onset of the civilians and the damage from last night, to say nothing of the photographer’s rampage just now, they wouldn’t have been able to do much to keep it from approaching. The guns didn’t even go high enough. What soldiers hadn’t been distracted had been powerless to do much except try and sound an alert. They might have very well done so while the two of them had been trying to stop the photographer, for all the good it did in the scuffle, but it hardly mattered now.
For a moment or so, Applejack saw nothing but its bulk rapidly passing overhead, while the crowd went silent; allowing the noises of numerous gun clicks and the gears of artillery struggling to reposition now that the airship was low enough rang out. She could see the airship not only had the colors of Trottingham on it but all of its own cannons were deployed. The beginning of an order began to be shouted…
When a bay on the bottom of the airship opened and a pair of cylindrical objects fell from it. Before Applejack could fully realize what those were, its cannons erupted.
She wasn’t exactly sure what happened in the next few seconds. Deafening booms went out over her head along with gusts of hot wind followed by fire and the sounds of the structures around her breaking. Then came screams of over a hundred people, right before a wave of light and heat burst in front of her with enough power to almost knock her back in spite of her strength. Flames towered to the sky, and the assault on her senses was too much. She covered her eyes and staggered back as the chaos around her rose to full momentum.
The sounds of the engines of the airship overhead picking up, men and women shouting, and firearms erupting among the screams brought her back to her senses. She uncovered her eyes and saw everyone scrambling for cover now save the military. They were fighting back scores of people who were practically trampling them as they fled for cover. Wooden debris was raining down around them from the remains of two of the cannons. The other two were already being rotated to return fire, but again they were too slow. The airship was accelerating and hovering away past the two destroyed guns; an opening it had just made.
Most of all, fire and ash was roaring right in front of Applejack. One of the two cylinders, obviously bombs, had landed right in front of them while the second had hit another one of the one-story buildings. That building was now in flames while the ground before them was towering in fire and smoke. It had to have been an incendiary bomb. To her horror, she saw at least seven people were partially enflamed in its wake. Another five hadn’t survived the initial eruption.
One of them had been the very photographer they had been trying to save.
The farmer was aghast as she saw several people running while enflamed, as a few of the soldiers got out enough from the crowds to return rifle fire against the ironclad ship swerving over the fort perimeter. That snapped her out of it enough to look back down and spot the nearest person with their arm on fire screaming toward her. She nearly stepped in at that.
Before she could, however, she heard another noise behind her. She spun to it, just in time to see Twilight, now fully in her robe and hat again, and having converted the very broken stake Applejack had cast aside into a staff, take aim at the flames. A moment later she chanted and drew a symbol with it in mid air, causing a hailstorm of bitter cold and ice crystals to pour out of the end. She quickly swept it over the people, dousing their flames, before moving it to the fire and crater. It took several moments, but soon it was out.
Seeing that she was no longer needed to extinguish anyone, Applejack instead spun to her. “What the blazes was that?!”
“A Trottingham airship!” she shouted back as she began to move over to the flaming building, aiming at it with her staff again.
“Well what’d they want ‘round here? This fort’s in the middle of nowhere right ‘longside Equestria!” She turned back to the remains of the first fire, and the sight made her grit her teeth angrily. The charred remains of the people who had been initially hit were still there. The photographer likely never even knew it had been coming…
“About face!” a soldier’s voice cried. “Against the East palisade!”
Applejack looked up again, seeing most of the soldiers breaking into a run for the eastern fortifications. They struggled to urge people to do the same, but most of them were panicking so much they were fleeing inside the buildings or trampling each other to get to the main gates; not realizing neither route was safe. She wondered why only a moment before looking skyward.
The steam engines of the airship were blasting full tilt, but not the propulsion ones. The reverse propellers were now rapidly causing the ship to halt and bank around, turning its broadside against the fort. Applejack winced, thinking for a moment that they were going to rip the wall apart. She quickly looked around, spotted her hammer, and kicked it up into her grip to brace herself…only realizing after doing so that neither that, nor her own power, would likely protect her from something as strong as cannon fire.
However, Twilight quickly stepped to her side, drove her staff into the ground, and traced out a new sigil. An instant later, the broadside cannons erupted just as a small tempest formed in the area in front of the two of them, rapidly splitting into two miniature cyclones. The cannon shells sailed toward them, but the fury of the wind was enough to disrupt their path enough to spread apart any that sailed straight at them. Nevertheless, a second later Applejack quickly moved behind Twilight and spread her body over hers.
A good move, for even though the shells missed a direct hit, they still exploded upon landing around them. Fire and shrapnel was sent up in their way. The farmer grit her teeth in pain as she felt several pieces strike her, but she had bet that with her improved body her constitution was enough where even they would have a hard time piercing her skin. Fortunately for her, the assessment was right. Whereas any one of those pieces should have been a bullet to her body, instead they only opened a half dozen light gashes across her unprotected parts.
Applejack, still wincing a little, pulled off of Twilight soon after. She looked back up to the airship, which was already gunning its engines again and ignoring the attempts of the bullets to strike it. The surviving cannons, meanwhile, were finally nearly about to have their target, but it didn’t wait. As it moved forward, it simply slid back out of range again. Its broadsides remained aimed below.
“Cowardly sons of bitches!” Applejack yelled as Twilight used the lull to move over to the house and try to extinguish it. Looking around for a moment, she saw a fairly good-sized hunk of stone rubble from one of the blasts. Quickly, she snapped her hammer out and knocked it skyward toward the airship. It was a rather pathetic gesture. Even with her power, her trajectory was far off, and the stone had lost more than enough power to fall to the ground before making impact. The airship sailed up along the southern side of the wall, prompting another call to the soldiers to move as the cannons struggled to reposition. Soon, however, it started to slow again.
“Twilight!” Applejack shouted.
Only half of the flames were out but there was no time. She stopped and ran back into the previous position alongside Applejack. This time, the farmer winced on seeing several people were nearby and had only a few wooden walls or wagons for protection before she quickly shielded Twilight. An instant later, the cannons thundered again.
This time, one managed to hit the dirt right at the base of the tempest before going off. Both Twilight and Applejack alike cried out in alarm as the explosion burst. This time, the power was too much for her to withstand and both were swept off their feet. For a moment she thought that was the end, that she’d be torn apart by fire and debris…
Yet she landed a moment later on her rear end, and Twilight let out an oof of her own as she landed practically in her lap. Both were a bit sore and slammed around from it, but their respective spirits seemed to have protected them. A quick glance at the fires around them from fresh blasts indicated others weren’t so lucky.
Gritting her teeth, Twilight got back to her feet as quick as she could and drew an electric symbol. A cloud quickly massed in the sky before a bolt snaked out and struck the airship, but it didn’t even react on impact as it gunned its engines again. The last volley had destroyed another fort cannon. Now only one was left vainly trying to target it.
Twilight groaned at her failure. “Should have known… It’s an airship. It has anti-lightning measures. Anything else I got is too slow to hit it when it’s moving this fast from this distance.”
“Gutless polecats…” Applejack snorted as she got to her feet. “Can’t hit ‘em from down here! Why the hell they shootin’ up common folks anyway?”
“They aren’t.”
Applejack turned to Twilight briefly when she said that, but before she could argue the point, she noticed the area around them. They were surrounded with flames and dust from the two broadside volleys, but now that she looked at them she realized they were almost all clustered around them. A few buildings about them had gotten damaged, but aside from the shots aimed at the cannons most of the fort about them had gone untouched. The broken walls were almost still entirely intact.
A moment passed, but then it clicked. “They’re tryin’ ta’ hit…us?”
Twilight began to tense up. “I think so.”
“That don’t make no sense! Why would they want us?”
Twilight looked back at Applejack, straight in the eye. She, in turn, looked at the both of them, then back to the square. Especially at the remains of the photographer. Her eyes widened at the realization.
“How do they-”
“I don’t know, but somehow they do!”
Applejack looked back into the sky. The airship was already repositioning itself to ready another broadside volley. Once it fired this one and destroyed the final cannon, nothing would stop it from dropping more bombs to turn the entire fort into ash and everyone in it. Including her family members.
If Twilight’s assumption was true, there was only one thing they could do now to help them.
After a moment of hesitation, Applejack finally shifted the hammer to one hand, spun around, and grabbed Twilight by the wrist. She yelped a bit as she found herself being dragged along with her straight for the nearest wall. “Whoa...! What…? What are you-”
“You say they’re targetin’ us, right? Then we’re gettin’ outta here!”
“What?! There’s nothing but fields all around us! We’ll be sitting ducks!”
“There’s gonna be nothin’ but a field in here and a lotta corpses pretty soon if we don’t split now!”
Twilight didn’t protest any more, but Applejack hardly gave her a chance. She heard Spike start barking as he ran up behind the two of them, but she kept going until she reached the wall. Remembering how strong she was last night, she targeted a part that was already mostly damaged, hoisted her hammer, and drove it against it as she came. The blow connected and smashed out two of the logs. She dashed through it, not letting Twilight go until they were both out. A moment later, Spike scampered through after them.
Sure enough, the airship abandoned its attempts to fire another volley. Instead, it quickly stowed its guns on that side and picked up speed again, swinging its way wide and away from the fort to avoid the path of the final cannon. The result bought them a few moments, and Applejack used that to get away as fast as she could.
Twilight was less than enthused as she reluctantly ran after. “Well now what are we going to do?”
“Er…still thinkin’ up that part…” Applejack admitted.
She groaned, but kept running a bit farther before stopping and spinning around; prompting Applejack to do the same. They hadn’t gotten that far from the fort, but they could look back and see that the airship had gained enough distance from the final cannon to come about and angle straight at them. It started to pick up speed afterward, meaning to fly right over them and, no doubt, use its bombs again.
As soon as it became that straightforward of a target again, however, Twilight drew another symbol on the air. It was a fiery one this time. However, unlike before, she didn’t stop with the first symbol. Rather as soon as it was made, she swept her staff over it, seeming to “wipe” it from the sky and collect the traces of the sigil into the end of her staff. As the airship continued to get closer, she quickly began to draw another symbol slightly different from the first; all while her staff now gleamed with the same fiery light.
Applejack tensed on seeing the bottom panels on the ship open again, when Twilight finished the second symbol and drove her staff into it. The power of the first one emerged and combined with the new, and the farmer was nearly blown off her feet yet again as a blast of searing heat erupted from the stave. She gaped on seeing a small ring of fire ripple out from the front of Twilight before a ball of flame the size of her body shot away toward the closing airship. The way it was coming, it couldn’t pull aside in time. The blast struck the bow an instant later.
Applejack actually heard the sound of the fireball explode before bathed the entire front of the airship in fire. At once, the ship pulled to one side and gained altitude. Twilight’s hat was nearly taken off and Applejack shielded herself as the force from the propellers blasted over the both of them, but it kept sailing right by, picking up more speed as it went higher. When the wind died, the farmer turned and looked, but saw it continuing to ascend as flames and smoke continued to emit from the front of it.
“Whoo-hoo!” she hollered. “Ya’ got it!”
Twilight sighed as she lowered her staff at last. “Hardly… That was mostly smoke and mirrors. All I did was spread a fire over the front of their ship. They’ll think they’re in worse shape than they are after that, but once they realize they aren’t that hurt and snuff those flames they’ll be back around.” She turned to her anxiously. “Any ideas?”
Applejack hesitated. She glanced around the field a moment. Plenty of craters and scorched earth from yesterday, but nothing they could hide in from an aerial assault. The fort was still the safest spot and that wasn’t on the table. However, after looking a second longer, she spotted one other possibility.
She pointed to the trees. “In there!”
Twilight’s eyes seemed to nearly fall out of her head. “Are you crazy? That’s the way to Equestria!”
“But it ain’t right on the border! Some of it’s still in the light! So long as we stay in there an’…an’ not accidentally walk on a Nighttouched in a shadow somewhere…we’ll be fine!”
“That’s the direction last night’s attack came from!”
The farmer was caught at that. “Well…I know the two of us can handle at least a bunch of Nighttouched, which is more than we can do ‘gainst that airship.”
Twilight hesitated, realizing the logic in that. She turned and looked back to the sky. The airship was slowing but hadn’t turned around yet. The fires, however, were rapidly going out. She looked back to the forest and winced yet again, but finally rolled her eyes and groaned.
“Fine! If that’s all we can do!”
“Let’s hurry ‘fore they recover!”
Applejack quickly took off for the woods. Twilight groaned a second time before calling out. “Come on, Spike!” Soon, both she and the dog were running in the same direction.
By the time the airship was ready to turn about, its two targets were only fifty yards from the tree line. It gunned its engines and aimed it fore guns, but by the time it drew a bead they were already vanishing into the woods. The airship continued to pursue them regardless, chasing their path all the way to the tree line before slowing. Once there, however, it fired the retros again and slowed rapidly. It was practically in a hover after a few moments, staying at the edge and looking into the woods.
After about twenty seconds, it rotated to its unused broadside and fired a volley across the tree line for a good five hundred feet in either direction. Trunks were snapped, branches and leaves went flying, and fire filled a considerable distance into the woods. However, as the echoes of the blasts slowly died out again, there was nothing but silence and stillness. No sign of life or movement from wildlife or anything else.
The airship hovered a moment longer before, with a series of clicks, its guns retracted. Moments later, it began to turn and ascend in the air to proceed to its original destination.
Rainbow Dash woke up to realize rather quickly that her situation hadn’t changed much from how she had left it.
She could still feel herself jostling and shaking from the rhythm of the stagecoach she was in, and the pace had quickened once again; no doubt due to the fact that, as a glance at the door’s window showed, the sun was on its way down. It was that quicker pace that had actually awakened her—for it drove her side into more pain that she struggled to bite back.
Moreover, Rarity was the same as how she left her. Seated across from her and crying into a handkerchief.
Dash winced at the sight, not only at waking up to it but the fact that Rarity’s own weeping and sobbing didn’t seem like that of anyone she had ever known but more like the kind one would see in a stage play or performance.
She mildly groaned as she sat up. “So, how far from the stop?”
Rarity didn’t answer, save to let out another cry into her handkerchief.
Giving her a bit of a deadpan look, she next rapped her knuckle on the back of the stagecoach wall. “Yo!” she called, wincing as raising her voice made her side hurt more. “We almost there or what?”
A loud scoff came from the driver’s seat. “You young people… The moment that second airship landed I should have left you both behind but I stuck around long enough for you both to get in, and since then the only things you’ve said to me are ‘drive now’ and ‘we almost there or what’. How about a ‘thank you’?”
“Ugh…we’re paying you, aren’t we?”
Another scoff. “Bartering again… And what am I supposed to do with this…this thing anyway?”
“Sell it to your government. They’ll pay top dollar, believe me…” Dash shrugged before leaning back against the seat and looking at Rarity. “We’ll have to hang out at the stage stop tonight. They don’t like it and it’s not the best in the world, but it beats the ground or being out in the dark. We’ll be at the Macintosh Hills tomorrow.”
Rarity didn’t respond. She continued to sniffle, even throwing in a bit of a hiccup.
Dash winced. “Are you still crying about that?”
This got Rarity to pause. A moment later, her handkerchief lowered so she could glare at Dash through red, puffy eyes.
“If by ‘that’ you mean the fact I saw my old elementary school teacher and friend get decapitated right in front of me, then yes I am!”
“Well, can’t you dry it up at least? It’s going to be hard to lay low or finish this trip if you’re going to be sobbing like this every step of the way.”
Rarity stared at Dash in open-mouthed surprise a moment, before her jaw clenched and she slapped her handkerchief down on the seat next to her. “How…how dare you! If that’s not the most callous, rude, and insensitive thing I’ve ever heard in my life! I would have died in that town if not for her! And you would have too, for that matter!”
“Well, moping about it isn’t going to help you or me now, is it?” Dash retorted; her own volume rising. “And it’s definitely not going to do her any good!”
Rarity sputtered before growing more incensed. “Alright, I take it back…that was the most callous, rude, and insensitive thing I’ve ever heard in my life!”
“Oh, give me a break!” Dash lashed back. “Until we arrived in that town, you didn’t even know she was living there! You hadn’t seen her in…what? How many years? You could have been back in Manehattan when it happened and you’d never have known one way or the other! Or cared for that matter!”
Rarity let out a mild gasp, leaning back in her seat like she had been struck.
“So your old teacher got killed. I hate to break it to you like this, but you know what? Big deal! Maybe it means something if you’re safe and making piles of money in Manehattan to have some grade school teacher of yours bite the big one, but out here if most people got as worked up as you over something like that they'd never be able to live! There’s a lot worse things you could lose! And a lot of us have! Why don’t you try showing some of us some respect by not rubbing it in our faces with your waterworks?”
Rarity had been caught at first when Dash lashed back with her accusation, but as she went on, her look began to grow furious all over again. Nevertheless, she held until the Huntsman had finished saying her piece, and by then she was quivering. In spite of this, she somehow restrained herself as she spoke in a forced, measured tone.
“Yes, well…I’m terribly sorry that I am apparently not in the category of a ‘lot of us’, as you so put it, and therefore have somehow not ‘earned’ the right to be sad when someone I knew passes on. Please forgive me for such an affront. But I suppose,”
Her tone grew sharper.
“That after I lost both of my parents on the same day and had to fish our family’s company out of bankruptcy, after a few years later I got the news that my little sister had also been killed and I couldn’t even attend a funeral or leave work for one day on learning I was the only member of our family still left in the world, and after I arrived in Flaxonville only to find the one client who almost single-handedly saved my business had died without me even knowing about it, and not from Nighttouched or Light Eaters but from regular people invading Cloudsdale,”
Tears were now flowing from her eyes again as her teeth gnashed.
“That seeing yet another person who had been important to me die right in front of my eyes tends to get me a little emotional!”
Rarity didn’t break into sobs again, but she did slump back in her seat, look at her lap, and continue to let her tears flow. Dash, however, had changed. She had looked a little cowed at Rarity’s long tirade, but one part seemed to have struck her more than the rest.
“Your friend…died when Cloudsdale fell?”
Rarity sniffled and, in a rather unladylike manner, wiped her nose with the back of her hand.
Dash’s head lowered. Her own look became regretful. “I’m…sorry about that.” Her voice was so quiet it was almost a mutter. “I should have…should have done something…”
Rarity scoffed as she leaned back, still not looking at Dash. “Oh, now you’re just being petulant. What could you have done about that?”
“More than I ended up doing. I was there when it happened.”
The designer’s anger broke and she looked up at Dash again. The rainbow-haired woman was still sitting there with head hung. She met Rarity’s gaze, but her look was no longer bold or daring. She hadn't looked so pathetic and small since they met.
“You’re looking at the last Wonderbolt. The last of Cloudsdale’s best defenders.”
Rarity straightened in her seat. “You?”
Her eyes fell to the floor. “Sole survivor. Lucky me, huh?” Nothing but shame hung on those words. “Everyone I ever really cared about…everyone I ever called my friends…they all died that day. I couldn’t help them. I couldn’t save any of them.” She frowned. “I couldn’t even die alongside them. All I could do was survive…”
Her hands clenched.
“Captain Spitfire…she could have made it, but she wanted to save me. Me, of all people. She was ten times the person I was, but she’s dead and I’m here. Here with this…”
She held up the hand with the hexagonal symbol on it.
“This thing that showed up that same day, reminding me each and every time I’m about to bite the big one I have to call her to save me again.”
Rarity’s face had eased; most of her earlier anger forgotten. She looked at Dash far more gently. She finally exhaled and leaned forward. “I suppose neither of us have the right to belittle the other… We’ve both lost those we care about, the same as everyone else in Greater Everfree I suppose…” After a moment, she reached out and put her hand on the Huntsman's knee. “It’s not your fault what happened there, Rainbow. You can’t blame yourself for surviving.”
“I dunno… I think I’ve managed that pretty well so far.” She took in a deep breath and looked up again. “But…just because I don’t like getting hung up on people I’m not getting back doesn’t mean I should have given you a hard time for doing it. I know your teacher saved you and that she saved me too back there. And I really do appreciate it. I’m sorry if it sounds like I don’t. It’s just…”
She winced, nearly looking down again.
“Just I don’t like thinking of someone else dying I couldn’t save…”
Rarity was quiet for a time. Finally, with a bit of effort, she smiled again. “Well, I’m sure she wouldn’t want you to think that way. And…well, if that was an apology just now, I accept it.”
Dash stayed looking morose much longer before she made a weak smile of her own. “Thanks.”
After a moment, Rarity exhaled and leaned back. She dabbed her eyes with her handkerchief again, but had stopped crying. She looked to her own hand instead. It had changed again since initially appearing. While it was at a different point than the one on Dash’s hand, a larger spot-like symbol had appeared on one of the edges.
She sighed as she held it up. “I suppose this is something else we have in common now…and that we shared with Ms. Cheerilee. The question is what in the world is it?”
“Beats me,” Dash shrugged as she leaned up. “I’ll tell you one thing though…those Trottinghamites didn’t like ‘em.”
“No, they certainly didn’t…but that reminds me. You wanted us to leave in a hurry as soon as that airship landed. Did you happen to…?”
She frowned back. “If you’re saying if I knew they were going to try and kill us for having these things on our hand, nope. I keep mine a secret ‘cause I don’t like people asking questions about it and I like keeping that ace in the hole. But…” She leaned back, crossing her arms. “There’s a lot of rumors kicking around in the Huntsman guild about Trottinghamites who do whatever they want whenever they want, and it’s never pretty. Most of them are over on the border with the Dragonlands, but there’s this one story about this one ‘noblewoman’…”
“Who?”
“Dunno. Never paid much attention. They just say she’s got a mess of hair like a fire and this real nasty attitude. A big bully, more or less. Goes around doing what she feels like, and sometimes it involves a lot of fire and people getting hurt. Even killed.”
“Well, that incident certainly fit the bill…” Rarity winced. “That sort of behavior would cause an international conflict though, wouldn’t it?”
Dash waved her hand. “Trottingham thinks it’s such a big shot now that it can actually fly over Equestria without getting torn up by flying Nighttouched that it can do whatever it wants. That being said, this is kind of extreme even for them. I mean, all the other times were just rumors, but there’s no way this didn’t happen. I think it’s probably best that you do what I do from now on.”
“What’s that?”
“Keep it a secret. Don’t offer out any more reasons to stick out.”
Rarity sighed and slumped in her seat. “I suppose you’re right. After this business trip is over, I’ll never want to set foot outside of Manehattan again.”
“Y’know,” Dash spoke up more casually, “I’m not about to raise too much of a stink about it so long as it’s footing my own bill, but you must sure love money a ton if you’re risking all this to get that piece of paper signed. I thought you’d have turned tail by now.”
Rarity frowned a little as she looked back up. “I’ll have you know that this isn’t about lining my pocket. If I can’t get that contract signed, then my company misses out on making those new uniforms.”
She shrugged. “Big deal. You really think that’s worth your life?”
Rarity looked indignant. “Aside from the fact that the fashion industry is my passion, my art form, and my life, this has nothing to do with my own petty pleasures. I…” She suddenly caught herself, looking a bit nervous. “That is…well…I…”
Dash raised an eyebrow. “What?”
Rarity looked to one side. “You see…um…er…”
Dash frowned. “Come on. Spit it out.”
Finally, she groaned. “Alright…the truth of the matter is I’m not a native of Manehattan city proper. I grew up in a much smaller rural community. My family always operated out of Manehattan for greater clientele as well as those who would appreciate our business.”
“I can get that. More people with more money, right?”
Rarity frowned again. “The point being is after the Lunar Fall business dried up in my hometown quickly. Almost every small business was bought out and most of the younger residents went to the cities looking for work. One local establishment after another was shutting down. I had the idea to put most of the city’s displaced workers to work for Carousel Couture and relocate many of the operations there. That way I could help keep the town on its feet.”
Dash raised her head, now seeming honestly interested. “Really?” A pause. “How is it working out?”
“That’s just it… It might not work out at all. Not if this deal doesn’t go through. And if it doesn’t, not only do I lose my business but my hometown loses out as well.” She grimaced, wiping at her brow a little for the mere thought started to make her sweat again. “And if that happens, everyone who was living there loses out along with it.”
The Huntsman was silent, staring at Rarity as she continued to slump in her own seat. After a time, she finally leaned back and tried to relax as well.
“Let’s just worry about getting there for now. We’ll cross the next bridge when we get there. ‘Til then, though…” She tapped her symbol. “Let’s keep these a secret.”
Rarity sighed. “I knew I should have packed my traveling gloves…or at least a strong foundation…”
The old man was still looking taken aback, and even sweating a little, when he finally managed to sit down. “I must say, Ms. Rarity, when I thought of the day in which we would finally have a chance to meet face-to-face, this…isn’t quite what I expected.”
Rarity forced herself to give a minor chuckle, hoping it hid her embarrassment. “Yes, well, the feeling is certainly mutual, but these aren’t quite the times I expected either.”
Following one of the more back-jarring nights Rarity had ever been forced to endure, sleeping in total darkness on a hard wooden bench at a stagecoach waystation, she and Dash were up bright and early the next day and walking the last part of the trip to the Macintosh Hills. Rarity was the faster of the two that day, and while she wished it was merely due to her improved footwear she knew part of it was the fact Dash was still sweating and holding her side the whole way. It became clear to both of them that Ms. Cheerilee’s strange move had only partially healed her and she definitely needed rest. She wouldn’t admit it, however, and even after noon she kept herself going.
They arrived at the community soon after and got a wagon ride out to the Fabrichique plantation. She was impressed at the sight of it. Very new, very modern, and just as shiny and upscale as a Manehattan establishment only smaller and in a far more rural area. They definitely took their craft seriously, however. On arrival at the front gates, Dash went off to what Rarity hoped was some rest as she herself tried to ignore the fact she hadn’t had any food for close to 24 hours and stumbled up to the front gate.
Even now, in the cushioned chair she had drawn (and was immensely grateful for along with her legs), she was repressing the urge to stuff her face with a few tea cakes that had been placed between her and Colonel Cotton Gin, the owner of the plantation. Goodness knew it had been hard enough to even get her foot in the door. She nearly got chased off of the property when she introduced herself as Rarity of Carousel Couture, and it took a great deal of convincing to three separate individuals before they finally would let her in.
“I honestly didn’t know whether we’d ever get a response to our solicitation, let alone one that would bring you in person all the way out here at a time like this,” Cotton continued. “Haven’t you heard the news?”
“I, heh, tend to normally keep up on periodicals, but I’m afraid I haven’t had the luxury over the past four days…”
He gestured to the window out in one direction. “The latest surge of Nighttouched is happening on the border that way. They think it’s going to cut off the northernmost railroad route. Maybe as early as this evening. A third of the military is an uproar. Several settlements have already been wiped out overnight.”
In spite of her own concerns, Rarity couldn’t help but go wide-eyed. “Oh my… Are they serious?”
“That isn’t the half of it. Trottingham has been making moves of their own. Just yesterday they hit Flaxonville. I don’t suppose you heard of that one on your way here?”
Rarity suppressed a swallow. “I might have heard a whisper or two…”
“Well, something new came out of that one,” Cotton frowned as he helped himself to his own teacup. “Now the government is telling folks to be on the lookout for anyone who has these weird six-sided symbols on their hands.”
It was a good thing Rarity hadn’t managed to grasp her own teacup when Cotton had said that, or she might have shattered it. Instead, she nearly went rigid as a rail before she caught herself, quickly turning her palm over. In the end, the best she had been able to do to hide her own mark was pretend that her hand was bandaged from an injury, but she didn’t dare even give an inkling of it now. “Wh-why…what a strange thing to suggest! Er, that is, a strange thing for which to be on the lookout. I don’t suppose they mentioned why, did they?”
He shook his head. “Not at all. Something to do with terrorism, supposedly. They say to report to the local authorities as soon as one gets spotted, though.”
Rarity paused only a moment before quickly seizing her teacup and downing a drink to swallow the lump in her throat. “Oh my,” she fanned herself a little, “I’m afraid I’m not used to these Appleloosan summers at all. It’s terribly warm. Anyway, I’ll be very careful. Now then,” Putting the teacup down with a touch of a jingle, she reached for her handbag next. “We’re on the verge of a deal with the Manehattan government that’s worth a considerable sum. If I can just get your signature confirming your willingness to sell to us at your proffered price, we’ll both stand to do very well with our respective businesses.”
“Oh, I’m very much hoping for that,” Cotton smiled as he straightened in his own chair, reaching for his pen. “I was hoping that an up-and-coming designer like you and your company would be willing to help us break into the Manehattan market. And with the way things are going, I hoped to get a signature soon before the next crisis had a chance to break out.”
“Oh yes,” Rarity nervously chuckled, “I can imagine that feeling…” Soon after, she produced the document and placed it on his desk. “Please peruse that to make sure that the arrangement is to your liking. I don’t want to sound like I’m pressuring you by any means but I’m somewhat in earnest to close this deal today…”
He accepted the contract and fixed a pair of spectacles on his nose, beginning to look it over. “I’m sure it will be. I must thank you again for this opportunity, Ms. Rarity. This means a great deal to our emerging industry. Right now, everyone in the industrial portion of Appleloosa craves some stability. Some means of a consistent income. Manehattan’s location offers the best chance at that. And with an upcoming contract like this…”
He trailed off as he continued to look over the document. Rarity’s anxiety, which had just been starting to fade, resurfaced. “Is…is there something wrong?”
“Oh, no, no…” he half-mused, even as he continued to look over the rest of the document. “It all seems fairly well and good…” He trailed off, swishing his lips. “Except for this one detail right here. I’d like to make a proviso, if I might, before I sign.”
She struggled to keep up her business appearance. “What sort of…proviso?”
“I would like this to be amended that this contract is not binding if the deal with the Manehattan government collapses.”
“Excuse me?”
“Well, the truth of the matter is that we received a rather generous offer from another Manehattan company just this morning. One that didn’t quite meet our original quoted offer, but offered us insurance in the case of a national collapse and offered to absorb a portion of the costs of missed shipments. As we’re shipping halfway across Greater Everfree, you can understand why this is so valuable. In fact, most of our local competitors already signed on.”
Rarity’s jaw slowly began to slacken. “Pardon me, but…did you say ‘most of our local competitors’? As in this same company has contracted with multiple suppliers…?”
“However,” Cotton went on, patting the contract, “I may be getting started late in life on my own business, but I like to think I know a thing or two about the market. And I think being guaranteed as an exclusive supplier for a contracted major client is a bonus worth the momentarily lax social security. So that’s why I opted to hold out for a better deal and, lo and behold, here you are.”
Rarity sat there stiff as a board, almost twitching in place.
“…Is something the matter?”
Shaking her head, she snapped out of it. “Oh…oh, of course not, sir. And yes, don’t worry. We’re guaranteed for that contract so long as you place your signature on that slip of paper.”
“Well then, we’re all set,” he smiled back, leaning over and beginning to write in the edit. “I look forward to our business future together, Ms. Rarity.”
She forced a smile. “And I…am quite hopeful about it myself, colonel.”
In spite of how many tea cakes she had, Rarity was still wobbling on her feet as she half-stumbled down the road about an hour later. Her eyes stared at the dirt path in front of her wide-lidded; her mind ablaze with all new thoughts and concerns in addition to the ones she had from the disastrous trip there. She barely even noticed where she was walking, let alone how the day was getting late by then.
It wasn’t until she slowly made her way closer toward her scheduled meeting point with Rainbow Dash that she noticed the area around her had changed. She heard the sounds of horses coming down the road and, on looking up, noticed several members of the Appleloosan cavalry running into town. She was a bit nervous at first, putting her bandaged hand to her side and moving out of the way, but soon more followed afterward at the next road. Two different teams came down the road after that; making her increasingly suspicious. She found herself looking skyward and listening for sounds of any airships as she continued.
However, the local clock tower was just chiming seven when she caught a glimpse of Dash with a paper parcel in her hand turning a corner, spotting her, and then moving up to her as quick as she could. She was still trying hard not to wince or grasp for her injured side.
“There you are!" she called on reaching her and moving to her side. "Get your paper signed? Come on…let’s walk and talk.”
Rarity felt a bit stunned to be pushed along, but didn’t question it; especially in light of the current situation. She patted her handbag. “It’s right here.” She sighed soon afterward. “For what it’s worth…”
Dash looked confused. “Huh? What do you mean? I thought that was the whole goal of this trip?”
“I just found out that someone is trying to corner the market on textiles,” she frowned. “And considering how Cotton Gin was eager to get a start in Manehattan, and that I had my own deal pulled out right from under me with Tartan Top, I can bet it’s Suri Polomare. With all this recent business it seems she’s looking to corner the market.”
This puzzled Dash even more. “I’m, uh, not really up on how these things work… Like…she’s going to get the market into an alley and threaten to beat it up or…?”
Rarity sighed. “She’s trying to move up on the Manehattan market. It’s still the biggest garment purchaser in Greater Everfree, and she must be using the latest surge of Nighttouched.”
“How does a bunch of Nighttouched attacking mean her, um, ‘moving up’ in the market?”
“…You really don’t understand macroeconomics, do you?”
Dash only gave her a blank stare back.
She grimaced. “Manehattan may be the bigger garment purchaser in Greater Everfree, meaning they’ve got the largest market share, but many of their textiles come from abroad. With this latest Nighttouched surge affecting the northern part of the country, it’s going to either increase material costs by forcing countries like Appleloosa to go around on a longer train route or get cut off entirely. Are you with me so far?”
“I think…”
“So she’s sequestering all of the smaller suppliers. The ones who need to break into the market and are trying to be alternatives when this happens. By tying them up with contracts of her own, she’s keeping all of her competitors, like Carousel Couture, from being able to make any headway. Normally this would be risky for her as she couldn’t afford to keep all these suppliers, but when the normally-expected deliveries get cut off by the Nighttouched, all of the major suppliers will take a major hit. She’ll be the only one in a position to pick up the slack and won’t leave anything behind for the smaller companies. It’s an aggressive power play, but it could certainly pay off.”
Dash had to take a moment or two to fully absorb this before she looked a little stunned. “And I thought Dragon Folk were cutthroat…”
“And that only adds a higher stake to everything,” Rarity moaned. “I already knew my company would be in trouble if I didn’t get this deal made, but now there’s not even a hope of coming back if I can’t get back in time. Gin forced me to add a provision to the contract that it’s null and void if my main contract with the Manehattan Armed Forces doesn’t go through.”
“Well, what’s the big deal?”
“The ‘big deal’ is I still have no way of getting a wire back to Manehattan, and it’s taken me so long just to get to this point that I only have three days to get back and close the deal or everything will have been for nothing.” She slumped hopelessly. “There’s no way we can be in Manehattan in time. I feel like I’m going to collapse tomorrow even trying to make it back as it is…”
The Huntsman let her sag a moment before looking skyward. “Well, I think I might have that taken care of.”
Rarity looked up somewhat lazily, clearly not in the most believing of moods. “Unless that little paper parcel contains an airship, I’m not sure I trust you.”
“Not exactly…but I do have some good news, some more good news, and…er…just a touch of bad news.”
She exhaled. “Alright, what’s the good news?”
She began to open the paper parcel up. “I managed to get us a bit of food for free. Hope you like ham and cheese.”
She revealed some slabs of both inside. It definitely wasn’t anything out of a five-star dining establishment, but merely looking at it made Rarity’s eyes gleam. “Oh…oh thank you ever so much, darling…” she sighed nearly breathlessly. “I wish I could have saved some of the tea cakes for you but I was afraid I’d look rather uncouth if I shoved the whole tray into my handbag…” She nearly reached for it, but then paused and looked up. “Um, on that note, since I had a little something, you should eat first.”
“Nah, don’t sweat it. Already had my share. I was saving that for you.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive.”
She smiled back. “Ms. Dash, you can be a real gem.” She reached up and took the slabs, held them together, and then took a bite. Her eager look almost immediately diminished, and she struggled to keep from losing her grateful smile as she slowly chewed up and swallowed. After she was done, she moistened her lips once, put a hand to her throat, and then smiled again. “Aheh…quite an interesting local flavor. It would seem just a tad…gamey.”
“Huh? Not a chance,” Dash waved off. “It got thrown out no more than two days ago.”
Rarity’s pupils shrank into pinpricks. Her grip on the ham and cheese began to loosen. “T…two days…?”
“Well you don’t think there was someone out here just giving away fresh food for free, do you? Relax. I’ve eaten stuff two weeks old before with maggots and mold to brush off.”
For a moment, Rarity’s cheeks bulged before she lowered her hands. “Heh, as I said…I already filled up on tea cakes, so I’ll save this for a bit later.” She barely managed to say as she started to sweat all over again. “Now then…as to your second bit of good news?”
“Oh yeah. I checked in with the local Huntsman Guild. Found someone I knew there with some hot tips and, well…” She grinned a bit. “I just might have found a way for you to make it back to Manehattan in time for your contract.”
Rarity, forgetting about the rotting food, lit up in delighted surprise. “Really?!”
She leaned in closer, looking about a bit to make sure no one was out who could possibly overhear, before whispering in her ear. “I got the latest news. That big Nighttouched attack? It was so big that almost all the survivors fled to the one fort out there that’s still standing. They’re having a hard time getting messages to and fro, and this is apparently a big secret they’re trying not to let anyone in on, but they’re going to try and run one last train out there to pick them up and take them to the other side while the lines are still open. It’s an emergency so they’re running it tonight at sundown. We get that far; you can hop a train back to Manehattan no problem.”
Rarity nearly gasped in delight. “That’s…that’s marvelous news! Oh, Ms. Dash, you really are a lifesaver! I’ll be giving you a bonus for all of this, rest assured! You’ve gone above and beyond the call of duty! Let’s not waste another moment! Let’s get there at once!”
Dash leaned back at that, her smile fading into an anxious look. “Uh, yeah…about that… Remember that bad news part?”
“What do you mean you won’t let us on the tra-aaaaaaaaain?!”
At her wit’s end, Rarity couldn’t help but degenerate into an almost childish whine as she stamped her feet in front of the almost statuesque Appleloosan guard. For all the good it did. Neither he nor his partner gave an inch as they stood posted in front of the narrow entryway leading to the platform. Just beyond it, the train bound for West Appleloosa sat there, already steaming and being loaded. The tool to her salvation just out of their reach.
“Ma’am,” the soldier on the left calmly addressed, “I’m going to have to ask you to calm down and step away from the platform.”
Rarity, looking almost frantic, nearly gave another desperate response before she remembered herself. She took a few deep breaths to compose herself in the most lady-like manner she could afford before speaking again. “Good sir, I understand that you have a responsibility and I am very impressed at how well you are at keeping it, but this is a matter of grave importance. Is there any way I could negotiate with a higher authority to possibly secure a place on this train?”
His jaw twisted into a hint of a frown. “Ma’am, this train is bound to lift hundreds of Appleloosan refugees who got driven out of their house and home last night by Nighttouched to safety before the next surge strikes. So unless you have something more important than that, I suggest you stop wasting my time.”
“But this is important!” she cried, before quickly composing herself again. “I mean…this is important as well. The livelihood of every employee for my business depends on this as well as the survival of my hometown. If I don’t get back to Manehattan they’ll all be out of work. I’ll sit on top of crates or even in the luggage racks if I absolutely must, but I’m desperate.” She paused a moment, before smiling innocently and batting her eyes. “Couldn’t a kind-hearted, devoted man of the military like yourself see it to help a stranded woman in an hour of need?”
His frown only widened into a scowl. “I’m not about to give an inch of ground on this train, or any train, just to help some Manehattanite line their pockets with a few more bucks. Stranded or not.”
“And if he did,” his partner suddenly spoke up, scowling at Rarity as well after her latest attempt, “I’d have him reprimanded for violating a direct order because some pretty lady asked him to and I’d have you thrown into the stockade. Get lost now. I’ve pulled my rifle on people for less than this.”
Rarity’s innocent look turned into a defeated frown before she turned away. Soon after she started to walk back to Dash; waiting just a short distance away. “Another thing I dislike about Appleloosa…the servicemen and women here are far too chaste…”
The Huntsman could only hopelessly frown back. “If it makes you feel any better, you made out better than I did.”
Before she could say a word in response, she heard one of the soldiers behind her. “Hey there.”
Stopping in her tracks, she turned and looked back. One of them was eyeing her with a hint of suspicion. “How’d you get that injury?”
For a split second, Rarity was confused as to what that meant before she realized she was talking about her hand dressing. As best as she could to not miss a beat, she smiled innocently again. “Oh…that. A bit of a mishap with one of those new sewing machines is all.”
The soldier was silent for a full second. “If you head over to the field infirmary, they can take a look at it. Tell them I sent you.”
A cold shudder ran down Rarity’s spine as she quickly smiled and shook her head. “Oh no-no! I wouldn’t dream of inconveniencing you! I’ve already taken enough of your time! Have a good day!” She quickly turned around and hurriedly walked up to Dash, falling in alongside her. “Let’s get out of here at once. Away from any more of the authorities…”
“Yeah, that’s gonna be a bit hard…” Dash muttered as she looked around. Sure enough, soldiers were pouring in by the troop. Already another dozen had arrived since they had first gotten to the train platform, and now they were setting up everywhere. And that was to say nothing of toward the outskirts of the city, where they were all but erecting a base camp. The few civilians still about, whether on business of running the station or desperate to get on the train like the two of them were, were looking increasingly uncomfortable as some soldiers took positions while others started loitering about the premises. Since all had their weapons, it was nerve-wracking. “This has got to be serious. I’ve never seen so many before outside of a war…”
“Well, we get to share in their misery now,” Rarity sighed, raising her volume as soon as they were far enough away from the two guards, “because now there’s no hope at all of getting back to Manehattan on time. I don’t suppose there’s any way we could at least get to a telegraph?”
She frowned. “Even if we could, do you have any money left for one?”
The designer grimaced back. She reached into her pocket and fished around for a moment before pulling her fist out. She opened it up to reveal three cents.
“I don’t think is even enough to pay the operator to write ‘STOP’."
“They really can’t give you any break at all? Even knowing what you went through to get this contract?”
“With that proviso I was forced to put in, that contract won’t be good for much in three days. I had to get that deal. And we had to get stranded out here halfway across Greater Everfree starving, thirsty, tired, and barely having escaped twice now with our necks.”
Letting out a massive groan, Rarity finally formed a fist, craned her head to the sky, and exclaimed so loud it made Dash snap back in alarm and several surrounding folks stare at her.
“This is, without a doubt, the absolute worst! I feel like I’m cursed by fate! After coming this far and finally getting that signature, everything’s now hopeless! My staff and I had better just get used to limping through dirt and eating garbage because that’s all we have to look forward to in three days! My business is ruined! My hometown’s ruined! Everything’s ruined! Ruined I tell you!”
By now, Rarity’s drama was attracting about a quarter of the people’s attention. Dash herself winced and looked around at all the stares they were getting, before she quickly leaned in. “Well standing out in the middle of public bawling about it isn’t going to help anything!”
“I am emotionally distraught without any sort of outlet, creative or otherwise, to vent my frustrations! And my feet are absolutely killing me! At this point, if my only decent option is to lie down in a gutter and rot, I can at least not suffer in silence!”
Dash moaned and slapped her hand against her face. “This is why I hate Manehattan clients… Look, things aren’t as bleak as they seem. We just have to get creative!”
“Darling, I know all about creativity in my line of work, and this doesn’t need creativity. It needs divine intervention! No one is going to give us any transportation for a hundred miles if the Nighttouched are involved!”
“Well, we can’t just throw in the towel yet! If you said your employees are really counting on you and so’s your town, we got to do something! Maybe we can get horses! Or try stagecoach! Or just something that can get us as far as the Appleloosan mountain range-”
“Excuse me?”
Both woman stopped their respective tasks, Dash talking and Rarity throwing the back of her hand against her forehead, and looked nearby.
A uniformed man was standing there, rifle shouldered and pulling off his hat. He was rather firmly built, but he had a kind, if not somewhat uncertain, face as he offered a smile. Definitely not who one would expect for a soldier type, and totally different from the other Appleloosans. In fact, as they looked over his uniform, they soon saw that was indeed the case. His uniform was for an entirely different country; not a style that Rarity was familiar with.
Both were put on the spot for a moment before Dash gave him a more critical look. “Hey. Can we help you?”
“Oh, sorry. I guess I was a bit too forward,” he answered, blushing a bit as he realized how awkward he had come up to the two of them. “It’s just that I overheard what you were saying from over there.”
“Oh, did you?” Rarity asked. “So sorry. I didn’t realize I was being so loud.”
Dash leveled a stare at her. “…Seriously?”
“It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it. I just happened to hear that you sounded like you were in a bit of trouble. I mean…just about everyone is nowadays, one kind or another. You said something about your business shutting down, though?”
Dash continued to look a bit suspicious, but Rarity eased up and faced him. “Yes…yes I did. I’m afraid we’re in a horribly tight spot. If I want my company to survive until next quarter, I absolutely have to deal this new contract. But I couldn’t unless I first came out here to-”
“Uh,” the Huntsman suddenly cut off, actually extending an arm across Rarity to keep her from saying more, “I can see where you might have overheard a lot, but that’s still eavesdropping. Who are you again?”
“Oh, sorry again,” he apologized, looking over himself, “I hope this uniform doesn’t throw you. Right now I’m not too far removed from a civilian myself. I hail from Hoofheim. Part of the national guard there. Since most Nighttouched don’t come up that far, we have a deal with the Appleloosan government to do ROTC down here where there’s more of them. And I didn’t mean to overhear but the thing is I think I can help you two out.”
Rarity immediately pushed Dash’s arm down. “Oh, really?”
Dash frowned and stepped forward again. “Sorry buddy, but pretty sure that the only way you could help us is if you could get us on that train.”
“That’s just it. I think I can.”
Dash’s jaw dropped while Rarity beamed. “Really?” they both spoke in unison.
“They canceled our training tour and they’re sending us home. They want us out of the way if they’re going to be conducting major operations. Especially if a war could break out in the aftermath. They actually found room to ship us out before they shut down the rail lines, but I ended staying behind with my bunkmate because he came down with influenza.” He began to reach into his jacket. “Just this morning they came in and gave us a couple of passes to get on this train instead as it’s the last one out, but my buddy’s still not back on his feet yet. He told me to take the train without him but I didn’t feel too good about it. No one thinks the Nighttouched will come anywhere near this far anyway…”
He pulled his hand out, grasping a pair of typewritten slips of paper in his hand with an Appleloosan government seal.
“So I figured I’d pass it off to someone here who could use it better than me. You two sound like the best I’ve seen so far.” He held the slips higher, allowing them to see both.
Both Dash and Rarity leaned in closer and looked them over. Sure enough, everything on them was in order. The print looked perfectly legitimate, but more so was that the seal was official for Appleloosa.
After a moment, Dash quirked an eyebrow. “Alright, what’s the catch? What do you get out of it?”
“Seriously, there’s no catch. I really can’t use these right now. Not without leaving my bunkmate behind.”
“But you could get out of here no problem. And you just said you think this place is safe enough, right?”
He winced, running his free hand through his hair. “Yeah, well…it might be safe for right now, but once they shut down these tracks, I don’t think anyone’s going to be going anywhere for a while. And if Trottingham makes a move when the country is split, then he’s going to be in trouble.”
Rarity looked uneasy at that. “Yes, well…as very much as I hate to sound like I would decline such an offer…which I wouldn’t, just to be clear…if what you’re saying is true then you should really be on your way.”
“Like I said, I’m not leaving my bunkmate behind. If I did get out of here, what then? Appleloosa is out one more person who might be able to help. But you said that you’ve got a whole bunch of workers who could be out a job.” He frowned uneasily. “Take it from me. I’ve seen what depression can do to people. That’s all Hoofheim’s had ever since the Lunar Fall. I had to get into the military just to keep my parents fed. This means a lot to me. Please,” He pushed the passes forward. “Take them. I’ll just have to find someone else otherwise, but seeing as this train leaves at sundown…”
He glanced to one side at the sky. By now, the sun was only about three widths from the horizon.
“I don’t think I’ll find anyone.”
Dash held only a moment more, but then finally shrugged. “Well…that’s good enough for me. We got no other options, and if you’re not wanting anything I’m not about to look a gift horse in the mouth.” She nearly reached to take them.
However, this time it was Rarity who reached out and stopped her. “Are you quite certain you don’t want anything for these? If you were to give me your name and address, I’m sure I could find a way to pay you back for them. I know at the moment, considering this is the only train possibly for weeks, these passes are priceless, but I’d be sure to give you something for your troubles.”
He simply smiled back. “Really…if you want to pay me back, then pass it on to the next person in trouble. Otherwise, just make sure you get back to Manehattan.”
Rarity waited a bit longer, but all he did was smile back; not showing any hesitation. Seeing that he wasn’t going to renege or was at all reluctant, she finally smiled back as well. “Thank you, sir.” She reached out and took them from his hand. “Thank you. Fifty times. A hundred times. You have no idea how much this means to me and everything that we’ve been through. I’ll never forget this.”
After a moment, Dash smiled as well at last. “Yeah, you really bailed us out. I owe ya’. Hope you and your friend end out alright.”
“Yeah…and on that note, I should probably head back,” he spoke up nervously again. “If I’m not heading out of here, I think the Appleloosans will start asking what I’m doing on this platform pretty soon. You two have a safe trip back.”
He began to turn to leave, and the two women almost turned a well, when he suddenly stopped.
“Oh! One more thing.”
Both women stopped as he looked back at them. After glancing to either side, he leaned in and whispered to Rarity.
“Walk with one hand folded over the other. The dressing won’t stick out so much.”
The smiles on the women’s faces vanished. Both froze in place. However, the soldier merely smiled and put his hat back on his head, tipping it, before turning to walk back. Rarity had enough presence of mind right before he did to look at his own hands, only to note that his uniform had gloves. It was impossible to tell one way or the other, and soon his back was to them and he was walking away.
She blinked twice. “You…you don’t suppose he…?”
Dash put her hands on Rarity's shoulders and turned her around. “Like I said, no gift horses. Let’s just get on the train and get out of here.”
The Appleloosan soldier kept frowning as he looked at the pass, up to the two women, both now smiling innocently, and back again. He looked to his partner, who did much the same, but in the end shrugged. “It’s a reserved spot. Already had six or so come by with passes like this.”
The engine gave a loud whistle. Finally, he sighed and handed the passes back. “Third car from the end. Hurry up. That was the one-minute warning.”
They practically snatched them back and quickly pushed themselves through. “Thank you very much, have a nice evening!” one called before they both ran to their designate car, flashed the passes once more to the soldier at the entrance, and slipped in.
The two soldiers remained standing and frowning at one another, but then turned to resume their former positions.
A second later, one of them blinked. Her eyes narrowed and she leaned forward; looking toward one of the nearby buildings.
“Hey,” she began to call out, “do you see-”
A sharp crack suddenly echoed through the air, like a firecracker or gunshot. As a result, not only both soldiers but several others in the area instantly put their weapons at the ready. However, over the sound of the train engine and other hustle and bustle it didn't resonate far enough to locate. Those in earshot looked around for a moment, but saw nothing.
Her partner finally eased down. “That was weird. What were you saying?”
The soldier looked back to where she had been staring a moment before, but now saw nothing but an empty roof.
“Just thought I saw someone up there for a moment…”
Somewhat more ill at ease, she went back into position. Less than a minute later, the train whistled one more time as it began to depart.
“When he said they got him a spot on the train, ugh…I wonder if it was supposed to be for his luggage…”
Rarity said nothing back, but her face showed she quite clearly shared the same sentiments. The first train she got out of Manehattan was hardly luxury accommodations, but considering that their “seats” amounted to a hard metal bench mounted into the wall of a windowless car, crushed and practically buried behind a wall of crates of supplies, with only a slight lane worth of open space to walk to the end of the car, she could hardly disagree. It didn’t help that now that the sun was down both women were plunged into absolute darkness as they were squished together on that small seat. She was quite glad she wasn’t claustrophobic or she would feel as if she had been buried alive.
The train was at least moving now, although that made things only a bit worse on them. They were already pressed together so there wasn’t much wiggle room. At that moment, they hit a sharp bump in the tracks, and Rarity found herself shoved into Dash.
“Urk!”
She turned to her immediately. “Oh…oh dear! I’m terribly sorry! I couldn’t stop myself!”
She heard a sharp inhale through her companion’s teeth. “Don’t…don’t worry about it… Just…just hard to…to stretch out…”
Rarity didn’t like the sound of that. The fact was Dash had been breathing hard ever since they had sat down. Her side was hurting her worse than it had been earlier. All of the walking around had to have agitated it.
“Is there anything I can do to make things more comfortable?”
“Nah, nah… Like I said, don’t worry…”
“But…your side…”
“What, this? No…no problem… I’m tough enough to shrug just a little scratch…”
Rarity didn’t believe that for an instant, but there was little to nothing she could do about it. She wasn’t a doctor after all. And she didn’t have whatever strange power Ms. Cheerilee had…
A thought occurred to her at that. She looked down at Dash’s direction for a moment, moistened her lips, and finally made her move. She put her hand out and touched her.
“Huh? What?” Dash instantly spoke up.
“Er…all better, all better, all better…” Rarity began to half-heartedly mutter.
“Um…what are you doing?”
“...Trying to help heal you faster.”
Pause. “By…chanting ‘all better’? I don’t think it works like that…”
Rarity frowned and pulled her hand back. After a moment, she did the only thing she could do to give Dash a measure of relief. She got up from the bench and gave her some more room.
“Hey! What gives?”
“Just stretching my legs a bit, darling. I can’t stand these cramped accommodations… I think I’ll head to the end of the car and peek out the window and see if there’s any starlight with which to look around by.”
“Well, don’t go much farther than the door. Keep in mind there’s still some Appleloosans on this train and, pass or not, we don’t need to give them a reason to toss us off. Definitely not now if this train’s trying to get some place being hit by Nighttouched.”
Rarity winced. “I shall keep that dreadful tidbit in mind…”
It took a bit of maneuvering and bumping her shins more than once, but Rarity managed to work her way to the end of the car. That window normally afford a view of nothing but the short connection point between train cars and a look at the other entrance. It made Rarity grimace a little to see there was not only just enough starlight to see that the car across from them was a normal passenger one, but also totally unoccupied at the moment. None of the train’s own soldiers were present, but even if she could sneak into the next she knew they’d toss her out as soon as they spotted her, although since they were running dark she considered hiding if it meant a chance to lay down.
She also turned her head to the sides of the car. She could only get a small view of the surrounding countryside, but mostly all she could see were hills and shadows to the south and the forests to the north. Even now the tree line hung close to the tracks, and she knew much of it was bordering Equestria…
Suddenly she spotted something. “AAH!”
“What’s wrong?” Dash immediately called from the other side.
Rarity herself had gone white, not that anyone could notice, and quickly pulled back from the window. “Yellow eyes!” she half-cried, half-gasped. “I saw a pair of yellow eyes in the forest alongside us!”
“Oh…” Dash nearly groaned. “Don’t worry about that… You always see a stray Nighttouched or two this close to the border…” Another sharp inhale. “It’s only a problem if a bunch of them gang up and come out…”
Rarity, still shaking and nervous, slowly pulled herself up and looked back out the window. She nearly yelped again on seeing another pair of yellow eyes a bit down the track. “But…but what happens if they do that?”
“Eh, we’ll worry about that when it happens… Nothing we can do now… Live out here long enough, you always take it one step at a time…”
If Dash could have seen Rarity, she would have seen she looked anything but comforted by that. She straightened back up after a moment and looked down over herself, just making out her own outline in the darkness. However, in the process of rising, she noticed her hand and just faintly the edge of the bandage over it.
She stared at it silently for a little while, thinking it over. She looked back out to the forest again. Nothing this time, but she knew she’d see another Nighttouched eventually. She looked again to her hand, frowned a bit, and finally held it out.
“Captain Spitfire!”
“What?” Dash nearly shouted on hearing her call. “What’d you just say?”
Rarity wasn’t really paying attention. She was frowning at how she once again didn’t have a reaction. “Oh, dash it all… How does this work?”
“Hey!” Dash shouted again, getting her to look up and back this time. “I just asked you a question! What did you just say?”
The tone was almost accusatory, but Rarity didn’t notice. “I just figured that since I have a symbol like yours on my hand that maybe I could do the same thing you do. I’d certainly feel safer with speed and strength like yours…”
Dash snorted back. “Well, you’re not gonna get it by throwing around the name of my old CO…”
On hearing that, Rarity hesitated. She remembered back to what Dash had said earlier. About how she had gotten that mark herself and under what circumstances. For a moment, her look grew thoughtful about what that might mean…
Before she could voice it or think further, a much brighter, fiery light suddenly radiated through the window. It was so strong that, for a moment, she saw the interior of the car itself illuminated. Most shocking of all was that it seemed to come from over the train, as if crossing the top of it. She snapped to the window again in alarm.
“What was that?” Dash called. She had seen it too even from the back of the car and was already getting up.
"I...I don't know... It was like a rocket just went over the train..."
"If they were getting in a fight, they'd have a lot more than one rocket..." Soon Dash had limped up to Rarity's side and looked out the window as well. However, the light was gone and there was no sign of anything else. Nevertheless, she stared for a bit longer to make sure.
Abruptly, both women shifted forward as the train car lurched. At the same time, from the opposite window far on the other side of the passenger car in front of them, a flash of light went out. Rarity and Dash hardly had time to notice it before they stumbled to regain their footing, but then both quickly looked out.
"What in Greater Everfree was that?"
Dash frowned. "Nothing good..."
Rarity looked around a bit; her brow starting to quirk. "Do we seem to be...leaning to you? And the train sounds a bit different..."
Dash looked around a little herself before she frowned even more. After that, she looked at the door. Keeping one hand on her side, she reached out and felt along it before finding a handle, and with a sharp tug she popped it open. Rarity nearly gasped as a rush of wind and air from outside whipped in. "What...what are you doing?"
"Doesn't matter if the soldiers spot us now...the cars back here just got uncoupled from the rest of the train. We're slowing down."
"Wh-what?!"
She beckoned forward as she stepped into the threshold. "Come on. Let's go check it out."
"You want us to go out to whatever that light was just now after it just separated us from the rest of the train?!"
"Either that or wait for it to come to us, 'cause we got nowhere to go now and we'll be dead on the track soon."
Rarity let out a small whine but she realized that was the truth. Uneasily, she followed Dash as she stepped out the door.
The train was still going at a good clip as the two crossed over the very narrow walkway spanning the two cars, so Rarity ended up making the trek much slower than Dash in spite of her injury. She especially didn’t like that she saw not one but two more sets of eyes in the forest to the north of them. She nearly focused more on that than the other car when they arrived at the door. With a bit of a grunt and a jimmy, Dash seized the handle of this one and popped it open as well. Rarity quickly followed her inside.
It was indeed a passenger car, with nothing but rows of empty seats. Because it had wide open windows on either side, it was possible to see a bit better from the starlight and partial moonlight, but there was little to find. No sign of anyone, whether they be an Appleloosan soldier or otherwise. Rarity and Dash glanced at them only for a moment, then looked ahead and to the back at the rear door. The other train cars were already starting to grow smaller in what they could see through its tiny window. Dash stared at it a moment while Rarity swallowed and moved close behind her. The two began to move toward it, slowly and carefully.
Halfway across the car, it erupted in brilliant light as a bladed tip of a spear suddenly thrust through the wall. It was sparking with white electricity, sending off a dazzling gleam that illuminated the entire interior. Rarity yelped and cringed behind Dash. She herself planted her feet and tightened up, but began to sweat and not just from personal pain. Especially when she saw the bladed tip suddenly rake across the back, slicing right through the door frame and the door itself. The bottom immediately fell out as a result. A moment later, the spear tip yanked back, only for its shaft to lash out and knock out the upper half.
In its wake, an imposing figure, dressed entirely in the armor of an archaic royal guard, stepped through the opening and into the aisle. A device somewhere on his suit, similar to the ones on the Trottinghamites from Flaxonville, was chugging along. Every so often, another small bolt of electricity snaked out of the tip of his spear, sending another white gleam that served to make his intricate armor look almost hellish.
Dash stared at him for a brief moment. Her eyes narrowed.
“Rarity.”
The designer, nearly petrified at the sight of the man, looked up.
“Get back to the other car and as soon as the train is slow enough, get off and run.”
She nearly gasped. “Are you mad? Once I've seen a design, I know it anywhere! That’s a suit of Trottingham royal guard armor! He has to be with the ones who attacked Flaxonville! That means he’s behind the ones who killed Ms. Cheerilee and-”
“Just get back! You’re just going to get in the way!”
Rarity almost looked indignant at that, but it didn’t last. She realized it was the truth. It didn’t stop her from being hesitant and looking rueful when she finally broke and began to back up the way she came though.
The royal guard continued to walk forward, sending out more sparks, as Dash leveled her good side at him and primed her body for combat. While Rarity was still backing off, she held up her hand. “Captain Spitfire!”
The royal guard didn’t break stride as the blue aura once again fell over Dash, but once it was finished working its power she was able to draw herself up far better than before. At that point, Rarity was at the end of the car. She looked back one more time, but finally opened the rear end and stepped out.
Dash forced a cocky smirk even as a few beads of sweat gathered on her forehead. “Y’know, I was just thinking a little while ago that the ol’ fire-headed brat from Trottingham might be behind this, and look who shows up? You must be that little lap dog of hers the gang at the Huntsman Guild mentioned. What’s your name again? Flash Guard or something?”
“There’s only two options open to the two of you right now,” he spoke back, ignoring her comments as he readied his spear, “the easy way or the hard way. Don’t make it more painful than it has to be.”
“My, you’re thoughtful,” Dash snickered. “But I think I got a third option.”
In a snap, her body turned into a blur. A split second later, she was kicking off an aisle seat and launching herself at the royal guard’s unarmed side. Her leg cocked back to drive her foot into his neck.
Suddenly, his armor ignited in the same light that the spear tip had; only this time rapidly expanding to the rest of his suit and obscuring it in a blinding flash. Dash’s cocky look turned into surprise in mid-strike as she saw her foot sail into the electric cloud, only for it to evaporate into nothing but air.
She barely managed a “huh” before, to her astonishment, she realized the royal guard was just to the left of it and now watching her body sail by. At least, he did for a moment, before his gauntlet and spear shaft moved. His hand seized her airborne body, the shaft of the spear braced across it, and a moment later she was snapped out of the air and slammed down with a thunderous ripple against the floor of the train.
The look on Dash’s face on impact showed the pain that resulted, but she barely lay flat before she snapped her legs up and swung them about, trying to catch him off his feet. In response, he snapped back just as rapidly, hopping off of her and taking his spear with him. It gave Dash the moment she needed to spring up and back up to her feet, but even with her enhanced speed that was all she had time for. No sooner had she landed than the royal guard was on her, driving the end of his spear for her head. She quickly dodged it to one side, but even then she had to step back for he rapidly closed on her, and in moments he yanked the spear back and drove it for her middle next. She got around that only to quickly backstep from repeated stabs for her feet. Each one gave off sparks and punctured the floor, and in moments she found, to her astonishment, she was already backed up half of the way to the rear of the train.
As he went for a forth jab, however, she squared her jaw and advanced instead, hopping over the stab and planting one of her feet on the shaft of the spear. The royal guard’s helmet snapped up, realizing he was pinned, before Dash used the moment to drive herself forward and aim a pair of kicks for his middle. Quickly, he snapped back the instant she laid off and crossed his shaft in front of himself, blocking first one and then the other, but Dash didn’t stop. As the strain and agony on her face leaked through the edge of her grin, she snapped her body forward and progressed in performing one thrust kick and flying roundhouse after another, forcing the royal guard to step back and guard just as rapidly as she had to backpedal.
She managed to nearly push him back to where they started when his armor sparked again. Dash was so intent on applying her speed she noticed it too late, and was unable to break her momentum as he suddenly lunged at her. She tried to meet his face with her boot, but again she struck an electric cloud that faded into nothing. She was just in time to feel a physical presence behind her before the royal guard, now standing back to back with her, snapped around and swung out with the back of his fist. A solid blow connected with the base of her head; sending her spilling forward and sprawling on her face.
She didn’t even bother to look behind her again on landing, but focused entirely on pulling herself up and tucking into a forward roll--just in time to avoid the royal guard’s spear tip puncturing where her body had been lying. Once again, she sprang back to her feet and spun around, but the royal guard didn’t let up. Quickly he advanced again, this time swiping the end of his blade tip at her. Each one was charged with electricity, slicing easily through the railings and seats on either side as he forced her to continue to backpedal. Soon she was sweating and panting freely under his relentless assault.
Finally, after one slice, she snapped forward again; not in a direct forward charge but to a vertical support rod for the railings. She seized it with both hands and moved forward for another kick. Quickly, he halted and braced his spear to support himself, only to learn too late she was feinting. Rather than attack at first, she swung her body around the shaft once before flinging herself at him; after he had already lowered his spear again. A solid two-footed kick smacked into the side of his helmet, letting out a resounding clang and snapping his head to one side. The result forced him to stagger back.
Grinning again, Dash quickly landed on both feet, bit back her pain again, and moved in another blur. While the royal guard was still trying to get up, she snapped right in front of him and drove a palm for his middle. It nearly connected, but at the last moment he managed to recover enough to cross his spear shaft in front of him and deflect it. He began to step back again, but Dash quickly moved in another blur, this time chopping for his neck. He quickly had to wrench his arms upward to block that blow. She blurred a third time, this time aiming for his ankle with another powerful kick and forcing him to half-stumble back to avoid having it sprained or broken.
At that point, his armor began to spark again. By now, though, the Huntsman knew what was coming. She appeared oblivious, however, starting off by preparing for another strike, when suddenly he vanished in a burst of electricity. However, Dash instantly answered by launching into a rapid set of backflips, once more entering a blur in order to pull it off. The royal guard reappeared and swiped his spear out, only to see Dash was not only already out of range but continuing to flip back.
A split second later she planted her feet as she came out of her latest flip, then launched herself in another blur right at him. He readied his spear to thrust at her as she came, but she responded by launching herself into the air and for the side aisle again. Expecting another move that would use that as leverage to attack from his unprotected side, he quickly moved to block, only to snap his helmet around again on seeing her launch herself across the aisle instead and kick off from that side, to where he was open.
Having no other defense, he could only swing the blunt side of his staff out almost erratically, hoping the move would at least force her to abort her strike. Yet whether by luck or his own instinctive skill, Dash wasn’t expecting it, and the end struck against her exposed side.
The Huntsman’s eyes seemed to nearly bulge out of her head as her strike aborted, and she instead collapsed to the ground. The inertia sent her forth in a tumble so sudden and shocking that the royal guard stepped out of the way for fear it was a new move; letting her slide right past. She stopped herself soon after, but only by going onto three limbs. Her eyes were watering, her teeth were clenched, and she gripped her struck side in agony. Try as she might to get up, all she could do was hiss and lay there for a few seconds.
The few seconds were all the royal guard needed to understand. He saw the pain she was in, and where he had barely glanced her with a blow. Soon, he shifted his spear back down into an offensive position and squared himself at her. He nearly moved again, but held on seeing how long it was taking her to spring back up. Finally, Dash was able to bite it back enough to get to her feet in another snap, but she stumbled and, in spite of her best efforts, kept clutching her side with one hand while keeping her other in a fist.
“You have to see you can’t win now.”
“Guess I’m just that thick…” she slowly choked out; her grin now nothing more than a pure bluff.
The royal guard sighed before lunging at her.
Rarity nervously paced back and forth at the end of the storage car as she stared at the back window of the passenger one. It was still slowing down, but she wasn’t waiting for her chance to flee. Her attention was fully on the continuous flashes of light she was seeing from the other vehicle and how she was standing there powerless to help.
At last, she stamped a foot and made her hands into fists. “Confound it all! I cannot simply stand here doing nothing!” She held up her hand again and scowled at the symbol. “Good for nothing skin blemish! Can you do anything for me besides just make me a target for homicidal Trottinghamites?!” She snapped her hand into the air and called out again. “Um…power on! Razzle dazzle! Save the queen! Hocus pocus! Make with the magic!”
Nothing resulted.
She groaned. “Alright, so it’s not Captain Spitfire that does it. Who else is dead that I know…? Commander Hurricane? Chancellor Puddinghead? Do I have to sound out the deceased until I get lucky?”
She nearly flustered as she saw yet another flash of light from the window. She thought she heard Dash cry out at that point, in spite of the fact she had to be using her own power. But on thinking of that, she paused. She had been so flustered when all of this broke out that the idea she had come up with had slipped her mind. She remembered what Dash had said…
Captain Spitfire…she could have made it, but she wanted to save me. Me, of all people. She was ten times the person I was, but she’s dead and I’m here. Here with this… This thing that showed up that same day, reminding me each and every time I’m about to bite the big one and I have to call her to save me again.
Her eyes widened in realization. After a moment more, she looked back to her hand, held it high, and spoke out far more firmly and forcefully.
“Daisy Cheerilee!”
Her eyes widened even more as she watched her sigil blaze to life, especially the point on the six-sided figure. Soon after, the same aura that spread around Dash when she made her own call formed above her, only her hue was a darker blue closer to an indigo. She scarcely noticed; only staring slack jawed as she watched it seem to form a hint of a figure a moment before the light broke and fell over her.
Soon, she was gleaming with a bit of the same power, just like Dash. As such, she could see a few changes. Her clothing seemed to have fixed and cleaned itself a little. She couldn’t be sure if it was a trick of her eyes or not, but she almost thought she saw the hand-me-down boots look a little neater and more “chic”, and a trim on the edges of her clothes emboldened the way she liked it. Aside from that, she realized she didn’t feel nearly as tired or worn out as she had before. She didn’t feel like she could throw a punch or a kick as fast as Dash, though. And she didn’t feel like she could move in a blur either.
However, she placed a hand to her temple. There was something new running through her head…
Before she could concentrate on it, the door to the car suddenly smashed inward. Yelping in alarm, she turned and saw it swing wide before Dash’s body fell to the ground just in the threshold. She was sporting some new bruises now, and looked like she was in more agony than ever. Worst of all, on landing she could only groan; unable to snap up again.
Still cringing, Rarity saw the royal guard had hit her so hard he had knocked her out of his car and almost into her own. By now, it was slowed enough to hop off, but there was no way Dash could escape now. And by the look of the sparking lights from the other car, it didn’t look like their assailant would let her try.
Nervous, realizing she still wasn’t as strong as she needed to be in order to help, Rarity began to look around frantically for something she could do or use. Thanks to the soft light emanating from her body, she didn’t have to look far. Her eyes fell on one of the nearest crates and saw what was labeled on the side…
As much as Dash tried to force herself up, it wasn’t possible anymore. She was in too much pain. Her side felt like it was on fire; possibly internally bleeding now. The rest of the injuries she was taking were also costing a toll. When she finally managed to crack her eyes open, she saw her aura was starting to flicker and fade. She couldn’t maintain it much longer.
Finally, she managed to force her head up enough to look back to the other car. The royal guard hadn’t come at her again, having just used another one of his “lightning flashes”. However, he was still advancing and keeping her spear ready. He kept doing so for another step or two, before he suddenly crouched and broke into a run. She began to writhe and get her arms underneath her in a last ditch effort to stand, but it was no use. The pain only increased and he’d be there before she could get halfway up anyway.
“Aah!”
Rarity’s cry from behind her caused her to look up. She saw just a flash of her arm extend before an object was flung out of it; one she recognized as an Appleloosan grenade. She saw it fly through the air a short distance, right through the door of the passenger car and into the path of the royal guard.
Instantly, he began to plant his feet to stop himself; recognizing it as well. His armor began to spark…
Dash saw no more a moment later, save for an eruption of fire and smoke before she was slammed back against the train bottom and forced to shield her eyes.
It agonized her a bit more, but that was nothing compared to a moment later when she felt a grip go under her shoulders and arms and suddenly pull her back. She cried out at once as it agitated her wounds even more.
“Sorry! Sorry!” she heard Rarity apologize. “Just need to get you back! Just a moment!”
In seconds, she was inside the train car as the fire and smoke continued to subside from the grenade, although she was in too much agony to notice. She barely picked up on Rarity bending down at her side, not even realizing she was glowing by now. Right after, the woman pressed her palm against her side, causing her to wince and hiss yet again.
“Please let this work this time… I think I’ve got it…”
Dash tried to croak a reply, but before she could she heard the same chant as before.
“All better, all better, all better, all better…”
Another groan. “Seriously…? You’re trying that ag-”
Dash cut herself off and opened her eyes wide, realizing she was able to talk again in spite of her trauma. She realized a moment after it was because her pain was rapidly subsiding. She blinked a few times, then looked over to Rarity again. This time she noticed her aura. Not just on her, either. A stronger glow was now concentrated around the hand placed over her side as she chanted. Her pain didn't leave her all together, but the crippling nature was disappearing.
After a few moments, she managed to sit up. In alarm Rarity removed her hand and stopped chanting, but in spite of her lingering injuries Dash felt much better than before. For a moment, she sat still shocked not only at her change but what she had managed. It only lasted a moment, though, before she smiled again.
“Hey, what do you know? You pulled it off!”
Rarity couldn’t help but blush, partially out of modesty and partially out of relief it had worked. “I…I just tried it out… I thought, maybe if Captain Spitfire worked for you, then if I said Ms. Cheerilee’s real name-”
Loud sparking sounds cut Rarity off. Both women looked forward and gasped, for at that second the royal guard suddenly lunged out of the fire and smoke, not looking any worse for wear, and had his spear tip out and aimed for them both once again. Not wasting a second, Dash quickly shot to her feet, shoving backward as she did. Her arm swept out, caught Rarity, and unceremoniously pushed her away as she herself sprang back, again narrowly missing the spear tip.
However, the royal guard seemed to have noticed she recovered, and was attacking swiftly and powerfully again. In spite of the tighter corners, he slashed out with his spear tip for her again, forcing her back as he cut through crates on either side of them. Dash quickly backed up, trying to regain her footing and focus, but he wouldn’t let her as he sliced out repeatedly. Finally, however, he snapped his spear back to try and slice for her head; only to wedge the shaft of it in a crook between two crates at his side. He tried to come back but was halted; his spear barely moving as it pressed against the space it was now nestled in.
He looked up to see what had happened, and Dash seized the moment. Quickly she shot forward, braced one hand against the spear shaft, and drove her other fist deep into his side. The blow should have been enough to dent the armor and possibly even break a rib. Yet as soon as the armor began to give, she got a nasty surprise. A large spark erupted from the point of contact, and she yelped as her hand, now jolted numb, shot off it again.
The royal guard quickly twisted his helmet around and swung forward; smashing his armored head into hers. She snapped her neck backward from the impact, stunned again, and he followed up by yanking his spear free and swinging the nearest end upward as quickly as he could. The blunt side ended up catching her under the chin. Once more, one of his impacts was enough to send her sailing backward and to the floor, but not before sending her body sailing by Rarity and leaving nothing between her and the royal guard.
She looked alarmed at Dash for a moment, before turning back to the royal guard. He, on his part, gave a bit of elbow grease to fully snap his spear loose and aim it forward again, causing her to swallow.
“Alright…if that trick worked, then…surely I’m capable of more… Um…er…uh…” She held her hand up, but muttered and stumbled as she tried to think of something. “Er…light beam? Sparky-sparky? Pointy knives? Hertz doughnut?”
The royal guard’s spear began to spark again.
“Ah! Oh…!” Getting frustrated, she finally shoved her hand forward. “Fireball-fireball-fireball-fireball!”
As she desperately cried out the words, a few sparks of indigo light emitted from her fingertips before her hand suddenly glowed. Moments later, a ball of fire materialized from her fingertips, about the size of a marble, and sailed right for the face of the royal guard. It successfully impacted his visor a moment later, erupting in a small flash of flame. At once, he grasped for his eyes and shook his head, as if momentarily blinded.
“Yes!” Rarity shouted. “I mean…no! I mean…that will do!” Quickly, she spun around and tried to run for it while he was still stunned.
Unfortunately for her, it didn’t last nearly as long as she would have wanted. He jerked his head back to her as his vision cleared enough to see her running, then raised his spear and aimed the tip at her. This time he didn’t break into a lunge or dash. Instead, the tip gleamed and snaked out bolts of electricity before a finely focused one erupted out of the end in a sustained charge, tagging Rarity on the back of the right calf.
The designer instantly cried out, not only stumbling but falling flat on her face from the crippling jolt. The royal guard continued to shoot for a moment before cutting off, leaving her rear leg smoldering with a few wisps of smoke. Wincing and cringing in fresh pain, Rarity’s aura quickly faded into nothingness as she drew herself in and looked to the back of her limb. It sported a decent sized burn, and from the look of misery on her face it was clear she wasn’t going to push herself up again soon.
The royal guard kept his spear aimed out, the end still sparking and aimed at the woman. Before he could perform another attack, however, he heard a loud whistle. “Hey buckethead!”
Quickly, he snapped his spear up to the source of the voice, nearly letting out another bolt, before cutting it off as quickly as he could.
Standing again just behind Rarity was Dash, only she had found another grenade and now was idly tossing it up and down in her good hand.
“Ah, ah, ah…” she scolded. “You know what lightning like that could do to a room with tons of little explosives mixed in with it, don’t you?”
He didn’t answer. Dash smirked even wider.
“What do you say you find out and tell me?”
Popping the top off, she flung it forward. Instinctively, the royal guard stepped back and guarded himself, only to watch as the grenade sailed right past him and into the same box that Rarity had broken into for the grenade she had used.
Dash, whose own aura was still burning, moved in a blur as soon as the grenade was cast. She was at Rarity’s side in an instant, putting her arms underneath her. In spite of the renewed pain it gave her, she yanked her to her feet. A moment later, she flashed again. The royal guard snapped his head back, but only saw the door to the rear of the car still swinging open idly before a blur vanished through it. He began to spark to try and follow…
The grenade went off before he could.
The previously dark night was lit up rather brightly in moments. At first, only a few explosions went off at once from within the supply car. Other than breaking out the rear window and sending out clouds of smoke from the interior, they accomplished nothing. However, one of those explosions, in turn, triggered a cluster of other grenades, and their resulting blast blew out some of the covered panels where windows had been on the sides of the car, but more importantly triggered two other boxes of undetonated munitions. When they went off together, part of the roof blew off in a column of fire while the rest of the panels blew open as well. The entire car rocked violently on the tracks and sent out a resounding boom for miles.
When the noise died down, flames began to rise from the new openings; slowly gaining in strength. There was also a new clatter as debris and remains of crates were violently flung out of windows and pushed out of the end of the train, before the royal guard forced his way out to one end and dismounted onto the tracks. Aside from a touch of smoke, he still looked undamaged. His visor turned up to where the two women had run.
Nothing but darkness. Appleloosa had cleared the trees on their side of the forest bordering Equestria for most of the track length, but here was a spot where more of them were allowed to grow which prevented an easy sight line through bent grass.
More than that, however, was the fact that a steady light source was now right on the border. He only searched for the two for a moment before he looked northward. Two dozen sets of yellow gleaming eyes were already gathered there, with more slowly emerging from the woods and drawing nearer. After a few seconds, though, something suddenly spooked them and they scattered in all directions.
Moments after, a much larger pair of moonlight-colored orbs began to emerge. In moments, he started seeing a glossy shine about them as a misshapen, clay-like limb began to poke out from the woods.
Unlike how most would react when they realized they were looking at a Light Eater, he stayed calm. He turned and glanced one more time out in the direction the two had fled before he put his spear to one side. He used a hand to reach into his pocket, emerging with what looked like a tuning fork with a relief of a bell etched into the bottom of it. He flicked the end, and, about seventy yards away, he heard a bell chime in response.
Giving neither the Light Eater nor the Nighttouched, which were now beginning to gather behind it again, any more mind, his armor coursed electricity again before, in a flash, he was gone.
The student, her face covered with sweat by now, held her hand out and tried another gesture with new arcane syllables. However, it had no more impact than the last. In fact, the effect that was rapidly spreading up her body seemed to speed up temporarily; making her gasp.
Nearby, Sunset kept her arms crossed as she smirked at the whole thing. Unlike her normal satisfied smile, this one seemed to have just a hint of maliciousness…even sadism…in it.
“Oops, try again.”
By now, one of the other students was beginning to frantically check her own book. The others were growing increasingly fearful as they watched the effects of the petrification curse continue to spread up their classmate’s body. It was over her navel and to her ribs. She was holding her arms up, trying to keep them from being petrified as well, but was so panicked that she couldn’t even think of another spell.
“Better hurry up,” Sunset casually went on. “Once your arms solidify, it won’t really matter if you remember the counter-curse, will it?”
“S-S-Sunset…” one of her classmates spoke up. “I…I think you’ve made your p-p-point…”
“What?” She casually shrugged. “She boasted she read the whole chapter on deathly curses, so I’m sure she knows how to undo one. Isn’t that right, Moondancer?”
She could only gulp, continuing to watch the petrification. With shaking, trembling hands, she managed another cast, but this one did nothing either.
Sunset snickered. “That was only a cantrip for undoing wilting. You’re really crumbling now.”
“Sunset, stop it!” another classmate shouted. “Come on! This isn’t funny!”
“Just take off the curse!” another one shouted, sounding as scared as Moondancer was.
She shrugged. “Hey, if you don’t know how to remove gradual petrification in a tight spot, what was the point of learning the counter-curse at all? Maybe you’re better off made into a fountain sculpture.”
Moondancer began to whimper as she saw the stone almost reach her underarms, but before it could get any nearer an older and more experienced voice quickly called out a different set of arcane words. At once, the stone froze in its spot and then fractured. A second later, the fractures gleamed from underneath before shattering, as if they were no more than a coating of plaster, revealing Moondancer's intact and unpetrified body beneath
She didn’t look much in the way of relieved. She quickly grasped herself, as if to make sure it was truly flesh and bone, and then quickly backed away from Sunset as fast as she could. The other students looked up and to the source, immediately wincing and cringing. Sunset herself, having recognized the voice, lost much of her cockiness, but ultimately frowned as if she had been forced to stop a game rather than looked afraid.
She turned around and, sure enough, saw the grizzled, one-eyed, and frowning face of Professor Inkwell looking down on her. Her one good eye seemed to almost burn into both of her intact ones.
“Young lady, I think a visit to the headmistress is in order.”
Inkwell came from an earlier time than most of the school’s professors. As such, she didn’t have much patience or belief in being “gentle” or “considerate toward feelings” when it came to discipline. Hence, Sunset had braced herself well for a lecture as she walked along.
“I know I don’t need to remind you about how it’s explicitly against school rules to use a curse against another student, especially a higher level one you aren’t authorized to be using in the first place. Don’t think just because you’re the princess’ pet that I won’t argue for her to have you thrown out on your ass for this.” She snapped her head to her as she kept walking. “I’ve half a mind to turn you into a statue for a few days first so you know what it’s like.”
The days when Sunset would have balked at such a threat were gone. Instead, she smiled back. “That’ll be hard. Unlike Moondancer, I learned the counter-curse.”
Some of the professors would have actually looked uneasily back at her at that, but Inkwell’s one eye narrowed. “I had a feeling you were rotten ever since you got here. And don’t think I give a damn if you tell Celestia that’s what I said about you. I’ve known her much longer than you. She can teach you herself from now on, as far as I’m concerned.”
“It might make the lessons less boring…” Sunset muttered aloud back. Inkwell, however, paid her no more mind. She turned forward and kept leading her on.
After a time, they reached the passage to the headmistress’ office. It was rather grandiose in and of itself. The hallway that led to it had posted Canterlot guards, and even when they passed through that door it led simply to another hall; this one flanked with high windows letting in the light of the sun and the beauty of the gardens. It stretched forth a short distance before it went up a small staircase, right before extending to a set of large and beautifully etched doors, where two other guards were likewise posted.
The end of the hall closest to the entryway doors expanded a bit, allowing some space for standing. Inkwell led Sunset there before spinning on her. “You wait here.”
Sunset didn’t complain but stood to one side as instructed. Soon after, Inkwell marched up to the doorway. Before she could pass, however, one of the guards held up a hand. He said something, but it was too soft for Sunset to hear. She only saw that it made Inkwell stand to one side and wait.
The girl crossed her arms and tapped her foot, waiting for her turn to come. It was only about a minute before she heard something at the end of the hall from the other side of the door. While the office was mostly sound-proof, that was only to normal conversation. Someone was shouting. It was enough for her to look up, only for her to hear another shouting back. It actually intrigued her, because it sounded like Celestia’s voice. She had never heard her shout before.
It went back and forth for another few minutes, but eventually died down. About two minutes later, the door finally opened.
The figure who emerged immediately caught Sunset’s eye. She had never seen anyone like her at the school, or at the palace for that matter. She was older and taller than any student, but her attire, she realized, was the same as that of any Canterlot official. Grander, even. Most of all was her hair. It was a dark blue unlike anything any other. So dark it was almost like a picturesque night sky. As she descended the stairs, she could have sworn she saw a sparkle from it now and then; like a twinkling star.
Her face was anything but friendly, however. As soon as she descended, she practically marched back to the entrance Sunset was standing at. By now, the fiery-headed girl was staring at her, and as she passed her eyes flicked to her. They met very briefly, but then parted. The woman kept walking, passed through the door, and let it shut behind her.
Sunset looked forward again, but Inkwell had already vanished inside. There was nothing for her to do now but wait as well.
She ended up pacing around for about 20 minutes. She heard more yells from the door, but this time they were all Inkwell’s. At long last, the door opened again. Inkwell stormed out, clearly irate, and giving Sunset a much dirtier glare before she walked past and almost threw open the doors.
She had moved so fast that the doors to the headmistress’ office hadn’t had a chance to shut by the time she was already gone. As a result, she clearly heard Celestia’s voice, already sounding both tired and disappointed. “Come in, Sunset.”
The girl turned away from the rear doors and came forward, walking up the stairs, and through the double doors.
The office itself was a rotundra, with custom-made curved shelves to account for the headmistress’ personal collection. In addition to being as elegantly decorated as all of the rest of the finer points of the castle, the furnishing were comfortable and old-looking with a rather spacious amount of space to spread out in. A clock that had been built right into the masonry, with a large hourglass no less, was on one side while a fireplace was on another. Perched on one side of the desk was Celestia’s fiery pet bird, one that even Sunset had never managed to identify, and the headmistress herself was seated at the desk—eyes firmly focused on her as soon as she walked in.
The doors were constructed in such a way to close themselves behind her, so as soon as they had Celestia beckoned forward. “Have a seat.”
Sunset stepped forward and did so. She sat upright as she always did; still showing the attentiveness she used to when she was far younger. Celestia, however, didn’t have one of her normal warm, encouraging smiles for her this time. She exhaled tiredly as she sat back in her chair.
“Professor Inkwell tells me that you used a Level VI gradual petrification curse on Moondancer. Is this true?”
She nodded. “Yes, but-”
“She also told me that you refused to use the counter-curse on her even when the other students were begging you to. Is this true?”
“Well, they weren’t exactly begging but-”
“Is this true, Sunset?”
She clammed up and sighed. “They asked me to stop, but-”
“But you refused to.”
“I already learned the counter-curse. I wanted to see if she mastered it. What good is knowing a counter-curse if you can’t use it in a pinch?”
Celestia sighed. “Sunset, there is a reason our curriculum is broken into distinct levels. I continuously try to discourage students like yourself and Moondancer from reading ahead in the literature because they haven’t had the proper background in it to start dabbling in it.”
“If she had read ahead, she should have known even if she ended up totally petrified the curse isn’t permanent for a week-”
“Provided you cast it properly,” Celestia sharply cut off. “That’s what I just warned you about. If you don’t cast the spell properly, it could either fail to work or it could go to the opposite extreme and be unbreakable.”
“I had it correct!” Sunset insisted, leaning up out of her chair now. “And I thought I’d be giving them some help! If they learn how to do magic as well as I can, maybe I won’t have to keep waiting for them to catch up!”
Celestia folded her hands. “And when you saw Moondancer clearly looking scared and not able to think of the spell, you didn’t think that maybe it was time to perform the counter-curse yourself? Or at least try to guide her through it? You instead thought it was a good idea to leave her terrified and to upset the rest of your classmates along with her? To show off your own power at their expense?”
“The rest of them could have jumped in! Minuette had the textbook!”
The headmistress stared back without changing her expression. She was silent for a few moments. “I’m sure you are aware of this, but Professor Inkwell asked that I remove you from her class.”
“If she really wants me out of her class, I’ll be fine with going back to private lessons,” Sunset responded; her tone actually picking up in a touch of hope. “I think I was making a lot more progress just with you, headmistress. I’m ready for whatever spell you want me to master.”
Celestia’s face didn’t change. “It took me a great deal of convincing, but I managed to talk her into letting you stay.”
Sunset’s face sank a little. “Really?”
The headmistress’ eyes narrowed slightly.
“But I’m not learning anything new in there! That’s why I started dabbling in the Level VI textbook to begin with! I’m bored! Can’t you at least give me a new spell to work on mastering on the side?”
Celestia’s eyes closed as she exhaled tiredly.
“Alright, alright…” Sunset groaned. “I promise I won’t ever use magic on the other kids in the class again. I’ll apologize to Moondancer today.”
“Sunset,” she spoke wearily, straightening in her chair and lowering her hands again, “you’re missing the point. If you aren’t seeing why it was a wrong thing to do in the first place, then you still haven’t understood the reason I placed you in the normal classes.”
“Well, what is the reason?”
Celestia placed a hand on her forehead and shook it. “I can’t just tell you that.”
“Why not?”
“Because if I do, you won’t learn it.” Her voice had turned sharper. “You’ll only do what I want you to do and act the way I want you to act for a high mark or a grade, and nothing will have changed.”
“What do you mean nothing will have changed?”
“It’s…” she started to say. However, she merely sighed tiredly again and shook her head. “It’s nothing. Just…do what you said. Apologize to Moondancer and don’t let me see you in my office over this again.”
That answer was clearly unsatisfactory to Sunset, and she showed it as she started to rise. “Headmistress, this isn’t fair! You said you had more to tell me! Why not-”
“Sunset, I don’t have time for this right now,” she cut off, opening her eyes and looking back at her. “Something very important needs my attention and I have a lot of decisions to make in the near future. Just stick with Professor Inkwell’s class and I’ll see what I can do about getting you some extracurricular work on your next evaluation.”
Sunset, however, keyed in on that first part. “Important? What do you mean?”
“It’s nothing that need concern you. Not right now, at any rate.”
“Is it something that had to do with that woman who came out of your office when I got here?”
At once, Celestia leveled a firm glare on her. Her eyes radiated with a power she hadn’t seen since that night last year. And just as on that night, the power in her eyes and the ferocity with which she stared at her was enough to not only render her mute but conveyed one central idea.
Do not ask about that again.
Realizing she was getting nowhere else, she dropped it and nodded. “Very well, headmistress.”
For the first time since she had met her, she saw Celestia take a slow, deliberate effort to calm herself down again, before she managed a small nod. “Very well. Good day, Sunset.”
Naturally, Moondancer not only hadn’t accepted Sunset’s canned apology but had shrunk away from her silently when she tried to give it, and the rest of the class kept their distance from her the rest of the day as well. Not that she cared. Her mind was still ablaze with what she had seen and heard in the office that day. Even when she finally turned into her dormitory room for the night, she continued to lie awake and think about it.
It went without saying that Sunset did not have the same level of “hero worship” she used to possess for the princess on arrival at her academy, but even so she still held her in very high esteem. More so than anyone else at the academy. She had never seen her looking so distraught or tired before that afternoon. She didn’t think it was possible for the princess to be so worked up. Nothing ever seemed to get her down.
The only other time she had come close had been the night Sunset went to the Northern Keep…
As the night slowly wore on, Sunset thought more about that night. For many months afterward, she had nightmares about it. Celestia’s look and reaction, to say nothing of what she had actually heard that voice say. Yet as time passed and her experience and talent grew, all horror was replaced by curiosity. It occurred to her that night that whatever was in that place was the only thing she had ever seen upset Celestia, and that, as far as she knew, nothing had been done to remove it.
In the end, in spite of the stern warnings, even commands, and her own remembered fears, she decided nothing was for it but a second visit.
Around midnight, she slipped out of bed, quickly put on her clothes and shoes, and began to make her way out of the dormitory. If she had managed to slip out undetected a year ago, now it was so much easier to walk around the watchmen, locks, and other defenses. She knew, however, that ever since she had snuck into the Northern Keep Celestia kept a guard posted at the only gate all night every night.
Fortunately, she had ways around that too. The first was to hide her approach. She did that by not leaving the dormitory through the normal pathways on the castle grounds that would have made her approach obvious, but instead got only to the second floor before moving out to the laundry area and exiting through one of the windows adjacent to the gardens. She emerged not only on an unprotected side but near the gardens. After that, she stayed with them and managed to make her way to the Northern Keep, drawing very close to its eastern side in the process.
From her position in the forest, she spotted the two guards. She managed to get so close under the cover of night that neither of them even glanced to her when only a single wall of foliage concealed her. Unfortunately, she could get no nearer, and she knew full well they could handle basic magic. Anything more advanced would trigger an alert. Instead, she tried another Level VI spell she had wanted to use for a while. It took her a good solid ten minutes of preparation; staring at the other side of the gate behind the two guards and trying to focus on where she wanted to go, but finally she performed the chant. In a flash of fiery light, she disappeared.
The two guards were alerted, but it didn’t matter. As they ran to inspect the bushes, Sunset had already reappeared within the gate on the other side. She felt a massive headache and her body felt a bit stretched, but luckily it only kept her down for a minute—well before the two returned. Drawing herself up, smiling at her first successful teleport, she advanced.
Even though it had been a year ago, Sunset remembered the path only too well. In no time at all, she had navigated through the secret passages, lifted the magic locks, and worked her way around the labyrinthian keep until, at long last, she reached the third sublevel again. In spite of her curiosity, she couldn’t help but feel nearly as afraid as she had the first time on stepping into it. It seemed to have grown even danker and clammier. And as she walked over the moss-and-slime covered masonry and rocks, past the old, rusted, chilly dungeon gates, with only a soft fireball of her own making for light, she began to uncover unpleasant memories. She started to recall it wasn’t only for Celestia’s command that had kept her away, but rather the thought of the thing that was all but buried alive in the place.
As she neared the final stretch, the one last stone staircase that seemed to descend straight down forever into the darkness, she suddenly thought of something that made her hesitate. What if Celestia wasn’t there? What if only the thing was? The keep was deathly silent. Any sound she made would be heard. And if it was, and the thing heard her, what if it started to address her? Or what if it somehow could get loose and roam the keep at will while Celestia was away?
The thought almost melted her resolve. She only managed enough courage to reach the foot of the long staircase and, very reluctantly, look down. Had she seen nothing but darkness, she would have turned and run right then and there.
But no. Just like one year ago, far down at the end of the stairs, seemingly in the bowels of the world itself, was a flickering of light. And just as on that year, there were shadows.
It was down there, and so was Celestia.
Sunset swallowed, but she could hear nothing even in the silence and cold of the keep. Again, the thought occurred to her to turn around and leave. Remember the promise she made Celestia and never come there again. However, her curiosity wouldn’t let her. She had come that far. To turn around with nothing would render it in vain. Forcing her feet to move, she commanded herself to proceed. Moving painfully slowly, not making a sound, she stretched out a foot and placed it on the stairwell. Soon she stepped down again.
At this rate, it would have easily taken an hour to get all the way down the stairs, but she didn’t intend on going that far. And she didn’t need to. She only descended about six steps before she stopped, hearing a noise from far below. In moments, she felt her blood curdle as she repressed the urge to gasp.
It was the thing again.
And this time, it was laughing.
She swallowed a lump in her throat. Trembling, she managed one more step, but could go no lower. At that moment, it laughed even more high pitched and wild than before. It was a horrendous, twisted sound. Like something that didn’t know how to laugh or even what a laugh really was, and somehow mistook some bizarre form of scream for it. She could almost swear she heard it getting louder.
After a minute more, the thing locked down there gave a hideous, whooping cry in which it spoke out in a voice both dripping with madness and twisted with malevolence. It was even more of a horrible sound than Sunset remembered, and hearing it brought back all the frightening memories from before. Even as she stood there a teenager, it only took that one phrase to reduce her to a child again.
In a snap, she turned around and ran back up. She kept running back through the passages of the keep all the way to the castle grounds, and it was only a miracle that the guards had stopped to talk to the sentries about any intruders that she wasn’t caught on running back out. She hadn’t the presence of mind to try and teleport again. She plunged into the garden, charged through it, went back through the laundry room window, ran upstairs, and threw herself into her room before locking the door.
It wasn’t until an hour before dawn that she finally calmed fully again, and while she was unusually quiet the rest of the next day it was a welcome change for all of her classmates. However, long before that happened, she finally relaxed enough to think about the words that she had heard from the thing chained in the bottom of the Northern Keep. She would continue to think of them progressively more often from that day forth.
“You made a mistake with her, didn’t you?! Now you wish you’d never brought her here to begin with!”
The rendezvous point had been a good choice. It was a distance from not only any city or settlement, but also isolated from any of the spots where the Appleloosan military had deployed in response to both the surge of Nighttouched as well as the chaos their own forces had caused.
The Rising Sun had been put into a “hover dock” about 500 feet above the ground, left to wait for the others to arrive. The Legacy was likewise docked, and the helmsman had notified her a little while ago an airship was approaching flashing signals indicating it was the Prodigy. However, Sunset had taken her spot on the upper deck, heedless of both the wind and the threat of a stray flying Nighttouched, so that she could look out for one other arrival in particular. Not long after, it came.
A strange metal device born along on a jet of flame, elongated like an armored rocket, shot up from the ground and straight for the lower bay on the Rising Sun. Mounted across it was an armored man; the only one capable of driving it after Sunset had finished modifying it. He road on it like one would a horse, only using a set of handlebars rather than reins, and driving with such skill one would have assumed it was no more than a trained beast to him.
Five minutes later, as the Prodigy was coming in to dock alongside the Rising Sun while the Legacy was already mounted, the dorsal hatch opened and a soldier dressed in Trottingham royal guard armor walked onto the upper deck. Sunset looked over him for a moment, catching a whiff of ozone.
“Have any trouble?”
“None at all, my lady.”
“Then I guess neither of them were the one we wanted after all?”
“I couldn’t tell.”
Sunset’s perpetual smug smirk ebbed. She turned fully to face him. “What do you mean you couldn’t tell?”
“They both escaped.”
Her smile faded all together as her pupils narrowed. “Really.” She took a step in his direction. “And you talk about almost as if it’s something to be proud of.”
“They both have an Anima Viri now, and both can partially use them.”
“Which is why I sent you to deal with them in the first place.” Her tone was growing increasingly irritated. “Because I thought you would be able to handle two at a time. Now you’re starting to make me wonder why I bothered giving you that armor and chariot to begin with if you just let them escape even with it.”
“This only works out to our advantage, Lady Sunset.”
“Oh, does it now? How do you figure that?”
The royal guard held his spear upright and struck it against the ship’s deck, drawing Sunset’s attention to it. “I tagged one in the leg with the tracer dye.”
Sunset hesitated, but still looked critical. “I see. But we wouldn’t really have had to track them down later to begin with if you had done away with them now.”
“But my lady, I thought after our last stop you were trying to drive the Appleloosan government to round them up? Now if they get picked up and gathered to others, we’ll be able to strike them together without having to hunt each one down individually.”
She paused. She was quiet a moment as she thought this over, but she calmed quickly at the realization of that fact. Once the Prodigy was also docking and the Legacy had crossed over, she finally eased. “It seems I should give you a bit more credit, Flash. Well done.”
He immediately crossed his arm about his chest and dropped to a bow. “Thank you, my lady.”
“Just don’t get sentimental on me in the future. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but chivalry died out long before the Lunar Fall.”
With that, she turned away and looked forward. The commanding officer of the Legacy approached while Snips and Snails came forward from the Prodigy. She stepped up to both of them.
“Alright, let’s recap where we’re at. Our own ship managed to track down six in all; all neutralized. Snips, Snails,” She gave them a sour look. “I’ll spare you the embarrassment of disclosing how you only managed to eliminate one and let two more escape. Suffice to say it’s unlikely that either of them was the main target. What they did manage to do, however, is get us a description to go on.”
She turned back to the other officer. “We’re looking for a street magician. My height. Purple eyes and purple hair with a pink streak. Has a dog following her around. Alright, how’d you do?”
“We eliminated three, Lady Sunset, but I think you’ll be more pleased by the other news we have to offer.”
She crossed her arms again. “Really now. Why’s that?”
“If that description is correct, we’ve found her.”
Sunset was immobile for just a moment before she broke into a wide smile. “Well, that does make me happy, but I’m taking from the fact that you aren’t giving her to me right now that you didn’t actually manage to capture her?”
“Unfortunately no, my lady. We encountered her, but she managed to escape by crossing through the Greater Everfree Forest. She’s headed west, though. There’s only one route she can take, and one place where she can emerge.”
She nodded. “That there is. So, what can you tell me about her?”
“She definitely has a full grasp on her power. She used it to turn into a figure with a wide cloak and a pointy, wide-brimmed hat. Also what looked like a wand or stave.”
“Caster role, eh? How quaint. Makes sense.”
“More than that, though. She has another one with her who also has a full grasp on her Anima Viri. This one had combat armor and a warhammer.”
This gave Sunset pause, intriguing her. “A Warrior role? And paired with a Caster. Huh…” She raised a hand and put it to her chin. “So they offset most of each other’s weaknesses. Especially if they got away from you.”
She grinned wide enough to show her teeth.
“I might actually get to have some fun with these two. If I take them personally, they might actually make me break a sweat.”
“What are the orders now, my lady?” the royal guard spoke up.
She uncrossed her arms, laced her fingers together, and cracked her knuckles. “From here on in, it’s the easy part. We know which way they’re headed. You can track your group, and all I need to do is wait for them to use their Anima Viris again and I’ll be able to track mine.” She glanced to Snips and Snails. “You two and the Prodigy are with us.” She turned to the other commanding officer afterward. “You keep up the good work and arch downward through the country. Make sure no one from Appleloosa disturbs our trip as we work our way west and take out any more folks with the Promethian Sigil you can find while you’re at it.”
All three bowed to Sunset, and then turned to go back to their respective ships. She herself turned and began to walk toward the hatch leading below deck. As she passed the knight, he rose and quickly fell in behind her.
“We’re causing quite a bit of trouble and right in the midst of a Nighttouched surge. The largest one in years. Cinch could have us all hung for this.”
“Flash, as soon as I’ve claimed that Anima Viri from our little runaway, neither Cinch, Trottingham, or anyone else will ever have anything to say about what we do again.”
Hours had passed since the two had plunged into the forest as deep as they dared. They had slowed only briefly before the shots fired into the woods from the pursuing airship caused them both to run as fast as they could through the now-uneven terrain for miles beyond. Even when their respective transformations faded they kept going, and hours after that Applejack and Twilight were both feeling it. Their bodies were sore not only from last night and lack of sleep but now from the actions of that day.
Applejack was used to this trudging when necessary although she didn’t like it, but Twilight was practically collapsing on Spike as she limped along by now. She was tripping over tree roots once every five minutes and she was making a lot of noise each time—a fact that Applejack wasn’t too happy about as the day grew later and the shadows in the forest lengthened.
Finally, she huffed, pulled her hat off, and gestured. “Alright…I guess we better start headin’ out.”
Twilight was so exhausted it took her a moment to pick up on that. “Wait…what? We can’t do that! If the country is still wide and flat, that airship could see us for miles! Especially if it’s still looking for us!”
“I’d rather be out there with an airship than in here much longer…” the farmer muttered back.
Twilight was reluctant, but a glance toward the direction of Equestria and how many black patches were showing up made it clear that was best. The three worked their way back to the forest edge. On hitting the tree line, they looked out but saw no sign of any pursuing airship. Soon after, they stepped into the open fields beyond and kept walking.
Unfortunately, both of them knew this wasn’t much better. It might not have been getting dark that quickly, but the landscape had nothing else but other stands of trees and fields; both natural and farmland. Neither was useful to them.
“We gotta find some shelter somewhere…and fast,” Twilight groaned, looking to the sky. “The sun will set in an hour at the most.”
Applejack frowned while glancing about. “Most of these fields are abandoned and left ta’ fallow. Not only does that mean most folks ‘round here are gone, it means they packed up and left ‘cause the Nighttouched are real bad. Don’t know ‘bout you but I’m exhausted. Don’t think I can fight another one without some sleep… Any ideas where ta’ head?”
Twilight uneasily looked at the forest and the field. “We could start walking away from the forest and hope we come up to something. That’d get us farther away from the Nighttouched at least. But we still have to worry about that airship. Maybe we should walk alongside instead so long as we’re in an area that is…or at least was…settled. We can duck back in the forest if we need to.”
“Ain’t gonna find the forest safe much longer…” Applejack muttered as she looked into the woods; searching for yellow eyes. She kept watching as she began to walk and Twilight soon followed.
The two found the way easier now, but that only made them pick up the pace. They found they were indeed in the rural part of a country but it was long since abandoned. They risked calling out once or twice for people every time they came to a spot that looked more well-traveled, but that soon stopped. There was no one around and, as night continued to near, they knew it would only attract more Nighttouched when the sun fell. Applejack kept looking into the woods as the shadows deepened; her nervousness growing as her stamina continued to lessen.
After a while, she looked behind her to Twilight. Seeing how far back she was, she called out. “Don’t fall behind now. No sense walkin’ next ta’ this critter-infested forest if we both can’t duck inta’ it in a hurry.”
“Sorry…” she said between pants. “Been…a while since…I’ve done this much cross-country…walking…”
Applejack waited a second or two before frowning and continuing to walk. “This don’t make any sense ta’ begin with. Why in the world would some airship from Trottingham want ta’ risk causin’ a war just to hit us?”
“I have no idea… I’ve never seen…”
Applejack walked a few more steps before she realized Twilight had trailed off. “Seen what?”
“Nothing.”
Noticing how hurried that was, Applejack turned her head back to her, crooking an eyebrow. Twilight, still poor at hiding her emotions, was already wincing.
“No, what?”
Twilight hesitated a moment, before realizing it wasn’t going to help to hide anything anymore. She exhaled and slumped. “Remember what I was saying earlier about the one person who could have stopped this?”
“Yeah.”
“She was my instructor. The same night the Lunar Fall happened, we were on a summer break and doing a tour across Greater Everfree. The rest of the students and I were being taken to our respective hometowns to say hi to our parents for a night or two. When we arrived at my home, I got out of our carriage, and moments later…” She stiffened.
“What?”
Her face shook, her eyes staring at the ground with a hollow expression. “Moments later…something blew up the carriage with the princess and the rest of the students in it.”
Applejack was surprised, but also caught one word. “Wait… Did you say ‘princess’?”
Twilight shook her head, pushing away the bad memory. “That…that doesn’t really matter… All that matters is that night, something or someone tried to get rid of both my headmistress and the rest of the students she was teaching about magic, the Promethian Sigils, and what was going to happen to this world. I never found out who and…and…” She began to look fearful and uneasy again.
“And what?”
She grasped one of her arms and rubbed it uncomfortably. “To tell the truth, I’ve been scared to find out.” She looked up, and the farmer could see the fear in her eyes. “Whoever killed my headmistress and my classmates that night would have killed me too if they had been ten seconds faster. And believe me when I say that anyone who could catch the headmistress off guard like that is not someone to underestimate. That’s the reason I don’t stay in one place. I’ve been scared over the past eight years that they’d find out they…they ‘missed one’…”
Applejack frowned. “Ya’ mean ta’ tell me there’s other folks out there after the heads of anybody who’s got one of them symbols on their hands?”
“No! I mean, I don’t think so! Or…or at least never until now! But…based on what happened at Fort Chestnut…” she trailed off before wincing. “This is why-”
“I know, I know…” Applejack sighed, “this is why it was better ya’ didn’t tell me nothin’… Ain’t nothin’ for it now. Just tell me if ya’ think them Trottingham ones are the one who got yer headmistress.”
“I’m sorry,” she sighed, shaking her head. “I honestly don’t know. I’ve never seen anyone actively trying to target me until today, so maybe. Whoever killed my headmistress was secretive, though. No one…” she paused, grimacing a little, “no one in my town saw anything.”
Applejack noted the pause, but wasn’t in the mood to press more. “Well, it can wait ‘til we got a place ta’ rest our heads.” She looked forward again. “And we gotta make do pretty soon. We… Hey wait! Over there!”
The farmer stopped and pointed. Twilight and Spike walked up further and looked where she indicated.
Up ahead was a field where the grass had been kept low, either due to cutting or grazing. At the moment, some domesticated and wild animals alike were moving about in it. Their posture and mannerisms indicated they were looking for a spot to relieve themselves. However, presiding over all of it in a long, simple, one-piece dress was a woman with long pink hair. She was too far to hear clearly, but she seemed to be calling out to them as if she was their handler.
“Somebody’s up there!”
Twilight quickly moved to her side. “Oh, what a relief! If there’s someone here, that means they must have a shelter nearby!”
“I better get ta’ her ‘fore she has a chance ta’ run off!”
“Wait, don’t do that! You might scare-”
It was too late. Applejack immediately took off in a rush, seizing her hat off her head and waving it while shouting. “Ma’am! Ma’am!”
The shouting went all up and down the valley, and several of the animals perked up, spotting someone charging at them, and then broke into a run and scattered. In moments, the pink-haired woman looked up as well. However, rather than do as Twilight feared and break for it, she simply stood there and looked a mixture of fearful and nervous. She cringed, folded her hands, and turned her head down to the side; like a mixture of a shy child and a cornered animal.
Applejack ignored that as she finally came up to her and slowed to a halt, as well as the fact that, while the other animals had run off, a single white rabbit still stood there like some sort of sentry. “Howdy, ma’am,” she spoke hurriedly, “the two of us have been in a real peck of trouble and now we’re lost. Can ya’ tell us where the nearest town is?”
The woman merely stood there in her semi-cringed posture. She had let her long hair fall over the side of the face facing Applejack, and used that as a shield for her vision even as she kept looking at the ground.
Applejack was puzzled. “Er…ma’am? ‘Scuse me? Ma’am?”
She glanced up to Applejack, but then away again; even more nervous than before.
This began to annoy the farmer. “Can ya’ at least look at someone when they’re talkin’ to-”
“Sorry! Sorry!” Twilight quickly cut in, only then finally managing to catch up with Applejack and fall in next to her. She let out a short, nervous laugh between fresh pants. “Didn’t mean to startle you, ma’am! We’ve just had a really, really rough day and we’ve been walking for a really long time. We’re not bandits or thieves though; just travelers. We’re not even armed…uh…unless you count a hammer. So there’s no reason to be afraid of us.”
The woman glanced up again once, but then looked back down again.
Applejack frowned. Twilight looked uncomfortable, wondering if the woman had even understood that. “Well, um…as I said, we really don’t mean you any harm or trouble and we’ll be out of your way soon as we’re just passing through. So there’s no reason to be scared of us. Ok?”
She kept looking away. Her lips parted, but spoke so softly that the two only heard a quiet mumble.
“Ex…excuse me?”
She looked up once briefly before mumbling even quieter than before.
Applejack’s teeth began to grit. “Dagnabbit, this is a waste of time… If ya’ ain’t gonna talk ta’ us, can ya’ at least point us to where the nearest town is?”
Her voice was so booming that the woman cringed a little more, letting out a feeble noise that almost sounded like a whine. Twilight gave Applejack an annoyed look. “Could you talk a little quieter? I think you’re intimidating her.”
“Well, at this point I’m startin’ ta’ wonder what in tarnation she’s doing out here in the first place so close ta’ the Equestrian border if two people passin’ through make her clam up tighter than a river muss-”
“Oh…oh my! I’ve never seen a dog like you before!”
The two women stopped and looked back to the lady; both a bit surprised to suddenly hear her speak. They got another surprise to see her previous shy and fearful demeanor had vanished. She was now crouched on the ground and greeting Spike happily.
“What a beautiful shade of fur!” she went on as she pet his belly. “And it’s so soft too! Who’s a good boy? You’re a good boy!”
Spike, naturally, not only accepted all of this praise, but it only took a few seconds before he got down and rolled over to allow the woman greater access to his belly. As for Twilight and Applejack, they were both a tad dumbfounded at the difference in demeanor. They looked to one another, before Twilight decided to risk using it. Forcing a new smile on her face, she crouched down next to Spike as well.
“So, um…you like my dog?”
“Oh, he’s your dog?” the woman spoke up, finally addressing them clearly. “He’s so handsome! I didn’t know dogs came in a shade of purple and green. What’s his name?”
“Spike.”
“Well hello there, Spike! You’re a cute boy! Where was he born?”
“I’m not exactly sure. I got him in Canterlot Castle.”
The moment she said that, Twilight’s own eyes widened and she nearly covered her own mouth. Applejack perked up again on seeing her slip, but the pink-haired woman seemed not to mind so much. “Oh my… I don’t think I’ve ever heard of Canterlot Castle. Are there many animals like him there?”
Twilight sweat a little, but quickly evaded the issue. “I, um…couldn’t say. I was only visiting… But anyway, like my friend was saying, the two, I mean, three of us are really in a whole lot of trouble right now. We, uh…got stranded from the rest of our group and some…bad people chased us into the forest on the Equestrian border.”
The pink-haired woman looked up, cupping a hand to her mouth. For a moment, it seemed as if she would be petrified again, but fortunately the dog had gotten her to open up. “Oh no! Little Spike didn’t get hurt, did he?”
“‘Spike’?!” Applejack retorted. “The dog? What about-”
“We all came out of it ok,” Twilight quickly cut in, “but we’ve been running half the day and we’re exhausted, and the sun is going to be down soon. We really need to find shelter fast. Can you please show us the way to your town?”
“Town?” she echoed back, before looking away again. “Oh…oh dear… You see, um…I don’t live near any towns. I haven’t even been to any towns in about two years now, but the last one I passed through was at least eight miles southwest of here.”
“Eight…eight miles?!” Applejack echoed in shock. “We’ll never make it that far before sundown! Not even if we could run the whole way!”
Twilight hesitated a moment before smiling a little more at the woman. “Well, in that case, I don’t suppose, um…possibly…maybe…you would be willing to let us…”
She trailed off. Her eyes suddenly widened.
Applejack noticed the pause and turned to her. “Twilight, come on. Spit it out. Ya’ were gonna-”
“Excuse me,” Twilight quickly cut off, before she snapped to her feet and went in alongside Applejack. The woman didn’t seem to notice, continuing to pet Spike; now tickling him and making one of his legs kick. At once, Twilight’s tone turned sharp.
“Applejack, we can’t stay with her.”
“Beg yer pardon?” she answered at full volume, making Twilight wince again. “Why in tarnation-”
She reached out for her chin and turned her head. “Look.”
Applejack found herself forced to look at the woman again. She nearly protested, until she realized Twilight was indicating toward her hands.
On taking a closer look, and seeing her now petting Spike, she noticed a six-sided emblem on one.
“She’s got a Promethian Sigil!” Twilight sharply whispered. “She could go crazy during the night and try and kill us!”
Applejack almost rolled her eyes. The pink-haired woman looked about as solidly built as a tower of feathers, and as intimidating as a butterfly. “I don’t think it’ll be a problem. Just look at her.”
“Well, look at her now… But if her mood changes…”
“It’ll be fine,” Applejack waved off. “If anything comes up, it’s two of us on her and we’ve both got our…our…whatever ya’ called ‘em.”
“But-”
“Ma’am,” Applejack spoke up again, far more composed this time. She actually pulled off her hat as the woman look up to her. “We’re stranded out here right now so I don’t suppose ya’ could trouble yerself ta’ let us shack up with ya’ for the night, could ya’? We’re willin’ ta’ do whatever chores ya’d like ta’ earn our keep, but we’re really in a tight spot. If ya’ don’t help us out, the three of us’ll end up sleepin’ under the stars.”
“Oh dear…” the woman softly answered, leaning up and looking down on Spike anxiously. “This is far too close to the forest… I’d hate to think of what might happen to poor Spike during the night… He could be bitten by a Nighttouched rat or bat, or clawed at by a Nighttouched owl, or even run into a wild Nighttouched raccoon or dog…”
“Uh…we wouldn’t care fer any of that stuff ta’ come ta’ us neither.”
She nervously wrung her hands. “I…I don’t normally have guests…but…” She looked back up to them. “If you’re really sure you wouldn’t mind, then…I guess I could let you stay at my home tonight.”
“Heh, right now we’re a couple o’ the least-choosin’ beggars you’ve ever seen,” Applejack half-chuckled.
“We certainly wouldn’t mind. Thank you very much,” Twilight added.
“Well…alright, if you say so…” she timidly answered as she began to rise. “I don’t live far and I was about to get the animals in for the night anyway… We better hurry.”
About fifteen minutes later, both Twilight and Applejack were, somewhat hesitantly, “settling in”. It turned out the shelter that their new host was offering them was an old cellar underneath an even older, half-broken down shack. It probably would have been a bit more appealing to them if they didn’t find they were sharing it with almost an entire farm worth of animals jam packed everywhere they could be, leaving them barely any room to stretch out on the floor.
Both women glanced about repeatedly at the walls of chickens, mice, turtles, lizards, squirrels, raccoons, birds, rabbits, and more. Twilight noted that many of them seemed to have a purple or dark-colored splotch on them, while Applejack frequently looked at the woman’s rabbit; who, at this point, was not only down there with them but seemed to be eyeing them cautiously. He wasn’t touching his own food, but Spike, lying nearby, was digging into his own. Their host had made sure to feed them first, and now the ceiling above them creaked as she moved about.
After a time, Twilight somewhat uneasily moistened her lips. “So…” she called up above, “Missus…uh…um…?”
“Oh…I’m Fluttershy,” her voice softly called back.
“Fluttershy. Do you really live out here all by yourself?”
“Well, with all of my friends. I left town a while ago and came out here. I saw this building was abandoned and I moved in. I, um…don’t really care for towns that much. I tend to…get a bit shy around people.”
“I can imagine…” Applejack muttered before looking up again. “Looks like you an’ the critters all cram down here every night?”
“Oh yes. I can’t really barricade the house against any Nighttouched, especially the small ones. So we hide down there every night. Don’t worry. I always make sure everyone does their business before heading down.”
Both Twilight and Applejack winced. A single whiff of the cellar informed them that Fluttershy had clearly gone “nose-blind” to the animals after two years. “I…think there might have been an ‘accident’ or two down here at one point.”
“Oh dear…well, animals will be animals.”
A few moments later, she appeared at the top of the cellar door, holding a small, warped pot and a few bowls. She began to make her way down the stairs. “I apologize in advance for supper. I wasn’t really expecting anyone and I had to put out the fire before it got too late so…it might be a bit undercooked.”
“Well, I’m hungry as a horse so I’ll take whatever yer offerin’, ma’am,” Applejack answered as she reached the bottom. As soon as she was down, she moved over to Spike’s side, pausing to pet him as well as her rabbit again, before setting the bowls down and beginning to use a spoon in her pot to scoop something into them. Twilight soon spotted it was rather gray, lumpy, and paste-like, with numerous dark spots in it.
She tried to suppress her displeasure. “So, um…what are we having?”
“Oh, my own special recipe for oatmeal. I made it up myself when I moved out here.” She smiled a bit at that last part in self-pride.
Soon she had served up the bowls and passed them out along with some old spoons. She immediately went right into her own, offering a little to her rabbit at the same time. Applejack tried to dig into hers, but her spoon seemed to be adhered to it. She frowned and pulled at it a bit, almost needing to shift her grip, before it came up and she began to eat. Twilight noted her expression blanched a moment before she was able to put down a bite. Nervously, she went for a spoonful from her own bowl.
“The best part about it is that it’s made right from the same food I gather for the animals, so they can have whatever is left over.” Fluttershy added happily.
Applejack paused; giving her own food a glance. Reluctantly, she forced herself to keep eating. Twilight was far more nervous as she pulled up a spoonful of her own. “Really now? And…what kind of food is in it?”
“Well, oats of course. But I also coarse ground some kernels and seeds, and I even throw in some mashed up grubs, beetles, and larva. They really give you a lot of energy, you know.”
Twilight flashed a shade green. Applejack herself moved even slower, now seeming to rue each bite, but she also leaned over and elbowed Twilight. “She’s givin’ us a free meal no matter how bad we think it is…and we ain’t gonna get nowhere tomorrow without some food in our stomachs tonight.”
At long last, wincing one more time, Twilight took up a spoonful and put it in her mouth. She looked slightly more nauseated each time her tongue touched one of the more “gritty” parts, not knowing if they were seed kernels or insect exoskeleton, and trying not to think about what each unusual blob of material her tongue touched was. At last, she managed to force it to her throat, and soon after winced as she tried three separate times to swallow.
After a time, Applejack leaned in again. “It’s a bit easier if ya’ chew it first.”
She winced again as she forced it back up to chew a little, seeming almost ready to heave each time, before she finally swallowed a bite. At that point, looking as if the sick feelings in her stomach were worse than hunger, she set the bowl down. “Ms. Fluttershy…” she went on again, trying to get her mind off of it, “you’ve really been living out here for two years? This close to the border to Equestria? By yourself?”
“Well, I wouldn’t say all by myself. I do have all my little friends here.”
“But as dangerous as it is you’ve still managed to stay out here?”
She folded her hands in her lap momentarily. “It does get a bit dangerous from time to time…but I’m used to it by now. I’ve worked out a good system for being able to avoid any Nighttouched or Light Eaters. I even have a special hood I used to make sure none are hiding in the house in the morning before I get up. And I’d still rather be out here than in a town.”
Applejack frowned. “Ya’ might wanna rethink that. We just got away from a whole hoard o’ Nighttouched comin’ cross the border. Not more than half a day’s walk from here.”
Fluttershy’s eyes widened, before she cringed a little again. “Oh…oh my… Really?”
“Worse’n that. They got some special ones that eat right through wooden walls.” She nodded to the ceiling. “That cellar door ain’t gonna mean squat to them if they decide ta’ break in.”
“Oh dear…” she winced a bit more. “That does sound bad…but…” She looked up and around herself, at all the rows of animals currently in the cellar. “Oh…I can’t just up and leave all of them behind. They still need me. I’m the only one who can help them.”
“I’m sure that if you could corral all of them, you could relocate them to a forest or abandoned lot in a safer town south of here,” Twilight offered. “It’d be safer than living here.”
Fluttershy shook her head. “No, it’s not that. Here…” She turned to the side as she put her bowl down and patted her lap. “Angel, could you come here a moment?”
The rabbit looked up and then, a bit to the bewilderment of the two ladies, did exactly as she said and hopped over to her. He soon lay out on her lap, and she began to pet his head, but also gently manipulated him through her petting to get him to roll over. Once he did, she moved out and held one of his rear legs. She stretched it out while still stroking him and exposed the other side.
The light from the single lantern in the cellar was faint, but the two could make out a tiny purple splotch on his inner thigh.
Twilight looked curious. “What is that? It almost looks like the same color as…”
She trailed off; her eyes widening in realization.
“You…you don’t mean…?”
Fluttershy bowed her head a little sadly. “Angel showed me that he was out trying to dig up a tuber in the woods about two miles from the border when it suddenly got dark out, and soon after he saw a long, prickly Light Eater come out like a cobra and try to strike him. He tried to jump, but he got poked on the inside of his thigh by one of its spines. He ran and ran until he went out of the forest and right up to me, and he was so scared and panicked he jumped right into my arms. That was about six years ago now…”
“Six…six years?!” Twilight cried; loud enough to make Angel and Spike lean up and Fluttershy cringe.
Applejack shrugged. “What ya’ yellin’ about?”
She snapped to her. “Didn’t you just hear that?”
“Hear what?”
“Her rabbit got injured by a Light Eater six years ago!”
Her own bowl of oatmeal dropped to the ground. “Wh-what?! And…and ya’ mean…” she spun to the rabbit, who had calmed now but seemed to almost stare at the two of them angrily at upsetting him. “Ya’ mean…he ain’t…ain’t tried to bite yer throat out or nothin’? He’s still actin’ like a rabbit and not like some little pit demon?”
“I might have phrased that a bit more gently…” Twilight moaned.
“Oh…oh no, it’s alright,” Fluttershy answered as she began to lean up again. “I know what you’re saying. And you’re right. He should have turned into a Nighttouched in less than a day.” She looked up and around, gesturing around her. “They all should have.”
“All?” Twilight echoed back, before looking up and around. She gave another start. “You mean…those little splotches on them…?”
“They’re all gonna turn into Nighttouched?!” Applejack cried; almost getting up.
“Oh no, it’s fine,” Fluttershy reassured. “You see, that’s why I need to be here. Their spots aren’t getting any bigger. I’ll admit they do act a bit unusual… They seem to know everything I say to them and they walk around and act a lot more ‘person-like’ than normal animals would, and none of them seem to get any older. They’re not in danger, though. You see…every time their splotches start getting bigger, I found out all I have to do is look them straight in the eye and stare while I hold onto them. When I do that, the splotches shrink again.”
Both Twilight and Applejack were still rather tensed up, especially realizing they were basically surrounded by future monsters. Yet they paid attention to this, and when Fluttershy was finished they turned back to her incredulously.
“Seriously?”
She smiled and nodded back, but lowered her eyes again and frowned soon after. “But I can’t make the splotches go away all together… I’ve tried as hard as I could, but it’s no good. I can only shrink them, and after a while they always start to grow again. That’s why I have to stay with them.”
The two were quiet, rather surprised to hear this news. Even Twilight had never heard of anything like that before. However, she shrugged after a moment. “Well, even if you can’t find out a way to make the corruption go away completely, you can still relocate them somewhere safer.”
She shook her head. “No…I need to stay here in case I can pick up any more animals that end up getting attacked by Nighttouched. And if I’m not right next to the border, I’ll never see them…”
“Well, that’s just plain nuts,” Applejack snorted. “All ya’ need is a Light Eater ta’ walk right cross this border and there goes yer animals and yer homestead. And after that big surge we saw last night, I think that’s gonna be sooner rather than later.”
That made her turn a shade white, even in the dim light. “Oh…oh no, I couldn’t…” she meekly answered, shrinking in a bit further.
“What’s there ta’ be scared of?” Applejack frowned. “Twilight an’ I spent all day walkin’ right in the edge of the forest and didn’t run into a scrap o’ trouble. Everywhere else has gotta be safer.”
Fluttershy actually winced and looked at both of them in sudden terror. It was enough to make them both start.
“You…you actually went…through the forest…?”
Applejack blinked back, then shrugged. “Well, yeah. Ain’t like it’s right on the border where things get dark. You gotta know that livin’ this close, right?”
Fluttershy didn’t answer. She curled in on herself, placing her hands around Angel, and began to tremble. “Oh dear… Oh dear… Oh dear…”
“Um,” Twilight spoke up again, “is there something wrong?”
The woman didn’t answer. She was quiet for a long time, seeming to rock on herself and only saying “oh dear” like an attempt to self-soothe. Eventually, however, she looked up to them again. “You two don’t know how lucky you are. You can never set foot in that forest again.”
“Well, why not?”
Fluttershy again had to pause to compose herself, holding Angel up higher to her chest like a teddy bear. She looked again to the floor, letting her hair dangle over her face. Applejack was getting rather impatient when she finally spoke.
“A few days ago…Olivia ran into the forest. I tried to run after her and…and I ended up going…pretty deep… Where the sun stopped shining and…and I saw yellow eyes starting to come out… Only it wasn’t just a few of them like at night. It was hundreds…thousands of them…all moving through an old creek bed…”
She swallowed. After about a minute, Applejack and Twilight thought that was it, until she spoke up again.
“And then…then I saw…” Another swallow as her voice shrank to a near whisper. “Then I saw…it.”
Twilight, looking the more intrigued of the two, leaned in. “Saw what?”
Fluttershy’s eyes went lower as she muttered in a near whimper.
Applejack frowned. “Landsakes, we’ll never get it out of her now…”
Twilight didn’t give up. “A Nighttouched?”
She shook her head.
“A Light Eater?”
She nodded.
“A big one?”
She nodded again.
“Like…the size of a wagon?”
She shook her head.
“The size of a house?”
She shook her head.
Twilight began to look uneasy. “A…building?”
Another head shake.
Applejack raised an eyebrow. “Uh…is Twilight gettin’ farther away or closer ta’ how big it was?”
The lavender-haired woman swallowed a little herself now. “A…hillside?”
A long pause, before she nodded. Twilight actually let out a small gasp as she leaned back. Applejack blinked twice, her jaw beginning to hang.
“No way…that ain’t possible. No Light Eater gets that big…” She paused, then glanced at Twilight. “…Does it?”
“Not one I’ve ever seen…” she uneasily answered.
“Well, if one was that big, there ain’t no way it would have let Fluttershy go…” Seeing the pink-haired woman cringe, she quickly held up her hands. “Er, no offense.”
“I don’t know. If it was that big and she wasn’t too far from the border, it might not have been able to get closer without seeing some sunlight. The only thing the Light Eaters fear is the sun. Of course…” she winced. “Light Eaters tend to bring darkness with them wherever they go… If it was really that big, maybe she was too small to notice…”
She trailed off on seeing Fluttershy was looking more and more petrified. “Er, sorry,” she quickly apologized. “Do you remember anything else about it? Was it a corporeal form?”
Applejack quirked her brow. “Was it a what-now?”
Twilight sighed. “Did it have a form other than a cloud or a blob? Like it was taking the shape of a creature?”
“I’m…I’m not sure…” Fluttershy meekly answered. “All I remember was seeing four legs bigger than the trees around me walking by. They looked almost like a horse’s legs… Oh dear.” She set Angel down and began to rise. “I’m afraid I’m scaring myself a bit too much. I’m going to shut up the cellar now and then I’ll have to put out the light for the night.”
Quickly, she turned around and began to head up the stairs to close the cellar. Applejack continued to wince at the news, but also kept her eyes on Twilight.
She too was looking at the floor now, although her expression was far more thoughtful.
In spite of the cramped accommodations, smell, the wealth of new concerns and fears on her mind, and the food turning her stomach a little, Applejack was nevertheless so tired that it didn’t take her long to get to sleep. She wasn’t sure how many hours went by, but it was still pitch black and silent when she felt a hand set on her shoulder with a light shake.
“Applejack. Applejack.”
The voice was in such a faint whisper that she never would have awakened from it alone. However, the feeling of a hand on her as well as the light shake got her alert fairly quickly. After a few calls, she suddenly snapped up and nearly seized the hand, causing a tiny yipe from Twilight as well as several animals rustling. Only then did she recognize the voice.
“Wh…wha…Twilight?”
“Ssh!” was the sound that came back. A few moments of silence passed, as the animals eased again. Applejack felt her leaning in closer to her. “Keep your voice as low as you can. I wanted to wait until Fluttershy was asleep to talk again, but I’m sure a lot of these animals can hear us.”
“Animals ain’t what ya’ got ta’ worry about…” Applejack somewhat grumpily whispered back. “It’s some Nighttouched wanderin’ inta’ her house and hearin’ us down here.”
“So you don’t want to talk about what we’re going to do next when she’s not listening?”
The farmer paused, and then sighed. “No…I do. And right now, the first thing I’d like ta’ do is head back to my kinfolk.”
“Wh…what?!”
“Relax…keep yer voice down…” Applejack sighed back. “I said that’s what I’d like ta’ do. Not what I can do. I’ve been thinkin’ most of the day and…well…” She groaned. “Dagnabbit…I don’t know what them Trottingham types want, but if they’d blow a whole fort just ta’ get the two of us, then I’m a bigger danger ta’ them now than I ever was with this damn Promethian Sigil thing…”
“Well…we definitely can’t go back East,” Twilight groaned. “That just gets us closer to Trottingham and wherever that airship came from. And we can’t go any further North, either. That’s leaves South or West.”
“Ain’t no Apples that live in either of those parts…not anymore. Ta’ be honest, I’m outta my element out here. Ain’t never gone far from home. But no matter where we go, those Trottinghamites could show up. Any ideas?”
“Yes. West, toward Fillydelphia and Manehattan.”
Applejack nearly leaned up. “Ya’ outta yer magic-slingin’ mind? Not only is that on the other side o’ the Hyperborean Mountains, but it’s a third of the distance across Greater Everfree! ‘Sides, what’s so great ‘bout bein’ with all them stuck-up folk from Manehattan and them sneaky SOBs from Fillydelphia?”
“The fact that neither of them will let a Trottingham airship fly into their interior without shooting it down is a good start.”
Applejack found herself tongue-tied at that.
“If we head South, all we have is open country and sparse towns. All of the Appleloosan military is trying to guard the border from the Nighttouched surge according to Burnt Oak. Since Trottingham can hop over the border to Equestria whenever it likes, there’s no way they’ll be able to cover for us if they catch us out in the open.”
“Well, that’s assumin’ they can find us ta’ begin with. And walkin’ ‘longside the Equestrian border doesn’t really keep us safe from a surprise attack neither.”
“Except they can’t see through the trees, and while they may fly over it they’re not going to risk landing to look for us. I’ve taken this route before. We only need a couple days to travel West then we’ll be able to hit one of the major roads to the Shell River, then we just ride it down to the Seaquestria Port and cross right over. So many people travel down that river that they’ll never pick us out.”
Applejack frowned. “We still ain’t sure how they found us at Fort Chestnut…”
“They had to have gotten lucky. Passed by just as they saw us using our Anima Viris.”
The farmer wasn’t so sure, but she had to admit West was slightly better than South. She sighed. “Fine, fine… West and stuck-up cityfolk it is. Just so long as it means I can get a letter back to my folks and a newsstand to find out what happened ta’ Fort Chestnut. ‘Course, we got another reason ta’ not be so eager ta’ head West…assumin’ Fluttershy didn’t jus’ get spooked by some trees.”
Twilight paused. “I’ve…actually been thinking about what she said a lot.”
She snorted a bit as she leaned back down. “Tall tale, if ya’ ask me. If there were Light Eaters out there that big, Greater Everfree wouldn’t last a month…” Her face softened soon after. “Although, I gotta admit, the thought of one of them near here… I mean, they ain’t never figured out what caused the Light Eaters ta’ show up ta’ begin with…”
In spite of herself, she found herself cringing a little more and looking up at the darkness more uneasily.
“Don’t suppose…it might’ve been a big one…” Pause. “Ya’ think?”
“I…actually wonder if I’ve heard of it before.”
“Beg yer pardon?”
She heard Twilight shift as she leaned back on the cloth Fluttershy had lain out for them to use as a makeshift mattress. “There were a lot of things I learned in that academy, but there were a lot more things that I never got the chance to learn. And there were even more things than that which the headmistress didn’t want us to learn… There was one book, though, that I looked in that was in Celestia’s office. I was trying to ask her a question about a new spell and I was waiting for her, just sitting in that chair being bored, and it was lying on a stand that was already open and I knew it was a book I had never read, and so…I walked over to it and took a look. And I saw it was full of creatures I’d never seen before.”
“What kinda creatures?”
“Not…good ones. Most of them didn’t look like any animals I had ever seen. And a lot of them…” Her voice lowered. “Seemed to be monsters. I barely had a chance to flip through more than a couple dozen pages, and I read even less, but in that book I saw a Light Eater for the first time.”
Applejack sat up even more. “Say what now?”
“It was a long time ago now and I wondered if I imagined it… A lot of my memories in that school early on are unreliable. I think I was too overwhelmed by everything I saw. The more I thought about it, though, I’m almost positive that’s what I saw in that book. I think I didn’t believe it for so long because the book called it something different…”
“Ya’ mean ta’ tell me yer old schoolteacher knew ‘bout the Nighttouched long ‘fore they showed up?” She paused soon after saying this. “Uh…just outta curiosity, what did the book call them?”
She could hear Twilight swallow in the darkness. “Nightmares.”
“Uh…nightmares? Like bad dreams or…?”
“The whole name ‘nightmare’ comes from mythology to begin with…the idea of an unwholesome spirit tormenting people while they sleep. Calling them Nightmares is about as fitting as calling them Light Eaters.”
“Well, alright…but what made ya’ think of that?”
Another swallow. This time, Twilight paused before her voice grew quieter yet.
“When I turned the page, there was a picture of a much larger Nightmare. As big as a mountain. Spreading pitch blackness and death with every step it took. This one looked like some sort of giant, starry, black horse with a spire-like horn. I didn’t get a chance to read much, but this one wasn’t called a Nightmare. The book called it…a Tantabus.”
The ghastly reverence with which Twilight spoke the monstrosity’s name was as if whispering it would cause it to appear. The description of its picture only made her more uncomfortable. As a result, Applejack found herself involuntarily cringing a little. “How’s it different from the other Light Eaters? I mean…aside from bein’…so damn big…”
“I didn’t have a chance to read any more than its name,” she spoke a bit louder. “But ever since Fluttershy talked about what she saw and I remembered it, I got to thinking again. Everyone knows that Light Eaters themselves spread permanent night and darkness. But every record I could find indicates it normally takes a lot of them gathering to pull it off. Some researchers think that’s why they slowed down in their frequency of attacks as the years passed. They’re spreading themselves thin and they can’t muster up enough numbers in one spot to take over large tracts of territory anymore.”
She half-laughed in her faint whisper. “I actually hoped that was true, because it would mean they’re finite. But it also made me remember that the bigger they are, the more darkness they can spread. And it grows geometrically. And it made me start thinking about what a Light Eater that big could do if it was real… It would be enough to take the remainder of Mount Aris overnig-”
“Let’s…let’s talk ‘bout somethin’ else besides silly picture books,” Applejack cut in. There was no way Twilight could see in the darkness that her expression showed she had heard enough. “Like what we’re gonna do ‘bout Fluttershy here.”
“Huh?” Twilight asked; snapped out of her own train of gloomy thought.
“We both think that the reason they were after us was ‘cause of the Promethian Sigil, right?”
“Well…yeah, right…”
“So don’t that mean if they come by lookin’ fer us they’re gonna spot her too? Not ta’ mention…I don’t know if ya’ noticed, but I think she’d crack under an interrogation before they even asked the first question.”
“Oh…” Twilight remarked with a half-groan. “I didn’t think about that… Any ideas?”
“Just one. We take her with us.”
“What?!” This time, it was Twilight who upset the animals, and more than Applejack. She quickly clamped her hands over her mouth and leaned back down for several minutes until they all relaxed again. “Take her with us?”
“Well, what else we gonna do? We can’t leave her behind ta’ tell ‘em we were here if they come lookin’, assumin’ they don’t jus’ blow her up too.”
“But we can’t just take her with us! What is she goes crazy like the photographer did? We barely stopped her!”
“Have ya’ taken a good look ‘round here at all these animals? Somethin’ tells me if she can keep ‘em from turnin’ inta’ Nighttouched, then she’s the last person we got to worry ‘bout losin’ it. Besides, a person like that might be handy ta’ have around. Maybe she can make people stop bein’ crazy like too.”
“Oh…” Twilight groaned back. A few moments of silence passed before she sighed. “I don’t like it, but…she did help us. And you’re right about her own power. Plus I’m kind of interested to know if she knows anything else about whatever she saw…especially if it’s a Tantabus… Do you think she’ll even want to come though?”
“We’ll just have to explain things bright an’ early when she wakes up. Then I think we best get out of here and on the road ourselves. Between them Trottinghamites and the Nighttouched, even stayin’ the night in a cellar is startin’ ta’ look unsafe…”
Applejack had intended to tell Fluttershy the situation with Twilight the night before, but bright and early, as soon as the sun was up and they finally left the cellar, the street magician headed outside saying she’d be back. Figuring it was to avoid eating any more of Fluttershy’s homemade oatmeal, which she immediately started cooking, Applejack got tired of waiting and finally spilled the whole story.
Needless to say, by the end of it Fluttershy had forgotten the now-burning oatmeal and looked as if she wanted to go hide in the cellar again. “Oh…oh my…oh my…”
Applejack winced uncomfortably. “Yeah…it ain’t the best news in the world, but the bottom line is ya’ ain’t safe here. It’s better if ya’ tag along with us as we head out west.”
“Oh…oh, I don’t know…” she half-whined, fretfully putting her hands on her cheeks and staring at a spot on the floor. “It’s been so long since I’ve been around towns…I get so nervous…” She looked up. “I’m not sure you and your friend would really want me along. I don’t tend to get along too well with other people, and I’m sure I’m not worth any trouble you’d run into on account of me. Maybe I should just stay here and hide if things get too bad…”
The farmer frowned. “That might work, but then again it might not. These fellas we ran into didn’t care nothin’ ‘bout blowin’ up a whole fort and everyone in it just ta’ get ta’ us. They have a reason ta’ shoot at you, they ain’t gonna care ‘bout sparin’ no critters.”
“Oh dear…”
“An’ ya’ may have gotten lucky tonight, but if any more of them Parasprites come out with the next gang o’ Nighttouched, yer gonna be in deep trouble. There ain’t no way outta yer cellar once somethin’ finds its way in.”
Fluttershy paled a little and cupped a hand to her mouth. “Oh dear. I never thought of that…”
She actually began to shift in the direction of the cellar at that, causing Applejack to sigh and quickly get in her way. “Now look…you’ll be much safer with the two of us. Not only can we stay on the move, but these here Promethian Sigil things…well, we just about got the hang of ‘em. We can beat up most anythin’ that tries ta’ tangle with ya’.”
“Oh, but I really don’t want you to go to all that trouble. I’m really not worth it.”
Applejack winced at her latest self-depreciation before cutting in. “Really. It ain’t no bother. So what d’ya say?”
The pink-haired woman hesitated. She put a finger to her chin and thought. “Well…I’ll admit it’s getting harder to find food around here. And I know one day the shadow over Equestria will come out this far. And…and…” She swallowed. “I really don’t like the idea of airships with big guns or Nighttouched that eat wood coming here with all the animals at risk. I guess I could…”
She looked up.
“But…on one condition.”
Applejack wasn’t sure she liked the sound of that. “What is it?”
Applejack’s teeth were nearly gnashed. “So much fer keepin’ a low profile…”
She was outside again. The sun was higher than she wanted, and illuminating what almost looked like a caravan worth of animals. Every single last one under Fluttershy’s care had come out and arranged themselves in a troupe. The bigger ones seemed normal enough, but when it got to the level of squirrels, turtles, songbirds, and even mice standing in neat rows, it not only seemed excessive but was also highly noticeable. Even Spike seemed to be displeased with the entire display. Nevertheless, Fluttershy continued to fuss over them and speak with them. The only good side seemed to be that she was in a better mood now that she was arranging them.
The farmer crossed her arms. “Ya’ really sure we need ta’ bring all yer animals?”
She looked up just long enough to turn to her. “Oh, yes! Of course! I have to make sure to stay close to them in case any of them start to turn so I can treat it.”
She frowned. “I’m just not sure they’ll all keep up…”
“Oh, don’t worry about that. I’m already arranging for Smoky and Cynthia’s families to take turns with Sheldon and Royce’s group. They’ll work in shifts to make sure that no one falls behind and we can stay at a good pace.”
Applejack repressed the urge to throw her hat to the ground in frustration.
“We’re almost ready to go, but where’s your friend?”
“Her name’s Twilight Sparkle…and that’s a good question,” Applejack answered as she spun around. “Just finish up and I’ll go look for her.”
Fluttershy didn’t dispute as the farmer began to walk away from the clear space in front of the slumped building and glance around, looking for the nearest outhouse. She assumed that she would be there trying to rid herself of last night’s oatmeal. However, she saw nothing of the sort, and as she moved on from that to start looking around behind the shack she still didn’t see any sign of her. She soon walked a good distance from Fluttershy and looked out to the surrounding land, but still saw nothing.
As she began to near the remains of an overgrown trail that led into the forest, she rubbed her hand against her forehead. “Now where did she get off to? Maybe she can talk her inta’ leavin’ behind most of those critters…”
“I’m here! I’m here!”
She suddenly raised her head, hearing Twilight’s voice at last, but soon more surprised to find herself looking at the old trail. Moments later, the woman came rushing out of the forest onto it, and, panting yet again, quickly ran up to Applejack. “I’m all set!” she exhaled as she slowed to a stop. “Let’s go!”
Applejack didn’t move, staring dumbfounded. “What…you were…what…” Her brow creased. “Ya’ don’t mean ta’ tell me that you were in that forest the whole time, do ya’?”
Twilight immediately began to look uncomfortable. Her eyes went to one side. “Uh, well…not exactly. I found a place to ease nature first…”
“That’s what you were lookin’ at?” Applejack nearly shouted. “Runnin’ off into the forest right next ta’ Equestria? Even my strongest kinfolk were never that dumb!”
“I just wanted to see if there were any signs of what Fluttershy was talking about!”
“What the-” Applejack flummoxed, before looking twice as upset. “You were tryin’ ta’ find that thing?!”
“M-Maybe…” she offered with a sheepish grin, before turning to her and looking insistent. “It was my only chance to see the effects of one!”
“I don’t believe you! Here I let you talk me inta’ leavin’ my family behind and followin’ you on everything, and now you do this!”
Twilight groaned. “Look, I know it was risky, but if Fluttershy really saw a Tantabus, that means there’s one out here right on the border and it could do a lot more damage than any other swarm of Nighttouched every did! Something like that could destroy an entire major city by itself! I wanted to at least make sure we weren’t going to walk right into its path!”
Applejack scowled, finally leveling a glare at her. “Now answer me this and give it to me straight… You ain’t leadin’ us West just so you can try and follow in that thing’s footsteps, are ya’?”
“No! No, of course not!” Twilight instantly insisted, before wincing a little. “I’ll admit it’s kind of a ‘fringe benefit’ because I really don’t think it’s a good idea not to know where it’s going…but I still think going West is best.”
“Well that better be the only reason,” Applejack finally huffed as she turned about. “’Cause we don’t just got Fluttershy along fer the ride but a whole mess o’-”
She cut herself off and suddenly turned her head to the sky. She wasn’t alone. Twilight did at the same time.
Until then, the morning had been rather clear and quiet. They weren’t around where any birds or insects dared to tread, after all, and the only noise all morning other than their own movements or Fluttershy’s tending was a breeze.
At that moment, however, they heard something just over the hills. Something that sounded like the breeze carrying the sound of an airship turbine.
The two looked to one another; their uneasy expressions immediately showing that neither had imagined the noise.
“Let’s…let’s just get on the road. We’ll argue there.”
“Good idea.”
Both quickly moved to get back to Fluttershy.
The end of the curved blade went out and shifted the old rug aside, revealing the cellar door of the slumped shack. A moment later, the blade retracted and its owner quickly squatted down and felt for a handle. It took him a moment, but he grasped it and pried it open to reveal what was beneath. He looked over the edge, but quickly scowled.
“Aw man! Nothing but a hiding place?” He leaned in closer, getting on all fours and looking inside. “No salted pork? Preserves? Apple cider?”
“Hey Snips!” the armored man’s taller comrade shouted from outside the shack. “What’d you find?”
He winced for a moment on hearing that, actually put on the spot. “I’m, uh…still lookin’!”
“Ok. For a moment, I thought you hadn’t found nothin’ like I said you wouldn’t if we stopped here, and that we’d only be wasting time and fuel, and that Lady Sunset would be really mad at us if we really did let anyone else get away because you wanted to stop and see if whoever lived here had abandoned their home and left any jewelry or food behind…”
“Ugh, I get it, Snails!” he shouted back as he angrily began to look for a lamp to light up the cellar.
Outside, Snails didn’t seem to recognize the anger in his voice as he went back to idly looking at the nearby forest. Nearby, the Prodigy had come in for a “hovering dock” on the nearest wide open field to the shack, although aside from a pair of sentries standing by below it the rest of the crew was inside. Snips and Snails alone had gone forward, the former of the two saying they had officially stopped to look for signs of the escapees.
Now as Snipes moved into the abandoned shack to rummage for anything of value left behind, his companion looked around the area. He noticed the more recent patches of dirt, and the signs of three separate sets of footprints in them as well as numerous animal tracks.
“Say Snips?” he called in again. “If you’re still thinking that they may have passed through here, I think you’re-”
An angry yell cut him off. “Don’t bother me now, Snails! Can’t ya’ see I’m searching? I mean…looking for signs of ‘em?”
“Yeah, I know. That’s why-”
The sound of a head hitting a board rang out. “Ow! Dangit, stop bothering me!”
He shrugged. “Ok, suit yourself.” He resumed idly looking down, staring at the tracks again. Having nothing better to do, he started to look around and try and trace them. When they got too far for him to see, he started to follow them.
He didn’t have to look too far. He was able to watch as they went around the shack and toward the side, where they moved onto an old, mostly overgrown trail. He walked right up to the side of it and then looked down, toward the country, tracing it as it went along and out of sight.
“Hey Snips. Maybe we should follow…”
He trailed off, turning his head.
By the side of the road there was a tall clump of grass, seemingly growing around an old tree root or a hollow. For a moment he thought he had seen something in it, and now turned fully toward it. His eyes rested on a dark patch right underneath the grass, like a small hole, but saw nothing else.
Curious, he walked up to the small dark spot, and once he was close enough he knelt next to it. From there, he could see something unusual. The dark patch wasn’t due to the position of the old tree root or a hollow at all. Rather, it seemed to just be a dark, black spot. Like it was in total shade, only nothing was covering up. Just a patch of night right there in the open.
Beneath his helmet, he looked puzzled. Slowly he stretched his armored hand out and extended two fingers. He poked them into the dark spot until he felt something, and then pulled them back. A touch of the dark seemed to come with his fingers as it came back, and on turning it over he saw his fingertips were dipped with a black, oil-like substance; only glittering very faintly. Almost like…
Stars?
“Snails!”
“Huh?” he snapped out of his focus on the substance, looking back to the shack. A dirty, sore-looking, and upset Snips was standing there.
“Quit wasting time poking around here! We need to get back to the Prodigy and get on the road before they go any farther!”
“But you’re the one who-”
“I said move it!”
“Ok then,” he answered as he started to rise. As he did, he started to put his hand down, but noticed the substance still on it. “You might want to look at this for a second th-”
“Ugh, I don’t care about whatever junk you found ‘round here!” he snapped back as he turned around. “Just get back to the ship so we can find their trail!”
“Alright, but actually I got something on that too. I think these tracks-”
“Gah! Stop talking and move it!”
“Alright, Snips,” he answered, shaking the black material off his fingers and taking off after him.
About two miles south of the Trans-Appleloosan Railway, there was a pullout for passing trains. Nothing as sophisticated as in the bigger cities. Simply a flat stretch of ground to draw a train aside if need be. Aside from the old, underused tracks that led out to a pile of logs blocking the end of the line, there was only a single small booth scarcely larger than an outhouse on a platform that looked like it was made from an old barn wall. The glass was boarded up and the door was shut.
Yet as soon as the first few rays of morning light shone through the old, weathered cracks, the door to the booth suddenly fell open and a pair of bodies tumbled out.
Rarity and Rainbow Dash, dirty, tired and sore, slumped out on the ground like they were sacks of potatoes. Both looked exhausted as their eyes lolled around in their sockets, which only made sense as both of them had been forced to sleep back-to-back on the single, uncomfortable wooden stool in the shack while propped up against each other’s backs. It was the only way both could fit.
After a moment of lying there, Dash craned her head to the sky, spotted the sun, then weakly smiled. “Heh…we made it. We’re alive.”
Rarity moaned as she slowly began to uncompress herself. “If I am ever forced to sleep on a hard wooden chair sitting upright again, it will be too soon…” She finally rolled off of Dash and plopped on the ground with a pitiful sigh. “How close did we get to Manehattan?”
Dash cracked her neck and shoulders and pushed herself up. She looked around and spotted a large mountain range that began only thirty miles away from them. She gestured. “See those mountains?”
The designer weakly looked up.
“That’s the Hyperborean Mountains. We’re on the east side of ‘em.”
“And…where is Manehattan?”
“About a hundred miles away from the west side of them.”
Rarity’s eyes bulged. She stared at Dash and the mountains for several seconds of silence. One of her eyes began to twitch, and a violent quiver came over her jaw as her body seized. Finally, she could take it no longer.
Smashing her fists against the ground, she let out a scream so loud it made Dash jump and recoil from her.
“Alright… That. Is. It! That is, absolutely, without a doubt, the very last straw! I have had it! Ever since I left Manehattan I’ve been waylaid, extorted, threatened, kidnapped, hijacked, disrespected, insulted, chased, shot at, stabbed at, electrocuted, and had my best traveling dress and boots ruined beyond all repair! I’ve been marched across country like a combat trainee, harassed like a common thug, watched my childhood teacher beheaded, been branded like a cow across my back leg, and forced to run across country in the dark to take refuge in a glorified outhouse to avoid being eaten alive from a hoard of Nighttouched groundhogs! And now…now after having endured all of that…I am still an entire mountain range away from the nearest telegraph!”
She snapped up and glared at Dash with such ferocity she nearly looked wild. She violently tore a loose thread from her dress and waved it in front of her.
“Do you see this? This is my wit! And do you know what? I’m at the absolute end of it!” She flung the thread to the ground, put her arms in front of her, threw her head on top of it, and began to break out in wailing. “It’s over! It’s hopeless! I have absolutely nothing left to give!”
By now, Dash was looking almost uncomfortable with Rarity’s overreactions. “Ok, ok…look, just chill out…”
Rarity raised her head. “Chill out?”
In a flurry, she was back on her feet at full height, and glaring down on Dash so furiously the mercenary actually recoiled.
“Chill out?! What, pray tell, do I have left to take out for any kind of chill at this point? Those train passes that we got last night were my last hope of getting back to Manehattan, and now we’re stranded in Appleloosa with no money, no transportation, no food, no water, and a scrap of paper that we might as well use for toiletries for all the good it is going to do us!”
“Hey, relax!” Dash quickly got to her feet again, wincing only a little at her side. “I got another way we can get back!”
Rarity groaned and ran her hand along her face. “At this point, unless you have an airship stowed somewhere, it doesn’t matter. On foot it will take days to cross those mountains.”
“Not if we went under them.”
Rarity slowly pulled her hand off her face. “I beg your pardon?”
Dash looked to the sky, but then around. She spotted a pathway leading away from the station, so she turned and began to head for it. “We better start moving now if we’re gonna make it. I’ll tell you on the way.”
Rarity stood there a moment or two; feeling hungry again and still sore and stiff from yesterday. However, having no other alternative, she groaned and began to walk after her. She caught up just as they reached the main pathway, which Dash quickly began to take for the nearest road.
“It just so happens that yours truly knows this area. I also happen to know of some associates nearby.”
“More Huntsman Guild members?”
“Eh, not these guys. Not quite as ‘savory’, but don’t worry. I can vouch for this one. They’re smugglers, actually. And they smuggle all types, including people. Especially during wartime. With the rails down, they’ll be getting lots of requests to get people under the Hyperboreans.”
Rarity began to look uneasy. “Did you say…smugglers?”
“Yeah.”
“Of…people?”
“Well, uh…occasionally.”
“Um…voluntarily?”
Dash sighed. “Look, do you want to get back to Manehattan or at least a telegraph in time to give that contract or not?”
Rarity realized she didn’t have a rebuttal for that. “Just one question. It’s my understanding that smugglers demand payment for their services and, after that jaunt on the train, all I have other than the clothes on my back is that slip of paper.”
“I…might have a way around that,” Dash responded; a bit more hesitantly than Rarity liked. “First things first, we gotta get there. I think I know the area but it’s still a long walk.”
Rarity made a firm decision that once she got back to Manehattan she would never walk anywhere again so long as she could afford a coach or steam taxi. Having to go on yet another rough, cross-country trip again hungry, thirsty, and still stiff and sore from the night before was reducing her to the point where she felt like she would collapse. She might have if today hadn’t been so different.
One factor that was that Rainbow Dash had them stick to the roads this time, so the going was more even and easier. Yet they had only been walking about an hour when they began to see others walking down the road, and going the same way they were. Soon they were more than a random occurrence. Many of them, and mostly in large groups, continued to pass them by. Some were on horses or in wagons, but all looked as dirty, sore, and distraught as the two of them did. Some even more so. A few of them had crying children, while others walked along as if in a distracted, hollow daze. As time went on, the road grew so thick with them that it was impossible to miss them, and several of them began to threaten to push the two off the road all together.
As the two kept walking along, Rarity gradually began to look at each one as they passed. Finally, she spotted one group consisting of an older man leading a horse that had a woman his age and one child on it. Another one walked on the other side.
She waved to him. “Excuse me? Sir?”
He glanced up.
“May I ask what all of this is?”
“Another Nighttouched surge last night,” the man darkly answered. “Took two more towns. Had ones bigger than anyone had ever seen, from what I hear. That wasn’t all, though. Trottingham airships attacked another town. Everyone says they’re taking advantage to invade. Whole military is up in arms.”
Rarity looked rather uneasy. “Oh my…”
“That’s not all. They got some sort of new soldiers running through Appleloosa now. Ones that got these weird tattoos or something on their hands. They’re attacking other cities too, from what I hear. Northern Appleloosa’s going to hell. I’m getting my family out before it gets any worse.”
Rarity slowed down at that, letting the group pass. Dash did much the same, before she dropped in next to her. “Let’s take that as our cue to keep the symbols hidden, got it?”
She said nothing; just pulled her sleeve down lower over her already-bandaged hand.
By the time noon had passed, Rarity was so tired and hungry she was getting dizzy. Dash, however, kept them moving forward as the land began to grow wetter and, as a result, more overgrown. The road became more maintained, but it also grew so thick that they were surrounded on all sides by civilians moving out. There had to be hundreds or even thousands by the time they reached that point. Rarity eventually began to see buildings up on the horizon up ahead, no more than a mile or two from the foot of the mountains. More than that, she saw planted hedge rows and basic stake palisades stretching both north and south.
She saw little more than this initially, however, for the caravan suddenly came to a stop. She and all those around her were forced to halt. Scarcely had they done so when Dash tapped her against the shoulder and gestured off the road. “Come on.”
Rarity felt a bit out of sorts doing this, but did as Dash indicated. Not too many people seemed to mind as they left. It was a bit of a hard walk as by now there were deep ditches on either side, but they got through and started trudging through marshy, insect-filled grass beyond. The two kept walking away from the road until Rarity could look back and see, much to her surprise, it stretch for two miles with no end in sight.
“What in the world…?”
“We’re at the Mount Aris border. And unlike Appleloosa, even this far north they got enough people to not only build a fence all along the border but folks to watch it too. And the Hippogriff Legion isn’t about to just let a bunch of Appleloosans flood their borders at their weakest spot,” Dash explained. She gestured up and down the horizon. “This here used to be a mining village before the shadow over Equestria got too close. Now it’s just an outpost. But that’s perfect for us.”
Dash continued to lead the two of them on away from the road for another three miles north, until the line of wagons trying to gain entry shrank into a thin ribbon before nearly vanishing. Only then did Dash turn around and began to trudge for the border again. Even from this distance, Rarity could still see old buildings and streets on the other side of the fence, but these ones were abandoned and left to rust and rot.
“Now, something really important…” Dash spoke up as they walked. “You don’t let anyone in there know you’re from Manehattan.”
“Wh-what? Whyever not?”
Dash winced at the sound of her voice. “You’ll see when you get there, but trust me. Huntsmen Guild members take whoever, but smugglers are more choosy depending on who you go with, and they don’t like Manehattanites. On that note, try and lose that city accent. It’s a dead giveaway.”
“Of all the…” Rarity began to fume, but finally bit her tongue. “Oh, very well.”
“And try to act more…I dunno…cool. You’re too uptight.”
Rarity’s face fell, her teeth gritting. “Well, do y’all want un I should act more country like?” she spat sarcastically; heavily exaggerating the accent.
“Eh, that’s too much. Tell you what…just don’t talk for the next day or two and let me handle everything.”
The designer nearly fumed, but didn’t answer. The two of them walked the rest of the way to the fence in silence. In spite of not looking too terribly formidable, it had one very important aspect. There was a manned guard actually patrolling it every several hundred feet. Rarity looked one way and the other, and in addition to one guard directly in front of them she saw one posted on either end of the fence barrier as well. She realized they must have had one all up and down the line, with a way of signaling others. Small wonder no one had bothered leaving the road.
The two finally approached the fence and went straight to the sentry. She spotted them and quickly turned to face them. Her weapon was shifted across her chest, but she didn’t try to take aim. Not that it mattered—it was more than enough for Rarity to stiffen and shove her marked hand further behind her.
Finally, the two reached the fence and halted directly across from the guard. She stared at them both with a hard-set jaw. “You can’t cross here. If you need to get into Mount Aris, cross at the customs post like everyone else.”
Dash merely half-smirked back. “We’re on an emergency for Old Knick-Knack.”
The guard paused. She glanced at Dash a moment, then to Rarity, then back to her. After a moment, she glanced in either direction, seeing how far she was from the nearest soldiers, then back to her. “200 up front for the both of you.”
Dash kept smirking and shaking her head. “Uh-uh…you know that’s not how it works. You get the cut, same as everyone else.”
“Times change. Haven’t you noticed the border?”
“Times change, huh? Then you won’t mind us checking the next couple guards down and, once that doesn’t work out, come back here, huh?”
The guard frowned, but finally reneged and stepped to one side. “Get over here already.”
Dash nodded and readily hopped over the fence. Rarity, on her part, moved up and more awkwardly inched over one leg at a time.
“The code name is Sour Peach. Got that? Sour Peach.”
“Yeah, yeah…got it…” Dash grumbled as she reached out to help Rarity the rest of the way. “Come on, let’s move.”
She went ahead and held her hand to pull her away quickly from the fence to the nearest abandoned building; only letting her go to walk normally once there. Rarity looked behind them as the soldier resumed her spot and tried to look innocent. “That was a Hippogriff Legionnaire, wasn’t it? I recognize those gharish uniform designs anywhere…”
“You bet.”
“Why did she let us pass?”
“Nowadays, being a soldier is the easiest way to getting your throat ripped out by a Nighttouched in five years. A lot of them will take whatever pay on the side they can get, including looking the other way for a nice big smuggling ring. All you got to do is make sure they get their cut. That’s why she passed on that fake name. We tell it to the ring, and they make sure they get their percentage.”
“And, once again,” Rarity said with a groan, “the topic of money comes up. I don’t think I need to remind you we still can’t foot the original bill, let alone give that woman a ‘cut’.”
“What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her,” Dash answered, leading Rarity to sigh as she kept walking.
They didn’t have to go nearly as far this time. There was nothing to see in the abandoned city but rubble and ruined buildings—ones that Rarity honestly couldn’t tell were due to Nighttouched attack or warfare. She was hoping for the latter as there were a lot of shadows there, and even more as clouds began to roll in. Yet as they neared the foot of the mountain, most of the larger buildings gave way to smaller homes and finally shacks, before spacing out and revealing sets of abandoned train tracks. They passed a large station soon after before nearing the edge of town.
As they came close to that, Rarity finally noticed that there were several wood framed entrances forming openings in the foothills. The dirt around them was rather packed and rocky, even after so many years of being abandoned. At this point, Dash put a hand on Rarity and pushed her up against one of the last buildings before the mountains. She did the same but inched forward and looked out to the closest foothill. Her eyes focused on one building that seemed to be built right into the side.
“What’s-”
“Ssh! Like I said, quiet from now on! Don’t talk unless I talk to you first, ok?”
Rarity frowned but clammed up. Soon after, Dash moistened her lips, inched forward a little, and waved her hand out. The whole time, she stared at the windows of the building. Rarity looked as well, but it was dark and she couldn’t make out much. Dash waved again soon after, and continued to do so for almost a full minute. Only then, however, did Rarity think she caught a glimpse of a light in the window.
She turned to her. “We’re in. Stay behind me.”
She stood up and started walking again, with Rarity falling in behind her. Only now did the woman truly begin to feel a bit nervous, suddenly realizing that in a town full of ruins she could be rather exposed to many people lying in wait while she herself was clearly visible. They crossed the dirt patch to a small stoop and walked right up it to the building. However, they didn’t have to knock. The old yet functional door gave a click and opened wide, and the two walked right in.
Dash strolled through the threshold easily enough, but Rarity nearly gave a gasp and a start as soon as she stepped inside. Not only did the interior stink and was caked in grime and filth, not just from disrepair but continued poor usage and maintenance, she was faced with a pair of dirty, smelly, shabbily-dressed, and, judging by their expressions, foul-tempered individuals. It didn’t help that both were brandishing rifles and had both sidearms, bullets, and knives strapped to their hips.
Evidently she stared too long because one of them sneered. “What’re you looking at?”
“Uh…um…er…” Rarity stammered, nearly responding but then remembering not to speak.
Quickly, Dash grabbed her hand and pulled her further. “Ease off. This is a paying client, so you mess with her you mess with me.”
She snorted and looked away. “Not like I have much to be scared of with some has-been drunk, but whatever. Don’t want to spend the rest of my day cleaning your blood off my knives. Especially for nothing.”
Dash frowned but kept pulling Rarity. They made their way across the filthy room, but only to arrive into an equally filthy one on the other side. It was larger, however, and arranged in such a way that Rarity assumed, at one point, it had been a loading point for mining carts. There were no carts there now, obviously. Just another rather unpleasant looking person giving them both the stink eye and a set of tracks leading straight ahead into a dark tunnel. Far ahead, she could see someone had lit an oil lamp. Dash walked them past the third guard, who actually fingered her own sidearm a little as they went, much to Rarity’s unease, and led them both inside.
They passed into somewhere damp, clammy, and filthy; clearly an abandoned mine. Rarity didn’t care much for it either, or the fact that no sooner had they reached the torch than the path already split up and branched. However, Dash led them straight on and started to weave them through the caves, always knowing where to turn each time.
“Nice gig they got here, huh?” Dash chuckled as she rapped her knuckles against the wall. “This old mine got ditched during the last war because it was too close to the border of Equestria. They figured they’d lose it anyway on the next Nighttouched raid, only it never came this way. Now this mine goes all the way out to the main train tunnels leading under the mountains. So anyone who comes in here can slip right through and come out in Griffonstone.”
Rarity looked over her shoulder, making sure they weren’t being followed. “I couldn’t help but notice that, um…those folks didn’t seem to be from Mount Aris.”
“Oh them? ‘Course not. This ring is run by a group from Griffonstone.”
The designer went wide-eyed. “Griffonstone?! But…but…how is that possible?”
She shrugged. “Smugglers don’t exactly have national loyalties. The fact they’re from Griffonstone just means they know their way in and out of the country better. Besides, there’s a general rule about people from Griffonstone…the shortest way to their heart is a quick buck. And they got plenty of folks nowadays who need things moved around where no one will notice. Anyway, quick lesson over. Look sharp up ahead.”
Rarity went quiet again. The two wound their way through a few more passages, but eventually the tunnel widened into a junction and staging area. When it did, more torches arose and the two got a better view of the operation. Several other people were gathered there, either milling about or seated against old benches near the shaft walls, in addition to a number of other people that looked to also be from Griffonstone. The first group she assumed as their clientele, being civilians and travelers like her. However, most of them didn’t look to be the savory type either, and when they caught her staring at them it didn’t take long for them to give her the same look the ones from Griffonstone did.
This seemed somewhat appropriate from the various goods that were arranged into separate piles through the middle of the chamber. They ranged from decent sized loads to amounts that would fill an entire wagon, and while one looked like textiles and another looked like exotic fruits and vegetables, most of them were tightly covered with canvas and lashed down with ropes. The more tightly covered ones were practically guarded by their own handlers, some of whom were armed. Needless to say, in spite of this area being more active and with a murmur of talking, Rarity didn’t feel much safer there.
Once inside, Dash stopped, looked around, then turned back to her. “Ok, I need to go talk to one smuggler that owes me. You just sit tight in here until I get back.”
Rarity winced, looking around a little at her grimy surroundings and grimier-looking people. She fought the urge to protest but it was clear as the nose on her face.
“Eh, don’t worry. Besides…” Dash leaned and put a hand to her mouth as she whispered. “You got the same trick I have, right?” She pointed to Rarity’s hand.
Rarity had, in fact, quite forgotten about it. However, now that she remembered both it and last night when she managed to use it, she realized she might, in fact, actually be strong enough to punch at least some of the people in the room out—as barbaric a thought as it was.
“Just keep it a secret. I won’t rule out some of these guys are bounty hunters.”
Rarity nearly responded to that, but Dash was already turning and rushing off. She took a step after her before pausing, but then frowned, glanced about, and finally found the nearest and most out of the way bench that was open. She stepped over to it and sat down before trying to look as small and unnoticeable as possible.
Several minutes ticked by, Rarity growing more uncomfortable with each moment. At some point, a smuggler came out and conversed with one person trying to transport the textiles. Another came out several minutes later with two other smugglers that looked more in the “muscle” department to talk with another about their covered shipment. She didn’t see much as staring at anyone or anything for more than half a minute garnered some rather dark stares. At last, she was forced to look into her lap as time kept passing; wishing Dash would come back more quickly.
She finally reached into her dress and came out with the crumpled, somewhat-dirty contract that had been the cause of all of this. She sighed tiredly as she remembered all of the trouble she was experiencing and was still in the realm where it could be for nothing…
“Oooooo!”
Rarity snapped up in surprise to hear a voice right next to her, but jumped a second time on finding, seemingly out of nowhere, a young woman in a dress made from bright-colored fabric scraps, “traveling” gloves that were nothing other than old farm worker’s gloves, and a mess of curly, poofy pink hair had appeared over her shoulder.
“You’re smuggling a piece of paper!” she cheerily pointed out, before ducking back behind her. Rarity gave a third jump when she immediately jumped up again, but this time in front of her. “That’s amazing! I mean, I’ve seen a person smuggling a cart full of wine, a person smuggling some exotic birds, a family smuggling another family, a person smuggling wood, another person smuggling furniture made out of wood, two people smuggling a whole wagon of tobacco, four people who looked like they were smuggling something that was a lot worse than tobacco…” She abruptly leaned in and grinned. “…if you get my drift, wink-wink…” She leaned back. “…and a whooooole lot of people smuggling a couple wagons of gunpowder and bullets, but I’ve never seen anyone just trying to smuggle a piece of paper before! Wow, it must be a reeeeeally important piece of paper!”
Rarity recoiled as she poked her head over her shoulder and glanced over it a moment. She quickly pulled the contract away and folded it, but the young woman leaned back in glee. “I was right! It has ink and writing on it and everything! Even printed! Ooo, swanky!”
The designer was rather caught off guard at the way this strange woman had interjected herself, and was even more confused now that she was done but still standing in front of her and grinning. “Oh, um…uh…thank you…?” she finally answered, for lack of a better phrase.
This made her nearly bounce in one spot, seemingly overjoyed. “Oh wow! Do you know what just happened?”
“I’m sorry, I’m…afraid not?”
In another instant, she was again at her side and leaning in with a smile. “You just won the prize for being the first person who’s said anything to me since I started waiting! It’s an informal award and more of a title, but eh…it’s the prestige more than anything.”
“Oh, um…” Rarity almost fumbled, again at a loss for words. “Thank you again…?”
“You’re welcome! Soooo….” She quickly zoomed out in front of her again. “Where are you taking your important piece of paper to?”
Rarity paused; assessing the individual. She was definitely a marked contrast to the rest of the room, which seemed rather dour and unpleasant. It was honestly a bit stunning and even overbearing. However, compared to the unfriendly and hostile stares, this unexpected burst of perkiness was a nice relief and actually made her feel more at ease. Reasoning that she meant no harm and that, despite Dash’s warnings, this individual wouldn’t be put off by her accent…
“Well, I’m taking it on to Manehattan.”
“Wow! Me too! Um…the going to Manehattan part, not the taking your piece of paper to Manehattan.”
“Oh really? Well, um…what are you, er, uh…smuggling?”
“Me!” she exclaimed in an excited squeal. “Crazy, I know, right? I don’t even have a cart to carry myself in!”
“I’m sorry, but…did you say yourself?”
“Uh-huh! Maud told me the only way a Gaiatian can get across Greater Everfree now is to use a smuggler, so here I am!”
Hearing that name, Rarity paused and looked the woman over, noticing how her clothing was scrapped together from leftovers and that her shoes were nearly falling apart, to say nothing of just a hint of an accent on her voice around certain words. At once, it clicked to her.
“You mean…you’re a Gaiatian.”
“Yup!” she perkily replied, nearly jumping again at that. “I’m heading out from my holdtown to go to Manehattan and learn how to be a baker! Maud told me there’s lots of places there that will let Gaiatians work without any papers at all!”
“‘Holdtown’? Don’t you mean…hometown?”
“Nope! My hometown got smashed to bits by Nighttouched bears, and once my family fled to a different country the government there put us in a hold-you-there-in-a-poorly-lit-badly-heated-no-plumbing-shack-forever-with-no-chance-of-ever-being-able-to-leave-town instead! But that’s too much to remember, so I just call it a holdtown for short. Pretty catchy, right? I would have much rather wanted to just get the papers and keep working there, but Limestone told me that the government made a big mistake with all that.”
“Oh…? Um, what mistake was that?”
“They went and made one law saying no Gaiatian could work without legal residency papers, but then they passed another law saying that no Gaiatian can ever be eligible for legal residency papers!” She giggled a bit harder. “And then they went even crazier and said any Gaiatian that’s seen outside of their residential zone without legal residency papers can be arrested on sight! So even if you could get the papers, you’d be arrested the moment you tried to get them!” She slapped her knee and laughed. “Isn’t that the silliest thing you ever heard? It’s like they want it so that no Gaiatian can ever become a legal resident!”
Rarity felt rather uncomfortable to hear all of that, but seeing as the young woman was taking it as a joke she decided to risk a small smile and minor chuckle as well. “Oh, uh…heh…yes, that was quite…obtuse of them.”
The woman stopped laughing and turned her head. “Say, are you feeling ok? You look like you’re a bit down?”
“What, me? Oh…oh no, darling. It’s just, I, um…have never met a Gaiatian as…enthusiastic as you.”
“Ooooooh…that’s what this is about. Yeah, I know. You were expecting me to be all…” Instantly, she rolled her eyes upward, squared her jaw, and spoke in an exaggerated monotone. “Thee needeth to get thee hence of sleep chamber and start churning butter ere dawn.” She giggled as she broke. “Tee-hee! I know! My family thinks I get to be just a little bit too much too, but I can’t help it. When I came in here and started waiting and I saw everyone looking all grumpy and tired and frowny I just wanted to start spreading some smiles! So I thought I’d try and cheer everyone up! But, um…”
She leaned in a second time, going into a whisper so loud half the room still had to be able to hear her.
“Just between you and me? I don’t think these smugglers really care for people singing. Unless they cheer by shooting their guns in the air and the one who shot needed to lift her gun a lot higher.” She gestured to her own poofy hair and shifted it, giving Rarity a start when she saw that there seemed to be a hole that wasn’t due to a curl right through it.
She was again left trying to find a word to say when a whistle went out. “Hey you.”
Rarity looked up again, spotting Rainbow Dash as she walked out of a different mine tunnel. Following closely behind her was another one of the smugglers. This one seemed a bit dirtier than the others, wearing a mining lantern on her head and with bits of other tunneling gear strapped to her sides. She didn’t have a rifle but still had a handgun and a pair of knives alongside a pickaxe. Her hair was shorter with the top swept over her head, sticking up in the front almost like a tuft while still keeping her eyes covered. Her look seemed very slightly friendlier than that of the others on her approach.
However, on stepping into the chamber her eyes focused on the pink-haired woman and her teeth bared. “I thought I told you to stop bothering the rest of the clients! I’ve had six-year-old sobbing brats get drug through this cave before that didn’t make half as much noise as you!”
The young woman stared back a moment before leaning into Rarity, once again whispering more than loud enough for the new arrival to hear. “Oh, you got her too? I don’t think she’s quite as grumpy as the others, but you might have a hard time telling the difference.”
Hearing this all clearly enough made the smuggler nearly hiss. “You’re just lucky we’re on a budget or I’d ask Greta to take another shot, and this time make sure it isn’t a warning.”
By now, seeing the reactions between the two had clearly made Dash nervous. “Um, so…Rarity, this is Gilda.” She gestured to the smuggler, who looked away from the pink-haired woman but only to cross her arms and frown at the designer. “She and I go way back, and she’ll be the one we’re hiring for this trip.”
Gilda scoffed and rolled her eyes. “‘Hiring’. Real nice choice of words, Dash.” She turned about while snapping her fingers at Rarity. “You. Her. Me. Back in my ‘office’.” She nearly turned all the way around to keep leading, before she paused, looked back to the pink-haired woman, and stiffened as she grew very reluctant. “You too Thumbkin or whatever your name is…”
This only made her giggle again as she stood up. “It’s not Thumbkin, silly! Remember? It’s Pinkamena Diane-”
“Just get moving before I cough up the money for an extra bullet myself!”
The young woman got up easily enough afterward, which was more than what Rarity could say. Between the cold, mean attitude and the almost casual way she talked about dealing with the client, the designer was rather nervous to be around Gilda. Dash, however, seemed normal enough and beckoned her on, and so she reluctantly rose and followed the two of them back into the tunnel. The pink-haired woman was right behind them, and Rarity was again puzzled on seeing her seeming to happily skip along; completely unmiffed by both the hostility and the threats.
“Gilda and I go way back,” Dash casually began to explain once they were a good distance from the main cave but still worming their way through other lit mine tunnels. “All the way back to when they still would let Griffonstone citizens train as cadets in Cloudsdale. Those were the days, eh?”
“Guess I should be grateful that I wasn’t actually in Griffonstone when the first Light Eaters crossed the border,” Gilda casually shrugged. “Missed the worst of it being a displaced refugee. Of course, it didn’t matter when the Farmland War hit a couple years later…but at least I got plenty of contacts to set this business up. Maybe being in that glorified scout camp was worth something after all.”
Rarity looked unnerved on hearing that, again forgetting Dash’s warning. “Oh my…you were in Cloudsdale as well when…?”
“I think I had a bit of a rougher time of it than Dash over here,” she added, slyly smirking at her over her shoulder. “No free pardons for me. Had to start finding places to hide like abandoned mines. Not that I mind. Especially since it means I still got it while those cushy Huntsman jobs have been letting ol’ Dash here grow soft.”
“Heh, you wish,” she snickered back. “Give me shoving a couple wagons a month under a mountain over needing to guard a herd of 500 cattle from twenty guys on horses as they go across country eighty miles.”
Both smirked and snickered before Gilda turned and kept leading them on. They wound their way through a few more passages until pretty much all the noise from the other caverns had faded to nothing. Only then did Gilda take them to the end of one cave that actually narrowed to the width of a doorway, before an old door and frame was set right in front of it. It was bulging and gapped, but it seemed to have transformed at least the end of one of the tunnels into a somewhat private room.
At here, Gilda snapped back to the three again. Rarity almost recoiled, fearing that the wrath was meant for her, but instead she jabbed out a finger as sharply as a knife and poked the skipping, pink-haired girl in the chest. “You wait out here. I don’t need to try and hear myself think over you cracking another lame joke about this abandoned coal mine.”
“Ooo! That reminds me! What’s the key that people who dig for coal like to sing in? A mino-”
“I said shut up!” Wheeling around in fresh irritation, Gilda threw open the door and stepped inside. Dash readily followed while Rarity, again a bit unnerved at Gilda’s sudden violence and the young woman’s continued obliviousness, walked after them. As soon as both were in, Gilda nearly slammed the door behind them in spite of the fact it looked as if it would break it to splinters.
The interior was rather cramped, poorly lit, had only a single chair (which Gilda immediately walked up and took), and, worst of all to Rarity, was extremely dirty with coal grime. There was no way she could avoid pressing into the walls and wincing as it irreversibly stained what was left of her traveling dress. At any rate, no sooner had she and Dash come to a stop and Gilda sat then she squared them both in her eyes.
“Ok, ‘princess’,” she flatly addressed Rarity, “Dash explained your situation to me, including where you’re from and what you do for a living so here’s the deal. Five thousand apiece as soon as I get you into Manehattan, meaning ten thousand all together.”
Rarity’s jaw almost hit the ground. Since Gilda knew the truth, she forgot about holding her tongue. “T-Ten…thousand?! I…I had no idea it would be that much!”
“Well it is, and if you want back to Manehattan in time for your business deal, that’s what you get.”
“I don’t have that kind of money readily available!”
Gilda scoffed. “Yeah right. Dash already said you were paying her twenty.”
Rarity wheeled on her, but Dash could only anxiously blush. “Uh, well…you really can’t keep any Griffonstone’s attention unless you bring up money pretty fast.”
She fumed at her a moment, but then let out a pitiful moan and turned back to Gilda. “Ma’am, I’m sorry but I’m really not sure I can come up with that amount. I’m already not sure how I’m going to find the twenty-thousand to pay Ms. Dash.”
“Wait what?!” Dash instantly shot back, wheeling on Rarity just as fast as she had wheeled on her. “You were planning on stiffing me the whole time?!”
Rarity grit her teeth; at this point more frustrated than embarrassed. “I would have done absolutely everything in my power to get you the money as quickly as possible but, no, I’m not sure I would have had it available to me as soon as I got back to Manehattan. I’m sorry to say that, contrary to popular belief, Manehattanites do not sleep on piles of money stuffed in mattresses and light our cigarettes with 100-dollar notes, especially when we are trying to keep our company’s afloat.”
“I’ve been nearly tagged by bounty hunters, stabbed, knocked through train cars, and almost killed and you weren’t even going to get me my money on time?”
Rarity spun on her. “Don’t you dare begin to think this whole thing has just been on your head! I have been with you every step of the way and dreading every hour that I’m going to end up dead in a gutter with a worthless slip of-”
“Both of you shut up!”
As the two were inching into each other’s faces, they froze and whirled back to see an equally angry Gilda glaring at both of them.
“I don’t really give a damn about your little business deal or sob story getting here. All I care about is that if you want to get your asses over to Manehattan, the price tag is a firm ten-thousand for the both of you, and I had better get it as soon as we get there.”
Dash turned to Gilda and scoffed. “Come on… I can’t believe you’re actually charging us. After I ran those rum runners through here that one time and got you that bonus, too!”
“You should know trying to use friendship as an excuse for a discount doesn’t get you very far with me. Especially not when you’re always broke. I’m already thinking I’m an idiot for waiting to get paid until after I do the work. That being said,” Gilda straightened up. “You two better not get any ideas talking to any of the other smugglers about trying to get a better deal than mine. It’s not going to go very well with you.”
Dash crossed her arms, but Rarity didn’t like the way she said that. “How so?”
“You must have been on the run if you haven’t heard the news. Appleloosa’s almost turning itself inside out right now. Rumors are shooting around everywhere, and they’re getting worse all the time. First there’s the Nighttouched crossing the border.”
“Big deal,” Dash shrugged, “Happens all the time.”
“Not like this. These ones are new. Meaner. They don’t even really act like animals anymore. Practically the whole Appleloosan military is going on alert. All signs point that the next big push is going to be right into half of northern Appleloosa. They’re saying they could lose up to a quarter of the land if the Light Eaters join in.”
Dash uncrossed her arms, looking as stunned as Rarity. “Merciful heavens…” the latter muttered.
“That’s not possible,” Dash answered, even though her voice sounded unsure. “They haven’t made a move that big since they first showed up eight years ago.”
“You two better believe it, because Appleloosa does and so does Trottingham. They already made several attacks. Most of them have been on the northern border but one went into the central area. Everyone’s saying they’re going to invade Appleloosa once it’s reeling from the Nighttouched. And guess what? It gets even better. Now they’re saying there’s an infiltration.”
“Infiltration?”
“Folks showing up with weird powers causing all sorts of hell. Burning, blasting, and leaving ruins behind. Some think it’s new weapons from Trottingham and spies disguised as normal civvies are using it. Other folks say it’s actually something Trottingham cooked up that got loose and is trying to escape, and that’s why they’re here…hunting them down. Some say it’s a new kind of super Nighttouched that’s actually disguised as people. In any case, one thing’s in common…these folks all look like normal people until the moment they start using these powers. After that, they go on a killer rampage.”
She shrugged.
“Well, that and the fact that they got the same kind of symbols on their hands you two have got.”
“Wha…?”
Before Dash or Rarity could react, Gilda snapped forward and, in the same motion, pulled out one of her long knives from her side. It swung out so fast that Rarity squealed, thinking she had just been cut right into as the blade swept across both women. Rarity recoiled in shock while Dash snapped back at the ready and made a fist on instinct, but Gilda, smiling cockily, leaned back in her chair and calmly put her knife away.
Both paused a moment before looking where she had cut, but looked even more uneasy on seeing she had sliced through Dash’s glove and Rarity’s bandage. Their hexagonal symbols were both on display.
Dash, in the end, simply frowned and crossed her arms again. “I figured that secret would get out someday…”
Rarity, on the other hand, was left stammering at the move Gilda made. “H-h-how…how did…?”
“I’ve got more going for me than being a smuggler. I’m also quite a great thief…among other things,” the smuggler smirked back. “Point is…you two likely saw the roadblock on the way in. There’s no way you two are getting to Manehattan without a smuggler now. Especially not since just this morning the Appleloosan government put a general warrant for people with those symbols on their hands.”
She leaned forward.
“I’m a bit more on the up-and-up than those greenhorns out there. I keep my ears open. But they’ll get wind of it soon enough and they’ll realize those same people will be coming through here trying to get out of Appleloosa while they can. And once they figure it out, they won’t be taking you two anywhere you want to go. They’ll likely hang onto you here for a while until the government starts offering a bounty, and then they’ll get their money out of you in that way.”
Dash eased her fist but grit her teeth uncomfortably. Rarity looked far more worried, especially realizing that Dash’s speed and talent hadn’t helped her just now. Her thoughts toward Gilda grew more uneasy.
“Now,” she went on, “normally I wouldn’t even give anyone the time of day about this. In fact, to be honest, if I could I’d love to cash the bounty in on you, princess. Dash and I go way back and I don’t love dollars enough for that, but you? No problem at all. I’m only giving you this special one-time offer on a few provisions. One is that Dash here is asking me and I did make some money off of that job of hers that went bad. Two is that I couldn’t get a bounty on you anyway. So right now I’m your best bet of getting back with your precious little contract. Deal?”
Rarity swallowed. She was over a barrel and Gilda knew it. She didn’t dare say no to this agreement now. Not when she was right in a lion’s den with no defense. She slumped and sighed. “Alright, alright…”
“Oh, one condition,” Gilda added as she leaned up again, frowning a little. “By now the two of you have noticed Ms. Pinkamena Diane Pie out there. She’s got me so annoyed that I’m practically praying that the Timberwolves make a visit and take her off my hands…”
While Gilda was idle enough about this, Rarity’s head snapped up. Dash actually shifted back on seeing her face. For a brief moment, a violence and anger that she didn’t think the designer was capable of flared in her eyes.
Gilda didn’t notice as she was idly looking about at the time. “But it just so happens, whether she fully knows it or not, she’s got the same issue the two of you have under those miner’s gloves she’s wearing.”
Rarity’s anger turned to surprise. Dash uncertainly jabbed her thumb behind her. “Miss Cotton-Candy-for-a-Haircut actually has one of these?”
“Blabbed the whole thing to me without me even asking. She did, however, have a ton of cold hard cash on her to pay for her passage.” She grinned. “That’s what I love about Gaiatians. Since neither of you can give me a down payment, she’s going to end up being it. She comes with.” She sighed as she turned back. “Who knows? Maybe the two of you can keep me from bludgeoning her to death en route…”
“Uh…we have to go…with her?” Dash asked uncomfortably.
Rarity was likewise uneasy, but only partially due to Pinkamena’s unusual demeanor and cheerfulness. It was more of the fact that she realized Gilda would now have sole custody of three people with those hexagonal symbols. Not only did it make them an even more appealing target to someone like the man in armor from the night before, but if Appleloosa really did offer a bounty then Gilda would have it all to herself.
She finally put her foot down. “And how, pray tell, are we supposed to have any confidence other than your word that you won’t turn us in to the authorities?”
“I never said I wouldn’t turn you into the authorities,” Gilda retorted. She raised her own hand afterward, showing off a glove similar to Dash’s own. Soon after, she unstrapped the bottom, pulled it off, and showed it to both.
Dash’s jaw dropped as Rarity was caught off guard yet again.
Another hexagonal symbol, and this one with one of the points enlarged just like both of theirs.
“I said I couldn’t. Get why I’m the only smuggler here you can trust yet?”
The door to Gilda’s “office” opened up, and she immediately stepped out with Dash and Rarity in tow; the latter of the two not looking entirely comfortable. Nevertheless, the young woman immediately leapt to her feet gleefully.
“You’re back! All done discussing and bargaining and yelling-at-each-other-so-loud-I-could-hear-you-through-the-door-so-I-just-hummed-to-myself-because-it’s-none-of-my-business?”
Gilda gave her a sour look. “I’ll take that five thousand from you right now.”
“Okie-dokie-lokie!” A bit to the surprise of Dash and Rarity, she reached right into her own poofy hairstyle, rummaged around for a moment, and then, astonishing them both from an act that seemed more for a magician than anyone else, actually pulled out a small, weathered, leather bag with a clasp. She opened it up as Gilda extended her hand. Soon she was rapidly pulling out 100-dollar notes and counting them out into it. “Onetwothreefourfivesixseveneightnineteneleventwelvethirteenfourteenskipafewfifty!”
Gilda frowned at that last bit, but held up the money and quickly recounted it herself. Seeing it all there, she tucked the bills inside her vest. “We’re leaving right now,” she flatly stated, pushing her way past the pink-haired woman and none too gently shoving her aside with one elbow before walking down the shaft. “Keep up. Fall behind and you get left behind.”
Dash, taking that threat very seriously, soon rushed in behind Gilda. Rarity took a bit longer to follow suit, but as soon as she did the pink-haired woman lit up and began to cheerfully skip alongside her—a bit difficult in the tight mine tunnel. “Ooooo! You’re coming with us to Manehattan? Yay! It’ll be just like when me and the family moved! Only hopefully less Nighttouched and people with guns!”
“Yes, um, perish the thought,” Rarity uneasily answered, squeezing alongside her, and finally offering her hand. “My name is Rarity and my companion is Rainbow Dash, Ms. Pinkamena.”
She took the hand and immediately gave it a vigorous shaking, but after it was done she snickered. “Oh, Pinkamena’s just the name my parents call me. You can call me ‘Pinkie Pie’! Or just ‘Pinkie’! Or ‘miss’! Or ‘you’! Or nothing now and then, like when you need to say something like: ‘Do you want ice cream?’ or ‘Run! Fire!’ or ‘Help, stop this bear from chewing my head!’ Hey!” She grinned as she bounced along. “Now that there’s four of us, it’ll make a game of I Spy much more fun! I spy, with my little eye, someone from Griffonstone!”
Dash looked over her shoulder with a raised eyebrow. “Are…you talking about Gilda?”
“You got it right with the first guess! Wow, you’re a natural!” Pinkie cheered. “Let’s go again! I spy, with my little eye, someone with a piece of paper in their pocket!”
Dash groaned and turned back around. “We deserve a discount for this…”
The sound pouring from Celestia’s teapot into the porcelain cup usually had such a ring to it that Sunset would smile. Today, the girl barely managed a more upbeat look as she accepted it and sank into the easy chair across from the headmistress. This wasn’t lost on the woman as she finished filling her own cup, but she didn’t call it to mind right away. Bringing the cup to her mouth, she blew on it a bit before taking a sip.
“Are you alright, Sunset? Usually you seem so much happier during our teas.”
“It’s nothing,” she answered, although she kept staring at her cup without drinking.
“Do you not want to do this anymore? If you’re feeling embarrassed, then-”
“No, no, it’s not that,” she quickly cut off, looking up again. “I’ve actually missed them ever since I joined the regular class. It’s just…”
“Just what?”
She frowned; her eyes drifting to her armrest. “Moondancer got a better score than me on the levitation exam.”
“Well, she has been doing it a lot longer than you, Sunset.” She took another sip. “You’ve only been in the class a month. The fact you got second-highest is nothing to be ashamed of.”
“It’s been a while since I was competing with other students…” she half-muttered.
Celestia lowered her cup. “Don’t look at it as a competition. These are other girls your age studying magic just like you, and with a Promethian Sigil just like you. You should learn from them so that you both can get better together.”
“They don’t have the destiny I do though,” Sunset muttered again before finally sipping her tea, causing Celestia to grimace ever so slightly. She glanced back to her hopefully. “Can we go back to one-on-one lessons? I was learning so much faster that way…”
“Sunset,” she answered more “teacher-ly” as she set down her cup, “there’s more to your education than just learning spells. Part of this is interaction with others. Taking classes with other students will bring out things inside of you that you never knew you had.”
The girl sighed, sinking back into her chair. She set her tea down and took up a cucumber sandwich instead, munching it idly.
“Please give it just a little longer. I’ll tell you more if you do. You’re about ready to learn about the Anima Viri.”
Sunset raised her head; her gloom vanishing at the thought of learning something new. “What’s an-”
Celestia cut her off with a smirk and one finger. “Two more months. Then you’ll learn all about them.”
Sunset frowned with a mixture of anxiety and pouting, but sighed in defeat. “Alright…” She crammed the rest of the cucumber sandwich into her mouth and went for the chicken salad croissant next.
“And, as a matter of fact, I do have a new assignment for you.”
Forgetting the food, Sunset leaned up in her chair excitedly. “Really?”
“It’s an essay.”
She slumped back into it just as quickly. “Ugh…”
Celestia couldn’t help but smile wider. “This one’s going to be a bit different from your usual writing assignments. I want you to answer a question for me in essay form.”
She reached for her desk, opened a drawer, and pulled out a slip of typewritten paper. As she passed it over to Sunset she recited its contents aloud.
“You and several other passengers are on a cruise ship that sinks in the middle of the ocean, hundreds of miles from any other land or boat. You end up being in charge of a single lifeboat that contains yourself and seven other passengers. There is only room for two more on board the boat, but two of the passengers are so large that they are taking up two additional seats. Ten other passengers are in the ocean and are in danger of drowning. There are no other means available to you to save any of these passengers other than entry onto the lifeboat. What do you do and why?”
Sunset sat there silently, staring at Celestia, for several moments. She glanced down at the sheet she had passed her. Finally she rubbed her chin. “I…guess I could try using a levitation charm, but on so many-”
“You can’t do that, Sunset,” she answered, causing her to look up again. “It says there’s no other means available. Including magic.”
“Then…breaking up the boat into a raft?”
“No other means, Sunset. Just letting them into the lifeboat.”
She glanced back at the paper, more confused than before. She read it and re-read it several times. Finally, she lit up. “Oh, I get it! It doesn’t say that there aren’t any other lifeboats but mine. So I take two on board and-”
“Sunset, it may not say that, but the implication is that there is only one lifeboat out there. There are no other boats.”
She looked confused again and stared at the sheet of paper longer. “I don’t get it… Can I get a hint?”
Now Celestia looked puzzled. “Hint?”
“There’s got to be information missing here. Are some of the passengers mages? Do they have rafts or floatation devices? Do they know how to swim and can dangle on the side?”
“Sunset, do you think this is a riddle?”
She looked up. “Well, I can’t figure out any other way to solve this problem.”
“Sunset, this isn’t a math problem or a new spell. It’s an essay.”
“But…but I don’t see any way to save all the passengers.”
She shrugged. “Then you can’t save all the passengers.”
The girl looked surprised. “You mean…that’s the right answer?”
“Sunset, there isn’t a right answer. This isn’t that kind of question. This is an essay about character and ethics. It’s not important that you find the right answer. What’s important is the answer you choose and why you chose it. It shows what’s important to you and what you value.”
The girl hesitated; looking over the assignment again. She winced uncomfortably.
“What’s wrong?”
“You…I mean, it’s nothing.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah.”
Celestia stared at her a little longer, clearly not quite believing, but finally eased up and took her teacup up again. “Alright then. You have a few days, so don’t stress about it right now. Let’s just spend the rest of the time catching up, alright?”
“Alright,” she finally said, although it was some time before she was able to take her own teacup again.
As midnight came, Sunset found herself still seated at the desk in her room, although she had let the lamp burn out. There was more than enough moonlight pouring through the nearby window for her to see the progress on her essay, or lack thereof. Namely, that it had just the following sentence fragment: “When faced with this choice, I would choose”.
Her pen tapped at the part where the rest of the sentence should have ended, but with no change other than what she had done for hours: frowned at it.
In Sunset’s mind, the headmistress never gave an assignment with the intent of getting an ambiguous answer. There was always an answer that would be the best. One that would garner praise. One that would lead to more advanced magic and more explanations. She puzzled over that now, but as she read over the assignment again for the 400th time, she still couldn’t find out what exactly it was. She would have given up and hit the sack two hours ago if she wasn’t to the point in her education where she prided herself on getting assignments done the next day. She had to crack this.
Letting out a sigh, she wiped at her face. The room was getting rather warm and she felt like some air. With that in mind, she stood up and reached over to the window to unfasten it, but on seeing outside she paused.
Sunset’s room just happened to have a splendid window view (aside from a large tree from the surrounding gardens encroaching on the main quad) of the Northern Keep. She had seen it many times before. In fact, she found her eyes often drifting to it after the first incident that had made it catch her attention a year and a half prior, although it wasn’t the building itself that had done that. In the entire year and a half, the building had never changed. It was never decorated for special dates. It was never lit up no matter the time of day. In fact, try as she might, she had never seen anything but darkness in whatever windows on it that weren’t shuttered.
And yet, almost every single night, around this very time, she saw the same thing.
The headmistress, her hair seeming to shimmer even in the night, her grace and poise seeming to let her attire drift in a floating motion behind her, crossed over to the building, paused at the gate for a moment, and then passed inside.
Sunset wasn’t sure what it was about that night. Ever since the first time she had seen it, her curiosity had done nothing but grow as she knew there were many things that Celestia had yet to tell her. Perhaps it was the essay combined with the timing of the change in classes turning her demeanor, but for whatever reason she decided tonight was the night. Almost on a whim, she elected at that moment to get up and go.
Celestia was the kindest and most understanding of headmistresses, but she was as immobile as a mountain when it came to the rules she se--which included that no students were allowed to leave the dormitories at night. To that end, she had set up multiple safeguards to ensure no student ever did anything other than go to the restroom.
Sunset, however, had been testing the safeguards for a while.
By now, she knew when the night watchmen would make their normal rounds, and how lazy they had gotten about checking which corners. It was a small matter of ducking out, waiting down the right corner in the right shadow, inching past when he walked by on her stocking feet, hiding again in a new corner until he came back the other way, and then slipping to the end of the hall.
From there, one of Celestia’s own trained birds sat in a cage, ready to squawk the moment a student tried to pass through loud enough to wake the dead. Sunset, however, had acclimated herself to the bird some time ago with bits of birdseed she purloined on her visits to Celestia’s office, until the animal expectantly waited for a bit of feeding whenever it saw her. On satiating it, she moved on to the stairwell.
The stairs themselves were another trap. Celestia had fitted each one with a magic rune to set off a colored flare above the dormitory alerting all the faculty and castle staff. It would take all night to undo them, or longer given that they came from Celestia, but Sunset bothered with none. Instead, she opened the window at the top of the staircase, let herself out, and began to shinny down the side of the brick wall. It was sheer enough to be quite frightening and impossible to most, but Sunset had practiced and broken it down into the short small drops to each protruding bit of masonry and window ledge, and even without a rope she had managed it. Once on the ground floor, she slipped back into the window; knowing from one mistake (that she had to rapidly blame on a misfired teleportation attempt) that touching the grass would set off another flare.
From here she went to the commons area, the farthest she had ever gone. She had to take some time to examine her surroundings, but her scrying practice apparently had paid off as she was able to not only detect the magical lock on the front door and two more alarms, but also the fact that the watchdogs out front had had charms placed on their barks to alert higher authorities even if they were muted. Realizing unlocking the front door would likely trigger them, she used a different approach. While she had only managed to combine spells once or twice before then, by combining the mute spell with the unlocking incantation she was able to spring the door silently, and before opening it muted herself. Sure enough, both dogs had laid down and nodded off some time ago, and while normally the slightest sound would have been enough to awaken them, with everything silenced she was able to slip right by.
She had a grin on her face at her first completely successful attempt to escape the dorm that lasted her all the way to the front gate of the Northern Keep. Evading any groundskeeper guards was far easier than leaving the building considering the shadows and close-packed structures keeping many areas out of the realm of visibility, and as soon as she was in front of the building she was halted by the lock. Another scry revealed that it was not only a very powerful charm, it was likely one that would trigger and alert if she tried to force it with her more basic level of magic. However, Sunset knew now from experience that the headmistress rarely relied on her own magic to undo these; else she would have to constantly replace the charms. Rather, the incantation would usually break with the proper password.
She leaned into the lock and whispered.
“Crystal imperium.”
Nothing. Sunset frowned. She knew she had overheard Celestia use that word before on a special chest in her office when she was waiting outside to come in. (The headmistress likely would have disapproved if she knew, but Sunset certainly didn’t let on to that.) She had hoped she would use the same password for all of her charms, but apparently not.
“Philomena?” she tried next.
Nothing.
“Promethian Sigil. Anima Viri.”
Nothing and nothing. Sunset suppressed a groan for fear of the watchdogs. Celestia had to know hundreds of terms that she had never brought up to her before. Any one of them, or none of them, could be the incantation. What could she do?
Sunset thought for a few moments, closing her eyes and trying to remember what she had heard Celestia say before. She came up with nothing. Nothing out of the ordinary.
Yet as her hand traced down over her body and her fingers ran across the scar in her side, feeling it through her thin nightclothes, a few sparks of memory stirred. There was that one phrase…the one she thought she heard…or perhaps only dreamed she heard…without ever knowing what it was. Before she even knew what she was saying, it spilled out of her lips.
A heavy thunk rang out as the lock undid.
Sunset stood surprised, honestly stunned that had actually worked. She had no idea what the meaning of that phrase she dreamed had been, only that she swore she heard Celestia say it once. It didn’t matter, though. Her way was open, and taking one last look around she slipped inside and shut the door behind her.
It was dark, which only figured. Sunset risked a small fireball spell and, holding it in her palm, used it as a candle to illuminate the interior as she walked in. It had all the trimmings of the architecture and design of the rest of the castle, but unlike the other structures this one was quite abandoned. The furnishings were old and worn, making it look like the keep was being used for a storage chamber. They were also covered with dust and old cobwebs. The entire place smelled musty and unused, and with the shutters in place and only moonlight for illumination, everywhere was cloaked in shadows. The ceiling was high, like most of the castle, but that only gave it a darker, emptier feeling. The silence of the chamber around her along with the coolness and staleness were a stark contrast to the rest of the castle, and it made her visibly unnerved.
The girl began to walk inside, looking around but seeing nothing but junk and old furnishings. She worked her way into the foyer and around furniture, a bit nervous about traveling through the dark and quiet place but also wary of alerting Celestia, before she reached the back. The rooms in the keep were smaller than in most of the rest of the castle, and combined with the storage they were a tight squeeze. She ended up making circuit about the entire first floor, ignoring the stairs for she had seen no movement in the upper floors from outside, but on passing through all of them she saw nothing save clutter and age; not to mention done a fair share of jumping at shadows.
She didn’t give up though. On returning to the foyer, she looked at the ground and held the light lower. It took a bit of time, but at last she spotted parts of the old carpeting and hard floor where the dust had shifted. Her own path had muddled it a bit, but she was still able to track it to a room in the back that looked like a rather inconspicuous storage area built toward the keep’s interior. Once there, she looked about until, after eight minutes of relentless searching, she noticed a stone against the wall that looked unusually smooth. Thinking it to be from finger oil, she risked touching and pushing it. As she hoped, it depressed beneath her and, with an unlatching sound, the seemingly solid stone wall in front of her swung open.
The air, however, was colder and a bit fouler coming from that way. It led to a spiral staircase that went down under the ground, where no natural light at all was available anymore. It gave Sunset pause, but she had come this far and so she swallowed and pressed on down the shaft.
Thirty minutes later and Sunset had made her way though at least seventeen different barriers, a combination of both magical and physical. By now, she was descending to a fourth sublevel. Whatever the headmistress was hiding here was something she definitely didn’t want anyone to find.
As Sunset went deeper, however, she began to think less of Celestia doubling back and thought more that there might be a good reason for that.
Each level she descended was as cluttered as the first floor, but was also damper, danker, colder, and dirtier. She eventually started seeing rather ugly bugs living in moist spots and carcasses or skeletons of mice and rats, and always it grew stiller and quieter. The air was more stagnant than ever now, but with a coldness that brought a chill right down to the bones. Some of the masonry looked hand cut and, in spite of how dark it was, moss or perhaps mold was growing over much of it. Eventually her path was barred not by doors but by iron gates, all of them rusty and making rather loud noises when she swung past them. This wasn’t a place Sunset would have normally ever wanted to go, and in truth she was growing more frightened the farther along she went. The look on her face gradually changed from bold and curious to hesitant. Had the keep descended one more level, she might have turned back.
That was when she finally saw light up ahead.
By now, the keep architecture was so basic that it seemed to be nothing but a collection of crudely mortared stones; far more ancient than the upper levels. Right at the end of the current hall she saw a simple entryway, just big enough for one adult at full height, opening into what looked like nothing but more masonry. Venturing a bit nearer, she could see that the bottom dropped out. She doused her own flame and stepped closer yet, until she was right at the edge and looked down.
The opening descended into a long stone staircase, just old and crude enough to look slightly twisted. The stone masonry on either side was just rough enough to have a jagged feel. Far at the bottom she saw a light flickering—a torch or a lantern. It was coming from within some sort of barred window that she assumed was on a door to a chamber at the bottom of the stairs.
That wasn’t all though. A new foulness on the air. It was neither cold nor dank. Truly, Sunset couldn’t tell what it was. All she knew was it wasn’t pleasant. It reminded her of the feeling she got when she was younger when she thought she heard a noise in the house during a thunderstorm, or dreaded the shadows of forests or the stern words of a disciplinary parent. It was wrong to call it dread though. It felt more like the rush one got from fear; the final surge of adrenaline one had when faced with the object of their terror.
Right before…
It took all of Sunset’s courage to finally begin to step down the stairs. Even the first step made her heart race. In the darkness and silence, she could almost hear her blood coursing through it. On forcing herself to take a second, the feelings began to rise around and wrap about her; stifling all other emotions. The third step down she paused and held her breath, listening for anything. The flickering of the lights far below seemed much closer than her few steps should have taken her, but still silence.
She hesitated at the thought that Celestia wasn’t there. Even if she wasn’t, maybe nothing was down there. Just a private study. A secret book or talisman. She swallowed as one of her legs began to lift, almost inching backward.
“Let me out of here! Let me out you filthy, rotten bitch! LET ME OUT!”
Sunset froze in midstep. She went totally white. The voice that came from below defied description. She couldn’t tell if it was male or female. She couldn’t even tell if it was human. It sounded like it was wrapped in a mixture of unholy rage and unmeasureable madness. It was both high pitched and twisted as well as warped hideously. The girl didn’t know anything that lived was capable of making that noise.
The only thing that shocked her more than the hideous voice and the rattling of what sounded like no less than two dozen heavy chains, many of them snapping taut, was the viciousness of what she heard bellow from its mouth. It let out a stream of obscenities and foulness so vile and disgusting that it used every profanity that Sunset had ever heard in her young life as well as all others she had yet to hear; mixed together in the most murderous, disgusting, and hideous threats imaginable. She actually felt sickened as she heard the ghastly thing scream at the top of its lungs about how it was going to kill its captor in ways so horrifying that those vivid descriptions alone would have filled Sunset’s mind with nightmares for a month.
It didn’t tire as it went on. On the contrary, its voice grew louder and more booming. Enough to where Sunset swore she saw the very masonry begin to tremble. She could almost hear the chains snapping a bit looser with each rapid tug and the glow of the flames grow more unstable from what had to be the thing fuming a bit closer to them each time. Yet her body stayed petrified, unable to move. Trapped in a dark hole with it.
Through a mixture of panic and desperation, she finally forced her foot up and back to the step above, only for it to miss and scrape against the masonry. Her heart froze as she heard the single loud scoff resound more audibly than she ever thought possible, and right when the thing was in between threats.
The chains instantly went silent. The horrible screaming stopped.
Sunset stopped breathing. She almost thought she willed her heart to stop beating. Icy terror clutched her chest.
It had heard her.
Her mind dared to think, somehow, that it would just ignore her and resume its tirade. That hope was swiftly crushed.
“Who is it?”
The voice wasn’t nearly as full of anger this time. Rather, it had mixed in its madness with a hint of saccharine sweetness. The fact it had said “who is it” as opposed to “who’s there” only made Sunset more terrified.
“Who iiiiiis it?”
It spoke even more high-pitched that time; a grotesque parody of a cheerful mother asking who was at the door. Sunset began to shake like a leaf in a storm. She didn’t even notice a new set of footsteps suddenly moving.
“Ans-wer me pleeeeeease… Pretty, pretty pleeeeeease…” it sang. “I…can…hear…your…breath… You’re just an itty…bitty…girl…aren’t you?”
The girl tried to scream at herself to run, but she was too terrified to make any more noise.
“Say something…”
She finally covered her mouth, trying to stifle her breathing.
“Saaaaaay something…”
A noise was at the door fumbling with it, but Sunset could only hear the voice of the thing.
“If you do-on’t…”
Every last chain snapped taut so loud it was like a thunderclap.
“I’LL TEAR YOU INTO ITTY BITTY PIECES!”
Sunset’s mouth snapped open, but she was too horrified to scream. The door flew open, and in her terror she imagined seeing nothing but a black shadow coming out. She imagined it coming up the stairs and engulfing her in blackness and teeth. Yet she couldn’t scream. Try as she might, she was too scared to make a sound…
The fantasy faded from her mind’s eye readily in an instant, but a shape still came up the stairs. One with flowing, iridescent hair, a headmistress robe, and a kind, known face. Only it wasn’t calm or composed this time. It wasn’t motherly or caring. It was filled with shock and terror on seeing Sunset there. Sunset hardly had time to know what was going on before she swept her arms around her, and instantly began to force her up the stairwell again.
“Get out!” was all she heard Celestia nearly whisper. “Get out now! Hurry!”
Sunset didn’t hear if she said any more, for the thing was screaming again as it rattled the chains.
“I’LL GET OUT ONE DAY, ITTY-BITTY! AND WHEN I DO I’LL FIND YOU AND GOBBLE YOU UP IN BIG, BLOODY, GOOEY BITES!! WAIT FOR ME-EEEE!!”
In spite of how old Sunset was now, the headmistress scooped her up and moved back through the secret doors and charms so fast that she had to be running the whole time. The sound of the hideous thing finally vanished as soon as they entered the second sublevel, but Sunset’s eyes stayed wide open and fixed behind them; gazing into the darkness. She stared without blinking. She didn’t dare close her eyes even once. She feared if she did she would open them again and see the thing right behind them, mouth open wide, tongue wagging, and eyes on her. It wasn’t until the first sublevel when, still running, Celestia hugged her tightly to her chest and put her head next to her ear.
“It can’t get out, Sunset. It can’t get out. It can’t get out…”
She kept soothing her with that that all through the final sublevel, only going quiet once they reached the main floor. At the foyer, Celestia dropped into a walk, so that when they exited she had calmed her breath just enough to look perfectly normal as she stepped onto the ground still carrying Sunset. Even when the heavy double doors and gate locked behind them, Sunset kept staring at them. Gradually, the light of the moon and the wall torches, as well as the warm, fresh, familiar surroundings, eased away a small measure of her fear. Enough to where she was at least able to think again.
Celestia didn’t stop until they were in her room. Sunset hadn’t been in there in three years, when she got “too big” for the headmistress to offer her comfort for nightmares. She had never felt so good to be sat in her easy chair and covered up with one of her soft blankets. Celestia said no more the entire time. It wasn’t until she had almost finished brewing a fresh cup of tea for both of them that Sunset finally began to cry. She couldn’t help it. And she kept doing so when Celestia brought her the tea and put her arm around her and began to comfort her. She said nothing about the keep or what was in it, only reassuring words as she let her cry and hugged her tight. It took another hour before she had calmed enough to stop. Even then, the words still rang in her head and the fear was still in her heart.
At long last, the headmistress guided her over to her own bed, pulled aside the covers, and helped her in. As she did, she took her hand and grasped it warmly and tightly.
“It’s ok, Sunset. You’re safe.”
The authority and power in her voice had returned. Only now did Sunset realize it had fully come back somewhere on the run between the fourth sublevel and now. And just as always, it was enough to ease her just a little bit as she sank into the bed.
Celestia covered her up and gave her a brief comforting smile.
However, for once, it faded soon after.
“I’ll be right here, Sunset. But before you go to sleep, there’s something you have to promise me.”
The girl was still getting over her fear, but what she heard commanded her full attention. The headmistress almost always trusted Sunset at her word or said something expecting she would do it. Including keeping secrets about what she had shown her. This was the first time she had heard her ask her to promise her something in ages.
“Sunset…” she leaned in closer, and her face grew more serious than during the sternest lecture she had ever received. “This is very, very important. You need to promise me that you will forget tonight ever happened.”
The girl looked puzzled. The sound of her own voice sounded almost odd to her after being quiet so long. She never realized it was probably the first time she ever truly questioned her.
“What…?”
“Tonight did not happen. Do you understand? Tonight never happened.”
Sunset’s hands on the top of the covers began to ball. “But what was that thing-”
At once, two of Celestia’s fingers came out and pressed themselves against her lips.
“There was no thing. There was no basement to the keep. You never went in the keep. Nothing is in the Northern Keep besides old furniture. You had a bad dream and you came to spend the night with me. Promise me that’s what happened. Do you understand?”
Sunset began to look a little uneasy again, especially since Celestia’s fingers remained pressed against her lips.
When she hesitated, Celestia grew more serious yet.
“Sunset…what you dreamed of tonight…and only dreamed of…is something that you must never, ever see, hear, or touch. It’s something no one should ever know exists. People must not speak of it. People must not even imagine it could be real. People must not even talk about it as a fantasy. So long as that happens…it will only ever be a bad dream. So long as you promise me what I said, it will only ever be a bad dream. The only way it will ever be more than that is if you break your promise. Now…”
Her fingers removed from Sunset’s lips, but at that point Celestia wasn’t the kindly, motherly teacher that had brought her to the castle. All of her power and royal authority radiated through her as she looked down into Sunset’s eyes.
“What do you have to say to me?”
Sunset lay there silent for ten full seconds. She swallowed and took a deep breath.
“There was no thing. There was no basement to the keep. I never went in the keep. Nothing is in the Northern Keep besides old furniture. I had a bad dream and I came to spend the night with you.”
“And you promise me that is exactly what happened?”
A pause, then a nod. “I promise.”
A moment passed before some of Celestia’s kinder appearance came back. She reached out and brushed some loose hairs from Sunset’s face before smiling. “Now go to sleep. You have another busy day in class tomorrow.”
The girl closed her eyes soon after. She nestled into the pillow a little, but it wasn’t quite as comfortable as she was used to. Neither were the blankets spread over her. And in spite of knowing the headmistress was right at her side, on that night she felt not quite as safe or secure as she was used to…
“Sunset? One last thing.”
The girl opened her eyes.
She gaped in horror on seeing a ghastly, twisted face hovering inches from her own with saber-like teeth and flaming eyes.
“DIDN’T I TELL YOU I’D GET OUT?!”
At last, Sunset was able to scream.
“Nnnyah!”
Sunset sat up like a bolt in the command chair of the Rising Sun before looking around in a panic. All she saw, other than the bridge, were the members of the crew looking back at her with surprised glances. She stared at them all for a few moments before she finally eased.
Once she did, however, she grit her teeth angrily. She rubbed her eyes as she realized she had not only nodded off but nearly screamed in her sleep, and it made her angrier to feel a healthy amount of cold sweat on her brow. Apparently, this was what happened when she refused to rest until they found her target. As it was, it took her a full minute of calming herself down to make sure she wouldn’t be seen shaking before she was bold enough to look up and call out.
“Status.”
Her question was directed mostly in front of her, to one area in the center of the airship that had been custom-designed to her own specifications. It consisted of a strange podium of iron, gears, and some crystalline material which was poised and presented in the center. However, right now it had an additional usage. The royal guard stood there with his spear driven right into the center of it, and his hands were both clasping it as small bolts of electricity formed a moving arc with the shaft and the podium surrounding it.
He was already looking at her before she spoke. “My lady, are you alright?” The voice had an uncharacteristic level of tension.
Sunset frowned again. “I don’t recall asking you how I looked. I said status.”
After a pause, the guard slowly turned his head back. “The trail was growing dim for a while,” he answered far more smoothly, “but we’ve gotten close enough to pick up on it again. They’ve ended up going under the Hyperborean Mountains.”
Sunset nodded. “So they went with the Griffonstone smugglers after all. Fantastic. We know exactly where they’ll emerge.”
The guard turned his head over his shoulder again. “By now, Grifftham City has to at least gotten word of us, to say nothing of the Nighttouched. They may have an agreement with Trottingham but there’s no telling what they’ll do once we cross their borders, or how ready they’ll be for a fight.”
“Griffonstone doesn’t have a cannon in service that shouldn’t have been retired six years ago. I think we have enough power to launch one raid on Grifftham City, if need be. What do the others report?”
“The Endeavor checked in an hour ago,” the Rising Sun’s first mate joined in. “They say their sweep is clear so they’re flanking us. The Prodigy checked in thirty minutes afterward. They’re following the river south. Ma’am, I…”
Sunset smirked. “Trying to save face by bagging at least one Promethian Sigil bearer, huh? Whatever. Just so long as they cover the river route.”
“Ma’am,” the first mate continued, “I think you need to take a look at this.”
The woman rose from her seat and began to stretch a little. “What is it? Are the Appleloosans changing targets?”
“No, ma’am. It’s…well…”
“Spit it out, already. If things are going well, I might try to catch some sleep while I can.”
“I think you should see for yourself.”
Sunset frowned a bit more, but turned to the first mate. This late at night, there wasn’t much in the way of lighting on the bridge save for the royal guard’s arclight and a few candle-like flames mounted in glass at key consoles, but she saw enough to notice she was posted at the ventral periscope station. Stepping around the various stations and railings, she made her way over to it. Taking a moment to push her hair back, she leaned forward and placed her eyes on the goggles. “And what is it that I’m supposed to see?”
“The edge of the Equestrian border where it meets the Hyperboreans. We pulled in for a hover here after you…” She swallowed. “…about an hour ago.”
Sunset’s lip curled at the reminder of how she fell asleep but kept looking.
The view was scaled back for the highest panorama; designed to capture the most amount of land. From their position, Sunset could easily make out the northern edge of the mountains themselves, before they gave way into the inky black forest of Equestria. She saw nothing at first and nearly asked what the issue was, when she caught something odd.
An entire section of the forest suddenly shifted one way. Seeing that the rest of the forest stayed solid it couldn’t be wind. Before she could conclude it was a rockslide, however, she realized that the part of the “forest”, almost an entire hill on its own, was not only still moving but moving forward.
She looked closer and soon made out more than that. There were teeny, tiny lights, thousands of them, trailing behind the moving hill. And the hill itself wasn’t entirely black but had little specks inside it. Almost like looking at…stars.
Spotting that, she realized just what it had to be. “What in the world…?”
“It’s staying away from us just like the smaller ones, but…but…”
Sunset leaned up from the periscope and looked around the bridge. The crew had been startled when she first woke up, but now she saw they were all looking on edge. Including the first mate. “My lady, we’ve never seen a Light Eater that big even when we flew over the interior of Equestria. There’s Nighttouched and smaller Light Eaters right behind it too. Thousands…tens of thousands.”
Sunset looked into the periscope again. She stared at it for several more seconds.
“Should we notify the Regent?”
“At this point, we abandon this mission for nothing,” Sunset flatly responded, still staring at the periscope. “We’ve come too far.”
“Then…what should we do?”
Sunset pulled herself away from the station, turned, and glanced at her; raising an eyebrow. “‘Do’?”
The first mate, put on the spot, began to look uneasy. “It’s…it’s just that we’ve never seen anything like this before. Not even in the initial surges. It could…they could…they could be trying something.”
“And you think it’s our responsibility to stop it? Is that what you’re asking me, officer?”
She began to sweat. “N-no, ma’am…yes, ma’am…I mean, no ma’am, but I thought…well, I just…”
Sunset snorted with a smile. “You just thought that all of humanity should ‘drop everything and work together when Light Eaters are involved’, huh?” She scoffed and shook her head as she turned back to the royal guard. “Really, commander. If you still think chivalry is a thing, you need to take a good look around Greater Everfree. Flash?”
The royal guard, in spite of focusing on his staff, faced Sunset as best as he could. “Milady?”
“Get your chariot ready to go and head off the ones going under the Hyperboreans. We’ll use the Grover Peak entrance. Deal with them now. It won’t do me any good to lose the one I need to the Light Eaters and Nighttouched, and from the looks of it every cavern in those mountains is going to be flooded with them soon.”
Without the slightest expression of fear or hesitation, the royal guard bowed to her; even though many of the rest of the crew gave Sunset a surprised, and uneasy, glance. She, on her part, simply kept her smirk as she headed back to the captain’s chair.
“I suggest you hurry. The big one is moving pretty fast. It won’t be long before your neck will be in as much trouble as theirs.”
“Road closed! Check in or move along! Road closed! Check in or move along!”
Twilight frowned at the Appleloosan National Guard member shouting this same refrain, beckoning people along on the road. Just ahead loomed the Hyperborean Mountains. A deep ravine cut through this part of the landscape, made by the Shell River running from north to south. There was a Mount Aris port city stationed on just the other side of it, and Appleloosa was connected to it via a rather large bridge.
Unfortunately, the Appleloosan end was currently closed and blocked off by a large number of national guard members. The previous customs post they had was replaced by much stronger barriers and even a touch of barbed wire, as well as far too many guns for Twilight’s taste. Nevertheless, there was already a line stretching half a mile long off to one side of the road leading up to it; mostly individuals with large wagons or parties who couldn’t afford to stay on the road any longer.
Far more people were walking by, perhaps groaning or cursing but obeying the directive to keep walking. These types had quickly gotten impossible to avoid when her group reached the main roads, and they were growing more numerous all the time.
Finally, she began to walk back to her own group. The animals Fluttershy had insisted on bringing with her were seated to one side and, apparently, enjoying a bit of snack time in the form of nuts, grains, and vegetables the woman had brought. She herself was looking uncomfortable as Applejack was practically in her face.
“Can we pick up the pace just a mite? The Nighttouched’ll be here ‘fore we even get on a boat! Or the airships!”
“Oh, but Eustice was getting a sideache. He never was that athletic and at his age he’s doing so well to begin with… I didn’t want to make him feel bad by letting him think he was dragging the rest of us behind.”
“He is draggin’ the rest of us behind!”
She gasped, quickly leaning in and looking back. “Don’t talk so loud! You’ll hurt his feelings!”
“Hurt his…ugh! Which one is he, anyway?”
Fluttershy, after making sure he wasn’t looking, extended a finger and pointed to a mouse gnawing on corn kernel.
Applejack nearly fumed. “Ya’ gotta be kiddin’ me! I could carry that varmint in my breast pocket!”
She gasped a second time; this time covering up Applejack’s mouth. “Don’t say that! We don’t use that language in my house!”
The farmer rolled her eyes and twisted her way free as Twilight approached. “So, what’s the story?”
“A bad one. This road is blocked, so there’s no chance of getting into the port city here.”
“Ya’ ain’t scared of a few boys with guns, are ya’? Ain’t like we’ve done anythin’ illegal.”
Twilight stared deadpan before holding up her gloved hand. “You haven’t forgotten about these, have you? Take another look at the custom’s post.”
She looked and, this time, Fluttershy looked with her. In particular, they watched where people were being let in. It seemed to be taking a while, no doubt leading to the pile up, but after only a moment she noticed two of the soldiers were going along and looking at each person in the line. Their hands in particular.
Her eyes widened in realization. “But…but why would…?”
“I don’t know, but if I had to guess it probably wasn’t so much what we did the other night as either those airships looking for more people like us or more people acting like Braeburn and that photographer. And with the Nighttouched also getting ready to come across, the military is going to be so on edge that I don’t think we should try and show our sigils off that much.”
“Oh my…” Fluttershy remarked.
Applejack frowned and crossed her arms. “Fine. We’ll just head down the river to the next port.”
“That won’t be for another seventy miles, and these crowds might already have them taken up. Thousands of people already have to have been turned away. Even if they aren’t, do you think they’ll let Fluttershy’s animals take up so much space for passengers?”
“Well, what other choice we got?”
Twilight’s shoulders slumped. “I’ve been asking myself the same thing… We don’t even have any money to get on board a ferry in the first place.”
“Don’t that just beat all…” Applejack groaned; snatching off her hat and scratching her head. “I’ve been nervous as a cat in a room fulla rockin’ chairs all day thinkin’ every odd sound I hear is another airship, and now we gotta worry ‘bout the national guard too if they do show up. ‘Til yesterday I’d have loved ta’ stay in Appleloosa the rest of my life, and now the last place I wanna be in is in it and gettin’ out on foot ain’t gonna be the way ta’ do it.”
She frowned as a bit of shouting came from their surroundings. “It’d be a helluva lot easier ta’ think if that fella over there’d quit yellin’…”
Twilight looked puzzled at the comment and glanced up. There were a number of groups like theirs stopped alongside the road—no doubt due to seeing their way shut and reassessing their situation. Most of them were talking and many of them were yelling. However, there was one in particular louder than all.
A rather stocky giant of a man with a drooping hat was perched on an overturned broken wagon, cupping his hands to his mouth and yelling at the top of his lungs.
“Vet! We need a vet!”
Twilight perked up. Moments later she turned and began to move over to him.
“What…? Where ya’ goin’?” Applejack called as she ran off, but she didn’t stop. Sighing, the farmer looked behind. “Fluttershy, jus’ stay here with Spike and yer critters.” She muttered before taking off after her.
Even going against the flow of the people, it didn’t take long for Applejack to catch up to Twilight, but it took the latter even less time to run up to the feet of the man and hold her hand up waving until she got his attention. “Excuse me? Sir?”
He glanced downward.
“Did you say you needed a ‘vet’?”
“Sure do,” he grumbled back, although based on his look there more than a little worry on his voice. He motioned behind him. Twilight, and Applejack now arriving behind her, looked and saw twenty to thirty head of cattle grazing idly on the grass by the side of the road with various ranchers fussing about them.
“All that’s left of the ranch after the Nighttouched came through last night. Got ta’ herd ‘em south as soon as possible. The owner’s got a friend with a boat he uses as a ferry to move them down the river, but one of the bulls is lookin’ sick and one of the heifers is pregnant and just about on her last legs. It’s bad enough after losin’ everything else we may lose the mom and the calf, but that’s the prize bull. The owner doesn’t want to put him down if he can avoid it but if he gets the rest of the herd sick it won’t be worth it. It’s a long shot but we need a vet real bad. Know one?”
Twilight, put on the spot, held a moment. “Um…well…”
The man picked up on her hesitation, and quickly spoke again. “Ma’am, if you know a vet, we’ll be happy ta’ take him or her down the river on the boat too. ‘Bout all we can offer up right now.”
Twilight stared back a few seconds before her look grew thoughtful. “Could you excuse me a moment?”
She turned around. Applejack was about to say something, but Twilight immediately advanced on her, took her by the arm, and began to lead her back toward Fluttershy. She looked at her confused. “What?”
“You heard what he just said, right?”
The farmer frowned. “Fat lot o’ good it’ll do us. Don’t look at me ta’ be able ta’ take care o’ no sick cattle. Sure, we had a couple livestock back home, but it was always the older folks who-”
“Not you.” She pointed ahead. “Her.”
Applejack looked up. It took her a moment to realize that she was indicating Fluttershy. She nearly questioned why she would choose her but, before she could, her mind clicked and she came to the same realization. She ended up holding her tongue all the way back to the pink-haired woman.
As soon as they arrived she turned to both. “How did it go?”
Applejack didn’t split hairs. “Fluttershy, ya’ think ya’ can cure a sick bull and help a heifer push out her calf?”
She went wide-eyed. “Wh…what?”
“Fluttershy,” Twilight joined in, “that man over there is some sort of rancher. They’re trying to move their cattle down the river but some of them need help from a vet. Since you’ve taken care of all of these animals, we were wondering if you could do the same for him. If you do, he’ll take us all down the river along with him.”
“Oh…oh my…” she swallowed. She immediately began to nervously cringe again—much to Applejack’s chagrin. “I’ve…I’ve never done anything for animals that big before… I’m…I’m not sure…”
“But you handle the rest of these animals so well,” Twilight added. “And you’ve cared for all of them when they were injured. Besides, if they have a boat that’s big enough to let a whole herd of cattle on, they might be the only boat around that could take all of your animals as well.”
“That’s true…” Fluttershy quietly admitted. “It’s just…well…um…” She nervously wrung her hands together, playing with a strand of hair that had fallen over her face. “Did…did he happen to say how many people are going to be on the boat?”
“How many…fer cryin’ out loud!” Applejack groaned. “Yer gonna blow a prime opportunity like this ‘cause yer still scared of folks?”
“I just…don’t get along with other people that well…” she softly answered, looking again to the ground.
Twilight’s face looked like it felt a little of Applejack’s frustration, but she stayed level-headed. “Please, Fluttershy. This might be our best way out of Appleloosa. Besides, you saw how the military is starting to look for people with symbols on their hands. The longer we stay in this country the more thorough they’ll get. Can you please try?”
Fluttershy remained timid and quiet for a few moments, but she finally placed a hand to her chin.
“Well…those animals do sound like they need help. And if I’m really the only one who can, then I really can’t ignore it…”
She hesitated a little longer before finally looking up. Taking a deep breath, to assert her own bravery, she stood. “Alright. I’ll help.”
Twilight sighed in relief. “Thanks a lot.”
“Now that’s what I’m talkin’ about,” Applejack answered, before spinning around and waving her hat in the air to get the man’s attention. “Hey over there! Got yer vet right here!”
The arrangement took very little time to work out. There were seven ranchers in all including the one who had been calling out, and they took Fluttershy right to the affected animals. In spite of her tension and anxiety, to say nothing of the fact that she refused to work until everyone stood at a distance, she knew her stuff as Twilight had hoped. It took about a three hour delay, but not only was Fluttershy able to help deliver the calf but, seemingly miraculously, the sickness on the bull left him after she tended to him long enough. The ranchers were able to get the cattle moving soon after, and, true to their word, they invited them along.
“We’re much obliged for the help, ladies,” the first rancher said as they moved along. “The truth is a lot of them got bites and scratches from the Nighttouched last night we were worried might get infected, but we weren’t gonna try and deal with all that when we had stuff that could cost the herd. Once we get on board, we’d be mighty appreciative if your friend would tend to those too.”
As it turned out, Fluttershy ended up agreeing far more readily. Tending to the first two cattle had seemed to make her more amiable in general, although she remained shy and withdrawn and stayed close to Spike while keeping Twilight and Applejack between her and the ranchers.
The group explained the boat was going to dock at a simple local pier two miles down from the crossroads, and both the three women as well as the ranchers and what was left of their herd plus Fluttershy’s “herd” all headed that way. Halfway there, Applejack leaned into Twilight.
“Smart move back there. Didn’t think ta’ see if Fluttershy could fit the bill, and even if she could she seemed like she’d never be able ta’ pull it off.”
“I knew she’d be fine,” Twilight quietly spoke back, so that only the farmer could hear. “I got a good look at her symbol. It’s the sigil for the Healer.”
“What? Healer?”
“Remember how I said you’re a Warrior and I’m a Caster? You were good at fighting and strong before you used your Anima Viri. The same with me and magic. Fluttershy must have the innate ability to heal too. That’s why she’s able to keep her animals from turning into Nighttouched.”
Applejack looked to Fluttershy and her herd. An idea popped into her head. “Say…ya’ don’t suppose, if she could get her hands on an Anima Viri of her own, that she’d be able ta’ actually stop Nighttouched cold? Turn ‘em all the way back? Maybe even…even do somethin’ against Light Eaters?”
Twilight sighed. “The thought did occur to me, but even if Fluttershy was brave enough to do that, Anima Viris don’t just grow on trees and even when one arises it’s hard to get. If she really is a recluse, I’m not sure how many souls would resonate with hers to begin with.”
The farmer frowned. “Got a point there.”
“My main worry right now is the Tantabus and the airships. Let’s get away from them first and then we can focus on what comes after.”
A mile later, they reached a point where the ravine edge had worn down enough for them to descend next to the bank of the river. The group made their way there and soon came to a stand of two buildings. Both were weather beaten, old, and unused, but there was a small personal pier that had been built there. There were also about twenty additional people already gathered; most of them looking akin to the laborer ranchers. However, they also looked in much worse shape. Several of them had dressings and were limping or moving stiff. Some of those dressings were bloodstained. Nevertheless, they picked themselves up as soon as they saw the group coming in.
“Who are all of these people?” Twilight asked.
“Other families who got hit last night,” the big rancher grumbled back. “Much as I hate that we lost all but twenty-six cattle, at least we ain’t ruined. Unlike the rest of these poor bastards. Owner figured the least she could do was get the rest of them out. Once the Light Eaters move in, there’ll be no gettin’ that land back.”
Twilight said nothing, but Applejack herself frowned while Fluttershy cringed at the thought.
The ranchers didn’t take long moving the cattle onto the boat, and as soon as they were all loaded the people came on next, in spite of the many awkward stares Fluttershy got as she loaded her own animals. Luckily, the ship had enough room for all of them. It truly did seem to be an older livestock ferry, and while it bore a resemblance to a barge or overgrown pontoon with mostly just a large, wide space on one deck, it got the job done. Soon they were all on board, pushing off, and making much better time as they accelerated the boat to a steady 25 miles per hour.
The rest of the day was a welcome reprieve. Nothing but slowly heading down the river, passing by the occasional port town or dock on either side. Naturally, many other boats were preparing to make way as well, but as everyone was going roughly the same speed things never got crowded. The ravine gradually leveled out completely, but as the Shell River ran right alongside the Hyperborean Mountains they never escaped their looming shadow.
Twilight and Applejack spent most of the day on deck, although the latter of the two seemed nauseated any time she looked over the side. A few ranchers hung out there as well but, for the most part, they kept to the single large cabin adjacent to the helm, which only figured as many of them looked rather injured and didn’t want to be up or about. Fluttershy, on her part, spent all the time with her animals or the cattle.
After a few hours, Twilight got up and began to make her way to walk around the deck. As the helm and cabin were a bit recessed into the ship, it was actually possible to walk around behind the cabin and see the river in back as well as in front, but other than the landscape there was little to witness. While the road they had been told to go along ran alongside the river, the large crowds and caravans on it had gradually diminished into nothing. They had to be in the area below where Appleloosa had ordered the evacuation, or at least the minimum safe distance the people believed.
After searching the skies for about twenty minutes behind the boat, Twilight finally came back around and moved to the front again. At this point, the sun was starting on its way down, and the cabin was casting a lengthening shadow over the deck. No sooner had she reached the front when she saw Applejack coming up to meet her. She had something in her hand and was waving it.
“Bit o’ bread and a tiny slab o’ smoked beef. All they brought ta’ eat, but they said we could have some for all the help.”
“Thanks, but Fluttershy did all the work. She should get it first.”
“Don’t worry none ‘bout her. I ran some out already. She only took the bread. Apparently she’s one of them er, uh…vegetariables.”
“I think that’s ‘vegetarian’.” Reaching Applejack, she reached out and accepted a piece of both from the farmer. She immediately began to eat it and cleaned up in no time. (It wasn’t until she was actually chewing on the food that she realized just how hungry she was.)
“See any airships?”
Twilight shook her head. “No, but they can turn up pretty fast. Especially Trottingham ones. They burn less coal and don’t leave as big smoke trails. And I’m still nervous about the time. It’s only an hour or two until dark.”
Applejack gave her a look at that. “Uh, ya’ know we’re well south of Equestria now, right?”
“Huh?”
“We’ve got to have gone at least a hundred miles since we got on this boat.”
It was a moment before it clicked. “Oh…oh yeah. Heh…forgot about that…”
Applejack was quiet a moment, and leveled one eye at her. “Spend most of yer time near the border?”
“I guess you could say that… That’s where the road usually ends up taking me, but…well…uh…I just happen to like to stay close to Equestria and…”
“And I don’t suppose hangin’ ‘round the border so much’s got anything to do with the fact that you’ve realized this Promethian Sigil thing seems to be great at killin’ Nighttouched?”
Twilight was quiet for a moment, before she exhaled. She crossed a hand over one arm and looked out to the passing river. “I guess I never really gave up all hope of using my power to put a stop to this…”
Applejack frowned and lowered her own head. “Guess that’s nice ta’ hear…although ever since ya’ chewed me out ‘bout it I realized the sense in what you were sayin’. Not like two of us can take out somethin’ that tore up most of the armies in Greater Everfree if we can’t even deal with one airship takin’ pot shots at us. ‘Specially if most of the other folks who got these marks are like…”
She trailed off, quickly pursing her lips. Twilight looked up and saw why. At that moment, Fluttershy, looking rather dirty and her slip no doubt stained with something that probably rendered her clothes uncleanable walked up to both of them with Spike and Angel in tow. Spike went right up to Twilight while the rabbit stayed at her side. “Alright everyone, I’ve taken care of all the animals. They should be good until we get them to a nice new ranch to graze on.” She smiled at Twilight. “I need to thank you. I would never have been brave enough to speak up that I could help, but I’m really glad I did.”
“Oh, uh…heh…don’t mention it,” Twilight answered as she bent down and pet her dog.
Fluttershy smiled a moment more, as Applejack inched away from the bit of the stink her clothing had. Soon afterward, her face turned to concern. “So, I just realized… I talked to Clyde again, and he says that we aren’t going to stop until we hit the junction to Grifftham City. I don’t think we’re going to reach that until after dark. And…we’ll be out here…” She gulped and looked around. “In a boat…without any protection…or shelter…” She began to cringe again as her eyes looked skyward. “Oh dear…”
“Eh, relax,” Applejack waved off. “Like I was telling Twilight over here, we’re leaving the border of Equestria way behind us.”
“Uh, technically, that’s not true.”
Both Fluttershy and Applejack turned to Twilight as she pointed to the Hyperboreans. “The middle range of those mountains are actually all Equestria. The territory has mostly just been claimed by Griffonstone and Mount Aris. Before it was, Equestria almost split them in half except at the bay to the south.”
Now Applejack stiffened. “Ya’ mean ta’ tell me that Equestria is right over there? And we’re sailing down alongside it?”
“I…I thought all of Equestria was taken over by the Light Eaters…” Fluttershy whimpered.
“But like Applejack says, that’s no reason to worry,” she reassured. “This part is nothing but rough peaks and impassible mountains. Even the Nighttouched didn’t venture into those.” A pause. “At least, I don’t think they did. And if they did, nothing’s come out in eight years.”
She looked to the two girls, quickly seeing that neither of them looked terribly comforted by that. Now Applejack was glancing at the mountains uneasily.
“I mean, boats go down this river all the time and not one of them ever got an attack, so…”
Still nothing. Twilight winced uncomfortably.
“Hey Fluttershy!”
The three girls snapped out of it and looked, just in time to see Clyde run up from the rest of the livestock. He went straight to the pink-haired woman, who, once again, instinctively shrank back a little.
“The cattle are lookin’ great. We’re mighty obliged to you.”
It took a moment, but she eased and straightened again with a smile. “Oh, you’re welcome. It really wasn’t any bother at all. They’re so pleasant and well behaved. And I was so happy to see the look of joy on that mother’s face at her new calf.”
Clyde looked a little perplexed at that, considering how expressionless cattle generally were, but he let it pass. “Anyway, you’ve already done so much for us, but I was wonderin’ if you might do just one more favor.”
“Oh certainly. What is it?”
He pulled off his hat and held it closer to him. “You seem to really know what you’re doing with animals, so…we were kinda wondering if you might know a thing or two about people as well. You see, one of the little boys in our group got his leg broke. The wagon wheel came loose, he got toppled out, and the whole side fell right on it. He’s been in pain ever since. Mind comin’ in and havin’ a look at him?”
Fluttershy’s smile immediately went away. Applejack and Twilight had both seen her nervous before now, but never this much. Some of the color drained from her face as she began to cringe again. “Oh…oh my…” She spoke even more quietly than before; almost in an inaudible whisper.
Clyde looked confused. “Somethin’ wrong, ma’am?”
“Oh, I just…I…I’m sorry. Tending to animals is one thing, but…but I don’t try and take care of people. Especially children. It’s just…just…I…I don’t do well with children.”
“You sure? He’s a big boy. He won’t cry or nothin’ if it hurts a bit.”
“I-I-I’m sorry…but I’ll have to say no…”
Clyde frowned, but he saw she wouldn’t change on this. Finally he gave in. “Alright…I’ll let his folks know you just know how to treat cattle, not kids. We only got about two or three more hours on the river anyway…” Turning away, he began to head back to the one cabin.
As soon as he was inside, both Twilight and Applejack gave Fluttershy an uncertain look. “You know, people aren’t all that different from animals. Especially those cows,” Twilight suggested. “If you could make them feel better, I’m sure you could do the same for that child.”
Fluttershy stood a bit more, but only to shake her head. “No, I don’t think so. I’m really no good with children at all.”
“What’s the matter? Somethin’ happen?” Applejack asked.
She didn’t answer, only bowed her head to let more hair fall over her face before she bent down, took up Angel, and then turned away to head back to her animals.
Once she was gone, Applejack crossed her arms. “Like I was beginnin’ ta’ say, I ain’t sure how much good she’d be to most folks the way she is.”
“Well, nothing for it now, but once we’re away from these people and the rest of Appleloosa I’d like to talk to her a bit more about her power. And yours for that matter,” Twilight answered. She turned and began to head over to the cabin herself, not to go inside but to find a bit of wall to lean against. “Let’s just hope we get there alright first, and that by using the river and going this far south we can get away from anyone who might be looking for Promethian Sigils.”
“Fine by me. After no real breakfast for a few days, I could really go for some eggs. Maybe I’ll head over to Fluttershy and see if I can’t talk her…huh?”
Twilight was just about to lean against the wall when she looked up. “What’s the matter?”
“It seem…a bit darker out to you?”
She stood up once again on hearing that, and looked around. Sure enough, the light around them was much dimmer than a moment ago. It had been late afternoon, but now it seemed more akin to the evening.
Applejack turned her head. “We go past a mountain? Sun shouldn’t set for a while…yet…”
She trailed off as she looked to the sun. It hadn’t moved. It was still in the sky in its late afternoon position. Nevertheless, it had dimmed. It was as dark as it would be if it was just about to set under the horizon.
And it was getting dimmer.
The two women stiffened as the realization hit both of them. It didn’t take long for the same realization to travel over the rest of the ship. Although they couldn’t see inside the cabin or helm, the sound of the engines on the boat revving from the boiler being stoked soon started to roll out. As more smoke poured from the chimney, the sun grew dimmer yet. Although it was still in the sky, it grew so faint that both women could look at it without being blinded. The stars began to come out as parts of the sky tinged from orange to purple, and then darker yet.
“This far south?” Twilight exhaled aloud in a panicked whisper. Her eyes went to the mountains and began to scan them nervously.
“Fluttershy!” Applejack called out, as loud as she dared. “Fluttershy! Get up here! Get to the cabin!”
The sun began to fade from sight all together as the sky transitioned fully into darkness. The engine chugged louder as the boat was pushed up to thirty miles per hour in spite of the danger of driving in the dark. Applejack reached for her side and pulled out her hammer. She nearly spoke the chant right there, but stifled herself on realizing she emitted a light whenever she did. Instead, she began to look around herself fearfully too.
“See anything?” she called to Twilight.
She looked about a moment longer at the newly formed night, then suddenly pointed. “Look!”
Applejack turned. For a moment, she only saw the fading outline of the top of the Hyperborean Mountain Range. Yet a cluster of stars suddenly seemed to arise from it, and in moments she realized she wasn’t looking at the sky but what appeared to be a moving mountain peak itself rising over the top.
In spite of her bravery in the face of the otherworldly monsters, Applejack’s jaw dropped. It was clear she hardly believed Fluttershy’s description until now. She was only looking at the backside of the thing, and only the mountains were large enough to conceal it. It had to be several stories tall easily. She would have suspected she was imagining things or not seeing it properly when its body suddenly slammed down. In spite of the rushing river sounds, she heard a dull whump far in the distance, right before specks of what looked like starry dew flew from it. She realized it had just taken a step, and it shed out small bits of itself when it did. Soon after, it raised again only to drop once more. Again, more splashes of starry dew, some of them almost erupting from it.
Applejack nearly stammered. “Good…good lord…”
Twilight said nothing at first, transfixed on staring at the massive Light Eater as it took another step. While she did, a light pitter patter rang out on the boat as Fluttershy finally walked up to them.
“E-E-Everyone…I don’t mean to alarm you, but…it started getting really d-d-dark and spooky all of the sudden and-” She froze on seeing the Tantabus. She couldn’t even muster the courage for an “oh my”. She only whimpered.
“S…stay calm…” Twilight stammered.
The farmer wheeled to her. “Stay calm? Stay calm? If that thing comes over here, it’s curtains! This river ain’t nothin’ but a mud puddle ta’ somethin’ that big!”
“But it’s not coming over here!” Twilight harshly whispered back. “From that far, it can’t even hear us! And it’s taking big steps but we’re faster than it! We’ll leave it behind!”
Sure enough, with the boat still accelerating to 35 miles per hour, the rising and falling motion of the giant Light Eater was slowly fading into the distance. Nevertheless, each time it stepped down it continued to give off more bits of itself. And on its next step, the pieces launched so far it was like a firework had gone off. All three women saw bits fly for a mile in all directions easily. On the following step, in spite of gaining ground, the three saw one starry bit in particular shoot off of its body, arc through the heavens, and begin to descend right for their position on the river.
“Uh-oh…”
“Hang on!”
Applejack’s warning, however, proved to be unnecessary. They watched the starry bit as it got closer, seeing it was easily the size of a rainbarrel, but it didn’t land on the boat itself. It fell down in the area behind the main cabin and a loud splash sounded.
Twilight and Spike immediately took off for the other side of the boat to see the impact. Applejack followed suit and Fluttershy, quickly realizing she was being abandoned, trembled once before forcing herself to follow.
The three rounded the cabin quickly and went to the edge. The river had already smoothed out whatever disturbance had been made by the splash, but even without it the three spotted the after effect. A large black spot, like a mass of tar, was on the water now and slowly spreading outward. It slowed as it did, but it did leave a patch of darkness even deeper than the night they found themselves plunged into in its wake.
Twilight sighed in relief. “That was close. Only about fifty feet short…”
“What d’ya reckon would’ve happened if it hit us?”
Before Twilight could answer, the fur on the back of Spike’s neck rose. He barred his teeth and started to growl at the water.
“Um…everyone?” Fluttershy nervously spoke up.
The two girls looked back and saw what was changing. In the wake of the dark spot they were leaving down the river, small yellow orbs were appearing beneath the water. Soon they began to scatter away from the initial spot and run through the rest of the river, moving at speeds fast even for strong river trout.
Moments later, two more splashes went out further up the river as two more of the starry droplets struck it.
Applejack’s eyes widened. “Them bits of that thing… They’re turnin’-”
“Nobody panic!” Twilight quickly whispered loudly. “They can’t hear us over the river underwater, and there’s no light sources for them to target on the deck of this boat! We just keep going downstream a bit farther and we’ll make it!”
“Uh…everyone?”
Applejack, nervously looking at the river, groaned. “Yeah, yeah, we see it, Fluttershy…”
“Um…that’s…that’s not… Um…er…”
Applejack frowned. “I said we see it! What’s wrong with ya’?”
Twilight turned to Fluttershy as she began to cringe and fold her arms, but she also noticed she was trembling far more fiercely than before.
“I…I just wanted to say…um…that…” Her voice lowered. “That’s…not what I was scared of.”
Applejack, and even Spike, looked up to her. She covered her eyes with one hand and pointed to the mountains.
The two looked, and saw the Tantabus was falling farther and farther behind. However, coming out from the cracks between the mountains, emerging from caves, or perhaps protruding from old train or mine tunnels, were hundreds of Nighttouched. They poured out like living streams of blackness; their yellow eyes burning fiercely in the newly-created night.
Twilight’s own jaw was agape now. She looked at it for several seconds, before finally taking a deep breath. “Ok…I still say it’s best not to panic. We’re outrunning them and so long as we can keep a good distance on them and keep accelerating, none of them can possibly catch up.”
Scarcely had Twilight finished saying this when a small eruption of the smaller Nighttouched burst out of one of the holes; the result of something behind it suddenly breaking loose. All three women gaped again on seeing a much larger shape come barreling out of the cave, only to unfurl great, high-speed wings and give a mighty flap to quickly shoot itself out the rest of the way and into the night sky.
None of the three had ever seen a bird like this before, but based on the fact it stood as large as two of them put together and could still fly meant it had to have been warped from its original form by the Nighttouched. Its wings and tail were built for high speed, like a falcon, but its beak was broader and a tuft of hair on top of its head indicated almost a peacock. Its yellow eyes seemed particularly burning and vivid. While the boat did indeed begin to leave the rest of the emerging Nighttouched behind, this one had scarcely emerged before its head turned fully to the boat, and soon it changed its path around to make for it.
“Twilight…um…no disrespect, but…it sure looks like it’s comin’ this way…”
“Just…s-s-stay calm…” Her voice was growing progressively more anxious. “It can’t key on us without light…”
“Um, what…what about the fire rising from the coal boiler? Couldn’t it, um…maybe…possibly…see it from the sky?”
Twilight’s pallor turned a shade wan, just as the Nighttouched bird collapsed its wings and went into a diagonal dive right for their boat. As it neared, its thick beak opened wide, and the three were surprised to see a third light coming from inside of it.
Moments later, it strafed over the boat, but as it did a jet of flame erupted from its throat and blazed a line of fire straight across the rear deck. Twilight, Applejack, and Fluttershy all reared back in alarm, but kept from bolting as they saw the fire was aimed on the opposite side of the boat. Nevertheless, it quickly ignited into a burning blaze across the wooden structure, and in moments the darkness was broken by a fiery glow.
And once that happened, the three saw the yellow eyes scattered throughout the river rapidly turn toward the boat before beginning to approach it in unison.
“Alright…” Applejack moaned. “Now can we stop bein’ calm?”
Twilight winced once more before she pulled herself together. She glanced to Fluttershy for a fraction of a second before she sighed apologetically.
“Sorry, but there’s no way around it now.”
She glanced around at the deck before she found a loose stick one of the ranchers had been using to shoo the cattle on the boat. She quickly snatched it up and held her other hand skyward. “Member of my house, I command you to come to me! Master of Sorcery—Starswirl the Bearded!”
Fluttershy yelped as Twilight’s aura began to surround her, but jumped again soon after as Applejack yanked her own hammer out. “’Bout time! Member of my house, I command you to come to me! Bastion of the Fields—Bright Macintosh!”
Both of their respective auras flared about them a moment before both had transformed into their respective “battle attires”—Twilight clad in her wide-brimmed hat and cloak and Applejack in her armor and warhammer. Both couldn’t afford to waste much time. The first of the new Nighttouched reached the back of the boat a moment later.
With a tremendous splash, a fish three feet long, meaty, and with glowing yellow eyes and a monstrous jaw filled with jagged teeth burst from the water. It curled around in midair and seized the edge of the boat. Wood ripping and wrenching noises came from its jaws as it began to savagely tear into it. Two other fish soon leapt out and began to do the same, before a fourth leapt out on the deck itself, snapping viciously for Spike. The dog quickly recoiled to let it fall to the deck, snarled, and then leapt at it. It tried to rear up and bite him only for Spike to bound over it, spin around, and seize it by the neck before digging in.
Applejack, brandishing her hammer, dashed forward and swung out. The first swing snapped one of the attached fish almost in two. The second got a lighter blow but was still sent flying back into the water. Before she could get the third, however, three new fish lashed out. Two of them reattached while the third sailed straight for Applejack’s face with mouth opened wide. Shocked, she quickly dashed to one side and let its shoot by, its teeth scraping against her shoulder armor, before it flopped to the deck. Vigorously, it twisted itself around to try and angle itself at her for another snap, but she buried her hammer into its head as soon as it did.
Twilight quickly made a more direct move. Snapping her newly-made wand out, she began to chant and manipulate a symbol in the air before pointing to the sky. The night turned darker yet as clouds rapidly formed and coalesced right over the back of the boat. Thunder rumbled as lights flashed from within it, and as soon as it did she snapped her wand downward. A large thunderbolt snaked out and struck the water with a sizzling crackle.
Moments later, at least a dozen of the yellow-eyed fish went flaccid and began to bob to the surface. Unfortunately, it didn’t have the completely desired effect. Not only did many of them survive the blast, but upstream the fish that had been turned from the other two starry blobs were now rushing down river. Many of them were leaping out of the water and snapping viciously and hungrily as they came.
She took aim at them for another blast, only to hear a shout from Applejack. “Look out!”
Twilight looked skyward, before crying out and ducking to avoid another jet stream of fire from the airborne Nighttouched. While the flames missed her, it kept strafing the boat and firing as it did. As a result it ignited a blaze along the side of the boat stretching almost all the way to the animals. The livestock rose and began to panic, but they didn’t have time to worry about them. On looking back at the river, they saw a large portion of the Nighttouched fish divert course and start swimming to the edge of the ship—drawn to the newer, stronger fires.
“Damnit! One of us has gotta take out the one in the air!”
Twilight turned to her nervously. “Can you handle all of these fish by yourself?”
Applejack hefted her hammer as she smacked the last of the currently-attached fish off the back of the boat, although it took a bit of boat in its jaws with it. “Just don’t take too long!”
Twilight nodded back and turned to the third person with them. However, Fluttershy was almost paralyzed right now. Her eyes were open in horror at the river, especially how many fish had been killed already, and she was practically hyperventilating.
“Fluttershy!”
“Those…those fish…those poor-”
“Fluttershy!”
The yelling was enough to jar her away and look to Twilight.
“Get to the cabin! Tell anyone who can to get out here and try and snuff these fires and everyone else take cover! Can you do that?”
The pink-haired woman hesitated. She glanced to the dead fish again and back to the cabin. “Y…yes…”
“Alright, then go!” Twilight swept around and began to make for the front of the boat. “Spike, help Applejack!”
The dog, which had been rising to follow after her, quickly snapped back, planted its feet, and growled at the incoming hoard. Fluttershy continued to glance at the Nighttouched and the fires, but finally forced herself to start walking to the cabin. Applejack readied her hammer and seconds later the next assault began.
The fish didn’t bother chomping against the ship this time. Like deadly, living missiles, they shot out of the water one after another with their jaws snapping for both the farmer and the dog. Gritting her teeth, Applejack shifted her grip down on her weapon and advanced to meet them, smacking them away and back into the water as fast as they flew at her. One was knocked in horizontally while another had its jaw broken off as it was hurled into the air. One managed to land on the deck, but Spike quickly dove on it and ripped its gills out. As soon as he killed it, he looked up and saw another land on deck and try and drag itself up to Applejack’s exposed leg. Quickly, he barked an alarm. She snapped down, spotted it, and leapt back to avoid a snap before the dog lashed out and tore into it.
Twilight dashed out onto the front deck as the sound of terrified moos as well as other animal noises burst from Fluttershy’s group. She looked to the sky, confirming the bird was still flying away, before she angled her wand down and performed another gesture at the nearest fires. A sharp, biting wind came forth around her before a hail of tiny ice crystals were carried along with it and deposited on the blaze. Unfortunately, she only had a chance to snuff part of it before she saw the Nighttouched arc back around and begin another approach. Immediately, she shifted her wand to the air, drew out a more advanced symbol, and then pointed at it. The tiny ice crystals still in the air halted right where they were and gathered together; growing into much larger, sharper, and deadlier shards. They resumed their movement and sailed right for the bird just as it exhaled another blast. It managed to tag part of the boat with its flames, but it quickly aborted and changed its flight path as the ice crystals ripped past it.
As Applejack and Spike continued to fight off the swarm, the door to the cabin snapped open again as four of the more able-bodied and braver ranchers came out. As best as they could, they started to whip at the fires with their tougher leather clothes or stomp on them with their boots, as going to the side for water was impossible at this point. Twilight, however, kept her eyes on the bird. It swung around in another attempt to make a dive to compensate for its aborted one, and she quickly generated another ice hailstorm to try and pierce it. Unfortunately, not only did it also fly over this one, it adjusted and got off another jet of fire this time. Twilight yelped as she realized it was aimed for her, and quickly she changed the spell to its lesser variant to snuff out the flames before they could singe her. Unfortunately, the bird kept on flying past, and her target was lost again.
Applejack began to work up a sweat as she kept battering away the fish. Through the vigor and swinging, she began to realize after a short while that some of the fish she was smashing had bloody bruises and welts alongside their bodies. That was all the indication she needed to see that, strong as she was swinging the hammer, their solid muscles were absorbing most of the blows in most cases. Some of the fish she knocked away were recovering and coming right back for her.
Suddenly, two fish leapt out at once for her. Applejack quickly smacked away one, but there was no way to stop the other before it latched onto her arm and clamped it jaw down like a steel trap. In spite of the fact her body was more durable and the vambrace absorbed some of it, it still hurt enough to make her yell. Clenching her teeth angrily, she quickly brought the pommel down on its head. Not only did it hang on in spite of the bludgeoning, another fish leapt out for her face again. She quickly dodged to one side, but this time it dove in so hard that it sailed past her and broke partially through the wooden wall of the cabin. Another landed on the deck to her side and quickly began to snap for her legs.
Cursing, Applejack swung her pommel down two more times, this time splitting off half of the jaw of the thing attached to her. As it fell to the deck, she brought the hammer down to crush it. She nearly turned to the one going for her legs when she heard Spike barking again. She looked and saw him running to the side of the ship, where a dozen monstrous fish were attached. To her shock, they were already ripping away one of the planks off the side of the boat and going for more. Sighing in exasperation, she quickly dashed over there to join him in defending it even as more fish flew on deck.
As Twilight’s third attempt to pierce the Nighttouched bird failed, this time the monster was able to fire enough to ignite a third line of flame on the deck. She nearly groaned as it passed again, and paused to try and think of a new strategy. It took her a few moments of looking around before she zeroed in on the water about the boat. She made a note of the Nighttouched’s current flight path before aiming her wand at the river. With a few gestures, the surface of it broke off and began to rise into a fine mist; nearly invisible in the darkness. She kept gesturing with her wand, rising it up until it hovered right in the bird’s way. Once that was done, she quickly began to form her ice spell again.
The Nighttouched once more went into a dive, and once again Twilight sent her ice crystals flying at it. This time, however, one of them lingered behind hovering right over her left shoulder. As on the previous occasion, the Nighttouched evaded the strikes and opened it jaw wide. Fire burned in its gullet and blazed forth.
Yet before it could project it, it suddenly aborted and clamped its jaw shut—for on opening its mouth to fire again it immediately saw a second Nighttouched identical to it, also readying flame, flying right at it. The instant it was distracted, Twilight snapped her wand down. The final ice crystal left her shoulder and sailed at the monster, and moments later embedded itself right in the Nighttouched’s breast.
As the creature gave a yell and curled up on itself in midair, Twilight grinned and pumped her fist in excitement. Her water reflection spell had worked perfectly in making a mirror image of the Nighttouched, distracting it long enough to land the fatal strike. Now it dropped from the air like a stone, looking to plunge right into the river.
Only it never made impact. Suddenly the entire bird burst into flame as if it was soaked in oil. Twilight let out an alarmed gasp as fire rapidly spread all over it. Moments before its body could touch the water, it suddenly split apart and broke away into molten fragments…allowing an identical bird, untouched, to burst from the remains and soar back into the sky. Quickly snapping down and around, it dove right at the raft without missing a beat and exhaled another burst of fire along the opposite side of the boat.
Twilight stood there stunned, but not just from what she saw. For a moment a faint light of recognition came over her.
“Twilight!”
Applejack’s shout was enough to get her attention away from the bird, and she turned and saw both the farmer and Spike fighting a losing battle against the Nighttouched on the side of the ship. They had nearly torn away enough of the edge to bring it down to the water level, and for all the hammer swinging and tearing the two were doing it wasn’t enough. More fish were coming up to replace and surpass the previous ones, not to mention they were now jumping at the two of them again and forcing them to defend themselves. Ten new fish were attaching themselves to the back of the boat and digging into it fiercely as well, now beginning to rip off that portion too.
Suddenly the door to the cabin opened once again. A panicked-looking Fluttershy stumbled out and looked at Twilight fearfully.
“Th-they’re…th-they’re coming through the bottom of the boat!”
As if perfectly on cue, a section of the deck snapped upward as if struck from beneath right next to her. She yelped and recoiled onto the deck. On spotting it, Applejack abandoned the side and ran up to it. Just as the fish below pushed its head up enough to snap, she swung the hammer down and knocked it back beneath the boat.
Cries began to go out from around the ship, and not just animal ones. Twilight looked around and saw the ranchers who had come topside were now recoiling, for enough fish had jumped on deck to start targeting them too. And there were still more in the water attacking. Three sides of the boat were now aflame, and the Nighttouched bird was rising for another dive as more fish rose to try and cling to the latest side.
“Twilight!” Applejack shouted as she bludgeoned another. “We’re in trouble!”
She nervously looked around before finally turning toward the helm. Even in the darkness she managed to spot the rancher driving the boat. “We’ve got to dock!”
“We don’t have time for that!” she yelled back. “I’ll have to run her aground but I got to wait at least for a good shore!”
Twilight winced again. She saw the Nighttouched bird was beginning to come around, but they were being swarmed by fish at this point and she couldn’t help defend against both. Leaving either one would only get the ship sunk faster, which became clear already wouldn’t take much longer as two more holes were knocked through the bottom near where Applejack had hammered out the first.
Yet through this all, Fluttershy put her hands on her head and cringed in terror. She ran toward the back of the ship to hide, but it offered no relief. No sooner had she gotten there when she gasped and saw a dozen fish attached to it and ten flopping on deck, who quickly fixated their beady eyes on her and began to snap toward her. The Nighttouched bird fully turned and began to go into a dive as more threw themselves on the boat or grasped the sides.
She looked at them for a moment, gripped with terror. As she kept staring, however, she saw that many of them were bloodied from Applejack’s blows. Some had broken bones but were still forcing themselves onward. Their faces were horribly twisted and swollen by whatever force had enlarged their jaws. Although their glowing yellow eyes showed no emotion, from this close she could look at them and see if they had their minds they would be in agony from how warped their bodies had become. Even the ones that were chewing away pieces of the boat were piercing themselves with splinters to do so. Yet whatever force had them mindlessly pushed them to keep biting…
When that happened, Fluttershy’s fear lessened. Her hands lowered as she looked at the closing creatures.
“Stop…”
The fish kept snapping viciously for her. One threw itself out of the water onto the deck right in front of her. Snapping like steel blades, it wriggled closer.
“Stop…”
Behind her, the Nighttouched bird opened its jaws. Twilight braced herself to defend. Applejack cried out as a fish latched onto her leg, but she quickly smacked it off with her hammer. She quickly went for her rope at her waist.
Seeing that they wouldn’t stop, no matter how much pain they were in or misery, no matter how broken their bodies became, Fluttershy’s last bit of fear momentarily faded as she fixed as many of the fish with her gaze as possible. Her fists tightened.
“I said…”
Yelling loud enough for everyone on the boat to hear, her voice resounded.
“Stop!”
Every one of the boat defenders suddenly felt as if they had momentarily been rooted to the spot by the sheer power of Fluttershy’s yell. Twilight aborted her casting while Applejack froze just as she brought her hammer to her rope, and all of the ranchers likewise paused where they were.
That, however, was just the beginning.
For a brief moment, all of the jaws of the fish went flaccid as the light in their eyes dimmed just a little. Those attempting to bite into the boat or tear it apart slipped loose and fell into the water, and those on deck became limp and simply tried to breathe through their gills. The Nighttouched bird suddenly went rigid. Its jaw closed again as it glided for a moment without trying to force itself along. It ended up sailing right over the boat before it spasmed once and began to flap again.
The moment passed soon after. The fish on the deck began to flop around again angrily, but not before Applejack and Spike realized that they had an opening. The dog quickly tore into another one while the farmer quickly finished tying her rope around the end of her hammer and converted it once more into an impromptu “hammer and chain”. Snapping it out, she began to rapidly smack and slap as many of the fish as she could out of the way and fight her way to Fluttershy. The ranchers quickly went back to work snuffing the fires where they could and actually shoving a few of the fish that were slow to recover back off the boat.
Twilight alone stood there stunned for a moment, realizing who had just shouted and what the end result had been. She did finally snap out of it and joined in with the others after a few seconds. Taking out her wand she quickly aimed it at the fires closest to the animals, which looked about ready to break into a stampede on deck or charge into the water, and quickly began to douse them.
She was still working on it when Applejack finally came back around the cabin, holding Fluttershy by one arm (who was looking fearful all over again) and nearly gesturing for her to go inside again. Before she could, however, the Nighttouched bird, fully recovered and flying again now, had come about from the rear and was opening its mouth again.
Gritting her teeth at it, Applejack quickly snapped her hammer out twirled it around like the end of a lasso several times, then flung the end at the approaching creature. It tried to lift itself up, but the farmer’s aim was true. It smashed it right into the head with a sickening crack, and as its beak snapped skyward the rest of its body sank and crashed with a heavy thud right on top of the cabin.
“Yee-haw!” she shouted as Fluttershy cupped her hands to her mouth in horror. “Nailed that sonnuvabitch!”
Her joy quickly evaporated as a pillar of fire suddenly ignited on top of the cabin. The monster, which had sprawled out limply on impact, burned away into ashes and revealed a new Nighttouched bird monster beneath. It quickly took to the sky again, but it left its flaming remains behind. Now the cabin itself was on fire.
Applejack revelry turned to stunned astonishment before she let out an angry curse. “What in blazes is up with the Nighttouched ‘round these parts?! None of these damn critters do this back home!”
“Applejack! Fluttershy!”
Both women looked and saw Twilight beckoning them.
“Over here! Quick!”
Applejack quickly began to lead Fluttershy over. Hearing her call out like that, Spike likewise turned and ran up. Some of the fish were leaping back onto the boat at this point, which clearly made Applejack nervous, but she let it slide for the moment as she ran up to the magic-user. Twilight herself looked back to the cabin again.
“Can we get this boat off the river?”
Just barely through the glass, she saw the person at the helm point. “Right there!”
Twilight looked back around as the girls approached. About a mile down the river she saw a large, wide, sandy shore. Not only that, but the night seemed just a tiny bit brighter in that direction, indicating that they were near the limit (at least for the moment) of what the Tantabus had brought. Unfortunately, the fires by now were spreading too fast even for Twilight to put out if she could focus all of her attention on them, and even if she could the ship was slowing…no doubt from taking on water.
Taking all this into account, she looked to Applejack and Fluttershy. “Alright, both of you. The boat’s going to run aground and we’re all going to get off, but it’s not going to make it if it takes much more damage and we’ll be sitting ducks for the flying one. We have to kill it.”
“Yeah, how the heck we gonna do that?” Applejack retorted. “We both hit it and it just burned up and came back to life!”
Twilight visibly stiffened on hearing that, looking uneasy for just a moment before pushing it aside. “We can stop it if we can kill it before it has a chance to use its fire to be reborn.”
Applejack gave Twilight a puzzled look, while Fluttershy herself looked at her strangely. “What’dya mean ‘’fore it has a chance to use its fire to be reborn’? Ya’ mean ya’ actually know what that thing is?”
Again, she grimaced, but swallowed it back and spoke more sharply. “I think I might, but that’s not important right now. What is important is stopping it. It takes it a moment after you kill it for it to fully ‘die’ and then ignite. If it drops into the river before it has a chance, it won’t be able to catch on fire. That will kill it for good.”
Applejack was still fixated a bit on what Twilight said, but she likewise pushed it away and rubbed her chin. “Might work, but there’s only one problem. Only takes that critter a second or two to light up again, and it’s always in the air ‘cept when it’s flyin’ over the boat. It’ll always burn up ‘fore it can land in the water.”
“Not if we hold it in one spot close to the river.”
“Oh yeah? How we gonna do that?”
“We aren’t.” Twilight turned to Fluttershy and pointed. “She is.”
The pink-haired woman paled again. “Wh-wh-what…me?”
“We saw what you did a moment ago. You managed to stop all the Nighttouched for a second by just shouting.”
“But…but…I don’t know how I did that! I’ve never done that before!”
“What about your staring? You said that you heal your animals when you look into their eyes and concentrate on them, right?”
Fluttershy winced. She looked uncertainly to the side. “Well, yes, but…but it’s too late for…”
“I know, I know. But have you ever tried looking into the eyes of a Nighttouched that’s turned before? Did you at least make it stay still?”
Fluttershy kept cringing, but rubbed her hands together uneasily. “Well…um…yes, but…but those were all things like little squirrels and songbirds…and this is a big…scary…fire-breathing bird…”
A rush of flame lapped over the heads of the women. Fluttershy yelped and cringed as Twilight dove over her, just as fire lashed out and singed the top of the deck. Before it could enflame it, however, Applejack cursed and swung her hammer and rope at the Nighttouched again. It was enough to abort its strike and send it to the heavens again, but as it flew away she gnashed her teeth. “Damnit, this boat’s ‘bout to burn up with or without that bird hittin’ it again, so we gotta do something soon!”
Twilight, sweating a bit herself now, leaned back up and looked at Fluttershy as she kept cringing against the deck. “Fluttershy, right now you’re the only one who might make it stand close to the water.”
She kept trembling. “But…if I want it to look me in the eye…I have to stand out in the open and…and…let it look at me first…when it could shoot more fire…”
“Please.” Her voice began to grow more desperate. “If you don’t help now, I don’t know how many of us are going to make it out of this…whether it be us or your animals.”
The pink-haired woman was caught by that last part. She winced a bit longer, still looking uncomfortable, but when she glanced to the panicking animals and the spreading flames she finally swallowed. “Al…alright… I’ll do it.”
Twilight nodded back. “Alright. I’m going to try and help get the ship to shore. Applejack, you have to hit it when it gets close enough. Remember, it has to be over water.”
“Well hurry up and get to it!” she shouted as she swung her hammer out to knock another fish that had just latched on. “It ain’t gonna be but a few more seconds ‘til this boat is swarmin’ with ‘em all over again!”
As she and Spike went off to fight again, Twilight rose from near Fluttershy and extended her wand to the ocean. She concentrated a moment, remembering an older spell, and then began to wave the stick around at the river. In response, the current picked up around the edges of the boat, but rather than propel it the water it radiated away from the sides. As she kept concentrating, it grew in size and power until small waves were cascading off of it. While some of the water lapped into the boat and doused a bit of the fires, she didn’t dare get any more in it while there were holes in the ship. Instead, she forced a water wedge at the prow of the ship, not only forcing as many of the Nighttouched fish back as possible but creating a potent force in front of it. The rancher at the helm didn’t question the move. She turned the wheel about as the shore came closer and aimed it straight for it.
Fluttershy was left alone in the center of the deck. Nervously, she slowly stood up and saw the Nighttouched bird spin about. Soon it was aiming at her, standing on the only intact portion of the ship, and began to fly in.
While it was still far off, Angel suddenly hopped out from the midst of the animals. Making deep whining noises, he began to approach her.
“No, Angel!” she called out, holding her hand to him. “Stay with the others! Make sure they get out safe!”
The rabbit hesitated, whining again and stamping a foot.
“You have to! I’ll be fine, but you need to stay back!”
The rabbit whined a third time, but, while still looking at Fluttershy, slowly turned around. After a moment, it hopped back to the others.
Fluttershy herself swallowed and looked up to the sky. Her eyes sought out and met those of the bird Nighttouched, but it was too far away to clearly see into her own; assuming it was even looking at them. Nevertheless, she tried to concentrate and open her eyes wider…
She was interrupted as the thing gave out a shrill screech before exhaling a smaller jet of fire. Fluttershy yelped in alarm and jumped to the side, just missing a blaze igniting where she was standing.
The ship continued to near shore, but began to groan. Two more holes were punched in the deck. The roof of the cabin creaked, and, while still burning, suddenly collapsed in partially. Applejack tensed up when she heard it; quickly ignoring the attacking fish and running to the door of the structure. Twilight began to sweat profusely as she tried to increase the power of the spell. “Fluttershy! Hurry!”
She wasn’t nearly as durable as Twilight or Applejack, and was now scared all over again on top of everything else. Even falling down had caused her a rough landing. Nevertheless, she swallowed and put her hands down and slowly forced herself to her feet. By then, the Nighttouched bird had already begun to sweep around. This time, it wasn’t going for the boat.
At the rear of the ship, Applejack smashed the door to the cabin with one powerful strike of her hammer. She quickly beckoned everyone out as fast as they could, and soon people began to file out from the burning structure. They ran toward the front of the ship—the part still staying the most above water and where the animals were. But they could only get out so fast with some injured, and now the Nighttouched bird aimed at them. Soon it came above and dove for the group.
Applejack noticed it coming, just as the couple with the boy with a broken leg began to try and help him out. She looked up at it just as it opened its jaws wide. Sweating, Applejack quickly extended her rope to try and swing it around to nail it, but with how it had dodged she had no idea if she could before it struck. It flew in closer as the flame in its throat gleamed…
“Wait!”
But before it could unleash a new blaze, Fluttershy ran in between the two of them, stopping right at the edge of the boat, and held her hands up.
“Wait!”
The Nighttouched bird instantly changed its focus to her, but when it did its own yellow eyes met hers. It snapped its jaws shut but kept diving until it was nearly in striking range of her, then quickly went into flapping hover. It snarled and snapped, flashing out with its talons, but also staying well in the air above the water. As the family got free, Applejack turned to it and nearly made her move only to realize it was too high to guarantee a kill.
“Stop this! Please!” Fluttershy cried as she kept staring into its eyes.
The Nighttouched screeched back so loudly it made Applejack, Fluttershy, and everyone else wince in agony. Yet as soon as Fluttershy was done cringing, she stared into its eyes again. Her voice remained pleading but also grew more composed.
“I know it has to hurt! It has to be nothing but pain and misery!”
The thing screeched again, but was a bit quieter this time.
“But I know you can’t want to do this! You can’t want to hurt these people and animals! You just don’t know what else to do, do you?”
The creature let out another screech, but this time it was little more than a loud caw. Fluttershy continued to grow calmer. Her face became softer. Her eyes seemed to grow larger, deeper, and more beautiful as she kept staring. Her hands went from reaching out and straining to more relaxed and gentle. Rather than straining for the bird, they turned to kindly offering themselves to it.
“Show me. I’m right here with you. Just keep looking at me.”
The Nighttouched clicked its beak once more, but the light in its eyes began to dim. Soon after, its flaps lessened more and it began to slowly lower toward Fluttershy. Applejack nearly swung right then and there, but now she found herself staring at this display. The monster had been vicious and bloodthirsty moments earlier. Now it was so calm…
The ship reached the shore at last. The water, growing too shallow to allow the Nighttouched fish to jump in, finally grew calm as they searched for other prey. Not a moment too soon as water began to bubble out onto the deck. Twilight kept the water wedge going as the ship rolled in, and she used it to plow a wedge-shaped earth “dock” into the sand of the shore; gradual enough to grab the ship and slow it down. It still caused a mighty lurch that nearly knocked everyone over, and part of the ship’s hull could be heard cracking, but it managed to slide to a stop in spite of the boiler chugging away. As soon as it was somewhat anchored in, the ranchers ran forth and quickly started to get the cattle and their families off the prow.
Twilight lowered her hands, and turned back. “Ok, that’s done. What about…”
She went quiet. Soon she too was staring, although for a much different reason.
The Nighttouched bird was almost in front of Fluttershy now, yet still hovering over the water lapping at the rear end of the boat. Nevertheless, it had grown so docile that the instinct to strike had left Applejack. The lights in its eyes were so dim now that they were barely faint glows, and yet they grew dimmer than that. Slowly, as the two women watched, they faded all together.
When that happened, the blackness in the feathers seemed to recede a little, like ink drawn through a cloth. It didn’t leave it all together, but it did peel away from the bird’s head. When it did, many of the black pinions that were not affected fell off all together and faded away. As they kept falling the head of the creature began to shrink. On reaching the deck, it didn’t keep flapping but reached out and perched on the remainder of the back of the boat.
The feathers kept falling, until, like layers of an onion, the monstrous, black, twisted body was topped with a much smaller head of a beautiful bird with feathers like a warm, fiery flame—the first look at the creature’s original form and size.
Twilight let out a gasp on seeing it. The bird, however, continued to look in Fluttershy’s eyes as it gave a cry. It was far closer to a normal bird cry now, but far more mournful. Sadder than any creature any of them had ever heard.
It caused Fluttershy’s own face to clench, as tears began to well in her own eyes. “You lost everything…just like so many others, didn’t you? She was so special to you, wasn’t she?”
The bird gave another pitiful cry.
The tears began to roll down Fluttershy’s cheeks. Her throat tightened.
“And…you don’t want to hurt anyone anymore either, do you? You just… You just…want to go see her. You want it to be over…”
The bird’s head began to lower, but even that small gesture caused some of the “ink” to sink back into its feathers and new plumage start to regrow. Before it got too far, it looked back up and into Fluttershy’s eyes again; stopping it.
Fluttershy sniffled, before her voice began to break up. “I’m sorry… I’m so sorry… I can’t stop it… I wish I could…”
The bird cried out again.
She shook her head. “N-n-no…no…I…I can’t…”
The bird cried more softly. Its own eyes enlarged. To Applejack, who had lowered her hammer by now, it was something she had never seen before. The bird seemed to be pleading.
Fluttershy let out another sob. She sniffled again.
Finally, she nodded.
“Ok…ok…”
She reached out and touched the side of the bird’s head. For a moment, its eyes squinted as it felt fingers against its uncorrupted plumage for the first time in eight years.
“You won’t hurt anymore… You won’t hurt ever again.”
The bird looked back into Fluttershy’s eyes. Applejack stood almost immobile for a moment, but then she clenched her own jaw. Taking up the hammer, she undid the rope from the end and hefted it. For a moment, the way she stared at the bird as she moved up to its side looked like she too would falter, but in the end she readied her weapon with both hands. It raised into the sky.
Fluttershy, through her tears, forced herself to smile.
“Go fly with her now.”
Applejack, for the first time since she was seven years old, closed her eyes on bringing the hammer down.
The talons instantly loosened and the Nighttouched spilled backward into the water. For a moment, the edges of its feathers began to smolder, but it was doused as soon as it sank into the deep. The last Fluttershy saw of it was its feathers turning back into their fiery golden color as it sank into the deep river, before it vanished from sight.
Fluttershy cupped her hands to her mouth and began to cry freely. Applejack, her eyes open again, stared at the water to make sure it was gone, before she looked up to the pink-haired woman. Seeing her continuing to cry, she winced herself a moment before she put her hammer in one hand and reached out to grasp her by the shoulder in an attempt to be encouraging. She looked up and out to Twilight as Fluttershy started to lean on her for support.
On looking up, however, she noticed Twilight was still blankly staring where the bird had fallen.
“Twilight? You alright?”
She blinked, then turned to the farmer.
“Come on, we gotta get off this boat. It’s still sinkin’.”
“I knew her.”
Fluttershy sniffled again, but looked up and back to her on hearing that. Applejack was confused. “What?”
Twilight was now looking not only still stunned but with a growing somber expression.
“I knew that bird. Her name was Philomena. She was Headmistress Celestia’s bird.”
“What in tarnation you-”
Applejack was drowned out by a roaring sound overhead, only this time it wasn’t of any monster or Light Eater. It was the sound of a massive steam engine. Moments later, she was bathed in light along with most of the rest of the boat. She, Fluttershy, and Twilight all looked up to the heavens for the source.
For a split second, they saw the frame of a Trottingham airship hovering there.
A heartbeat later, and its cannon fire ripped what was left of the boat in half.
About fifteen minutes later, the remains of the boat, its passengers, the cattle, and Fluttershy’s animals were a good mile upstream, but the nearest civilization was still miles away. The night had continued to lessen, but natural night was replacing it and so one could still scarcely make out the shore or the surrounding countryside. The water had gotten more violent and rapid not far from where the boat had beached itself, but here on the river it was finally calming again.
And at that moment, a large splash burst from the surface as Applejack surged out of the water and flung herself onto the muddy bank. She was coughing, choking, and trying desperately to hold onto her hat with one hand while clutching Fluttershy, who was coughing and choking twice as much, to her with one arm. Her power had faded and now she was covered with bruises from having been washed down the river, but she managed through undulating her whole body to wriggle herself and the woman with her onto shore. As soon as her head was well above water, she finally freed the hand to cling to the silt and mud and drag herself, and finally the two plopped out completely on dry land. They sprawled out and began to pant for air.
They were so out of breath that Applejack never thought to look at the sigil on Fluttershy’s hand once; especially the new point on it that had formed while they were being washed downstream.
However, while the pink-haired woman was still trying to catch her breath, the farmer forced herself to lean up. “Where’s…Twilight?”
Fluttershy was still too busy gasping, but weakly looked up after a moment. Between the fading light and rough country, it wasn’t possible to see much. However, after a moment they spotted something in the river splashing around and angling itself to the shore. Pushing past her pain and soreness, Applejack forced herself to stand for a better look, and realized it was Spike. His jaws were clenched around Twilight’s shirt, and she, also reverted back, was still in it although she had clearly gotten too worn out to keep swimming.
In spite of her own exhaustion, Applejack forced herself to move back out until the water was nearly to her pelvis to grab on to both of them. With some hauling, she managed to finally drag her to shore.
Once they were there, Applejack went back into the sand, sprawled out, and panted again. Twilight herself spread out on the ground and struggled to catch her breath, and Spike laid down nearby and let his tongue wag.
As soon as she could speak, though, Twilight looked up again. “Is…is everyone…alright…?” she panted.
“Aside from really hatin’ Trottingham’s rotten guts…sure…” Applejack groaned. A moment later, she snapped her head up. “Wait…them folks were still gettin’ off the boat! So were the animals!”
“They were almost all off…” Twilight gasped back. “At least…I think they were. I’m sure they would have run as soon as they saw the ship fly low…”
She didn’t sound entirely convinced herself, and she soon turned and looked to their third companion anxiously. “Fluttershy, I…”
However, she shook her head as she finally pushed it off of the ground. “Oh…don’t worry. I told Angel to look after the others. I’m sure they’ll be alright. He knows to meet us in Griffonstone.”
“Really? You think so?”
“Sure! I mean, it’s probably likely…” Her optimistic look began to fade as she thought about it. However, she shook her head before she could get too down. “No…I am sure. I bet we’ll run into them in no time on the way there. No…no need to worry.”
Twilight stared on at Fluttershy, watching her look grow more uncomfortable the more she brooded on it. She was beginning to stare at the ground and cringe once again. Before it could go much farther, Twilight smiled and nodded. “You’re right. Angel’s really smart and so are the rest of your animals. I know they’ll find their way back to us.”
Speaking like that got Fluttershy to look up again, seeming just a bit more optimistic, but Twilight didn’t have time to dwell on that. She looked up to the sky and around. There was no sign of the airship and no sound of engines, but considering what had happened it was quite likely they thought that shot had killed them.
“How in Greater Everfree did they find us?” she finally remarked aloud. “We haven’t seen head or tails of them all day... They couldn’t have been tailing us from the ground…”
“Beats me,” Applejack groaned as she felt around in her belt loops. Fortunately, her hammer was still tethered there from when she had shoved it in after going into the river. “Seems they manage ta’ pop up every time that we bring out these Promethewhatsits…”
As soon as she said that, she paused.
“Y’know, that is somethin’. Fort Chestnut was full o’ all types of people, but they knew ta’ take aim at us once we turned in order ta’ take down that crazy photographer. Even if they got a real dead eye on that thing that couldn’t be easy to spot. And they didn’t show up again until we had to defend the boat and used it again…”
She turned to Twilight, who by now was looking up and staring right back at her.
“Ya’ suppose…they’re somehow findin’ where we are every time we bring out the sigils?”
Twilight looked uneasy, but shook her head. “No…no, that’s impossible. I mean, obviously our sigils give out some energy, but it’s not like you’d know it unless you were standing right there and watching when our auras flare. And it’s not like I go around advertising it. No one would even know to look for it-”
Abruptly, her pupils shrank into pinpricks. Her mouth hung open silently.
Both Applejack and Fluttershy saw the change come over her. Their own looks grew concerned.
“Uh, Twilight?”
She kept staring a moment more before she placed a hand to her own head and slowly pushed back her own wet hair. “I don’t believe it… I never thought of it. Not in eight years. But…it makes sense…” She looked back to the two. “I think you’re right, Applejack. I think whoever it was did track us based on our powers. Which means they had to know about the Promethian Sigils. That can only mean one thing. Whoever is leading those Trottinghamites…whoever is trying to kill us…went to the same academy that Princess Celestia ran.”
Fluttershy looked perplexed at all of this. Applejack wasn’t much better. “What’re ya’ sayin’, Twilight?”
She lay there a moment longer, before her face tightened and she started to push herself up. “We have to go. Right now. We have to get to the southernmost point of the Hyperborean Mountains.”
Applejack frowned as she began to force herself up. “Well, we’re in luck, ‘cause that’s where we were headed anyway…Grifftham City. Why we suddenly in such a hurry, though?”
“Because after what I saw on the river, I’m convinced that’s exactly where the Tantabus is headed. And when it gets there, if my theory’s correct, everyone in Greater Everfree could die.”
“Ok, ok! I spy, with my little eye, something ha-”
“It’s a rock, isn’t it?”
“Ha-ha! You got it again! But how about this? I spy, with my litt-”
“It’s another rock.”
“Wow! That’s 217 in a row!” Pinkie cheered, having not lost the slightest bit of perkiness or energy since they started. “You’re a real champ at this, Rainbow Dash!”
The Hunstman ground her teeth together so tight Rarity could swear she heard them clench together, but that was far better than their guide. At this point Gilda was now walking about fifty feet ahead of them to try and minimize having to listen to her. Rarity, on her part, was sticking next to Pinkie near the rear to avoid facing the wrath of another outburst from the Griffonstone native.
“Ok, I’ll get you this time! I-”
“Say, you know what?” Dash cut in. “How about I pick the next game we play?”
“Ooo! That’s a great idea! And the biggest winner of this game gets to pick the next one! So what game are we going to play?”
“The quiet game,” she flatly retorted. “Next one to speak loses.”
“Oki-” Pinkie’s eyes widened, and quickly she slapped her hands over her mouth as she continued to bounce along.
Rarity sighed in relief as she walked on through the mine, but it wasn’t even a full minute before she began to miss it. At least with Pinkie Pie being continuously perky, happy, and chattering endlessly, unmiffed by her surroundings, there was some semblance of normalcy. Now that it was quiet she could only focus on the mine itself.
The prelit torches had given out long ago, in what seemed to be a couple miles back. Ever since then the only light had been a lantern in Gilda’s possession as she led them down through one turn after another. Some of the passages widened into broad areas with places for cart tracks, but many of them were narrow and twisted. All of them were pitch black and silent as the grave, and Rarity actually preferred it that way. Lost in this darkness far underground, it was only when she heard something down one of the inky black tunnels that she got truly nervous.
“So we’re passing right through Mount Aris to Griffonstone going this way?” she had asked early in their trip.
“Not quite,” Dash answered. “We’re cutting across Equestria.”
“E…Equestria?!”
“Relax,” Gilda responded. “This is just one little part of it that goes through the middle of the Hyperborean Mountains. I’ve been running through these tunnels for years. Never found anything in them aside from a bat.”
Nevertheless, several hours later, Rarity was still quite nervous at the thought that they were actually going underneath Equestria itself, even if it was an area that hadn’t been claimed by the Nighttouched. As she kept walking through the mines, the constant fear leapt up within her that Gilda would walk a little too fast and leave them behind, and they’d end up spending the rest of their short lives lost in the dark labyrinth either starving to death or waiting for a monster to appear and slay them.
On the topic of starving, Rarity was getting quite dizzy from the constant lack of food and, at this point, water. The caves weren’t terribly hot and were mostly damp and moist, but it didn’t change the fact she hadn’t had a real drink or meal in quite a while. Her arms and legs were trembling from weakness and she found herself tripping often on the uneven parts of the mine path.
She wiped her brow. “Excuse me, Ms. Gilda, but how much farther is it?”
“Uh-oh, Rarity lost!” Pinkie called, before looking surprised. “Oh no! I lost too!”
Gilda rolled her eyes at both of them. “Should’ve known you Manehattan people would be too soft to make the whole route in one go. We’ll take a break up ahead, but if you fall behind again I’m leaving you behind.”
Rarity was too tired to be offended. “Yes, but might I ask what we are going to do when we get out of the mine?”
“You’re going to find a way to get me my money. I thought we were clear on that.”
“Yay!” Pinkie chimed in. “Rainbow Dash wins again!”
Rarity frowned and slumped, but Dash fell back a bit to lean in to her. “Try to ignore it. Pretty soon she’ll take us to the main train tunnels. We follow those straight across into Griffonstone, and then we hop a train from Feather’s Ford to Manehattan, or maybe an Railless Engine. Simple.”
“I hope so…” she sighed.
Gilda turned around one more corner and shouted behind her. “Up ahead. Take a load off.”
The travelers went around and found an old bench mounted against the tunnel, no doubt reserved for the previous miners. Rarity nearly collapsed on it. Dash herself rather tiredly sat down, but also winced a bit. Apparently her injury still wasn’t fully healed. Pinkie eagerly hopped over and sat down; apparently no worse for wear. Gilda set her lantern down, leaned against a cave wall, and crossed her arms.
Rarity reached for a pocket handkerchief only to frown and realize she had lost her last one two days ago. Instead, she fanned her face with her palm. “It’s…very impressive that you’re able to find your way through these tunnels, Ms. Gilda.”
She shrugged. “Eh, not much to it. Just gotta know the tricks to finding your way around, and it’s a piece of cake.”
“Ooo! What kinda tricks?” Pinkie grinned.
Gilda glared at her. “If I told whoever came along how to get through these tunnels, how would I make money as a smuggler?”
“Oh, oh!” she excitedly answered, raising her hand as if Gilda had just asked a riddle. The woman sneered and ignored her.
“I’m guessing this gig isn’t going to last much longer for you, though,” Dash spoke up as she leaned back. “I mean, if you got that mark just like us…”
Gilda slumped. “You got a point. Much as I hate the idea of hanging around in Griffonstone, seems I’m gonna have to head home next. You can bet they’ll sell guys and gals like me out the second they can make a buck on it.”
Rarity winced. “Your home country would really sell out its own people like that? How horrid…”
Gilda snapped her head up and fixed Rarity with such a sharp glare that the woman cringed and swallowed.
“Real high-and-mighty talk from some Manehattan socialite. At least people from Griffonstone don’t try to hide that this world’s all about dog-eat-dog now. You Manehattanites would just get someone like me to scrub your toilets and shine your shoes. Fillydelphians would shove me back into some labor camp like they did after they steamrolled over Cloudsdale. There was no amnesty for me. Trottinghamites will just want me so long as I can kill people for them or until their wallets run dry. And Appleloosans?” She sneered. “They’ll just plain hang me as soon as they get a mob together that doesn’t like my face.”
Dash winced a little. “Gilda…she was just trying to be nice…”
Her teeth grit. “Manehattanites always try to ‘be nice’ by talking down to you when most of them don’t even know what a Nighttouched looks like. Little princess over there thinks she’s had such a rough time because she’s spent a week on the road. Meanwhile, the world’s gone to Hell in a handbasket and she makes dresses for a living.”
Rarity was a little taken aback by Gilda’s tirade, but after the past few days she wasn’t ready to sit and take it. She frowned and nearly lashed back, but was stopped when Pinkie Pie suddenly popped up in her face again. “Wow! I didn’t know you were a princess, Rarity! Why didn’t you tell me that when you introduced yourself? Oh wait…oooooh!” She grinned. “I get it! You’re incognito!” She winked and leaned back. “Got it, Ms. Not-Princess Rarity.”
Rarity was so caught off guard that she was stuck mute for a moment, during which Dash quickly interjected again. “Yeah, but you’re not thinking of staying in Griffonstone forever, are you? I mean, if things do spread to there…”
Gilda sighed and shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe I’ll join up with the Huntsman Guild. They seem to make good enough money and I’d be a nice fit for it. Keeps me from being tied down to one place too. That’s worked out pretty well for you.”
“Heh, yeah!” Dash laughed back, although Rarity could see it was a bit forced. “Pretty nice having a life of freedom…”
“It’s not like I got any family or friends waiting for me in Griffonstone or anywhere else.” She smirked. “We’re kind of like two peas in a pod when it comes to that, Dash. Maybe it’d be better if we did hang out. You watch my back and I watch yours, eh?”
Dash looked a bit more uncomfortable, but she kept forcing her smile. “Heh-heh, yeah! Sounds…pretty awesome.”
Gilda picked up on her hesitation. “Come on, you aren’t wanting to keep those big fees all to yourself, are you? Speaking of…if you think I’m taking less than fifty percent just because I’m a journeyman to the guild, keep dreaming.”
“How are you at baking?” Pinkie cheerfully asked. “Maybe you can become a baker like me! I could use a tall, dark, somewhat-grouchy assistant with a dark and mysterious past!”
She frowned. “I don’t think it’d be too good of an idea to go legit and then commit murder my second day clean.” Leaning up from the cave wall, she stretched her arms a bit. “Ok, rest period over.” She bent over and took up the lantern. “Just a bit farther and we’ll hit one of the main train tunnels. Only thing we have to worry about from there is taking the right branch at the fork.”
“Almost home free, huh? Great,” Dash responded as she rose and cracked her own neck.
Pinkie was back to her feet in a second and bouncing happily in place again, and Rarity, groaning at the thought, started to rise only to pause soon after.
Seeing her hesitate, Gilda grit her teeth again. “Come on. I said up and at ‘em.”
“I say…did any of you feel that just now?”
“Feel what?” Dash asked.
“I could have sworn I felt something shaking…”
“Oh, I felt something shaking!” Pinkie cried, still hopping in place. “Oh wait, no…that was just my hair bouncing up and down. Tee-hee!”
“It’s nothing,” Dash answered, reaching a hand out. “Come on and get…”
She trailed off. Rarity looked surprised again.
“There it is again!”
“I think I felt it that time too…” Dash muttered. She turned to Gilda. “It kind of felt like a tremor.”
Gilda frowned. “You’re both nuts.” She made a fist and smacked it against the wall. “Solid as a rock after eight years. I’ve been through here a hundred times. Never so much as let loose a single peb-”
She cut off as a faint tremor sounded off just loud enough to echo through the surrounding caverns. This time, it was joined by the echo of a few tiny stones breaking off the ceiling and clattering to the ground from down the passage they had come from. Now she looked as on edge as the others.
Only Pinkie continued to look cheerful. “I felt it that time too! Yay!” A moment later, her smile faltered. “Wait, no… Don’t those sorts of things usually happen right before something like an earthquake or a cave-in?”
“If an earthquake or a cave-in was going to happen, it would happen all at once,” Dash nervously answered. “This is more like…”
Another tremor, slightly louder than before.
“…big footsteps.”
Gilda looked to the ceiling. In spite of her attempts to look bold, unease was beginning to leak into her features. “Maybe…some airship is flying low overhead…or something…”
“Really? Do you think the airship can make lots of itty bitty crawling sounds too?” Pinkie asked.
“Excuse me?” Rarity responded, but there was no need for Pinkie to explain. In that same moment, all four women began to hear it.
Through the stone walls of the caverns there was a rushing sound. At first it was mistakable for some form of fluid, but as they kept listening they realized it wasn’t the sound of water but what seemed to be hundreds or even thousands of tiny footsteps.
“What…what in the world is that?”
“Sounds like it’s coming from the tunnel beneath us…” Dash remarked.
Soon after, a similar sound began to ring out overhead. She swallowed.
“And above us…”
Gilda tensed a bit further before she turned and began to lead the way. “Alright, let’s get moving. The train tunnel’s just a bit farther.”
She took the lead just as the cave shook again from another impact. This time, it didn’t take but a moment for all three women to fall in behind her, although Pinkie’s enthusiasm remained. Rarity and Dash, on the other hand, grew increasingly unnerved as the sounds of the feet in the tunnels above and below them increased, and soon both were looking over their shoulders into the darkness that was behind them.
“Rainbow Dash…so you think now might perhaps be a good time for us to…you know?”
“Actually…I’m not really sure how much good it will do us if there’s as many as I’m hearing…”
“Keep it down back there!” Gilda hissed in a harsh whisper as she picked up her pace. “Not that I’m saying there’s anything to get too freaked out about, but if there is you don’t want to let it know that we’re here!” A pause. “Just the same…keep your eyes open behind us.”
“You bet!” Pinkie chirped at full volume, before spinning around and skipping after them backwards.
The four continued to pick up speed, but the sounds didn’t get quieter. Each new stomp shook the caverns a bit more, and they grew especially nervous when some of them began to make the wooden beams supporting the tunnel creak. Eventually, one stomp actually caused a larger rock that Gilda passed to crack in two.
“I don’t mean to be rude, but I dearly hope we are at that tunnel soon…”
“It’s just up here. Look.”
Pinkie flipped back around to look forward with Dash and Rarity, just as the lantern illuminated a slanting branch in the path up ahead.
“We just head left and it’s a straight shot to the train tunnel. We’re almost home free.”
Dash tightened her own fists up. “Let’s just be ready in case something’s in that one or the one going the other way.”
Gilda didn’t argue. She drew one of her pistols instead with her free hand and cocked back the hammer. The others quickly gathered close to her in case of a need to run. The sounds continued to get louder above and below, but they couldn’t hear anything in front or behind them at least.
Finally they reached the junction. Gilda went first and immediately snapped her pistol in front of her on their route ahead. As they others arrived, she confirmed it was clear and looked the other way.
On doing so, the gasp she gave out was so sharp and horrified that they all looked that way as well. Each of them immediately did likewise—including Pinkie.
The light from the lantern seemed to sink into oblivion save for a patch of some substance that seemed like a starry night sky. The moment the light hit it, it spun about on crude yet taloned hexapodal limbs, before a faint head-like shape with two rows of vague teeth in huge jaws aimed at them. Faint pale spots for eyes formed out of the mass and focused on the lantern.
A Light Eater.
A split second later, Rainbow Dash snapped to the group. “Everyone run!”
In a heartbeat, all four of them turned about and ran down the tunnel. Rarity felt her hand seized by Dash before she yanked her along with her to pull her faster, but everyone else charged as fast as their legs could carry them. As exhausted and hungry as they were, terror now forced new strength into their limbs.
Far at the end of the long shaft was a small bit of light, where Rarity could just make out their passage opening into a new chamber.
“Get to the train tunnel!” Gilda shouted. “There’s an opening for sunlight! It can’t follow us there!”
Behind them, Rarity heard the sounds of rocks being dislodged and the walls being scraped. She glanced behind and gave a shrill cry on seeing the Light Eater was not only moving after them but was breaking into a full run with its six limbs. The monster itself didn’t make a sound although its tooth-filled head pantomimed snarling and roaring, but its body clawing at the rocky tunnels did. The only good part was the tunnel was so narrow that it seemed to squeeze it a little, keeping it from reaching full speed.
Gilda snapped around as she ran and aimed her pistol at it. “Get to one side!”
“No, wait!” Dash yelled.
Too late. The hammer snapped and a deafening gunshot went out through the tunnel. Rarity, Dash, and even Pinkie (a little) all clutched for their heads in agony from the deafening echo that went off in the small space. Rarity herself felt like her eardrums nearly burst and almost tried to pull away from Dash to raise both hands to her ears. As for the Light Eater, the bullet sank into it like a pebble in a pond. Its body rippled, but then quickly stabilized a moment later. It didn’t even slow down.
“Don’t try and hurt it!” Dash angrily retorted. “Just run away from it! Get to the end as fast as we can!”
“Um…I don’t think they’ll move even if we ask them nicely!”
Hearing Pinkie shout, Dash looked and saw her pointing in front of her. She looked and in spite of the very real threat behind them, to say nothing of how they had been slowed by the gunshot, they nearly stopped again on seeing a mass of Nighttouched pouring out of a tunnel on the right light a living flood and right into their same passage. Fifty of them were in the tunnel in moments with more still coming, and each one on spotting the group of four took off to meet them.
“Oh, great!” Dash yelled. She looked back to Gilda. “What do we do now?”
She tensed for a moment, clearly thinking over her options, before she began to put her pistol away. “Change of plans! We’re taking the scenic route! Turn right at the next tunnel!”
There was no argument considering how they were moments from being sandwiched. As soon as the next tunnel was reached, all three turned and followed Gilda down it. She began to reach into her clothes as she kept the lantern aimed forward, but this tunnel was not nearly as smooth and even as the previous one. As she bounced along it was hard to see, and it was only moments before Rarity cried out on scraping her arm against a jutting wall before she hooked her toes and nearly tripped; bringing Dash down with her.
None of them looked back again, but they soon heard the scraping and crunching follow them into this new passage. It was keying in on the lantern light. Before it could gain much distance, though, Gilda led them down another tunnel. To Rarity’s displeasure, not only did it only lead into more darkness, there were a pair of monstrous Nighttouched rats the size of housecats running up to them from the opposite way.
Rarity shrieked. “Two of those horrid things are coming!”
“Deal with them, would ya’, Dash?” Gilda snapped as she finally grasped something in her jacket. “I’m doing three things at once here!”
Releasing Rarity’s hand, and forcing the designer to quickly struggle to keep up under her own power, Dash ran to Gilda’s side. The rats gave hideous squeals, but she used what little ceiling space there was to run forward, leap, and drive both heels down on the first one’s head. A crunch went out as it fell limp. The next one quickly opened its mouth to bite her leg, but she answered by lashing out with a hooking kick and snapping it up and away. Its body was impaled on a more jagged section of wall a second later.
She glanced back to Gilda as she resumed running, and caught her just as she tucked something into the corner of her arm and went back into her pockets. On looking it over, she noticed it was a red stick with a long fuse.
“Is that…?”
“Always keep something like this for emergencies… Just keep moving!”
The two charged down this next corridor. It was empty, but as they ran on it was only a few seconds before they heard a large crash against the mine walls behind them; the thing obviously chasing them and not making the turn sharp enough. It was closer than before, but none of them could run any harder. Rarity was already to where she could only gasp for air, and even Dash was starting to breathe hard.
Gilda got out what looked like a lighter and clenched it in her fist as she turned another corner. “Alright, at the end of this one is a junction, and-”
“Squirrels!” Pinkie chirped.
“What?”
“Squirrels! Three of them!”
Gilda nearly hissed, but Dash looked at the ceiling. Sure enough, hanging upside down and scurrying toward them were a trio of yellow eyed monsters with bushy tails and foaming mouths.
Before Gilda could say or do anything, Dash shot her hand out, seized her other pistol from her belt, and snapped it upright. “This is gonna hurt your ears so brace yourselves!”
Rarity cried out again in agony soon after as three more gunshot rapidly erupted out. Gilda herself nearly staggered and dropped her dynamite and lighter, but somehow kept running. As for the squirrels, one after another they fell to the floor of the cave and their bodies were summarily trampled.
“Glad I can still shoot one of those things!” she shouted over the dying echo. She shoved the weapon back at Gilda’s side. “You were saying?”
She still looked dizzy from the echoing, but she forced her thumb to start flicking the lighter. “As soon as we get down at the end of here, head south and don’t stop! Just keep running!”
“Which way is south?”
“Just run where the light is! And hope they aren’t already cutting us off!”
She flicked the end of the lighter one more time before the flame came on. Quickly, she held it to the fuse and moments later it began to spark and burn. It was doing so far faster than Rarity cared, but all she could do was keep running.
Gilda reached the end and exited the corridor into the wider passage; the same one they had started at. Here, she stopped and turned about, quickly identifying a place in the framing of the tunnel and rushing over to jam the stick of dynamite into it. Rarity kept running along with Dash and Pinkie, but as she looked back she almost shrieked again in spite of her lack of air on seeing the Light Eater was right on their heels, and the corridor behind them was nothing but a sea of Nighttouched. Not only it, but at least two of the branch tunnels had them flowing out through it as well.
Yet they could also see the light from the main passage at the end of the tunnel, and it was stronger than ever now. Pushing themselves on, the three charged inside this last stretch one after the other: Dash, Rarity, and finally Pinkie. Gilda quickly snapped around and rushed after just as the Light Eater shoved itself into the end of the mine tunnel. Luckily, it did so crooked, trying to go straight for the lantern’s light, and ended up jamming itself in the opening momentarily. Gilda quickly threw the lantern away at the thing before reaching back for her sides for her metal talons…
Suddenly, part of the flood coming out from the tunnel burst; allowing a black, warped, vicious-looking fox Nighttouched to come forth from an eruption of its smaller yellow-eyed fellows. Like the crack of a whip, it lashed out for the nearest person: Gilda. It opened its mouth and snapped loudly as it dove into her legs. The force with which it slammed into them, mixing the fact she was running, caused her to immediately hook a foot over its body. With a loud cry, she spilled over and fell flat on her face.
The cry alerted Dash, who immediately stopped and snapped around. Her eyes widened on spotting her. The fox itself yanked itself free of her legs, ignoring biting at her ankles and boots and instead snapping for her face. In response, she grit her teeth and swiped one of her metal talons up; instantly slicing through half of its jaw and neck. Blood splattered as the fox fell to the ground and spasmed in violent death throes, but she shoved it off and yanked her legs up.
Before she could stand, however, she saw the Light Eater breaking the edges of the tunnel to push through, as well as the length of fuse remaining…
She paused for a heartbeat before she snapped back around. She scrambled onto all fours and rushed to the nearest tunnel to her right as she glared at Dash. “What are you gawking at? Get out! Now!”
“Gilda!” She shouted back, advancing a step back toward her.
Rarity, however, ran into her with a shoving motion soon after, not having the energy to try and argue or do it gently. She ended up pushing her back further. Dash kept staring as the Light Eater began to extend one of its monstrous claws through and Gilda, with a grunt and a strain, threw herself into the tunnel—right before the dynamite went off.
All the three of them could hear in moments was a painful ringing in their ears as light, heat, and dirt fragments shot at them like bullets. In the chaos, Dash cried out and snapped her head away as some of its struck her eyes, and she was left powerless as Rarity half-stumbled, half-charged herself along and pushed her away. Pinkie ran in behind her and acted to force all of them onward. Moments later, a cloud of dust and dirt swept over them, blinding and choking them and forcing their eyes and mouths shut. Feeling nothing but pain inside and out and lost in a cloud, they could only keep pushing forward; bumping and banging along the rock walls and stumbling over cracks as they went.
Finally, the light around them cleared as the space opened up, and through their shut eyelids they could sense the darkness giving way to a red glow. They kept running until they were further from the dirt, but then Dash and Rarity lost their footing all together and fell to the ground. They instantly began to choke, gasp, and cough violently. Pinkie herself remained on her feet only long enough to walk to the nearest decent boulder and sat on it, finally breathing heavily as well. For several minutes, that was all the three of them did.
Yet as soon as Dash was able to do more than gasp, she did her best to blink to clear her dirt-covered eyes and looked up and back. “Gilda!”
The tunnel they found themselves in now was much larger. Big enough to accommodate not only two sets of train tracks but wide enough to switch off the main track to service or dismount them as necessary. On top of that, part of the rock wall that made up the tunnel was so thin it had been removed and the early evening sun was free to shine down on the three of them. They themselves were now facing the mine opening they had just escaped.
However, there was nothing to see there save for clouds of dust still rolling from it. There were no more sounds of Nighttouched or Light Eaters, but echoes of large rocks and boulders still falling from what had to have been a cave-in rolled out. No other sound or word of life.
“Gilda!” Dash half-coughed, before she started to force herself up.
Rarity was still gasping as she pushed herself up from the ground, wincing again at her further ruined appearance, but then turned fully to Dash and the mine entrance. However, one look at it was all she needed to know the truth.
Her face twisted uneasily. “R…Rainbow Dash…there’s no…no way we can get back…”
“No!” she cried, getting her feet underneath her and rising. “I saw her get in the tunnel! She had to have-”
“‘Rainbow Dash’.”
The woman cut herself off and looked to her left on hearing her name.
“You need to worry more about yourself right now.”
The Huntsman’s eyes widened, but she was barely on her feet and unable to react any further. Soon after, a sharp electric crackle rang through the air before a bolt of electricity smacked Dash back down to the tunnel floor.
Rarity gasped and Pinkie sat bolt upright. Both looked in the direction it came from, before Rarity yelped again and rolled onto her back before scrambling away from it.
The man in royal guard armor was walking down the main tunnel with his lance tip still aimed forward and snaking with electricity.
“Hi there!” Pinkie waved. “What’s your name? Wait…um…I think the fact that you just shot Dash means you’re not here to be friendly.”
“You!” Rarity cried. “How in Greater Equestria did you find us?!”
“I never lost you, to be honest,” he answered coolly enough. He shifted his spear upright as he walked forward, while Dash herself was still smoking and writhing on the ground. “When I shot you last night, I used the magic my lady imbued into my armor and spear to tag you with a metallic tracer in a special pattern. As it turns out, everyone’s body has a bit of ‘lightning’ in it, and I figured out a while ago how to use it as a conductor along with the tracer symbol. After that, our airship tracked you down.”
He glanced over the group for a moment as he came to a stop.
“Just the three of you, huh? And none of you are the one she wants. In that case, I have no choice.”
He began to ready his spear again.
“Um, yeah…he’s definitely not friendly,” Pinkie muttered.
Rarity herself was panic stricken again and drug herself back further. “Why are you doing this to us? What did any of us ever do to you?”
“This isn’t personal. My lady said she wanted you dead. That’s all there is to it,” he answered; just a hint of regret in his voice as he aimed his lance at her.
Rarity began to tremble. She eyed the sizzling tip of the lance, petrified and unable to speak, move, or even breathe. However, the fatal shot didn’t come. The royal guard continued to stand there like a statue.
After a moment he spoke again. “Do it.”
Rarity was so terrified she barely registered that. “I…I…beg your pardon…?”
“Call out your Anima Viri. Hurry it up.”
She blinked and stammered. The fear was still clutching her too tightly to really process what was going on, but her senses came through enough to be confused at what she was hearing. “I’m…sorry?”
“I won’t kill you all simply outright. The least I can do is give you a chance to defend yourselves. I’m not going to wait forever, though. You three don’t know it, but there’s a Light Eater as big as a mountain crossing over right now. It’s blotting out the sun and once it gets here we’ll all going to be food for the smaller ones and Nighttouched. I need to be gone before then.”
It was too much new information for Rarity on top of the shocks. She didn’t know what to be more scared of. Fortunately, she didn’t have to wait long.
“Heh…giving us a ‘fair chance’, huh?”
The royal guard looked up and saw that Dash, in spite of still smoldering and clearly in pain, was back on her feet. She was glaring at him furiously with her fists tightened.
“That’s gonna be the last mistake you ever make, because you got me at a really bad time!” she snapped. “Captain Spitfire!”
Her aura blazed to life again, which, in turn, prompted the royal guard to ignore Rarity all together and face her. He planted his feet and readied his lance, but in spite of his lack of facial features he didn’t seem nearly as tense as last time. Dash, on her part, was soon ready, although it took only a moment for everyone to see she still was unsteady on her feet and her look was far more unhinged.
“Fair warning,” the royal guard called out. “You might not be in as much pain, but I can tell you’re tired and weakened. And I know how you move this time.”
“Shut up!” she snapped. She took off and launched herself straight at the royal guard. This time, she looked so furious that it didn’t seem to matter that his armor would likely guard him. He, however, kept his footing and waited for her; not even shifting weight. His armor began to spark and sizzle as she neared, readying to use the move he performed last time, but Dash didn’t care. She looked ready to dig through the discharge and hit him anyway as she leapt in the air and cocked back her foot to come around to his head.
A blinding flash went out as the royal guard disappeared, but Dash’s face broke in surprise when she saw him reappear in the exact same spot with one difference. His lance was now propped upward with the point aimed right for her body’s midsection.
Since she was in midair, she as powerless to do anything but abort her attack and twist her body to the side; but he was waiting for that. In a snap, he ripped his spear upward and swung the shaft completely around, and buried the pommel right into her exposed midsection before letting her own momentum drive her onto it. The sound of air rushing out of Dash’s throat echoed through the cave as her body crumpled about the metal shaft, right before he let out another charge. With a monstrous crackle, Dash’s body flew off of the end of it and made a solid impact against the tunnel wall.
As her body slid off, the royal guard gave no mercy. He quickly ran after her. She had barely touched down on the ground when, in spite of the pain and agony she was now in, she grit her teeth, forced her head up, and lashed out with a fist to try and meet him. In response, he snapped his lance around and aimed right for her right eye. Again, she had to abort her attack, but had nowhere to go. She ended up wrenching her body to one side and protruding her shoulder; and the royal guard used the moment to swing his lance about, bring up the shaft again, and then come down with both hands on top of her shoulder joint. A loud crack resulted as that arm slumped, and Dash’s pupils shrank before she screamed in pain.
The royal guard pulled back momentarily, letting her cry, but even then she wouldn’t stop. As that arm hung uselessly to one side, she forced her pain into fresh anger, looking viciously at him, and drove herself forward and swung at his face with her good arm. He quickly sidestepped and let the blow shoot by, only to seize her by the outstretched limb. A moment later, he yanked her forward while bringing up his knee to slam her already injured middle across it. The life drained from her face as she sustained another horrible blow, but he didn’t stop there. He twisted his own body around, brought her and his knee down, and simultaneously slammed her into the rock tunnel floor while bringing the weight of his body down in his knee on top of her stomach. This time, all she could do was gag. Bloody spittle came up from her lips as her whole body went flaccid.
He quickly rose off of her again, and looked up a split second before Rarity shouted it. “Daisy Cheerilee!”
He saw her own aura ignite and quickly squared himself fully against her. Nevertheless, he kept his spear at his side until the change was complete, only then beginning to advance. Rarity herself tensed a moment before she did all she could think of. She held her hand out at him. “Fireballfireballfireballfireball!”
A bit larger than before, her aura glowed about her palm before peeling off and forming a ball of flame that was flung toward the guard. This time, however, she was surprised to see him simply twirl his lance in front of him while advancing. The ball struck the spinning weapon and instantly burst into nothing more than embers.
“Um…er…” She quickly held both hands up. “Fireballfireballfireballfireball!”
Two spheres shot off this time, but were annihilated just as easily.
“Oh dear, uh… Icicleicicleicicleicicle!”
The aura changed colors to a blue this time, but rather than produce any form of solid ice small amounts of snow squished into vague icicle shapes came out of both hands. He simply lowered his lance to his side for this one, letting them burst into slush against his armor as if they were no more than snowballs. He aimed his lance end at her next. It crackled once before snapping out another discharge.
Rarity cried out as her body was both wreathed in pain and flung violently backward along the ground, all the way to a bit of switchout track adjacent to the main track. Her body halted there, now smoldering as well, but she continued to gaze wide eyed and agonized from the shot.
“Not only do you not know how to use your Anima Viri, you don’t even know how to cast a real spell. Those words your mumbling aren’t even as good as Lady Sunset’s cantrips,” he called as he advanced on her again. “The only reason it worked last time was your fireball hit me in the visor and blinded me.”
Rarity moaned and raised her head, but her whole body was in pain now. She couldn’t rise again. She looked up and saw Dash was still in a heap, and at any rate the royal guard was much closer to her now and between the two of them. Besides that, Dash’s own aura had faded and, much to her displeasure, her own was rapidly failing too. Another hit unprotected by it would likely kill her. And this time there was no environment or hand grenades to bail her out.
Before she could panic too much or the royal guard could get any nearer, however, both of them were distracted by the sound of Pinkie bursting into giggling.
Both of them looked just in time to see her happily hopping off of the rock.
“Tee-hee! Rarity, Rainbow Dash! You’re so silly! You’re trying to get into a fight with this big mean armored guy and you’re not even using your Magic Circley-Circles the right way!”
Rarity, still coming out of her own shock, could barely respond. “Ex…excuse me?”
Pinkie answered by beginning to stretch out. “Don’t worry! I’ll stop the big meanie for you! I know my big sister will probably get mad that I’m showing this off, but since you two have Magic Circley-Circles too, maybe she won’t mind! Now…”
The royal guard turned to her. “What are you-”
“If you want to use them the right way, you do something like…” She held her hand with the Promethian Sigil to the sky.
“Member of my house, I command you to come to me! Sage Geologist—Maudileena Daisy Pie!”
Rarity let out a gasp as a much more powerful aura than the one she had seen on either Rainbow Dash or herself erupted from Pinkie. It was enough even to make the royal guard put a gauntlet to his visor and recoil; both from the wind that emanated from her as well as in genuine alarm. This time, the strands of light from the aura didn’t just form a vague humanoid shape but, to Rarity’s astonishment, formed a complete image of a young woman with straight bangs, heavy eyelashes, and a hard if not somewhat indifferent expression. It lasted only a moment before bursting over Pinkie.
Immediately, Pinkie’s clothing became expertly tailored and far more flamboyant, but also closer to her body. The boots became higher and better for travelling, pants emerged on her that fit comfortably but also made of a much smoother fabric, a durable vest came out over a short-sleeved shirt as ribbons and fingerless gloves grew over her hands, and a loose sash tied around her waist. To top it off, a small amount of her pink, poofy hair was swept back so that a long bandanna could be tied around it as a form of cap.
When it was done, Pinkie’s own aura remained just as it did with Rarity and Dash, only burning more strongly and steadily. She also seemed happier and more energetic than ever as she pumped her fists.
“Yay! It’s been waaaaay too long since I got to do that! Alright-y!”
She turned to the royal guard.
“So…you want to try to hit me first, or should I?”
The royal guard didn’t answer. His armor began to spark instead. Rarity gasped on realizing what it meant. “Pinkie, watch-”
Before she could say more, the guard instantly vanished in a crackle of electricity, only to reappear right in front of Pinkie with the end of his spear thrusting forward. Rarity nearly screamed on knowing she had to have just been impaled, but a second afterward she was struck dumb instead.
Although the royal guard had moved in an instant, Pinkie was even faster. She now stood right alongside the spear, smiling with her hands folded behind her—just far enough away for it to miss its mark completely.
“Missed me! Try again! Tee-hee!”
Rarity was stunned. She hadn’t even seen the royal guard move. Or Pinkie, for that matter. The royal guard stood there for a brief second, before his spear crackled instead. In a flash, he twisted his lance around and swung the shaft out for the top of her body.
As easily as if she was made of rubber, Pinkie bent her legs and arched back just long enough to let the spear shaft sail over her head before standing upright again.
“Missed me again!”
The guard hesitated only a fraction of a second before advancing on her, using both hands to swing his lance about in a combative figure eight. The spear tip and the shaft swung down and at her again and again. Yet without even breaking a sweat, Pinkie coolly stepped backward and made just the right movement each time to let both spear shaft and tip sail right past her. He couldn’t even get close enough to slice off one of her pink hairs.
He finished off by snapping back and driving his shaft forward, but Pinkie answered by instantly performing a backflip—one that kept her in midair just long enough for the spear tip to lash out and hit absolutely nothing. When the royal guard drew it back, she landed again, giggling all the while.
“Missed me! Missed me! Now ya’ gotta kiss me! He-he-he!” she giggled, before blowing him a raspberry.
The royal guard didn’t respond; only began to attack her all over again. From close range, he couldn’t use his lance’s ability to shoot lightning, but as soon as it charged again he attempted another lightning-fast move. Yet even as close as he was it was as useless as the first. For a moment, Rarity was transfixed in awe. Pinkie was as nimble and loose as a dead leaf on the wind, and all of the royal guard’s attempts to hit her was like trying to hit the air itself. She never even broke her smile.
What shook Rarity out of it was the feeling of the ground shaking. She snapped away and looked up, only to feel it again soon after but stronger. She realized it had to be whatever the royal guard had mentioned and what they had seen before. And where it was, she knew the rest of the Nighttouched had to be close by. The sun was already on its way down and had nearly cleared the tunnel opening that was allowing the light to shine inside. They couldn’t stay here.
She looked up and about for a way to escape, and soon rested on one. The switch-out track that she was currently on led back to the walls of the tunnel and right toward a small cavern opening. Just inside was a handcar. She was too exhausted to get that far on it, but it was the best they could hope for right now.
As much as it pained her and made her dizzy, she forced herself to get up while Pinkie kept the royal guard busy. As soon as she was on her feet she began to stagger and stumble over to the handcar. It would barely have enough room for the three of them on it, but she had to worry about securing it first. She reached the tunnel and began to grab for the handles to pull herself on top.
Suddenly, the rock wall behind the cart partially burst. Rarity shrieked and fell back again as the monstrous claw of the hexapodal Light Eater emerged from within and swiped at her. She quickly drug herself away, but the rest of the monster didn’t follow. Its limb continued to lash out viciously none the less and she clutched her arm to herself; panting fearfully at how she had nearly been scratched by it.
Yet as she calmed she realized that claw was now keeping her from getting any closer to the monster. Worse than that, the sun was still setting…
For a third time, the royal guard vanished in a flash of light. This time, he reappeared behind Pinkie before thrusting forward. She again slipped to one side, but the spear tip sailed out and just barely ripped a tiny tear into her outer vest as she moved. Quickly he tried to follow up, but she answered by nimbly backflipping three times to gain distance from him.
On planting her feet, she looked down to her side and spotted the tear. “Ooo! You almost got me that time! You are fast!”
The royal guard didn’t answer. He quickly began to charge his spear for a shot instead. Pinkie, however, laced her fingers and gave them a crack before smugly sticking her tongue outside the corner of her mouth and staring at him.
“Guess it’s my turn to make a move.”
In a flash, she took off straight for the royal guard. He looked up slightly in alarm, but then quickly braced himself against his spear. He kept aiming at her as she drew nearer before finally, at only a distance of four yards, he fired a shot.
Even from that close, Pinkie sidestepped so fast that she was actually able to dodge lightning. The very move was so stunning that the armored man was left stunned while Pinkie kept on running right by him. It wasn’t until she was already shooting past that he finally snapped out of it. Quickly he spun around, expecting an attack, but only saw her standing there calmly.
One of her hands lightly tossed a cylindrical object up and down.
“This looked important!”
The royal guard stared a moment longer before he suddenly realized what it was, about the same time he realized that his lance had stopped conducting electricity. He glanced down at it and, sure enough, the entire pommel section that served as the capacitor for the weapon was gone. He snapped back up in disbelief on seeing she had taken it right off of him on passing by.
Rarity, meanwhile, lay on the ground for a moment unsure of what to do. The claw continued to swipe out viciously for anyone, but still the Light Eater wouldn’t come out any further. At least not while the sun was still bearing down. If it went any further it would be in its rays.
That, however, gave her an idea. Quickly she felt about herself. Most of her jewelry and accessories were either left at home or were the worthless type, but she still had her necklace with a glass jewel on it. She quickly pulled it off and held it upright, right into the path of the nearly-vanished sun. Just as she hoped, on striking it beams of sunlight were scattered against the tunnel side. She quickly aimed one of the rays of light on the Light Eater’s claw.
She was almost shocked to see part of its translucent, star-like surface actually swell and bubble like gelatin that had been left to burn. A hissing sound went off as the limb spasmed, before quickly ducking back into the hole.
She dropped the necklace in stunned shock, hardly able to believe that worked, but realized she had little to rejoice about. The giant stomps were getting closer and beginning to shake off bits of dirt and pebbles around the tunnel. Worse than that, the sunlight suddenly vanished. She looked up and saw not only had it ducked under the tunnel opening but the light was rapidly growing dimmer. Just like how it normally did when the shadows over Equestria surged forth…
Terrified as she was, she forced herself up again. Glaring fearfully at the hole in the tunnel wall the whole time, dreading that either the Light Eater or a Nighttouched would flow out at any moment, she swallowed her fear and forced herself to run and crawl onto the top of the pushcart. She grasped the handle and put all of her weight on top of it. As a result, she just barely managed to overcome the inertia and force the pump down. Very slowly the wheels began to turn, and the cart crept out from the opening and into the tunnel.
Pinkie, at the same time, tossed the cylinder aside, aimed herself, and ran at the royal guard again. He dashed out to meet her with his lance swinging. She, in turn, calmly forward flipped once to land on her legs, sprung off of them to avoid the tip while gracefully vaulting over the royal guard’s head (reaching out to playfully tag him on the helmet as she hurled through midair), and landed on his opposite side.
He quickly whirled around and lashed out with his spear again, but she forward flipped one more time to get clear. As soon as she landed, she held up some metal fasteners. He stared at them a moment before looking back to his armor. The right breastplate was now hanging loose from it.
“Huh…this one’s not as much.” She shrugged and tossed it away too. “Ah well!”
She spun around just as the royal guard lunged at her, swinging fiercely and furiously at her. It bore no more successful fruit than the previous occasions. Without ever losing her smile, she nimbly and easily backpedaled to avoid each and every swipe. Nevertheless, he continued to go at her, for he was backing her up toward one of the tunnel walls to hopefully pin her there long enough for a strike.
Yet no sooner had he finally forced her back against it when she ducked instead of sidestepped and ran past him. This time, he heard a large hiss from his side. Before even looking at Pinkie, he glanced down to his hip and saw one of the lines for the armor was gone, and it was now jetting out steam like a deflating balloon.
He looked back up to Pinkie to see her excitedly hopping while holding onto a bit of piping. “Oh! Oh! This one was!”
The royal guard hesitated. He glanced down at the latest damage he had incurred, and then looked up at the tunnel opening. The sunlight was gone and it was rapidly getting darker. The tunnel was now rhythmically shaking. Finally, the echoes of the Nighttouched were beginning to come up from other side tunnels along the way. He looked back down at Pinkie, who was grinning hopefully back at him.
After a second more, he finally rose to full height and shifted the lance to his side. He snapped around and took off back up the tunnel the way he had come.
The pink-haired woman slumped. “Awww! I was having fun!”
“Pinkie!”
“Hmm?” She looked up, just in time to see Rarity struggling with all her might as well as all of her weight to pump the handle on the handcart. It was only rolling at about two miles per hour, but it slowly got onto the track. “Oh, hi Rarity! What’cha doin’?”
She grimaced a little at her obliviousness, before she gestured ahead. “Do you think you can get Ms. Dash onto this?”
“Noooo problem!” At once, she turned and happily trotted over to the Huntsman. Rarity could see she was starting to come around, but considering how hard it was for her to keep pumping the handcart she had to devote all of her focus to that. She heard Nighttouched noises from the cavern where she obtained it, and she began to see little yellow eyes arise from the growing darkness.
Fortunately, Pinkie, whether due to enhancement or her own strength, easily picked Dash up, put her over a shoulder, and skipped back to the handcart. She set her down on top before bouncing onto it herself.
Dash’s eyes cracked open as she winced. “G…Gil…da… We…we can’t leave her…”
“Rainbow Dash, there’s no way for us to get to her,” Rarity ruefully answered as she struggled to pump the handle again. “And if we stay here any longer, none of us will make it out of here! We just have to hope she could find her way!”
Dash still looked back at the collapsed tunnel. She reached out a hand toward it briefly, but could only wince and stare at it anxiously. Finally she let out a curse and let it fall before she forced her head to look away. The anguish Rarity saw on her face was stronger than any she had seen come from her physical pain. It made her uncomfortable, but she had no choice but to keep pumping.
Pinkie herself looked behind her. The darkness was reaching night levels now and, as a result, the first few small Nighttouched began to come out of the cavern where the hand cart had resided. She looked back forward. “Hey Rarity, need any help pumping?”
Rarity grit her teeth as she tried to push the handle up again, but almost rolled her eyes at the question. “Yes, any help would be much appreciate-eeeeEED!”
Her sardonic comment turned into a squeal as Pinkie cheerfully grabbed on and began to pump as if the handle was nothing more than a jack-in-the-box crank. She went so fast that Rarity found herself pried loose, right before she cried out again as the force of the handcart taking off threw her on top of Dash’s legs. She looked up in astonishment, for in no time at all Pinkie had propelled them up to a good 40 kilometers per hour. They were soon leaving the Nighttouched behind and racing down the tunnel fast enough to feel wind in their faces.
Alarmed, Rarity looked forward at the path ahead. It seemed clear, but she was just in time to see them roll up to and through a switching station. As they went past, she saw one line of track sharply break off in one direction while they stayed on the current one.
A memory of what Gilda had said came to mind, and she looked anxious for a moment. In the end, however, she only sighed and laid back as she realized there was nothing else for it.
All she could hope for now was that this cart was taking them far away from the Nighttouched and wherever the giant Light Eater was going.
About five seconds after the bell tower finished sounding its last chime across the castle courtyard, the doors to the chapel swung open. A group of children in uniforms began to file out in a pair of neat rows. As they made their way down the front stairs, their teacher came out behind them; already being forced to shout to those in front to “walk please” before they could burst into a run and shove past anyone on the courtyard walkway as they headed to the gardens to play.
Once the last of them were out, the other attendees began to leave at their own rate. Most of them were adults or very small children with their families, but mixed in with the rest was a fiery-haired girl also dressed in a uniform. However, neither the teacher, the other students, or anyone else involved with the academy gave it any mind as she went down the steps; keeping her head low and not making eye contact with anyone.
Nevertheless, by the time she reached the walkway, the two rows of students had already broken off and dispersed. One group of three girls remained behind, chatting with each other, until they spotted her. “Hey Sunset!”
The fiery-haired girl slowed in her step but didn’t stop and looked up to them.
“We need another player for badminton! Want to join us?”
“No thanks,” she answered in a rather distracted away, before lowering her head and resuming her former speed.
It wasn’t long before she had left both them and the chapel far behind and was walking more or less alone across the courtyard. She glanced up to the clock tower and noted the time, but sighed to herself soon afterward on remember that the last day of the week was a free one. She’d have the library more or less to herself, though, considering none of the other students would be there. With that, she took the path that crossed directly across the courtyard to minimize her distance.
It didn’t take long to see the library building up ahead, even while it was still rather far off, thanks to the open space in the middle of the castle grounds. However, she only walked a short distance before her eyes drifted to toward the largest structure on the grounds.
Although the royal palace stretched out farther and ultimately took the most space in Canterlot, the great spired structure right in the center stood the highest above the whole of the courtyard. Towering a good 450 feet in the air was the Canterlot Cathedral. Majestic, expertly crafted, without the slightest sign of moss or cracks upon it. It was in many ways more picturesque than the main palace itself. Sunset remembered how the headmistress told her that all of the Cathedrals of Harmonia were made such that they would be representations of Divine Perfection; a vision of the halls of paradise. Sunset had seen many pictures in books of them and the other great cathedrals of the world, but this one stood far above and beyond them. The architecture was not only majestic but of a style that she had never seen anywhere else. Not only art, but a truly unique work of art.
It was for that very reason that Sunset often found her eyes looking to its front doors, which stood padlocked and chained shut that day as they had every other day since she arrived.
She stared at it a short while before continuing to the library.
The headmistress used only one finger to draw a small symbol in the air, before she extended and flexed her hand. In response, the stack of circular cards flew up of their own accord and across the practice chamber like a flock of birds. As soon as they were a good distance from her, one after another they began to flip vertically and show their colors.
Sunset twisted her mouth a bit in concentration, but also smiled with a look eager to rise to the challenge. Bracing her casting arm with her opposite one, she quickly began to rattle off spells. The first card was red; her favorite element. It took less than half a second for her to conjure a fireball to turn it to ash. The next was green. It took her a bit longer to get off the whirlwind spell, but it succeeded and crumpled it up in its tempest. There was another after that followed by another red, both of which she dealt with far more easily.
Blue came next. Last time she had seen this, she had ended up using the wrong spell, but since then she had been practicing. Rather than performing the icicle formation, she did a bit of water conjuration to fling a sphere of liquid at it and soak it to the point of deterioration. Another fireball after that, then a tan card. This one was the hardest. It took her so long that the next color (green again) was shown before she dealt with it, but she forced a rock to break off from the floor and to strike it. Following the next green came a light blue, and this time she hit it perfectly with an ice crystal.
Twenty more flowed outward from there, and Sunset dealt with each and every one. She broke a sweat and was breathing a bit hard toward the end, especially so close to afternoon tea, but she held on and forced the spells to keep coming.
The third to last one, however, was yellow. And no sooner had it turned than the next one afterward did the same, exposing another yellow, and another after that for a third yellow. Three lightning cards. No doubt meant to push her to her limit. Lightning magic was hard to control even at her best, and hitting three targets one after another would push any student at her age.
Almost any.
Sunset grinned even wider before clenching her jaw. She grasped her spell arm even tighter and let out just one small grunt before she performed a far more complicated gesture. Her skin strained a bit as she felt something inside her being “pulled”, but she stuck with it.
As a result a single bolt of lightning projected and broke into three different branches: each one hitting a target simultaneously. All three were taken out together.
Sunset exhaled a deep breath and let her hand fall afterward, but she nevertheless lit up again on hearing the headmistress. “Oh my!”
She turned and saw Celestia marveling over her.
“That was amazing, Sunset! I didn’t think you would be ready for a move that advanced for another half of a year! Very well done!”
Although she felt a bit dizzy, she smiled again. “Heh…no problem for your star student…”
Celestia saw how exhausted the girl looked, and cracked the corner of her mouth wider. “Oh really? In that case, I’m guessing we can skip tea and go straight into the next lesson?”
Sunset’s smile fell, turning to anxiety. “Actually, I didn’t eat a lot for breakfast, so…I think I’d like just a tiny break.”
The older woman laughed as she patted Sunset on the shoulder. “Of course. Besides, even if you’re still feeling up for more, I think I could go for a bit of a rest this afternoon.”
She raised her hand and gestured around the rotundra. The fragments of the targets that Sunset had destroyed were rapidly gathered up in a whirlwind and carried away to a waste container at the edge of it, before a few more gestures gathered up the remaining targets and tools they had used. Another spell afterward took the pieces of the room that had been damaged, replaced them, and quickly patched them. After that, a final spell sent a thin wave of water to gently glide about the room; cleaning it from top to bottom. Once all was in order, Sunset had caught her breath and both she and Celestia walked to the side of the chamber. It seemed to be just into an ordinary wall, but on reaching it she spoke a word of power to it. At once, it separated and opened wide into a concealed door. The two exited and it automatically shut again behind them, sealing their private practice chamber once again.
A minute later, both were back in the headmistress’ office. Sunset lit up on seeing one of Celestia’s attendants had already brought the cart with their usual three-plate “tower” for tea time. The aroma was a bit different today, but still smelled wonderful. She had to suppress the urge to hop into the comfy chair across from Celestia’s own seat. As soon as the headmistress levitated the tea trays over to them, she was so eager that she took up her plate and nearly jumped right in.
Celestia gave her a look as she did that said “mind your manners”. She froze where she was, then grinned bashfully as she leaned back in her seat and calmly unfolded her napkin across her waist and set her plate down on her side. Only then did she draw herself up and ask. “May I?”
She nodded. “Yes you may.”
Much more calmly, Sunset took her helping of a scone, jam, butter, cucumber sandwich, salmon sandwich, and chicken salad croissant. As for Celestia, she took up setting the teacups in front of her and raised the teapot to pour.
“We’ll be having something a bit different today. This is a ‘white tea’. It tastes a bit lighter and it has citrus inside it.”
“What’s citrus?”
“Things like oranges and lemons.”
“Oh! Sounds neat!”
She finished pouring Sunset’s cup. “Sugar?”
“Two lumps, please.”
“Really? You don’t want to try it without it first?”
“Nah, I like candied oranges.”
Celestia chuckled before giving her two lumps and passing it over. She stirred as Celestia finished pouring her own cup. Only when both had their teacups in their hands and had looked to one another for confirmation did they both take a sip; studying the other’s reactions the whole time.
On lowering her own cup, Celestia turned her head to one side and thought over the flavor. Sunset herself swished her mouth a little.
“What do you think?”
“I can’t taste that much lemon or orange.”
“It’s nice, but I don’t think I’m ready to give up my Roasted Chestnut.”
“I like Trottingham Breakfast better.”
Both set their respective cups down and went to work. Sunset, as she usually did, dove right into her cucumber sandwich while Celestia went to work buttering and jamming her scone. As always, she was so precise and delicate that not a single crumb was spilled. Sunset always made a mess of it whenever she tried.
“So, any questions for me today?”
Sunset nodded around a bite of sandwich but waited to swallow before speaking. “Can only people who have a Promethian Sigil do magic?”
“The short answer is yes, but it’s far more complicated than that. The truth is not everyone who has one can do magic either. It has to do with the role. Remember how you told me you noticed that my sigil wasn’t quite the same as yours?”
“Uh-huh.”
“That’s because your sigil is for the Caster. Mine is for the Healer.”
Sunset paused in her eating, glancing down at the symbol on her hand before looking up to the one on Celestia’s. “What’s the ‘Caster’ and ‘Healer’?”
“The best way to think about it is what role someone has innately. What they can do without pushing themselves in any new direction or trying to be more than what they are already.”
“Role?”
“Think of that like an occupation. A job. Like a baker or a singer or a mason.”
Sunset looked again to her symbol and Celestia’s.
“And…what does a ‘Healer’ do?”
“Healers are wielders of the forces of creation and harmony.”
“And…a ‘Caster’?”
“Their opposite. A Caster wields the forces of destruction and chaos.”
The girl looked unnerved to hear that. Moments later, she looked at her hand again and began to grow uncomfortable. “But…does that…that mean that I’m supposed to destroy things?”
Celestia caught this, and immediately put her scone down and focused entirely on the girl.
“Isn’t that…bad?”
“Sunset.”
She looked up to the headmistress. She was fixing her on the spot with her scholarly look, but her eyes remained kind and gentle.
“If you were in a shipwreck but you managed to swim to shore, and you were soaking wet and freezing, what would you do?”
The girl was a little puzzled by the question, but shrugged. “I…I guess I’d build a fire to keep warm.”
“And then what?”
“Find something I could eat…”
“And then?”
“Um…build a shelter?”
“Really?” Celestia’s voice turned into a tone of faux surprise. “Are you telling me you’d willingly cause a fire, rip apart plants and animals, and ruin trees by killing them and cutting them into smaller pieces? You’d destroy all of those things so recklessly, Sunset?”
The girl was struck mute. Yet as she sat there silently she began to realize what Celestia was saying.
“Creation and destruction, harmony and chaos, are both necessary for proper balance of the world, Sunset. It’s never just a matter of one or the other. It’s not enough to practice harmony and call yourself good or practice chaos and call yourself evil. If a tyrant establishes harsh laws that reduce people to slavery and oppression, he’s created harmony. If a hero comes along who breaks those same laws to free slaves and incite people to overthrow the tyrant, he’s created chaos. It always comes down to how you choose to use what you have.”
Sunset leaned back and thought about that for a time. After a minute she began to nibble on her sandwich again and looked up to Celestia once more. “But…I’ve seen you do the kind of spells I use before.”
“Healer is only my base role, Sunset. As I told you, it only represents what I am innately. I’ve grown past that original role by now. And one day, I expect you to do the same.”
Sunset smiled at that, although she honestly couldn’t tell if it was with a touch of anxiety or pride. She finished the rest of her sandwich and washed it down with a good amount of tea. Soon after, she subconsciously straightened in her chair. Perhaps she had pushed herself too hard, but her midsection was feeling uncomfortable. By then, Celestia had returned to her scone.
“Headmistress?”
“Yes, Sunset?”
“What’s the cathedral in the middle of the courtyard?”
She smiled as she finished dressing her scone. “My great, great, great grandparents were very devoted to the Harmonium faith. They wanted to build a Cathedral of Harmonia, and so they ended up building that same one in the courtyard. They named it Coronam De Caelesti Nuntio, but they never lived to see it past the foundation. It wasn’t until my grandparents were old men and women that the final stone was laid.”
“I noticed…we always go to service in the castle chapel. We never go in there. It’s always locked.”
Celestia nodded as she took a bite. “That it is. It’s been locked ever since it was finished. Locked since before I was born.”
Sunset shifted in place uncomfortably. She definitely pushed herself too hard. “But why? Why build a cathedral and not open it?”
“Simple. It’s not ready yet.”
“Not ready?”
“It’s still waiting for the right time.”
Sunset’s face began to tighten. It was getting a bit harder to focus on the conversation. “What right time?”
“When my family made that cathedral, they didn’t just intend for it to be like the others. They meant for it to be a palace. A throne. While everyone who follows Harmonia worships in chapels or their own cathedrals because they represent the heavens, my great, great, great grandparents intended for this to be used when the ones who dwell in the heavens finally came down.”
Sunset didn’t really hear the last of this, for by now she was clutching her side. Her face was twisted and wincing. There was not only a distinct pain in her side now, but it was growing stronger. Sharper. More like a knife…
Celestia set down her scone. “Sunset? Is something wrong?”
“It just…it…” She cut herself off, for the pain was growing so strong that she was having to regulate her breathing to subside it. It only grew hotter and stronger yet, though.
“Sunset, what’s the matter?” She began to rise; not that the girl noticed. “What’s happening? What’s hurting?”
She tried to speak, but it was too late for that. All that came out was an anguished moan that quickly turned into a cry. She could feel burning and throbbing, like a hot coal was in her side, and it blocked out all other senses. She tried to get up, tried to call for Celestia to help, but she couldn’t take it. All she managed to do was inch forward in her chair, but that only made the pain more intense.
With one more yell, she spilled forward so suddenly she smacked her head against the edge of Celestia’s desk, and then darkness.
Sunset wasn’t sure how much time had passed before she finally heard the familiar ticking of the clock in her room. All she knew, as her senses came back to her, was that she was far from Celestia’s office. She felt the familiar comfort of her own bed and sheets, and the darkness about her indicated it was night. Nevertheless, a faint glow was on her right that had to be from her nightstand oil lamp.
Her memories slowly returned, but when they did she recalled the intense, crippling pain she had felt before oblivion. It was gone now though. She felt fine, aside from the fact that she was rather sweaty.
Why was that…?
“Sunset?”
Hearing a kind, familiar voice caused the girl’s eyes to open even as she tried to remember what could have made her so hot. She turned at the same time and found Headmistress Celestia seated in a chair near her nightstand. Her clothing was looser and a bit disheveled, and she had a basin and a cloth nearby. It took Sunset only a moment to realize she had been tending to her.
She leaned in as soon as she was up. “Are you alright? How do you feel?”
Hearing the concern in her voice puzzled Sunset a little; not thinking it had been that bad. She had only strained herself too much, hadn’t she?
“I’m fine. I feel fine. What are you doing here, Headmistress?”
At first, Celestia smiled in relief. “That’s great to hear. You looked like you were having a terrible nightmare. And you got so hot I was afraid you had gotten a fever from infection.”
This confused the child even more. “What…fever? Infection?” She began to look around. “How…how long was I asleep? Have I been here since two o’clock?”
Celestia’s expression became rueful. “Sunset,” she spoke more solemnly, “I’m afraid it was a bit worse than that. You collapsed in my office at tea time three days ago.”
Immediately she turned back to Celestia—shocked at what she just heard.
“Sweetie, you got very sick, very quickly. You had something called ‘appendicitis’.”
She was almost too nervous to ask. “What’s…appendicitis?”
“You have a little organ inside you called an appendix. Sometimes when you’re growing something happens that causes it to get very sick, which is when we say it got an infection. When that happens, it starts to hurt very, very badly, and it’s in danger of breaking open. If it does that, whoever has one could get very sick. Even die. That’s why it’s very important that someone who gets sick like that have their appendix removed. The castle surgeon had to operate on you right away as soon as we found out what was wrong with you.”
The girl looked even more nervous at that. The thought of an operation was enough to make her shake all over. Especially one she didn’t remember.
“It’s ok, it’s ok,” Celestia soothed. “Everything went just fine. You won’t miss it at all. Did you feel any different when you woke up?”
Sunset paused. While her mind was conjuring all sorts of fears now, she had to admit she hadn’t felt any different aside from the sweat and lack of pain on waking up.
Celestia reached out and pulled back her covers enough to touch alongside her abdomen. “See?” she asked as she ran her hand along it. “You can’t feel anything. I healed you up myself as soon as it was out. You won’t even have a scar. It’ll be like nothing ever happened.”
Sunset, as disbelieving children tend to do, reached out and felt for herself. However, there was nothing. Her skin was just the same as always and she felt fine. Nevertheless, she remained shaken up on hearing all of that.
“But you were tossing and turning a lot while you woke up from the operation. I was afraid something else had gone wrong.” She reached over for the cloth. After putting it in the basin again, she brought it over and wiped Sunset’s forehead. She had to admit it felt very good, and just listening to the headmistress and knowing she was there began to ease her fear. “Were you having a nightmare?”
Sunset leaned back into her pillow. She looked back at Celestia for a while, not only still uneasy but thinking it over. “I…I think I was, now that I’m trying to remember.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
She shook her head. “I can’t remember what it was about. Just that I had one.”
“What do you remember?”
Sunset paused. She closed her eyes, but just like any other nightmare the memory was fading fast. And this time, it had gone away so quickly that she hadn’t even realized she had one until Celestia suggested it. However, there was one thing that stood out in her mind.
“This…place…with all these rough blocks put together…like a dungeon… People were talking…”
She shook her head.
“I can’t remember any more.”
Celestia replaced the cloth. “Do you want me to stay here with you until you fall back to sleep?”
The girl nodded. “I’d like that. Thank you, headmistress.”
She smiled and nodded back before leaning back in her chair. She dimmed the lamp again, and all was quiet. Sunset exhaled and began to ease back into bed.
Her brow furrowed.
“Headmistress?”
“Yes, Sunset?”
The girl remained quiet. She lay there silently a few moments.
“…Nothing. It’s nothing.”
She closed her eyes and exhaled. The unsaid question lingered on her lips a few moments more before she let it fade. She assumed that she’d forget it by morning and that would be that.
However, she still remembered it the next morning, and continued to remember it every day afterward.
“What’s an ‘Angra Mainyu’?”
“…Excuse me, ma’am?”
Sunset looked up from the window on hearing the voice of the first mate. She turned and looked, and saw her staring back in puzzlement.
She gave her a sour look. “Nothing,” she half-muttered before turning back to the window.
The first mate resumed going about her task, while Sunset looked to the cigarette in her fingers. Burned almost down to the tips. With a frown, she tossed it on the floor and crushed it under her boot before getting out another one. Ever since she had started this ‘mission’ she had been zoning out from time to time; a fact that made her visibly more irritated every time it happened. She almost angrily jutted the fresh cigarette in her mouth and lit up, before she took an especially long drag and blew it all out through her nostrils.
Dawn was still a few hours away but there was plenty to see outside. The last flyby they had made showed the giant Light Eater wasn’t deviating from its path in the slightest. Nevertheless, unless one had an airship and happened to be flying near the mountains like they were, there wasn’t much chance of spotting it. It was keeping right to the middle en route to its destination at the bay to the south; right through the east side of Grifftham City according to the navigator.
They were much further south now; where the mountains began to narrow. The giant Light Eater would be there by the time the sun rose, most likely, but for now Sunset was using the location for its view of Griffonstone. Even she was reluctant to open fire in there, considering the tentative partnership with Trottingham. Getting the regent into fights with established enemies was no skin off her nose, but firing on Griffonstone would likely get a fleet of Trottingham airships dispatched with orders to shoot the Rising Sun down. And from this high, far above the smog and filth of the country, she could see she was not alone.
Griffonstone was so narrow at this point she could see clean across for miles to the former border of Cloudsdale. She counted at least four sets of lights in the air at her elevation, obviously Fillydelphian airships. They were likely looking right back at her and had heard the news from Appleloosa about Trottingham airships attacking. Likely the Griffonstone territory was the only thing keeping them from getting closer.
Things were definitely heating up.
However, they weren’t her only concern either. It had been hours since she had dispatched her greatest asset, and he still hadn’t returned. While it was possible he had been waylaid, it was also very possible he was dead. Either way, the indication was that his quarry had likely escaped, which made Sunset rather upset at this point.
Not the least because they had picked up another Anima Viri being used to its full potential within the mines, meaning that she could have been among them…
“Lady Sunset.”
She looked up again to the bridge; spotting one of the crew on the voicepipe.
“Monitor reports spotting the Endeavor on the Starboard. They’re signaling.”
“Well, what are they saying?”
“Stand by,” she answered before pressing her head to the voice pipe. “Operator is translating.”
Sunset fully turned to her and crossed her arms; her impatience showing a bit more as she took another drag and exhaled. It took some time before the officer was finally able to pull away.
“My lady, the Endeavor identified your primary target on a beached cattle barge moving down the river along with at least one other individual bearing a Promethian Sigil.”
Sunset’s irritation evaporated as she nearly dropped her cigarette. “And did they capture her?”
“Unfortunately no. One of the ship’s gunners got too antsy and fired upon the boat.”
For a brief instant, Sunset’s face stared back blankly; right before twisting in absolute rage.
“They did what?!”
Everyone in the bridge stiffened at their consoles. Not only had none of them ever heard Sunset yell that loudly or sharply, but in that instant the temperature in the room suddenly rose ten degrees. Their leader herself looked about ready to set the entire place on fire. It took all the crewmember on the voicepipe had not to cower.
“And here I thought that crew was supposed to be the smart ones! How many times have I told you all that I wanted her alive?! What’s so complicated to understand about that?!”
“She survived the attack!”
Sunset’s face remained wrenched in fury, but eased slightly. The officer at the voicepipe herself was sweating quite a bit now, for their captain looked moments from “shooting the messenger”. Seeing her hesitate, she swallowed and kept speaking quickly.
“They report she survived and was washed down the river! They followed at a distance to avoid her spotting them again and saw that she surfaced downstream! They weren’t able to follow her from there but she has to be headed for Grifftham City! It’s the only way she can go!”
Sunset continued to stand there with her face incensed. She studied the officer as if still deciding whether or not to take this out on her.
After a few moments, she finally eased. Calming herself fully she rose again. She took a deep breath and exhaled, then raised her cigarette for another drag. As she slowly blew out the smoke, she became calm again and tossed the rest of the tobacco away before smiling.
“Alright then, this will work out. Send them this message and make sure we pass it along to the Prodigy once we reach it: we’re all headed for Grifftham City. And as soon as we arrive, dismount and deploy. We’re finding everyone with a Promethian Sigil and taking them with us. We’ll sort them out later.”
No one on the bridge moved. A few crewmembers swallowed.
Sunset didn’t react at first, but several seconds passed with no change. At that point, she put her hands on her hips as her smile vanished again. “Was I not clear that what I just said was an order?”
“My lady,” the first mate spoke up, “Grifftham City is right in the path of that Light Eater. There could be hundreds of smaller ones with it, and hundreds of thousands of Nighttouched-”
“Y’know,” Sunset cut off, crossing her arms, “I’m getting the impression that all of you are rather scared of the Light Eaters in spite of the countermeasures I personally built into these airships. Perhaps more scared of them than anything else.”
The bridge was silent. The crew looked at Sunset attentively but uncomfortably.
Her eyes narrowed as she began to raise her hand. The first of the five runes on it began to blaze.
“Maybe I need to remind you all who you really need to be scared of. Or maybe you need to remind me why I recruited you in the first place when you can’t even do what I say…”
In a snap, the crew whirled around to their controls and went to work. Soon she could hear the sounds of the engines humming and the course being laid in.
Sunset smirked as she lowered her hand. “That’s better.” Spinning around, she looked out the window again. “Oh, spotlight operator?”
“M-Ma’am?”
“Send another message back to the Endeavor. Tell the captain not to bother punishing their gunner. I’ll handle that once we’re done in Grifftham City.”
Twilight didn’t dignify Applejack’s shout with a response. At the moment, she was pressed so hard onto the back of the horse she was on that she looked as if she was trying to bond herself to it. Fluttershy, riding a bit behind her and falling further back, was a different story. While her own horse was taking his time, she seemed to be pleasantly enjoying her more leisurely canter.
Nevertheless, when she heard Applejack shouting from the back of her own horse, she leaned over to her mount’s head. “I’m sorry, Clark. I know you’re doing your best to make this a comfortable ride, and you’re doing a wonderful job of it, but we kind of need to be at Grifftham City soon. Would it be too much trouble to go a bit faster?”
The horse let out a bit of a whinny before increasing his speed. Seeming to pick up on Fluttershy’s talking, the horse bearing Twilight quickly sped up as well—much to her chagrin. She clutched her even tighter than before as she went into a faster gallop.
“Thank you so much!”
Applejack rolled her eyes but didn’t question it. As much as she wanted to show herself the superior rider, the horses they had “borrowed” were being far more accommodating for Fluttershy than her. As soon as they had learned the news from Twilight it became clear they didn’t have time to walk the rest of the way to Griffonstone. Fortunately, as they went down the road they spotted what Applejack hoped was an abandoned corral and Fluttershy, who admitted she could manage animals better than had been affected by Nighttouched rather than “normal” animals, nevertheless managed to tame a trio of horses and, according to her, got their consent to help them. The only problem was they had to leave Spike behind as he couldn’t match pace with the horses, but Twilight assured them that he would catch up as soon as they stopped.
Most of the country they had run through was either abandoned or uncultivated. Yet as the sun began to rise (something they were all grateful to see), they saw the land gradually cleared and turned to sparse grass and scrubland. The sky rapidly filled with a thick haze that had to be industrial smog from a major city. The road they were on gradually widened and switched to wagon tracks.
Finally, as the country flattened out, they saw it. Sprawled along the horizon in the distance was what had to be Grifftham City. Most cities in the world had long since been turned into grimy, metal eyesores by modern industry, but even among the worst offenders it stood apart. It seemed to be wreathed in fog even this early in the morning, although all three of them knew full well it was the various factories and businesses pumping out coal vapors. The engines and machines that filled the city had to all be a good ten years out of date, but none of them had been replaced or even well-serviced. What buildings they could make out in the haze were stained black wherever they hadn’t turned red or green with rust and oxidation. Applejack and Fluttershy, both used to much cleaner country living, began to cough even on the approach.
“That city stinks…” the farmer grumbled.
Twilight, who by now was forcing herself to push up from her mount this close to their destination, wrinkled her own nose. “It definitely is worse than anywhere in Fillydelphia or Manehattan, but that’s not important right now. It’s going to be much worse than this pretty soon.”
Drawing closer along the road, they soon spotted the actual boundary between Mount Aris and Griffonstone. It wasn’t hard to miss. Unlike with Appleloosa, both sides had built up their respective defenses on a strip of land that acted as a boundary. However, while Mount Aris continued to rely on their simple palisades, Griffonstone had made use of the rubble it had accumulated over eight years of periodic wars to construct a more formidable stone wall topped with jagged rocks stretching all along the border in both directions.
A small watch tower was posted at a wide iron gate, long enough to block the entire road. As soon as they came around, they saw several Griffonstone soldiers materialize both in front of the gate and from the tower. Mount Aris soldiers, on the other hand, were nowhere to be seen, but that only made sense as most of them had to be to the northwest expecting the next Nighttouched surge.
The three didn’t even manage to make it all the way to the gate before they saw the soldiers, six in all, begin to ready their weapons and take aim. One picked up a megaphone and shouted. “Halt!”
Applejack yanked her reins to bring her horse to a halt. Fluttershy, on her part, managed to simply tell her own horse to stop. Twilight was a different matter entirely. She was soon screaming in panic as the horse kept going right past Applejack and straight for the gate; only getting wilder when the border guards answered by leveling their guns at her.
“Oh dear…” Fluttershy muttered, before putting a hand to her mouth. “Tony! Could you please stop? I think we’ve arrived!”
The horse instantly planted its feet to halt, nearly throwing Twilight out of the saddle. Fortunately, she was grasping the pommel so tightly that she merely did a brief hop out of it before settling back in. Nevertheless, for a moment she could only stare forward blankly and struggle to regain her wits.
The guards didn’t wait long. “This crossing is closed to all foreigners!” the one on the megaphone shouted. “Clear out now!”
“Wait…wait!” Twilight managed to yell back, finally composing herself enough to raise her hand. “You have to let us in! We have to see your mayor…council…governor…whoever is in charge in Grifftham City! It’s extremely important and there isn’t much time!”
“I said the crossing is closed! All Arisians are barred from entry! Get out of here now!”
“Listen to us!” Her voice began to firm up as she regained more of her composure. “This city is going to be torn apart in just a few hours! Maybe less! There’s over ten thousand Nighttouched headed right this way!”
A few of the border guards lowered their weapons at that, but only to scoff at the three of them. The one with the megaphone actually snorted, lowering it long enough to turn to the others and mutter something before holding it up again. “What kind of prank are you trying to pull? The shadow of Equestria is over a hundred and fifty miles from here and every wire in Greater Everfree is saying the next hit is gonna happen in Appleloosa! Think up a better story than that if you’re trying to smuggle your way across!”
“Ya’ thick-headed sons of bitches!” Applejack shouted, spurring her horse to draw closer to Twilight’s side so she could be heard better. “Unless ya’ve been up north, don’t tell us ‘bout where the next surge is comin’! We just saw it ourselves and we almost got burnt ta’ a crisp ‘cause of it!”
Fluttershy winced a little at the exchange, but slowly pulled her own horse forward. “Um, ex-excuse me…but my companions really are telling the truth. I saw it last night too, so…um…I’m wondering if you might…make a little exception.”
Even if the border guards had heard Fluttershy, which was severely unlikely considering even Twilight and Applejack hadn’t heard her from a few yards away, they didn’t look ready to change. “Are you three deaf or stupid?” the one with the megaphone snapped. “I said the border was closed to foreigners! Now you can either turn your horses right around now or-”
“Hey! Marshal!”
The sound of her companion calling her made the border guard growl as she lowered her megaphone. “What is it now?”
The guard pointed. “Check out their hands!”
Not only the marshal but the other guards took a look. Twilight, Applejack, and Fluttershy all flashed a shade pale. They had been so busy dragging themselves from the river and worried about having a good grasp on the reins of the horses they “borrowed” that they had all, at one point or another, left their hands uncovered. Their Promethian Sigils were all clearly displayed, and while they may have been far enough where they weren’t noticeable at first, now attention had been drawn to them.
Applejack quickly crossed her opposite hand on top of her first and Fluttershy flat out crossed her arm behind her. The fact they tried to hide it only made it more obvious.
“They’ve got those things on their hands the Appleloosans are squawking about!”
“They’re trying to break into Griffonstone!”
Twilight began to wince. “Uh, you know what?” She began to grin nervously. “You’re right. We shouldn’t be here. We’ll be on our way-”
All six guns aimed at her the moment her hand moved to the reins.
“Get off the horses! You three are coming with us!”
“Don’t try anything funny!”
Twilight cringed. She turned and looked at Applejack and Fluttershy, but they were no better. They were caught now. If they tried to use their respective sigils, they’d be shot before they could finish the incantations. Applejack could only wince and sit there at a loss of what to do. Fluttershy began to sink lower on the back of her horse and whimper.
“I said get off! Now!”
Twilight started to sweat. She looked back, trying to think of what to say or do. Applejack swished her mouth, one of her hands itching to go for her hammer. Fluttershy almost began to cover her eyes.
Before she could, however, she looked up and to the side. A bird was tweeting loudly, and a moment later it flew out of the smog and gloom and swept past her. At once, her face lightened up again.
“Oh, it’s Meadowlark! She made it!” she called happily. “That must mean Angel and the others made it here too!”
Distracted, Applejack turned to her. “Huh?”
Suddenly, a swarm of mice, squirrels, and other large rodents popped right out of inconspicuous holes in the ground near one of the guards and attacked. He cried out as they immediately bowled him over and crawled on top of him clawing and snapping. A flock of birds, angrily chirping all the way, quickly fell upon another at the same time; surprising her and sending her stumbling over herself in a panic.
A third guard turned to her partner being assaulted, only to find a hissing, spitting trio of raccoons jumping on top of him and biting and scratching at his face. The fourth, the marshal herself on the small tower, heard her comrades crying out and tried to run to the edge to see what was going on, only to have a pair of foxes dart out from around the edge of the upper platform and cross in front of her feet. The end result was her crying out and tripping, falling right over the railing and nearly going off the tower all together. It was only by releasing her gun and megaphone that she was able to seize the railing at the last moment, but she still ended up dangling in midair over the side.
The last two border guards turned their weapons to counterattack, but they didn’t get farther than lifting them up. One found a bear on its hind legs standing one foot in front of him. It stared him down for a moment, immobilizing him in fear and rendering him unable to move let alone fire, before it casually swung out and smacked his gun out of his hands so hard that it bent in half. The last one found the end of her gun barrel slapped away from its target by a white rabbit jumping up and batting it with its feet. A second later, the same ball of fluff leapt up again and drove its legs right into the guard’s throat, hitting hard and gagging her. Shocked and in pain, she spilled over; leaving her at the perfect angle for the bunny to leap and drive its feet repeatedly against her head with the force of a small power tool. One last kick actually sent her sprawling back onto her rear end.
Twilight and Applejack were left stunned at the pained, shocked, and struggling guards in the wake of the animal assault. Fluttershy, meanwhile, smiled and clasped her hands in delight. “Oh, you’re all ok! I’m so happy!”
The guard who had been faced by the bear, now finding himself unarmed, quickly turned and ran for it. The bear didn’t give chase, but instead moved over to the edge of the iron gate. His huge jaws clamped down on the lock and disengaged it, before he began to yank it open. At the same time, the marshal grunted as she began to pull herself back up on the tower platform. She soon had her upper body over the edge, and Twilight spotted she was trying to pull herself closer to a switch. Judging by the fact that cables strung from it to the top of the tower, where a pair of loudspeakers were perched, she guessed it was some sort of alarm system.
Applejack spotted that as well and spun to Twilight. “What d’we do?”
She exhaled tiredly. “I guess we don’t look a gift rabbit in the mouth… Go in!”
Applejack shrugged hopelessly and spurred her horse on. Fluttershy seemed a bit standoffish, but realizing there was no choice quickly had her own horse follow. As for Twilight, she brought up the rear as she had to spur her own horse several times, and by the time she was riding through the gate the marshal had reached the alarm. A bell was soon ringing loudly over the city skyline as they rode straight into Griffonstone.
The moment had been in panic, and so for a few moments the group simply charged right down the streets. At first, all it afforded was another dingy look of its factories and workshops. Each one was so run down and outdated it was impossible to tell which ones were the ones in use, which ones hadn’t been fired up, and which ones were outright abandoned. The horses were soon in more danger of tripping and breaking their ankles on the broken, fragmented, and ground down roads than they were on the dirt paths leading through Mount Aris. The smog became so thick that even the street lamps, still lit although it was morning, barely helped. The three could barely see fifty feet in front of them.
Unfortunately, it was just their luck that the one thing that seemed to be working in the city was the local law enforcement. The bells of the siren resonated down the streets they were running down, alerting more authorities, and soon they heard shouting and yelling around them as either the local magistrates or border soldiers, either of which was equally likely, charged out of the surrounding roads and ran after them. It didn’t help that they were impossible to avoid, for between their dull, shabby clothing and the dingy surroundings none could tell who was a shocked local and who was an officer until they were nearly on them.
Things only got worse when they hit the main roads. It was then that they were forced to halt in their tracks as they were nearly run down by one of the massive, loud, noisy, and inefficient “trackless engines” Griffonstone was famous for: a tank-like, steam-chugging bus that shot right in front of their path. As soon as it pulled away, they were faced with a squad of six new soldiers running at them shouting and hefting firearms.
“Aw shoot!” Applejack shouted. “Follow me!”
Quickly, she turned her horse to one side and barreled off on it. Twilight grimaced as she couldn’t even get her own mount to run forward when she wanted, but fortunately Fluttershy called out to both her own horse and hers to follow Applejack, and she took off in pursuit whether she liked it or not.
Things only got worse from there. Another one of the “trackless engines” soon came the other way, seeming to form right out of the smoky gloom, and forced them to barrel off in another direction. This, in turn, almost led them right into a whole gathering of rather irate and poverty-stricken Griffonstone vendors who not only shouted at them but began to try and drive them away with rocks and bits of bottles. Applejack ducked in an alley to try and evade them, only to find another group of soldiers coming up that way. These ones actually fired a warning shot before they turned about and barreled back into the street. They tried to run across, only to nearly get flattened by three more engines going in either direction.
By the time they crossed the road, they heard additional hoofbeats coming out of the gloom along will alarm bells ringing. Applejack halted them just long enough to see twelve more magistrates manning what had to be a law enforcement wagon running down the street shouting at them.
Gritting her teeth in frustration, Applejack whipped her horse around and led them in another gallop. “This blasted city! Ain’t a fit place for anyone to be livin’ in, let alone ridin’ a horse around in! Can’t even see the signs on buildings!” She looked over her shoulder to Twilight. “We’re either gonna get caught or run the horses out long ‘fore we find anyone ta’ tell ‘bout what’s gonna happen! And that’s if they even listen ta’ us! Now what?”
Twilight didn’t answer. She looked around as she struggled to think of any options. Thanks to the cluttered road ahead of them, the magistrates were able to stay hot on their heels. Most of the soldiers they had passed were trying to run in from the sides too. On looking ahead, she saw more shapes coming out of the fog. They were going to try and cut them off again.
Before Applejack could try and lead them away, she shouted out. “Stop the horses!”
“Wh-what?” she cried. “You’re crazy!”
“It’s the only way we’ll get to talk to anyone in authority! We have to give up!”
Applejack let out another swear and grit her teeth. She held out until the soldiers began to emerge from the fog, shouting all over again, but before any of them could try firing another shot she reluctantly pulled on her reins and brought the horse to a stop. Still following suit, Twilight and Fluttershy’s mounts quickly did the same.
It took only moments for them to be surrounded on all sides. The soldiers in front quickly moved in; shouting not to move and keeping their firearms aimed at them. Their left and right were filled in with the other magistrates they had managed to evade before the wagon pulled in behind them and blocked a rear escape.
As the Griffonstone authorities continued to bark at them angrily, the three reluctantly began to raise their hands in surrender.
With a resounding clang, the iron bars to the cell slammed shut. Twilight reacted with slight unease, Applejack reacted with a sour frown, and Fluttershy yipped and leapt a little.
The jailhouse for Grifftham City wasn’t any better than the rest of the city and was, honestly, worse in most ways. The main reason the three stood in front of the bars wasn’t to plead their case but to stay as far away as possible from the clogged toilet and the bedbug-infested mattress, to say nothing of the oily stains on the floor. The rest of the building outside the cell was slanted, with cracked plaster, chipping paint, and only three functional gaslights out of six. Normally that wouldn’t matter for the sunlight, but sun was hardly a factor in the dingy town.
Four rather angry-looking Griffonstone magistrates were glaring at the three of them. Fortunately, none in Griffonstone knew the full scope of the Promethian Sigil’s powers, and so the main concern at the moment was how much of a chase they had led them on. They continued to do so for a good fifteen minutes before the front door of the jailhouse could be heard opening, followed by a loud, hoarse coughing and angry grumbling.
One lone magistrate, a teenager by the looks of him but also seeming irritated to be there, led in a much older man. Definitely a product of the Griffonstone times. In addition to coughing and hacking on what had to be half a lifetime of inhaling the fumes of the city, his uniform, or at least the jacket (which seemed to be the only piece he wore) was stained five shades darker than everyone else’s and even had an old patch on one elbow. A long scar across one eye left only a dead, pale orb in its wake, and he seemed so casual about his position he didn’t mind wearing a fez instead of the normal hat of a head magistrate.
“Alright, alright…” he grumbled as he stepped into the room. “Let’s see what was so much of a bother it had to drag me out of bed this early…”
He glanced up, but didn’t get another step. He saw the three women in the cell and stared at them a moment; then turned to one of the officers nearby.
“What…this is the big deal? You couldn’t just handle this yourselves? What’s with you young people nowadays…”
“Constable, look at their hands!” one of the magistrates shouted while pointing. “They got those marks on them! Just like Appleloosa’s going all nuts about!”
“Eh?” He looked again and took a few steps closer. Enough to where he could spot at the symbols with what was left of his good eye.
Twilight didn’t try to hide it, but she did begin to raise her other hand. “Um, excuse me, sir? Er, constable? May I-”
“Oh yeah, sure as hell do, don’t they?” the old magistrate interjected, sounding like he hadn’t even heard her. “Three of them in one go, eh? All trying to sneak across together, huh?”
“Sneak nothing,” another magistrate snorted. “They ran right across on horseback after they sicced a bunch of trained animals on the border guards. I think they were trying to storm the city. Break in just like I hear they did in Appleloosa.”
Applejack actually looked angry at that, but Twilight quickly spoke up. “That…that’s a bit of a stretch, but that’s not important right now. I’ve-”
“That so?” the constable snorted, before he finally looked up and squared Twilight in the eye. “So, you three of some of them troublemakers from over the border, eh? Alright then, come clean. What’s your angle? More Trottinghamites working under the table? Spies? Terrorists? Some secret society? One of those damn fool cults or something?”
Twilight sighed. “Mister…I mean, um…uh…”
He finally seemed to hear this part. “Constable Gruff. The folks here call me ‘Grandpa’. Now spit it out.”
“Constable Gruff, you need to immediately get a message to the mayor to start evacuating the city and then get everyone from the Griffonstone military ready to fight, because there’s a Light Eater the size of a small mountain headed right this way.”
The room was silent for a moment as the other magistrates quirked their eyebrows. Gruff himself stared back incredulously for a second or two before he could answer. “Hold on, did I just hear you right? Did you just say there’s a Light Eater the size of a small mountain headed here? To Grifftham City?”
“Yes! We saw it on the way here! That’s why we had to break across your borders! We were trying to warn people!”
Unfortunately, at this point the magistrates began to frown again. Gruff was no exception as he crossed his arms. “Oh really? You might want to try thinking up a better story than that, young lady. You think I’m a fool? The nearest place the Light Eaters are lurking is over a hundred and fifty miles north of here, and the farthest any of them ever went after the Lunar Fall was ten miles in one night. And if there was a Light Eater that big, you really expect me to believe it’d go this far south and we wouldn’t have heard a peep from anybody in Griffonstone, Mount Aris, or anywhere else?”
“You wouldn’t if they were all distracted by that surge over in Appleloosa. Or if all the armed forces had their eyes on the border waiting for them to cross. If it came right down the middle of the chain, no one would ever spot it unless they were watching for it.”
Gruff stared back incredulously. “Are you actually trying to tell me that all those things up north that act like oversized rabid moths somehow got smart enough after eight years to actually plan this?”
“Well, they were smart enough to hit Appleloosa at the point where they were spread the thinnest, weren’t they?”
He snorted. “Bah…just bad luck. I’ve seen five Nighttouched surges into Griffonstone. They don’t know their own bippies from a gopher hole. Just go wherever they see any light.”
Applejack, looking incensed at Gruff’s casual dismissal, suddenly stepped forward. “Listen here, you! I’ve seen more’n my share of Nighttouched too, and over the past couple days I’ve killed more’n them than I care ta’ count! Last night I saw this Light Eater with my own two eyes and ‘fore it was done I nearly got drowned, burned, blown up, and had my face bit off by demon trout! Not ta’ mention I’ve seen my family, my friends, and lots of folks just unlucky enough to be in the way nearly get torn up on account of all that! I don’t appreciate after ridin’ all night ta’ get here to warn folks bein’ accused of bein’ a liar!”
Gruff paused again, easing a little, but his sour look didn’t change. “Alright, missy. Let’s say there is a Light Eater that big out there. That doesn’t explain why you’re so sure it’s gonna come all this way. Grifftham City’s so dark most of the time you can’t see a block away even with every light in the city on. Why would it go all that way just to stomp on this town?”
“Because it’s not going to attack Grifftham City,” Twilight answered. “It’s only going to destroy the part it has to walk through on the way to the seashore.”
Now he looked confused. “Come again?”
“When we saw it walking across the mountains, pieces of it were coming off. Anything one of its pieces touched got…I don’t know…corrupted or something. But when it landed in the water of the river we were coming down, it turned a whole mass of fish into Nighttouched at once. Do you know what that means will happen if that entire thing gets in the ocean?”
“Uh…”
“It’ll turn the entire bay into Nighttouched! It might do worse than that! It could spread the shadow over Equestria along the entire shore of Greater Everfree! If it does that, there’s not even a chance of escaping! They’ll sink every boat and leave no survivors! Everyone will be trapped on the continent until the Light Eaters take it over completely!”
In spite of the clear air of skepticism, several of the magistrates at least hesitated on hearing that. Twilight grasped the bars and pressed her face against them.
“It was right behind us when we got off the river! I’m not sure how much time you have before it reaches Griffonstone but it’s going to be today! You may have hours…you may have minutes!”
“None of that makes any sense!” Gruff finally retorted. “Why now? They’ve been coming at random for years! Why all of a sudden would they do something clever like this?”
“I dunno, but right now that’s not important!” Applejack interjected. “Ya’ got ta’ tell your mayor to get people the hell outta here! Hunkerin’ down ain’t gonna help! They got a whole swarm o’ little ones followin’ after the big one! Real nasty ones! All them towns that got razed in Appleloosa was on account of them having ones that eat through wood like nobody’s business!”
“And…um…I hate to interject,” Fluttershy spoke up humbly. “But…there was one last night that could breathe fire…”
“And once everyone’s out, you need everyone who can fight to try and stop it!” Twilight added. “Call in Trottingham or even Fillydelphia or Appleloosa if you need to, but no matter what happens that Light Eater can’t hit the ocean! Everyone depends on it!”
Unfortunately, the magistrates were frowning again after this. Constable Gruff himself crossed his arms and looked at the three sourly.
“Alright, you three…I ain’t heard a peep about what any of that has to do with those funny tattoos you got, what’s been going on with you in Appleloosa, or how, if that big cockamamy story you just told me is true, the three of you somehow managed to survive this long when I’ve never met a person in all my life who ever even saw a Light Eater face to face and then lived to tell about it… But let’s say that you are tellin’ the truth about all of this and there really is a Light Eater on its way here as big as life and twice as ornery that’s gonna trample most of Grifftham to bits getting into the ocean and leaving us surrounded by Nighttouched sharks and whales. My last question to you is what the hell do you expect us to do about it?”
Twilight was caught off guard by that question. Applejack and Fluttershy were likewise dumbstruck.
“So we get Trottingham, Appleloosa, and Fillydelphia along. Heck, throw in the Dragonlands, Mt. Aris, and everyone else. Then what? Everyone knows every last bullet and bomb in Greater Everfree can’t kill one Light Eater. What are we supposed to do about a giant one?”
“Uh…well…” However, nothing else came out. Twilight didn’t have an answer for that.
Gruff frowned again. “Now I don’t know about any of all that stuff you just said, but I do know everyone on the borders is getting ready for another war to break out if Appleloosa ends up ceding a ton of farmland to that shadow of Equestria, and I further know that they’re going wild over folks with those weird tattoos on their hands and everywhere one of them pops up things go to Hell. Well, that ain’t gonna be happening in Griffonstone, and it definitely ain’t gonna happen in Grifftham City. So you three are gonna sit tight right here while I relay my message to the mayor—namely that we got a trio of troublemakers in town and we’re gonna get to the bottom of what they’ve been doing in Appleloosa and what they plan to do here one way or another.” He pointed a finger so sharply at Twilight she recoiled. “I suggest you start coming up with the truth while I’m gone.”
“But…but that was the truth! Could you at least have someone keep watch on the mountains?”
He grunted. “Keep watch? You’ve looked outside lately? I haven’t even seen a sunrise in twelve years!” Grumbling, he began to turn around. “‘Keep watch’… Of all the tourist things to say…”
“Y’all are crazy!” Applejack snapped. “Yer gonna wish you listened ta’ us in just a little while! Yer gonna get half the people in this city killed! Even if that big Light Eater doesn’t squish ya’ inta’ jam, this whole town is gonna get eaten alive by all the Nighttouched runnin’ along with it!”
“Yeah, yeah, just keep it down,” one of the magistrates retorted. Gruff, on his part, was already almost to the exit. The others turned to follow him out. “You don’t want me to move you to the bad cell.”
Fluttershy’s eyes widened. “There’s…one worse than this…?”
“Please! You have to listen to us!” Twilight kept insisting. “You’re all in danger! Everyone’s in danger!”
The magistrates ignored her. The rest filed out and the outer door was shut. Two of them remained posted, but soon they heard the front door open and close again. Realizing it was futile, Twilight slumped against the bars.
Applejack crossed her arms and frowned. “Well, so much fer lettin’ ourselves get captured… Now all we got is stuck right here in Grifftham City ‘til the manure comes runnin’ down those mountains…” She looked up to the window. “Uh, speakin’ o’ which, anyone tell which direction that’s in?”
Fluttershy moved a bit closer and patted Twilight on the back. “There, there…it’s ok. You tried your best, Twilight.”
She groaned and leaned up. “My ‘best’ isn’t good enough! Not only is Grifftham City going to be destroyed, but the rest of Greater Everfree could be doomed along with it!”
“I hate ta’ say it, but he had a point back there,” Applejack spoke up again. “The best we could hope for was warnin’ the people. Ain’t nothin’ we can do to stop that thing once it gets here, or anyone else fer that matter.”
“We can try!” Twilight shot back. “Even if no one’s ever been able to stop one before now, if they don’t try this time there’s nothing left! There won’t be any place left to run!”
Applejack raised an eyebrow.
“Huh…that don’t sound like the Twilight I met a couple days back.”
The spellcaster looked confused. “What?”
“Back when I first met ya’ and ya’ started talkin’ ‘bout all this mumbo and jumbo, you seemed dead set on just about throwin’ in the towel on the whole thing. Just wanderin’ ‘round doin’ yer magic act. Told me ta’ keep all this stuff a secret and pretty much put my head down. Now ya’ sound like yer ready to go down swingin’.”
Twilight paused. She stood there silently for a moment. Both Applejack and Fluttershy looked at her, until she finally straightened and wrung her hands.
“Well…it’s just…just…” She closed her eyes and exhaled. “Alight, I admit…over the past eight years, ever since what happened in Trotheim, I haven’t exactly had a lot of hope in anything… Especially when I saw what we were up against. I thought any chance of saving the world died with Headmistress Celestia.”
She opened her eyes again. They were much grimmer now. Sadder.
“I remembered what she told me to do, but…I didn’t honestly think there was any way to pull it off. I figured everyone else was gone, so I might as well just fade out too and wait for the end. I still had some interest, but there was nothing else I could do.”
“And…what about now?” Fluttershy asked.
She looked up. “It’s just been me and Spike for the longest time… But hanging around with both of you, seeing what’s been going on with other people, and…and actually doing something about it, really doing something, taking a stand and saving people…I’m starting to wonder. Celestia warned me that most people with Promethian Sigils would be a danger to others, but…” She looked between the two of them. “Here we are. A Caster, a Warrior, and a Healer. Even at school I never worked alongside any of the other students. And I’m starting to realize even just three of us can do a lot more than one of us can, or what we could do separately.”
Applejack uncrossed her arms. “Twilight…are ya’ absolutely, positively, 100 percent sure ya’ don’t know a spell that might actually kill that Tantawhatzit?”
She sighed and slumped. “I’m sorry… Like I said, my spells can kill the small ones, but the bigger ones are-”
She stopped as a noise from the window began to peel out: a siren. Unlike the bells from earlier, this was a much louder continuous note. Both Applejack and Fluttershy looked outside, for it was loud enough to echo through much of the city. And soon other sirens began to join with it to pass it along to other areas.
“Oh…that doesn’t sound like the one the magistrates made when they were chasing us.”
Applejack began to look uneasy. “That’s ‘cause I reckon it ain’t…”
A loud clamor arose from the front of the jailhouse. The three looked and saw that the two remaining magistrates were both scrambling to their feet.
“What the heck…?”
“You got to be kidding me! This far south?!”
“Um, excuse me?” Twilight called. “What does that siren mean?”
The two magistrates glanced back at her, but their expressions were now rather fearful. Neither one of them moved for a moment, then looked back to each other.
“You don’t think…”
“They weren’t actually…?”
“Telling the truth…were they?”
Applejack winced as she realized what they meant. “Uh, Twilight? I think that’s the siren fer when the Nighttouched are attackin’…”
Twilight’s eyes widened. Fluttershy whimpered again. As for the magistrates, they looked at the two a bit longer. Then, without a word, they both turned and abandoned their posts as fast as they could. In moments they had left the jailhouse door swinging open to the foggy streets and were gone.
“At least let us outta this cell, ya’ durn yellow-bellied chickens!” Applejack shouted angrily. “How ya’ like that?! First they roll their eyes at our warnin’, then they leave us fer dead! Nevermind them!” She began to look around. “We gotta get ourselves outta this cell! Damn it all, they took my hammer and Twilight’s wand!”
Twilight blinked and snapped out of it, shaking her head. “Those don’t matter. Anything will work.”
“Huh?” Applejack turned to her. “Come again?”
“It’s not the tool in your hand. It’s the power of the spirit in your Promethian Sigil that makes a weapon or stave. That doesn’t matter though…” She looked around the cell. “Unless we can make a weapon out of a bar of soap…”
“Um, Twilight?”
Applejack cursed and nearly threw down her hat, only to shy away from putting it on the filthy floor. “Forget a weapon! I’ll just call out my pa and then I’ll tear these bars ta’ ribbons!”
“Er, Applejack?”
Twilight winced. “I wouldn’t do that… Griffonstone isn’t exactly the best at construction. There’s a good chance this gate is load bearing. We might bring the whole cell block down on us.”
“Um, you two?”
“Well I ain’t gonna stand ‘round this cell waitin’ for a Griffonstone rat the size of a bulldog ta’ come in and gnaw my face off! Just get behind me and I’ll bust through-”
“Hey!”
Fluttershy’s abrupt yell was enough to cause both to be quiet, and they turned to her. Immediately, she winced and covered her mouth at her own volume.
“Oh…oh my…I didn’t mean to yell so loudly. I just wanted to let you both know…” she pointed outside the cell. “Spike caught up with us.”
The two looked through the bars. Sure enough, Spike had walked right in as soon as the jailhouse door was left open.
Better yet, a ring of keys was in his teeth.
By the time the three got out of the jailhouse themselves, panic had already settled on Grifftham City. Most of the residents were screaming and fleeing into the streets. Unfortunately, with the sirens blaring everywhere, and the smog hanging low over the town, it was impossible to tell which way the Nighttouched were coming from. Even knowing that they were coming from the mountains was of little avail to the three of them, as it was impossible to see the mountains or the seashore. Worse yet, half of the law enforcement and civil authorities had fled in self-preservation. Whoever was left was getting trampled and shoved aside as they struggled to try and knock out the lights.
Applejack herself nearly got tackled by a hysterical man and quickly pressed herself back against the door. Fluttershy cringed behind Twilight as a shield. “Well, don’t this just beat all! Like a bunch o’ mice in a corncrib! And we don’t even know which way it’s comin’ from!”
“Um…maybe we could ask someone?” Fluttershy suggested.
Everyone, even Spike, gave her a deadpan stare as the most rational person on the road at the moment was running like they were being chased by a wasp swarm.
“Or not…”
Twilight frowned and nearly looked back, only to pause. Her eyes fell on Fluttershy’s hand grasping her shoulders, and in particular on a spot on it. Her eyes widened as she pointed at it. “Fluttershy! When did that appear?”
“Hmm?” She looked at her hand and spotted the rune on her sigil. “Oh… I didn’t notice that before. I don’t know when that showed up. Although…” She paused looking up for a moment. “Now that you mention it, I know I didn’t have it back on the barge. I wonder if it appeared after we got knocked into the river… Or after I talked to Philomena…”
Twilight hesitated, taking that new info in, but shook it off a second later. She turned back to the busy road and glanced about, trying to find a direction but spotting nothing.
“We’ll just have to look for a signpost!” She shouted over the din, before wincing. “But how are we going to move through this crowd without getting trampled to death?”
“I got it…” Applejack answered, hefting her reclaimed hammer and her symbol. “Member of my house, I command you to come to me! Bastion of the Fields—Bright Macintosh!”
The crowd was too panicked to really even glance in Applejack’s direction as she fully donned her armor and warhammer, but that just served them better as there was no way to avoid making a scene now. As soon as she was turned, she braced the weapon in front of her and looked to the others. “Both y’all get behind me and stay close!”
Charging forward, Applejack plunged right into the mob. Twilight quickly seized the back of her armor and Fluttershy seized the back of her shirt as they went after her. Spike, unable to follow, could only bark a few times before he went off to find his way around.
The crowd was violently pulling one way and another, and both soon had to cling to their partner’s waists in order to keep from being torn apart. Applejack, however, stood as immobile as a rock. If anyone ran into her, she merely brushed them aside and kept walking without losing her footing once. Keeping her hammer in front of her, she used the top of it to weave her way through the crowd slowly but surely. She gradually pushed her way to a direction where everyone was flowing one way, and the three followed it.
At last, they managed to push themselves to a junction in the road. It had the normal street sign, but it also had a signpost mounted a bit higher. The three worked their way near and Twilight read off the top.
“Grover’s Cape! It’s to the left! That way is the ocean!”
“Awright, so which way’s the mountains?”
Twilight began to look around, only to hear a blood-curdling scream. The three looked up the street to their right. The crowds were still running down it, but at this point they were all unifying in one direction…which could only mean one thing.
Sure enough, it was only a few seconds before other screams joined the first, and, in spite of the fog already rendering things quite dim, they noticed the day growing darker yet.
“I t-t-think it’s that way…” Fluttershy muttered.
“I don’t feel any big footsteps yet…” Applejack answered as she hefted her hammer. “’Course I can’t hear much over all this racket… But I’m guessing that means it’s the rest of its friends…”
Another scream, and this time all three stiffened on seeing the shadow of what looked like a body being thrown up into the air. After that, the crowd rapidly began to thin out around them; with most of who was left quickly splitting and running for whatever buildings or cover they could manage. Soon after, a new shadow with gleaming yellow eyes began to come out of the fog.
On spotting it, Twilight quickly stepped out from behind Applejack while Fluttershy ran to the side of the street. The former quickly tried to look around for an object to use but, on not finding one right away, instead held her hand skyward. “Member of my house, I command you to come to me! Master of Sorcery—Starswirl the Bearded!”
As soon as her own transformation finished garbing her as a wizard, the street grew clear enough that there was nothing between the two of them and the shadow. It walked forward a bit more, clearly showing itself to be bear-sized, and a low growl came from its head region. Applejack readied her weapon to attack.
However, as it drew a bit nearer, she lowered it again. “What in blazes…?”
The thing was not only unlike any animal any of them had ever seen, it didn’t even look like an animal to begin with. Rather, it was bits and pieces of things. Sticks, bones, twigs, and lake pebbles mixed together like it was a sculpture of a creature rather than a real thing. It was moving just like a real monster, however. And the shape it happened to have been made into was that of a wolf—only far larger than any flesh and blood lupine.
As soon as it emerged it zeroed in on Applejack. It cracked open its jaws, and in the yellow of its eyes she saw a wisp of what looked like green vapor. It snarled as if it truly did have lungs, although it made a bony rattling noise when it did, and then took off. Its jaw, lined with teeth made out of sharpened rocks, snapped and hissed as it barreled at her. Tensing up at the sight, Applejack quickly readied her hammer and braced herself. Moments later, it took off in a lunge and lashed out for her throat.
In an instant, she swung out her hammer and smashed into the side of its shoulder as it came. The power was enough to knock it clean out of the air and send it careening into the nearest building. On impact, it instantly shattered into a pile of its constituent pieces.
Applejack whirled on it, expecting more, but saw it broken down into bits. She looked a bit puzzled. “That wasn’t too hard…”
As if in response, the sticks, rocks, and bones of the thing began to click and clatter together. A moment afterward, she got a surprise when she saw them actually moving of their own accord to arrange themselves and stick together. It didn’t take long for them to join enough to start making more complicated moves and piecing themselves against one another, such that within ten seconds the thing had fully reformed. It instantly snarled at her.
“Aw great!” she yelled. “Another one that don’t die!”
The thing charged forward and readied itself to leap at her again, but she didn’t give it the chance. She took off to meet it early. The move seemed to surprise the Nighttouched, and she used that to swing her hammer around and smash it down on the top of its head.
Instantly, it was driven into the pavement and obliterated. The yellow eyes were snuffed out, and Applejack peeled back in disgust a moment later as the same foul green odor was released all at once. However, the rest of its body immediately broke apart as well. This time it remained in a pile on the ground.
She whistled as she peeled back. “Phew-ee! Worse than a rotten skunk!”
“Don’t get too comfy!” Twilight shouted as she quickly ran up to the side of its remains, taking up a stick as it did. She pointed back down the street. “Look!”
Applejack turned, realizing at that moment that the latest scream she was hearing was from just up ahead. Four people were tearing down the alley as quickly as they could. Two more of the monstrous “timber wolves” were right on their heels snapping and snarling.
She quickly readied her hammer, but Twilight had beat her to the punch that time. Wielding the stick, her aura morphed it into a fresh wand and she quickly gestured at the two monsters. In response, some of the brickwork masonry on the road abruptly erupted right beneath either one. It connected with their middles and shattered both; causing their bodies to explode violently.
The four Griffonstone citizens caught a glimpse of what had just happened, but were too panicked to stick around. They quickly tore past the three of them. Twilight and Applejack readied themselves for more combat, especially as the screaming was getting louder and was spreading around them as it kept getting darker.
Suddenly, the gaslights in the street went out; one after the other. The two of them were all but dropped into darkness save for their auras.
“Huh? What gives?”
“They must be cutting the gas lines to the lamps! They’re trying to kill the lights!”
“Yeah, but we’re in a crowded city and now I can’t see nothi-”
An eruption of multiple sources of gunfire from the next block over cut Applejack off. Fluttershy yelped as the farmer and spellcaster looked over to the side, and over the rooftops and down the alleys they saw bursts of light from the fog.
“Sounds like some of the Griffonstone armed forces are fighting back!”
Applejack winced. “Then hold onta’ yer hats…”
She turned to her puzzled. “What? Why?”
“If they’re cuttin’ inta’ them, that means they’re gonna drive ‘em this-”
Suddenly, the window of one of the buildings adjacent to them exploded. The sound of crashing glass was pierced also by a monstrous growl and a man screaming in pain. Both Twilight and Applejack turned to it just in time to see a man being taken to the ground, one of the giant wolf constructs having its jaws clamped around his arm and looking to try and tear his limb off.
It gave a violent wrench, and a snapping sound was heard. The man screamed even louder.
“Hang on!” Applejack cried even as she ran toward it. Bellowing in fury, she swung her hammer down around right on its “spine”, snapping the creature in half. The lower portion immediately broke away while its jaws loosened around the man’s arm. In the dim light, she just barely made out a copious amount of blood around its teeth, before it whirled on her and opened its jaws wide. Gritting her own teeth, she swung her hammer again to send its shattered remains flying down the alleyway.
She didn’t even have time to check on the man when she heard a chorus of growls and snapping. She looked back into the building and saw at least five new sets of yellow eyes all staring at her. A moment later, they barreled at her, and she gasped as she realized all five were going to attack at once.
Just as the nearest was able to leap at her, however, a sharp crackling went through the air. In an instant, thick ice grew up in the window frame and rapidly congealed; catching the first leaping wolf construct and instantly immobilizing it. The others smashed themselves into the icy barrier, but merely crumpled against it. Applejack risked a look behind her, just in time to see Twilight lowering her wand.
The creatures didn’t stay long. Snarling, they all turned and scattered, looking for another way around. More snapping and snarling came from the front of the alley, as well as more screams and gunfire. Tensing up again, she looked down at her feet and saw the man still moaning as he clutched his bleeding limb. She couldn’t see how good it was, but considering the monster it could have easily compound fractured it.
Luckily, Twilight seemed to read her mind. She quickly moved forward and took the man by his good arm, then began to drag him back. “Sorry about that…” she apologized to the semi-conscious citizen, before looking back to Applejack. “I’ll take care of him. Can you buy some time?”
Applejack looked back up the road, just as new pairs of yellow eyes emerged from it. She whistled and hefted her hammer. “You bet.”
“Thanks.” Quickly, she continued to drag him backward. Applejack, not waiting for her to get away, ran forward to meet the latest incoming wolf constructs. Seconds later, her hammer was coming down and scattering them again.
Twilight, on her part, kept yanking the man back; all the way to where Fluttershy was currently cringing behind a public garbage can. She looked back to her as she came. The woman peeked her head out for a moment, but then quickly poked it back inside again.
“Fluttershy!”
A pause before she tentatively put her head out again. “Oh, um…yes?”
“Come over here! I need you to heal him!”
The pink-haired woman stared back in shock. “W-W-What?”
“Come on!” she shouted as she finished dragging him to her side, causing her to recoil a little. “Heal him up! At least enough to stabilize him!”
“W-Who…me? But…but…but-but…”
“You healed those animals back on the boat, didn’t you?”
Fluttershy paled; looking even more nervous than before. “Oh…well…I…yes, that is, but that wasn’t much. I was just talking to them and trying to keep them calm… I’m sure they weren’t really that sick if that was all it took…”
“No, they were sick, and you made them better. I told you already…you’re the Healer role. If you knew how to do it better you could use healing magic, but even without using spells your role lets you heal people faster.”
“Oh…oh dear…” Fluttershy began to cringe again, once more letting her hair fall over her face. “I…I really don’t know… Animals are one thing, but…but people? And I…I…I don’t really feel that powerful…”
A crash of glass sounded out in front of them. Twilight and Fluttershy both looked up, and saw Applejack, in the midst of fighting the wolf creatures, suddenly get tackled from overhead as one of the trapped beasts leapt out of an open window for her. The others snarled and snapped and quickly rushed in to try and join on her as she went down.
“Applejack!”
Twilight nearly got up after her, but before she could Applejack flung the one that attacked her into its companion, shattering them both. She quickly snapped up and swung her hammer around to shatter a third before making the others back away.
Twilight winced and looked back to Fluttershy. “What about back on the boat? You made Philomena stop and you also made the fish stop biting! It’s your power, Fluttershy! You have an influence over the Nighttouched!”
If anything, Fluttershy seemed to go whiter yet. She cringed so much at that she looked like she wanted to crawl into a hole and disappear. “Oh my…”
She winced on seeing Fluttershy grow even more withdrawn at that, realizing that was the wrong thing to say, and so she tried to speak more calmly. “Look…could you just try at least? There shouldn’t be much to it. All you have to do is talk to him like one of your animals, and you should naturally start healing him.”
“I…I don’t…”
“Please! I have to help Applejack, and even if I didn’t I can’t heal like you! He could bleed to death if you don’t help!”
She continued to shake all over like a leaf, but slowly raised her head up again. She swallowed but finally looked to the road. “I…I guess…it wouldn’t hurt…to t-t-try…”
Very slowly, she began to move over to the man. After a moment of hesitation, like she was shying away from a burning stove, she reluctantly extended her hands and placed them on top of him, taking care not to be anywhere around the wound.
“Um…er…uh…there, there. It’s alright. Who’s a good boy? I mean…who’s a good man? I mean…just take some nice deep breaths and it’ll feel better soon.”
Twilight didn’t have any time to see if it would take any longer. Quickly, she sprung back up and began to run out to Applejack again.
Two more of the wolf monsters jumped from two new windows, but this time Applejack darted back and evaded them as they sailed to the ground. By now, however, two of the wolves she had already shattered were back together again and running at her to try and bite her from behind. She snapped around and quickly swung out her hammer to shatter them; this time making sure to crush the head of one, but that allowed three more to try and rush her from her previous front.
Before the nearest could bite, lightning streaked from the heavens and struck it. It shattered in an instant, and the thunderclap made both of its companions recoil in pain. Applejack looked up alarmed and wondering what had caused that, only to see Twilight rushing out into the street. Two more of the monsters ignored Applejack and turned to her instead in a full sprint. She answered by quickly performing a new symbol on the air to generate a small whirlwind right in front of her.
She swept her wand around it, and the cone shape broke off and reformed into a sphere, which launched itself at one of the constructs. On impact, it blasted it apart and sent its bits and pieces flying up and down the street. She quickly generated another to slap aside the other, before following up with one more lightning spell.
Right in the middle of smashing apart a new wolf, Applejack looked up and saw three of the rebuilt constructs were trying to rush her from the front. This time, she braced to intercept them, but it turned out it was unnecessary. Once Twilight finished her spell, a bolt of lightning streaked from the heavens. A moment before impact, it split apart into three prongs and struck all three wolf constructs at once—shattering them like porcelain dishes.
Applejack was surprised not only at the spell but the finesse. She turned to Twilight as she ran up to her side, grinning smarmily. “Heh, Headmistress Celestia was pretty impressed when I pulled off that move a whole half a year before she was supposed to teach it to me.”
“Well, so long as it helps turn these sons of bitches into kindlin’ faster, I’m for it,” Applejack grinned back, bracing herself for more.
However, the remaining wolf constructs, surprisingly enough for a Nighttouched, were holding back. They continued to brace themselves and snarl but made no forward move. As for the freshly shattered remains, any that didn’t have their skulls cracked were beginning to shift.
“Heh, we actually got ‘em runnin’ scared?” Applejack grinned.
“That’s weird… I didn’t think Nighttouched could get scared…” Twilight muttered.
The sticks and bones began to rejoin again. Soon they slid over and united into their normal limbs before inching to one another to link up. However, they continued to do so for longer than ten seconds this time. After twenty, they were still aligning. At thirty, Applejack began to look uneasy.
“Uh, they don’t normally take this long…”
Twilight looked even more uncomfortable. “ Is it just me, or do those limbs look a bit bigger than what they came from?”
The two looked a bit longer before they finally realized it. While there had been the remains of several of the monsters, they were now forming one body. One big body. The limbs, each one now taller than the two of them, finally began to connect and come together to make something different. A much larger wolf monster than before slowly began to tower over them. Its yellow eyes were like a pair of floodlights now. Its teeth and claws were big enough to slide off a head. The stench and putrid odor coming from its mouth was so vile it actually dripped from its jaws.
As the colossal monster finished forming, it began to move as a real wolf again. It looked down on both of them, snarled for a moment, and then roared angrily. An instant later, it snapped up its paw and swung for them.
Both ladies cried out, splitting away from one another right before the deadly limb not only raked the ground where they were but smashed a hole into the street. It snapped out for Applejack a moment later, and it was only because she had leapt back and kept her posture that she was able to backpedal just out of reach of its teeth. Still roaring, it snapped around and lunged for Twilight next, swinging its paws again. She screeched, not having her own footing, and went back so quickly that she fell on her rear end. A good thing too, for the paw swiped just past where her head was on the follow-up strike.
Applejack quickly emboldened herself and dashed for it. Taking aim at the ankle joint, she brought the hammer back and slammed the head against it. However, aside from a few bits of twigs being knocked loose, nothing else was done. The limb remained mostly intact and Applejack was left gaping in astonishment as the wolf monster looked back to her and snarled. A second later, the paw snapped up and collided with her.
The farmer’s body crumpled around the limb before she was ripped off her feet and flung away from the monster so hard that when she smashed into the brick façade of the surrounding buildings she actually knocked them in a bit. She fell out and flopped to the ground in a sprawl; the blow having clearly taken something out of her. She moaned for a moment, weakly trying to get her bearings back, but the monster wasn’t waiting. It snapped and charged at her. She raised her head feebly, and quickly regained her wits on seeing it coming with jaws open wide. As best as she could, she rolled herself to the side just in time to avoid its first snap. Even so, the street was raked open by its teeth before its head smashed into the building she had struck.
Applejack struggled to get up to counter, only to freeze. Her hands were both empty. She looked and saw that her hammer had fallen from her grasp, and was hovering right underneath the head of the wolf monster still embedded in the building wall. She hesitated for a fraction of a second before she made a move to go for it.
The hesitation cost her. She had only started to reach for it when the wolf thing tore its head back out and fixed its yellow glowing eyes on her. She tried to stop herself, but was thrown in shock and pain a moment later as it snapped its body around and seized her entire body in its jaws. She was instantly yanked into the air before the monster began to violently snap her one way and another like she was nothing more than a chew toy. Its teeth clenched tighter yet, causing her to cry out as she felt its stony teeth push into her armor and slide toward the joints for her softer flesh beneath. It was trying to bite her in two.
Yet a moment later, its jaw snapped all the way open and Applejack found herself unceremoniously dumped to the ground. Still in pain from the bite and rattled from the shaking, she merely topped onto the street and lay there a moment before she was able to look up. The monstrous wolf construct was now roaring in agony. Its entire rear end was on fire and the flames were rapidly expanding across the rest of it. Its body was so dry it didn’t take any time at all to turn into a flaming brazier in the smoggy darkness.
At a short distance away, she saw Twilight pulling her wand back and recoiling from the flaming monstrosity.
Soon it began to prance about madly, smashing itself against the nearby buildings as it went into death throes. Quickly, Applejack forced herself onto her feet, dashed over just long enough to grab her hammer before it could stomp her with a flaming limb, and then backed off to Twilight. The smaller wolf constructs turned and bolted for it when the big one began to stagger near them, especially as it started to give off molten fragments of itself. Finally, its legs gave out beneath it and it toppled to the ground. It went limp soon after.
Applejack wiped her brow and tried to shake off her soreness. “Whew…nice one. How come ya’ didn’t start with that?”
Twilight grimaced. “Because this city is being invaded by Light Eaters and Nighttouched.”
Applejack froze; realizing what that meant. Sure enough, echoing howls began to come down the road. First one, then another, and then an entire chorus. The sound of rushing wings that could have been birds, bats, or insects started to fill the sky. On the other side of the blaze, the two saw black shapes coming out of the alleys and scurrying out of the gutters. More actually broke through windows and began to flap about in the sky.
They didn’t wait to see anymore. They turned and began to run back to their companion. “Fluttershy!”
Luckily, due to the remains of the burning construct, they were able to see well behind them. The man who had gotten bit was sitting up and holding his injured arm, but it had stopped bleeding and seemed more manageable. Good for him, because he was still stricken with panic—even more so now that Fluttershy had miraculously healed him. As soon as he could, he staggered to his feet, turned, and bolted for it. The pink-haired woman didn’t seem to notice as she got up herself.
“Oh look! I was able to do it after all. You were right, Twil-”
“Come on and move!” Applejack cut off, grabbing her with her free arm and pulling her the rest of the way to her feet before taking off with her in tow.
The three at first tried and go the same way the man had run. However, they didn’t get nearly as far as he had before the sound of the wings rushing came flapping over their heads and moving in behind them. Looking up above, they saw the foggy night being pierced by dozens of gleaming yellow eyes. They were pinching off the opposite side of the fire in a move to surround it.
Twilight glanced about a moment, before she looked to where the gunfire was coming. “That way!” she shouted, before running into the nearest alleyway leading in that direction.
Applejack quickly pulled Fluttershy along with her, and not a moment too soon. Scarcely had she entered the alley when Nighttouched birds descended and began to swarm around the blaze in the street. The three quickly picked up the pace.
“Why we headin’ this way?” Applejack shouted as they ran.
“If there’s other soldiers up here, then maybe we can get through to them to try and-”
At that moment a new scream resounded…right from the street they were headed to. Others soon followed. All three women slowed and nearly stopped, looking to each other anxiously. They looked back the way they had come, but saw that not only were the birds now flocking around the flames but the sewers had burst to let out the Nighttouched mice, rats, and cockroaches on their side of the road too. They had no choice but to keep moving now. Bracing themselves for the worst, they forced themselves onward.
The screams continued to get louder, and the gunshots began to fade out as they kept coming. Neither of those things set well with them, but what got Applejack and Twilight nearly cringing as much as Fluttershy was as they reached the last building in the alleyway. Some of the screams turned into a sharp, aborted noise that none of them had ever heard before…but definitely didn’t sound pleasant.
Finally, the three rushed out into the street, and on doing so halted where they stood. Fluttershy gasped once before ducking behind the two of them, but even Applejack could only manage: “Holy…”
The street was littered with bodies. Most of them were swarms of Nighttouched that had been cut apart by rifles, but at this point a number of Griffonstone soldiers had joined them. What soldiers were left were either panicking and running or firing desperately at one target in particular: a shadowy entity of starry matter shaped into a vague animal form.
A Light Eater.
This one might not have been the Tantabus, but it was twice as big as the one Twilight had run into in Fillydelphia. Its crude body had elongated, bent rear limbs and stubbier front ones, as well as a massive, cavernous mouth under its pale “moonspot” eyes. In other words, the form of a giant frog. Its body rippled repeatedly as bullets continued to strike it, but it ignored all of them and instead snapped it head around and opened its mouth wide—shooting out a length of its own material in a thick, rope-like whip. A “tongue”, obviously. Another soldier cried out as the end struck her, and a wet cracking rang through the air as she was snapped in two from the force.
Particularly desperate, two soldiers ran on it. One tried to pierce it with a bayonet on her rifle, while another seized the flaming ruins of a broken gaslight pole and tried to drive it at the monster. It ignored both attacks; with the bayonet moving through it as if it was made of water and the fire doing little other than agitating it to snap its head around and slap the soldier aside while snuffing it out. Another cracking, followed by a sickening splatter, resulted from the impact. It did the same to the other; nearly crushing that one with its massive bulk.
Yet the most horrifying thing happened soon after, when it lashed out with its tongue again for a fleeing soldier. This time, it didn’t crush her on impact, but adhered to her like glue. As soon as it did, it snapped back and began to recoil her to its waiting jaws.
The Light Eater obviously had no internal organs, but a look at the grotesque state of some of the bodies around it indicated this wasn’t the first time it had made that move…
“Twilight!” Applejack cried on seeing the soldier moments from death. “You’re up!”
She paled a moment, beginning to sweat again on seeing how much bigger and more formidable this one was, but she shook it off. She began to rush to it as she held her wand up again. As for Applejack, she turned to Fluttershy and motioned. “Come on! Let’s see if we can help ‘em get outta here!”
Fluttershy was practically covering her eyes at the sight of the bodies, but Applejack quickly seized her by the hand and led her over to the remaining soldiers struggling to hold their ground. As for Twilight, she generated a fireball spell and flung it at the monster just as the soldier was nearly inside its mouth.
The action caused it to release her, but unfortunately did no more. Its attention was instantly drawn to the light of the fire, and with a ground-crunching noise it suddenly leapt into the air on its massive rear legs. Not only did it shoot right over the fire, it opened its mouth wide and flew toward Twilight to try and engulf her whole. Stricken with panic, Twilight rooted herself on the spot and screamed before she performed a panic move. Out of instinct, she sent one of the “air balls” she had used on the wolf constructs at the thing. While it was too minor to possibly hurt or kill it, it did make physical contact and shoved it forward just enough to where it crashed headfirst into the street in front of her instead. She shrieked again as the impact ruptured the pavement and virtually catapulted her backward and again off her feet.
The Light Eater seemed momentarily stuck in the street from the attack, and quickly began to degenerate and reform its head to melt free. Twilight, stunned from what just happened, sat there a moment before she cast another spell. Ice crystals erupted from the ground beneath the entity, but unfortunately it was too late. The Light Eater leapt again just as they rose to impale it. It landed soon after and she quickly got up to try and attack again, only to cry out once more as, as soon as it touched down, it snapped its tongue out for her again. She quickly dove to the side as it whizzed by with the force of a cannon shell, pounding a slab of brickwork out of the road. She had no time to rest or recover, for it quickly snapped back and lashed out again at where she had been. After that she had to break into a run to evade it as it snapped out a third time.
Meanwhile, Applejack and Fluttershy reached the soldiers. At first, they were astonished to see Twilight jump in and even more astonished to see her power. Yet after a few seconds they decided not to question it, and by now they had resumed shooting at the thing.
The farmer ran forward and quickly swung her hammer to knock the rifle clean out of the grip of the nearest one, causing her to wheel toward her in alarm. “Stop that shootin’! With all the lights out, your guns are what’s making all the light ‘round here now!”
At this point, the soldiers were so overwhelmed they could do little more than just stare in puzzlement at the mildly glowing woman in armor for a moment, before one started to stammer. “Who…what…who are you?”
“That don’t matter right now! Just get back while you can! There’s a whole mess o’ Nighttouched one street over that’s gonna be comin’ here as soon as they’re done snuffin’ out what’s left of their big buddy! Anyone round here down who’s still tickin’?”
The Griffonstone soldiers were left stunned a bit longer, not the least because several of them were now staring at Twilight’s battle with the frog Light Eater, but finally one of them got enough bearings to point. “Gail and Gavin got caught under that wall when that thing knocked it down! I don’t even know if they’re still alive!”
“We’ll handle that! The rest of ya’ get outta here if ya’ wanna tell your grandkids ya’ actually saw a Light Eater and lived!”
Some of them hesitated, but at this point their courage was already strained to the breaking point. One by one they began to turn and run off. As for Applejack, she wheeled around and motioned Fluttershy over to where the soldier had pointed.
As for Twilight, the Light Eater readied to snap its tongue out again, but she reacted by errantly swinging her wand toward it. In response, the ground ruptured in front of it and sent bits of rock flying upward. Out of sheer instinct, the thing leapt out of the way again, giving her the moment she needed to stop and right herself. She used it to prepare another spell and quickly cast it as soon as she got a bead on where it was landing.
Unfortunately, she could only see so well in the dark, and the Light Eater itself, not bound by normal constraints of physicality, leapt off again as soon as it touched down; right as another burst of razor-sharp icicles fired upward. However, this leap wasn’t as good as before, and as it landed one of its legs sprawled out. The starry dew that seemed to make up its body was ragged and flapping along that limb as if it was a torn flag.
It didn’t last long, however. The fragments quickly condensed themselves and reformed, right as it leapt in a horizontal launch for Twilight again. She had been moments from being ready to shoot another fireball, this one intended to go down its gullet, but quickly aborted and dashed to the side on seeing the thing nearly touch her. It slammed into the ground again in her wake, and the impact again knocked her off her feet yet again, this time sending her sprawling face forward. Without missing a beat, it quickly pulled itself out, snapped around, and began to snap its massive mouth for her. All she could do was scramble away. She avoided its first two jaw snaps before she tried to get up again, but it lunged for her with its third snap and, although it missed, the impact sent her falling back on her face. It opened its mouth wider and rose to try and devour her again…
Straining enough to start sweating again, she quickly cast another spell out of panic. In response, another lightning bolt streaked down and hit it in one of the moonspots. It must have been the closest it had to a vital, for it staggered back at that. Twilight quickly got her legs underneath her, pushing around her robe to try and rise, but was still on all fours when the thing, apparently enraged, did a leaping lunge toward her again. She cried in alarm as she was nearly bowled over, and was forced to scramble away as it lashed out even more frantically after her.
Applejack and Fluttershy, at the same time, found the wall. It was in a bit of recessed road, but what tipped off the former that this was the right place was seeing the head and shoulders of a soldier sticking out from underneath it; face tight in agony and blood mottled about her mouth. She quickly glanced to Fluttershy, who was looking pale again, but kept a hand over her eyes as she ran in close.
Applejack was at the side of the collapsed wall a moment later. It was four rows of brick thick, and looked rather heavy and formidable even for her. She ended up setting her hammer down nearby and then reached out and felt for a lip. She called to the soldier as she found a grip. “You alright?”
She didn’t change her expression, but moaned through clenched teeth. “Ga…vin… Help… Gavin…”
Tightening her muscles, Applejack took a few deep breaths before putting her legs beneath her and lifting. Even with enhanced strength, she strained and struggled under the load, but she slowly pulled it up. Very gradually, the brickwork left the top of the fallen soldier, and a space formed underneath. The bricks began to crumple and fall under her grasp but she held it tight. “Fluttershy!” she called through her own clenched teeth. “Get under there! Pull him out!”
The pink-haired woman swallowed, but nodded before she got down on the ground. Very uneasily, she looked down in the space Applejack had made and, after a moment, began to inch her way under it nervously.
However, she only had her own head and shoulders underneath before she stopped. Much more slowly, she pulled out again. Applejack was confused a moment, until she saw the look on her face and the horror in her eyes.
“He…he didn’t make it…”
Applejack shuddered under the weight of the wall as the fallen soldier looked horrified, but she motioned on. “Just get her out, then!”
Fluttershy nodded and moved to put her hands under her arms. “I…I have to try what I did with that other man first… I don’t know if her back’s broken…”
Back with Twilight, the Light Eater attempted to snap at her a few more times before it stopped, instead cracking its mouth open and swinging its tongue out at her again. This one was a much nearer miss, and while Twilight ducked her head to one side to avoid it the impact still struck the road so powerfully that fragments of bricks were sent into the air. One sliced across her forehead while another shard nearly got in her eye. Crying out again, she covered her face and began to run full speed errantly, just trying to get distance on the monster. As she heard the sound of it retract its tongue, she again spun about and threw three fireballs at its direction wildly.
In spite of it being another panic move, it ended up being effective. Two of the spheres landed on either side of it, clear of its body but igniting enough to make it pause in indecisiveness. This was all the third one needed to impact against another forelimb. At once, the limb ignited and began to degenerate into molten fragments, causing it to rear up and recoil as best as it could on its three remaining legs.
Knowing it still had its tongue, Twilight quickly snapped about and kept running to gain more distance. Unfortunately, she only got a few more feet before halting. She was facing another alleyway into the road, but it wasn’t empty. Dozens of yellow eyes were in it and running down into the main road, and they were nearly to her. She was so stunned and surprised she didn’t even have time to think of a spell, and before she even thought to move her wand they broke out into the open and began to hiss and spit right for her…
That was, right before the first two were immediately taken down. A purple hued dog quickly dashed across and tore into the throat of one, while a white rabbit seemed to come down from the heavens so powerfully that when it planted its feet down against the Nighttouched’s head it crushed its skull.
Twilight’s jaw dropped. “Spike! Angel!”
The two weren’t alone. As soon as they turned to other Nighttouched, a flock of birds and swarm of mice rushed in and began to assault the attacking creatures; pairing in small groups to lay into them individually. The smaller creatures quickly took out the ones on the road, before Fluttershy’s bear inserted itself at the end of the alleyway. It growled and swung out with its paws, knocking back all of the others as fast as they could come.
Twilight was a bit stunned at her saviors but didn’t question them. She whirled back around to the Light Eater. While it still only had three limbs, it had recovered enough to rear back and prepare to use its tongue again. This time, however, Twilight quickly shifted to one side; away from the animals, and readied another spell.
The tongue snapped out soon after, but she quickly ducked to evade it. As it struck the ground behind her, she shielded her eyes with one arm from debris and cast her spell with the other. Ice crystals appeared again, but this time they rapidly condensed and solidified around the end of the tongue. The thing tried to pull it back only to find it anchored right where it had impacted.
With the Light Eater’s mouth open and immobilized, she used the moment to generate a more potent fireball spell and sent it flying down its throat. An instant later, it burst and filled its jaws with flames. The thing’s tongue was soon melted clean off its body, instantly degenerating into nothingness on breaking loose. The rest of it staggered back and thrashed about, but the magic flames quickly consumed what was left. It only managed to stumble a short distance before it was fully engulfed. With one last move it collapsed to the ground and burst into mist. The fire was snuffed as it faded away into nothing.
Twilight wiped her brow, but didn’t stay there long. She looked about herself a moment before she spotted someone. The soldier that had been snagged but dropped was still there, and sorely rising to her feet again. She cupped her hand and shouted to her. “Hey!”
The soldier, looking in shock from what nearly happened to her, nevertheless turned and gave her a vacant, hollow stare.
“Are you alright? Did it only get you by your clothes or did it touch your bare skin?”
She stared back blankly; barely seeming to process words.
“Did it touch your bare skin?” The second time was more insistent.
Finally, she blinked, and with a dazed look shook her head.
“Alright, then get out of here! Hurry!”
The soldier was still overwhelmed both at her experience as well as who was talking to her, but she finally turned and began to run off again as she had when she was caught. Twilight rubbed her face and looked back to where the animals were dealing with the Nighttouched, but gasped again at what she saw.
The fight had attracted company.
Another Light Eater, this one taking the crude likeness of a 6-meter long lizard, was inching its way down the side of a building and into the street. A third one, this one looking like a crude form of deer on stilt-like legs, was coming out from the side street. Their pale pool-like eyes turned and focused on her dim aura almost immediately. Spike, Angel, and the other animals, who until now had been standing their ground against the incoming Nighttouched, were now pulling back. Spike himself was letting out a canine whine.
Back at the wall, Applejack was getting progressively more red-faced as Fluttershy continued to talk soothingly to the soldier, which wasn’t easy as she was now distraught on hearing about the death of her comrade. Nevertheless, she finally got enough for the woman to reach under her arms and began to pull her free. As soon as she finished yanking her feet out, she called to the farmer. “Ok, she’s free.”
Applejack grunted as she let the bricks fall again; breaking them to bits on dropping them. Fluttershy quickly put her arm underneath the woman’s shoulders and began to help her up, while Applejack exhaled once before reaching around for her hammer.
Twilight, seeing the incoming reinforcements, shouted to the animals. “Get back! All of you!”
Luckily, they seemed to at least understand her voice even though she wasn’t Fluttershy. All of the animals including Spike turned and began to run away from the closing monsters. Twilight herself snapped around and began to run; opening her mouth to call out as she did. “Apple…”
She gasped again.
“Applejack! Look out!”
The farmer looked up just as she grasped her hammer; neither she nor Fluttershy nor the semi-conscious soldier noticing what had happened. Namely that a one-meter Light Eater walking down the side of the building on spindly, long, insect-like limbs had lowered itself right down to her level, and was now raising one of the appendages and curling the end into a claw to try and pierce the “light” that was emanating from her.
Yet in her surprise, and completely by accident, Applejack hefted her hammer off of the ground and brought it over her shoulder just as she called out: “Huh?” And in the course of doing so, the “teeth” on one end of it curled out and slid themselves right into the end of the Light Eater’s extended limb.
The moment it happened, the thing snapped its limb back and cradled it against the rest of its crude body. Twilight’s horror reverted to surprise and shock on seeing it react like that.
It was in pain.
Applejack hearing its movement overhead, turned and looked skyward. Fluttershy did at the same time, and instantly gave a shriek as she nearly dropped the soldier. The farmer, however, in spite of knowing full well it would do nothing, did the same thing she did every time she was panicked by an opponent. Out of pure reflex, she hefted her hammer and swung out at it. The head of the weapon cut through the air and smashed into its head.
And the thing, like an oversized bug that had been swatted, was ripped off of the wall and taken all the way to the road before its “skull” was crushed underneath the hammer.
In spite of the further monsters closing in behind them, for a moment all three women were stunned. Fluttershy pulled her free hand to cup her mouth. Twilight’s jaw nearly hit her chest. Applejack barely held onto her now-descended hammer as if she wasn’t believing that either it or her limbs had done that, even as she slowly watched the Light Eater degenerate into blackness before fading away into mist.
“I…I killed it…”
A beat passed, before a grin burst across her face. Her surprise turned to ecstatic joy. She yanked her hammer into the air with one hand and began to bellow loudly in jubilation.
“Whoo-hoo! Did y’all just see that? I killed one! I killed one! That’s fer every last apple tree ya’ spoiled, evert last acre you overran, and every last member of my family ya’ got killed, ya’ rotten son of a bitch! Jus’ you wait! I’m gonna put the rest of ya’ into holes in the ground too!”
“Applejack!”
Still cheering and shouting, the farmer looked down. Twilight, although still stunned at what she had just seen, had snapped out of it enough to keep running toward her. “Cheer later! We have to go!”
On spotting Twilight she was able to see behind her. Not only were the two other Light Eaters, much bigger than the one she had just smashed, still coming, but others were joining them along with fresh swarms of Nighttouched coming down both their original alley, the one that Twilight had faced, and the others along with them.
“Er, right!” she shouted back, some of her enthusiasm turning to shock, before she turned around and quickly got under the soldier Fluttershy was helping from the other side. Soon after she took off, nearly dragging them both with her. Twilight fell in alongside as the rest of the animals came up, and the entire party soon picked their way over the broken street to the more intact portions before breaking into a full run.
None of them looked behind as they rushed out into more open streets, but somehow they managed to keep ahead of them. That or they simply found other targets in the city to attack. At any rate their running kept them in the clear. The streets remained dark, a sign the gaslighting had been cut to this part of the town as well, so it was likely whatever fires had been set in the attacked portions were distracting them for at least a bit longer. However, the truly encouraging sign was that the sky began to lighten and turn gray the farther they went. They continued to hear gunfire from surrounding blocks, but no further screams.
At this point, Applejack finally turned to Twilight. “Did y’all see that back there? I crushed that Light Eater inta’ applesauce! Why didn’t ya’ tell me I could do that, Twilight?”
“I didn’t know you could! I didn’t think you could even hit them! I’ve been just like everyone else and tried to make sure they don’t touch me!” A pause. “But…now that you mention it…whenever we use a spirit our bodies start lighting up like this… Maybe it’s acting as an insulator or some covering that make it possible for us to interact with them physically…”
“Well, now we know I can kill ‘em too! So what now?”
Twilight’s answer was cut off by the sound of a heavy engine rolling up ahead. In the emerging light the three saw a large shadow in the fog. It soon parted it, revealing it to be another one of the trackless engines. This one had an old, weathered marking on it indicating its use by the military, which was all but confirmed by the fact it was carrying a field gun on a limber behind it. Fortunately, by now it looked as if there was enough light where one couldn’t make out the glows around their body. They did, however, seem to recognize they were carrying a soldier with them, and as a result they heard the large engine begin to slow as it chugged forward.
Twilight quickly waved to them when they did. As the two entities met, the engine came to a stop. The side opened and a few Griffonstone soldiers hopped out, regarding the incoming group with puzzlement. Yet before they could say a word, Applejack and Fluttershy rushed up to them with the fallen soldier and almost threw her into their arms.
“Here! Take her outta here and get yerselves out while yer at it!”
The dumbfounded soldiers looked over the gathering, including the unusual attire and the fact a whole troupe of animals were running alongside them. They almost seemed to forget the attack for a moment. “Who are you people? Some kind of circus? And what were you doing…”
The soldier trailed off as a light tremor went off down the road. He and his fellow soldiers looked stunned, but Twilight and her group went rigid. Especially when another tremor soon followed after it. The three women looked to one another briefly.
“Oh no…”
“It’s here…”
In a flash, Twilight spun back to the soldiers. Seeing her radiating eyes for the first time, they recoiled in even more alarm. “Which way is the coast from here?”
“Wh-what? Huh? What’s going-“
“Where?!”
“Well, uh…” he motioned with his hand to the left of their current path. “That way’s to the boardwalk…”
“How far?”
“I…I don’t know… A couple miles maybe?”
“Alright, thank you! There’s Light Eaters and a swarm of Nighttouched right behind us! Fall back if it starts getting dark!”
“Wait, wait!” the other soldier spoke up. “Just what’s going on here and who are-”
However, once again he cut himself off, this time not from the tremors but the fact that he spotted something down the road Twilight’s group had come. A moment later he raised his weapon. The other soldier looked as well and quickly did the same. Twilight risked a glance back the way they came and saw, much to her astonishment, the swarm of Nighttouched were still coming. The two opened fire and began to pick them off, but there were a hundred right behind them.
Realizing they couldn’t stick around any longer, Twilight turned and began to run again. Applejack and Fluttershy quickly fell in behind; leaving the soldiers to deal with the rushing horde.
“What in blazes is goin’ on? It’s light out here!” Applejack shouted.
“Um…I…think with all of this smog, that it’s kind of dark enough for the Nighttouched at least…” Fluttershy suggested.
“Great…” Applejack sighed. “That means they’ll be everywhere! And now that Tantamawhatzit is here too! And we only got a couple miles between it and the ocean!” She turned to Twilight. “Please tell me ya’ got a plan.”
She didn’t answer right away. She looked about as they kept running. By now, much of that part of the city was abandoned, and there weren’t many other soldiers left to keep running to the front line. Most of them, unaccustomed to dealing with surges, had broken for it along with the citizens, and all that was left were either abandoned and broken vehicles or homes and buildings that were left to rot or were being used as shelter. All of them were also darkened, making the fog of coal fumes even more absolute over the city.
She looked at the gaslights as they ran past, staring at several of them.
“I have the start of an idea, but I don’t think you’re going to like it.”
“Seein’ as it’s better than what I got, which is nothin’, I can’t complain. What is it?”
“First, we need to find one of the gas mains for these street lamps.”
Fortunately, it didn’t take the three long to find one. The city was continuing to desert, making it easier to move around, and the Nighttouched were keeping their swarms to the blackened portions. Only smaller groups were moving out in the rest of the foggy town, and were easily dealt with by Twilight and Applejack when they got near. And fortunately for them, the technology was so outdated in Griffonstone that they hadn’t moved their major gas lines under the ground. They found a large one right in the middle of an intersection at one of the roads at the ruins of where a pedestal had once stood.
As soon as they reached it she called out. “Alright, Fluttershy, stand back with Spike and the others for a moment! Applejack, get over here!”
Now that Fluttershy had finally stopped, Angel took the moment to hop into her arms as she stepped away; leading the other animals with her. Applejack came up to the main itself as Twilight stood at a distance.
“Alright…knock the top off of that valve right there!”
Applejack gave her an odd look. “Uh…I may have spent most of my life on a farm, but even I know that’s a bad idea.”
“Just do it!”
She winced, but finally shrugged. Looking back to the largest valve on top of the main, she exhaled before raising her hammer. For once, she made a “delicate” swing, not wanting to cause a spark. As a result, she managed to knock the valve right off the top of it. At once a hissing began to spill out and the air over the top of it rippled from gas fountaining up into the air.
“Good! Now stand back with Fluttershy!”
Applejack whistled as she readily did so. “Sure hope ya’ know what yer doin’… Be careful ‘round that. One wrong move and you’ll blow it sky high.”
Twilight waited until Applejack was far enough away, then raised her wand. She performed a gesture, painted a fiery sigil, and sent a fireball over the nozzle.
Moments later, part of the main was blown completely up as the gas ignited; scattering half of Fluttershy’s animals and knocking both her and Applejack off their feet. In its wake, a towering pillar of burning flame emerged like a giant torch blazing into the heavens.
As Fluttershy struggled to corral the critters, Applejack got back up and glared at Twilight. “Are ya’ outta yer mind?! You couldn’t blown us to bits! You trying ta’ start a gas fire?”
“Yes!”
Applejack’s shock turned to confusion. “Uh…come again?”
“They’ve turned off all the lights in the city in the path of the Tantabus! It has nowhere to go now but straight into the ocean like it wants!” She pointed to the now towering fire. “Now, this is the biggest and brightest light in the city! If it works like any of the other Light Eaters, it’s going to come for it before it heads to the ocean! Even in the worst surges, the Light Eaters always look for the closest source of light first!”
Applejack hesitated, looking at the towering flame, then back to her. “Ya’ mean…ya’ want it to come this way?”
“If it leads it away from the ocean, you bet I do! This will at least keep it from poisoning the coast!”
“But a fire like this is gonna bring every last Nighttouched and Light Eater here for blocks! And what do we do when it gets here?”
Twilight paused before she grinned sheepishly. “Well…I did say it was only the start of an idea.”
Applejack frowned.
“Well, what else can we do? At least this way we can keep it from the ocean.”
She rolled her eyes and groaned. “Awright, fine. Just one problem. If this city’s smoky enough ta’ keep these Nighttouched out in the open, then there’s no way that big one’ll see this from here. It’d have to be in a hundred yards or even closer.”
“That’s where the second part of my plan comes in. You’re going to have to hold the little ones back while I do this part.”
By now, Fluttershy had finally calmed down the last of the animals again, but their surroundings were already filling with the noises of Nighttouched screeching or calling. From the shadows about, an occasional pair of yellow eyes were emerging. Applejack saw them and let out a sigh. “Alright…guess if we’re gonna tangle with that big one, these little ones shouldn’t be a problem…” She hefted her hammer and began to step out.
As soon as she got on the move, Twilight looked right at the other woman with them. “Fluttershy!”
She looked surprised to be called to again. “Who…me?”
Twilight began to walk toward her. “This is very important and we don’t have a lot of time, so please listen carefully. With all of this smog over Griffonstone, there’s only one way that the Tantabus is ever going to see this signal fire, and that’s if it clears up. The only way I can clear it up is if I generate a wind spell powerful enough to sweep over all the city blocks leading up to it…which, at the moment, I can only guess is somewhere around that way.” She waved her hand in the direction they came from.
Fluttershy held a hand to her mouth. “Oh dear… Can you really make a spell that powerful?”
“No, I can’t. I’ve already used a lot of my mana but even if I hadn’t I’d run out long before I’d have all that I need. That’s why I need you.”
Now Fluttershy truly did look surprised. “What…what…me?”
Applejack gave a cry, momentarily distracting the two of them. They looked just as she finished flattering the first Nighttouched that emerged, but another one was already running out. Twilight quickly looked back to Fluttershy, holding up her sigil.
“You’ve seen how we use these in order to call on the spirits bound to us, right? If you were able to fully manifest your own seal, as a Healer you’d be able to regenerate my mana while I’m casting. Not sure if it would be enough…especially since you don’t have any experience with your own power…but it’s the only shot we’ve got. I have to get you to do it.”
Fluttershy shrunk a bit on herself. “Oh my… I…I’m not sure I know how to do any of that…”
“I’ll show you how,” she spoke more insistently, “but you have to do exactly what I say.”
Applejack crushed another Nighttouched, but now two were running out together. She swiveled her hammer once to scatter the blood and readied to meet them. Meanwhile, Fluttershy gulped, but then set Angel down. He looked back up to her, almost seeming concerned, before hopping just a short distance away. Standing up with trembling knees, she spoke to Twilight in a near whisper.
“Ok…”
“Now, you told me that you noticed that,” She pointed to the rune on her sigil. “after we got knocked off the boat.” She grimaced. “I’ve honestly never heard of an Anima Viri coming from an animal before…but that bird was very precious to Headmistress Celestia, and if anyone would have had a pet that had an Anima Viri it would have been her. So I’m thinking…or hoping…you got the symbol from her. If that’s the case, you have to do what we do. She’s already bound to you, so…”
She held her hand up. “Put your hand up like this.”
Fluttershy hesitated, then raised her hand halfway.
“All the way.”
Another pause, but then she extended it all the way.
“Now, you have to shout this in a commanding voice. ‘Member of my house, I command you to come to me. Little Sunshine—Philomena.’”
Fluttershy lowered her hand, looking confused. “Um…‘Little Sunshine’?”
“It’s what the headmistress called her. I’m hoping that’s the right title too. Now do it. And remember…commanding.”
Fluttershy stared silently a moment, then raised her hand again; once more halfway. “Um…member of my house, I command you to come to me. Little Sunshine—Philomena.”
Twilight stared blankly at her. She was standing two feet away and barely even heard her. “Fluttershy…I said commanding.”
“Oh, sorry…ahem. Member of my house, I command you to come to me. Little Sunshine—Philomena.”
If that had been any louder, Twilight hadn’t noticed. She began to groan.
“What in blazes ya’ doin’ over there?!”
The two looked up and back, and saw Applejack was now fighting off four at a time, all of which were clawing for her legs to try and get up to scratch her eyes. Six more were coming out and running up along the street.
“I can’t kill every last durn Nighttouched in this city! Hurry up!”
“Oh…oh, I’m so sorry…” Fluttershy apologized, turning back to Twilight. “It’s just, um…I don’t sound very commanding…”
Twilight nearly flustered, but she managed to keep her calm and looked more imploring. “Fluttershy, if we don’t do this soon it’ll be too late. The Tantabus will make it into the ocean, and then it’ll ruin everything. No boats will be able to leave the continent, we’ll be surrounded by night so nothing will grow, thousands of people living on the coast could die, the sea will be filled with Nighttouched fish and they might gain the ability to come on land-”
“Wait, you mean…the Tantabus could turn all of the fish in the ocean just like the ones on the boat? Those poor creatures that were in so much pain?”
Twilight paused, realizing she had just hit something. “…Yeah. And not only them, but the sea lions, the turtles, the…um…sharks, the, uh…aneomes…”
“Oh no!” For a moment, the woman’s knees stopped knocking. She looked down to her feet a moment, but then straightened up and took a deep breath. Steeling herself as much as she could, she held her hand all the way up. Although her voice still barely registered at a light shout, she called to call out with as much power as she could muster.
“Member of my house, I command you to come to me! Little Sunshine—Philomena!”
A second later, Twilight lit up in delight while Fluttershy herself yelped on seeing her sigil ignite. As it had with Twilight and Applejack before her, her aura lit up and streamed out above her head. This time it formed an image of a bird, but not the one from yesterday. This one was a resplendent beauty—a mix of falcon and peacock as iridescent and majestic as a flame. Even Fluttershy, after her initial shock, was left staring in awe at it before the light broke over her.
Her dress thickened and lengthened before being dyed into a white with bold color trim and seam. It swept over her arms into long sleeves before splitting in front to become a full length robe. More durable shoes came over her feet while gloves tipped each of her hands, and an inner garment with a sweater-like neckline filled in underneath. Finally, a thicker white hood grew out of the neckline with a design emblazoned on the edge. Her hair swept forward over her shoulders before it raised up and covered the rest of her head.
The light dimmed but maintained its soft glow, and Fluttershy was left looking over herself. "Goodness... I wasn't expecting that..." She reached up and felt the robe, smiling a little. "Well, it might be a little warm for the summer, but it's definitely soft. And look." She reached up and felt the hood. "I can pull this down over my eyes whenever I need to."
"Fluttershy?"
"Hmm?" She looked up, seeing Twilight staring at her. "Oh...oh yes, what do I do?"
With one last yell behind them, Applejack smashed the head of the latest of the attacking Nighttouched. She looked up afterward, quickly brandishing herself for more, and nearly taking a swing...
However, she froze when she saw what was rushing on her wasn't Nighttouched but more civilians. A hundred of them all together, and so panicked and desperate to flee that they didn't even react to her as they ran by. For a moment, she stood befuddled as they passed her one after another. As soon as the last one had gone, though, she looked back to the empty street they had come from and blanched.
A flood of Nighttouched were running down the street. These ones weren't just regular animals that had been transformed, and they weren't the wolf constructs from before either. She saw they were led by much larger creatures the size of covered wagons. As they parted the gloom and got closer, she saw that they were maned, four-pawed, and moving like giant lions. At least six of them had taken the lead, and even from a distance she could hear their growling.
Applejack grimaced as she hefted her hammer. "Hey Twilight, we're gonna have to move soon!"
"Alright, here's what you need to do." Twilight turned around and put her back to Fluttershy. "Put your hands on my shoulders."
She ventured forward and slowly did so. "Like...this?"
"Great. Now, close your eyes."
She obeyed. Twilight raised her wand and looked to the sky.
"Ok, here's hoping this works... What you need to do is to just visualize a stream running through inside you."
"A stream...? Like a creek or river?"
"No, no...it's like energy inside you."
"Energy? Like...in my muscles?"
"No, it's not that either, it's...it's..." She sighed, realizing how difficult this would be as a crash course. "How about this... Do you feel different right now?"
She turned her head, thinking it over. "Now that you mention it...I guess I do feel a bit stronger."
"What else?"
"Hmm...I almost feel...more...energetic? Almost like...like there's something inside me... Something warm..."
"Yes, that's it! Concentrate on that! Focus on that! I want you to see it flowing from you into me! Imagine...like...like you're a warm cup of tea and I'm something cold, and that all that golden, warm heat inside you is sinking into me and warming me up. Can you do...ooo!"
Twilight went a bit rigid as Fluttershy took it too literally, moving forward and putting her arms around Twilight before pulling her into a hug. "Like...this?"
"Uh...er...well..." she stammered. "Your hands would have been fine, but..." She flushed a shade red, before shaking her head. "Whatever helps you to visualize that. Keep visualizing it, like you're sending that into me, and don't stop for a second."
She raised her wand to the sky again. She took a deep breath and began to trace a new sigil. This one was a pale green, but it was also far more elaborate than the previous ones. She was still drawing it after several seconds, her eyes narrowing and her focus increasing. Her face already began to tighten by the time she finally finished and began to sweep her wand around. In response, a breeze started to blow through the square. It began gentle, but in moments it became stiffer. The gas fire started to whip around a bit along with bits of trash and debris, but Twilight continued to generate it.
Applejack took a step backward as the Nighttouched neared, for she could not only make out the outline of mouths far larger than those of normal lions but what looked like segmented tails with stingers were in their midst. On top of that, the sounds of the earth-shaking footsteps were getting louder and stronger. When she took another step back, however, she began to feel her hair being pulled. She looked up, noticing the growing wind.
By the time a stiff breeze began to whip around the square, Twilight was already sweating freely. She started to grunt with a bit of the strain as she forced her wand to keep moving around. Fluttershy's hood was ripped back, and she instantly closed her eyes and pressed herself tighter into Twilight as she tried to concentrate. The spellcaster's legs began to wobble as the wind grew strong enough to start moving debris around, and sweat started to fall like bullets from her chin. As her knees began to give out all together, Fluttershy clutched her even tighter and kept her held up. Her teeth bared as a visible gale began to circle the area. The flames of the gas light grew taller and more towering from the wind pattern, and a distinct roar echoed around them. Twilight started to cry out as moving her arm became as strenuous as lifting weights and she was nearing the breaking point.
Applejack began to crouch to the ground, as she was nearly being blown over by the power of the wind. The rest of the animals clung to one another and dragged themselves closer to Fluttershy and Twilight to avoid getting blasted away. Still it continued to grow. The smog around them was caught up and the air cleared as it was turned into a smoky twister about them. Yet still it grew stronger, and still Twilight cried as she forced herself to keep moving. Her nostrils flared as she breathed harder and Fluttershy felt a wetness as Twilight’s robe became drenched with her own sweat. Finally, it was all she could manage. With one final gesture, she snapped the wand up and aimed it skyward.
Applejack was blown clean off of her feet and flung against the nearest building as the full force of the wind blast took off. Two dozen windows were shattered and blown in and half the shingles blasted off of the nearest rooftops. A thunderclap ranng through the sky as the wind ascended skyward, and Twilight nearly collapsed in Fluttershy's arms as she alone was able to look up.
She watched as the smog surrounding the city broke like it was a wave rolling in reverse. A huge curtain of gray matter was swept right out of the sky. It wasn't high enough to let the sun shine back in, but it rolled away a good portion of the gloom and mist all across the skyline.
As Twilight weakly looked up and cracked her eyes open and the rest of the animals risked looking as well, they finally saw the clearing sky go far enough to turn black from the Light Eater influence. It continued to sweep from there but they couldn't see how much farther. All that was left was an empty area of the sky; running clean from the gas fire all the way into a sea of darkness.
Applejack stepped away from the walls and looked up with the others. Twilight and Fluttershy continued to search for a moment before they finally saw it.
Very faintly, a pair of moon-like spots formed in the distant darkness and slowly turned to face the direction of the fire. They focused directly on it. Soon after, a series of stars began to emerge from the blackness, encompassing an entire third of the visible skyline. It quickly began to grow brighter as the rhythmic tremors began again, and the moonspots slowly began to grow bigger.
Twilight couldn't help but swallow. The thing was so huge she couldn't even make out its full form. One thing was abundantly clear from the sky beginning to darken about them again, though.
They had its attention, and now it was coming.
"Alright...we distracted it," Twilight half-exhaled. "Now we've got about five minutes to think of what to do now..."
"Less than that, Twilight! Look!"
Still dazzled and weak, Twilight looked up to Applejack. She was pointing down the road, and on looking down it she saw the same swarm of monstrosities stampeding for the square and the fire. Clearing the sky had momentarily let more light in, causing them to become sluggish, but in the wake of the approaching Tantabus and its darkness they were fully active once more. They were so close already she could make out their snarling faces.
Twilight began to sweat again but not from exhaustion. Nevertheless, she forced her legs back up and to step away from Fluttershy. She started to aim her wand forward. Applejack readied her hammer anew. Fluttershy cupped her gloves and sleeves to her mouth, but Spike, Angel, and the rest of her animals prepared themselves for another fight. They watched the things cross past another building and charge into the last crossing. They passed it soon after, and now there was nothing but an alleyway between them and the group in the square. They braced themselves for this new fight...
When, suddenly, Twilight looked up with a puzzled expression.
“Does…anyone hear what sounds like a trackless engine?”
An instant later, a roaring, flaming engine burst out of the alley, raking through the walls on either side, before smashing itself into the building across from it. The two Nighttouched in the lead were tackled by the engine and obliterated against the building façade, smashed deep into it and crushed utterly when the entire side of the structure collapsed on the flaming engine. The rest of the iron vehicle halted at once as the flames on it continued to spread. It now formed an effective barrier blocking off the road.
The women looked up in a mixture of shock and dumbfounded surprise. Applejack nearly dropped her own hammer and gaped at what had just happened. The square was silent save for the sound of the collision slowly dying out and the flames crackling. No one moved or said a word.
A clanking noise finally came from the engine as the side bulkhead was rotated, and a moment later the door swung open only to groan once before snapping off of its hinges all together. Twilight and the others watched as three individuals stumbled out. A figure dressed only in light clothes for high mobility and to show off muscles, a lightly-clad woman in a bandanna who somersaulted out like an acrobat, and a flashing, debonair fencer dressed in elaborate finery like a royal musketeer.
They stared at Twilight, Applejack, and Fluttershy as soon as they emerged, and the three stared right back.
“Oh look! The track goes downhill again!” Grinning, Pinkie took her hands off the pump to hold them in the air. “Wheeeeeee!”
Rarity grimaced and tried not to retch as the cart once again went down a vertical slope of track at three times its normal speed, hurtling down the tunnel fast enough to derail at a sharp enough curve. This hadn’t been the first time it happened, but so long as they continued to get farther from the monstrous footsteps, the Nighttouched, and the Light Eaters, she couldn’t complain. She simply had to hold on for dear life for several moments until it leveled out again. As soon as Pinkie laughed and began to pump again, she held her hands back on Rainbow Dash and repeated a tired mantra. “All better… All better… All better…”
It had to have been hours since they escaped. Not all of it went as fast as the downhill runs or even their initial pumping. A lot of times they had to pump uphill, which was enough to slow even Pinkie down. That in itself was surprising. She didn’t seem to tire for a minute during the entire trek. During that time, whenever Rarity hadn’t been nervously checking for monsters behind them or clinging to the cart, she had been keeping her hands on her trying the same trick as before. There was no telling how effective it was being, however. Dash didn’t move once.
“Oh, look!”
Rarity paused in her healing at Pinkie calling. She pointed to the ceiling as she easily pumped with one hand. There was another break in it just like earlier, but now it was letting in faint gray light.
“The sun’s come up. Thank goodness…”
“Oh, and look at that!”
Rarity looked at the tracks as Pinkie pointed ahead. A sign was coming up fast. It was hard to make it out due to lack of lighting, but there was just enough of a glow to make out a warning that the track aborted in one mile.
She sighed in relief. “Let’s hope it comes out close to a city.” She looked back down at Dash, who still wasn’t moving. However, she didn’t seem to be sore or in pain like earlier. With that in mind, she tentatively reached out and put her hand on her shoulder.
“Dash…are you awake?”
“Yeah.”
Rarity was a bit surprised at the ready response. It didn’t sound groggy or slow at all, meaning she had been awake for some time. However, it was also rather monotone and unenthused.
“Oh, that’s…that’s good. How are you feeling?”
“Like crud.”
Rarity grimaced again. The way she said it, she didn’t think she was referring to her physical condition. “Well, we’re less than a mile from the end of the track. We made it. After everything that happened, we’re nearly at the end.”
She didn’t answer. Rarity kept looking uneasy but turned her head forward again.
It didn’t take much longer before the same gray light appeared at the end of the tracks around a bend. It was the mine exit. At last, they passed out of it. Rarity expected a welcome feeling of fresh air and light. Instead, she got a gray haze as they ran right into a foul-smelling fog, and in moments she was wrinkling her nose before coughing and hacking.
“Ugh,” she nearly retched again as she nearly covered her mouth, “what is this ghastly stench? I’ve seen less fumes from the pipe of a coal stove!”
“Oh, look Rarity!” Pinkie cheered again. “They’re congratulating us for making it out of the mines by putting a big sign on the track!” She looked closer. “Huh…kind of looks like a big red X and a lot of logs.”
“Wh-what?!” Alarmed, she looked ahead. Coming out of the gloom was a large reinforced palisade barrier. One they were running into at full speed.
Quickly she reached out, eschewing her lady-like traits for a change, and seized the brake; pulling it back with all of her might. A loud squeal followed by a shower of iron sparks erupted from the front of the cart; so powerfully even Dash looked up idly. Pinkie, seeming to take this for another joke, stopped pumping, giggled, and tried to scream out loudly along with the brake squeal. It was rather tight, but the car’s natural inertia plus the brake slowed it down quickly, and they managed to grind to a halt a mere eight feet from collision.
Rarity nervously exhaled before slumping on the cart. It took her a moment to recover. As for Pinkie Pie, she hopped right off. “Whee! That was fun! I hope there’s another dangerous, rickety, old push cart between here and Manehattan!”
The designer glanced to her and, to her surprise, noticed something. In spite of the fact that she had operated the push cart all by herself for hours, she was back to her former clothing. She puzzled for a moment over how that had happened before letting it slide and slowly inching herself off the cart as well. She grasped her lower back at how stiff it was, before she took a look at their surroundings.
It seemed they were up high on a mountainside, right on a level patch where a tunnel terminated. Perhaps it had been intended to eventually connect all the way down the mountain but construction had halted with the Lunar Fall. At any rate, the old switchback trail that would have led workers up to it was still there, although it didn’t go too far down the mountain before it vanished into a large amount of industrial smog. Far below them, like the surface of a foggy lake, Rarity could just make out the layout of a large, dirty city. Old smokestacks were everywhere pumping coal fumes, and the distant sound of large engines churning echoed up from it. Perhaps not the best-looking city in the world, but a city none the less.
“Alright…first things first. We need to get out of Griffonstone and into Fillydelphia. Then we immediately find a telegram and wire to Manehattan about the contract, and then we get there as fast as we can.”
As soon as she finished speaking, she heard Dash begin to laugh. Both she and Pinkie looked back to her, but she was still lying on top of the mine cart. Worse than that, the laugh was far from jovial or excited. It was empty and hollow with a wistful grin on her face.
“Um…Dash?”
Leaning her head back, she idly raised her hand and pointed. “Look.”
Rarity followed where she was pointing and noticed a sign mostly obscured by the surrounding fog. She hadn’t noticed it at first, but on taking a step closer she was able to make out the lettering on it.
It was mostly covered with graffiti insulting the town below, but she could just make out in bold lettering its actual name: Grifftham City.
Rarity’s pupils began to shrink. “Griff…Griff…Grifftham…”
“Yup, that’s right,” Dash said with completely mock enthusiasm. “We took the wrong track. Even straight as the crow flies, we’re a good 120 kilometers out of the way. Even if we could pump that cart back the way we came and didn’t run into a mountain worth of Nighttouched, it’d take a whole day to get to the city we needed to be in. And guess what? There’s no telegrams to Manehattan from here.”
Rarity stood as if she had just had a stroke. She stared blankly at that sign like it was a criminal sentence. A very cold feeling sank into her stomach. For several moments, she was silent as a corpse. Dash alone rolled over onto her stomach but did no more. Their somber moods were enough to even get Pinkie to stop bouncing. Her happiness turned to concern.
“Um…are you two ok?”
Rarity’s head fell to her chest, staring at the remains of her borrowed shoes and the dirt. “We…we can’t make it. After everything…everything we’ve been through…everything that tried to kill us…we can’t make it. This…this was all…all for…”
In spite of her exhaustion, she felt her eyes beginning to mist up. It wasn’t one of her more dramatic moments either. She no longer had the strength for that. Thinking of everything that had happened to get that far, only for it all to fail, only left her with the bitterest of tears.
Dash let out a tired humph. “Yup…” she muttered. “Now you see why the great ‘Sonic Rainboom’ isn’t good for anything except littering bars…”
In spite of her own state, Rarity looked up to Dash along with Pinkie.
“The big Wonderbolt…letting someone down again. Seems to be all she’s good for ever since Cloudsdale. Gets by on her glory days of when she was a somebody instead of a lazy has-been. Talks big about how she’s going to bail out all the people who gave her booze and a roof over her head when she never has two bits to rub together. Sells herself as the best of the best and this is what happens.”
She slumped.
“Not only did I not get you back to Manehattan, I didn’t get you back with that contract. Now you’re broke, your business is sunk, and your employees are going to be livin’ out of trash cans and old cider just like me pretty soon. I’m supposed to be protecting you and your teacher ends up biting the big one bailing me out. And now? Now one of the last friends I had in Cloudsdale is probably having her skull gnawed on by an oversized rat and I couldn’t do anything about it except get smacked down by a guy wearing an antique. If that wasn’t enough…”
She jabbed a thumb behind her at the tunnel.
“Any minute now we’re going to start hearing those things we got away from either tramping over this mountain or rolling down that tunnel, so I couldn’t even keep you safe, let alone anyone else.” She let her hand fall. “Some hero, huh? At least you don’t have to pay me my fee now. That means you got your money’s worth…”
Rarity didn’t answer. She didn’t like the sound of what Dash was saying, but she had no encouragement to give. She was too mired in her own failure to lift the rainbow-haired woman out of hers. She turned back to the dark city. Nothing but grayness, bleakness, and disuse. Not a single light or shining spot visible in any of it. After everything they had gone through and who had helped them get this far, this was the end of it.
She reached into her pocket and slowly pulled out the wrinkled, sweat-stained, dirty, near rag that was the contract. They had given everything they had to get it back to Manehattan, and now it was worthless. In another moment, she would have crumpled it up and flung it over the side of the mountain.
“Aw…”
Pinkie’s voice caused her to look away. Dash didn’t glance up, but it was impossible for her not to hear her. The pink-haired woman was bouncing again around before both of them, looking energetic again.
“Cheer up, you two! Things aren’t as bad as they seem!”
Dash let out a bitter snort.
“I’m afraid I share Ms. Dash’s sentiments…” Rarity dully responded. “This is it. Things couldn’t possibly be any worse.”
“Oh, sure they could!” she happily answered, immediately zooming to her side. “You’re both still here, aren’t you? You’re both still walking and talking! And this wasn’t all for nothing, silly! You got two big somethings out of it! You both got two new friends!”
This was puzzling enough for Dash to turn her head to Pinkie, although Rarity looked quite confused as well. “Ex…excuse me? Who are you talking about?”
She giggled. “You and Rainbow Dash are friends now, aren’t you?”
The two glanced to one another, blinked a few times, then looked back. “Well, I’m not sure I would go so far as to say that…”
“Yeah…” Dash added uneasily. “I mean, look at her… She’s all prissy and proper… Although I admit she comes in handy in a fight every now and then.”
“And she’s completely rough around the edges, but…” She shrugged. “I do find a sort of charm to her energy and bravery, I will admit. And I’m grateful that if I was paired with a Huntsman that it would be one who knew firsthand about…well, this.” She held up her symbol.
Dash smirked. “And if I was going to stuck with some sheltered Manehattanite, it’s nice to be one who thinks about someone else over her own pocket. You must be someone special if a woman who hadn’t seen you in years was willing to do that for you in Flaxonville.”
“Oh ho…I wouldn’t say that. Not in the least…” Rarity answered with a bit of a nervous exhale, before looking back. “Yet after seeing how much of a scoundrel a mercenary from Griffonstone can be firsthand, you can’t be that much of a disappointment if Gilda did that for you in the mines.”
Now it was Dash’s turn to hold her head down nervously, but she raised it again soon after. “Wait…who’s the other friend?”
Pinkie giggled. “Why me, silly!”
“Uh…we just met you yesterday.”
“That doesn’t mean we can’t be friends right away! Maud always told me that the way of a Gaitian is to be kind to everybody, and to me that means make friends with everyone I can! And seeing how much you two help each other out makes me want to be your friend too! It’d be great to have two people who care so much about their own friends being my friends!”
Rarity and Dash were speechless, and both failed to realize their moods had brightened up considerably.
“And you kno-ow…” Pinkie half sang, folding her hands behind her and leaning in close. “If you really, reeeally, reeeeeeeally want to help a bunch of people,” She pointed down at the city below. “I’m sure there’s tons of people down there who could really use someone telling them that there’s a whole mountain full of monsters coming this way. ‘Cause seriously? I don’t think they can see anything in this smog.”
Both realized that for the first time. They glanced back to the mine entrance. It was still quiet for now, but neither of them doubted what Dash had said. Any moment they’d start hearing the echo of the Nighttouched. And in the foggy surroundings it didn’t matter that day had broken. They looked back to one another afterward. For a few moments, they stared quietly.
“I will admit, I’ve never really pictured myself as being big on heroics.”
“Same here…uh, unless there’s a paycheck involved.”
Rarity paused. She looked at her symbol.
“Just the same…these things are quite powerful.”
“Yeah…”
“And this way, the trip wouldn’t have been in vain after all.”
“I’ll admit…it’d feel nice to save the day again for once.”
Another pause, but both looked up a bit more. Their faces were more energized and even optimistic.
Dash smirked. “Y’know, you do this, you’re gonna get awful dirty.”
“Oh, pish-posh,” she smiled back with a hand wave. “I’m already quite dirty. Besides, knowing that I made sure Ms. Cheerilee’s sacrifice wasn’t in vain, doing something for Gilda’s home country, and even not letting that generous man’s tickets go to waste is worth a little soot.”
Pinkie grinned from ear-to-ear. “Does this mean we’re gonna make our first official friendship get-together be the 1st Annual Friendship Saving of a Major Metropolitan Area from an Army of Darkness, hmm?”
Dash and Rarity looked at each other and smiled a little wider. Dash sat up, hopped off the cart, and began to rotate her cuffs. Rarity smiled back at Pinkie. “I suppose it does.”
“Yay! Aw…I should’ve brought a batch of my special surprise Annual Friendship Saving of a Major Metropolitan Area from an Army of Darkness cookies!” She snickered before lowering her voice. “The surprise is I haven’t invented them yet!”
Dash snickered once, then motioned her head along to the trail. “Alright, we aren’t going to save this city sitting around here. Come on. We gotta move.”
She immediately took the lead. Rarity took off after her, picking up the pace as Dash went into a jog. Pinkie Pie cheered and began to skip happily after them. In moments all three were running down the dirt and gravel trail to begin the long descent down the mountain.
“Alright then. Now that we’ve decided we’re going to save Grifftham City, I would love to know how we plan to do that.”
Dash turned her head over her shoulder to face Rarity. “First things first. We got to let everyone know trouble’s coming. Then the people can start getting out and the army can get ready to fight back.”
“Smashing, but…how do we do that?”
“Heh, that’s the easy part. Look.”
They rounded the first hairpin turn at that moment, and Dash pointed ahead through the fog and gloom while still looking behind her. Rarity had to look for a moment, but as they got nearer she gradually began to see a metal spire emerging from the smog. It looked as if it had some sort of megaphones mounted on top of it.
“Bingo. Maybe coming out this far from the city wasn’t such a bad thing. That there’s an alarm station. It’s supposed to sound whenever there’s a Nighttouched threat, and all the other stations around the city will sound out too and spread it everywhere. We’ll set it off for starters.”
Rarity thought for a moment. “That’s all well and good, but wouldn’t there be someone from their military already stationed there?”
Dash snickered. “You don’t know how things work in Griffonstone, do you? They never do anything they think they don’t need. Since all the Nighttouched attacks are north of here, there won’t be a soul at this station. Good thing we’re here though, right?”
“I suppose so, but if no one is monitoring this station, who in the world are they?”
“Huh?”
Dash looked back and, sure enough, at this point there were multiple man-sized shadows all up and down the road up ahead. Rarity could only make out the silhouettes herself. The Huntsman, on the other hand, could see more clearly.
As a result, she halted in her tracks. “Get off the road! Now!”
“What did-”
An eruption of gunfire went off, only it wasn’t conventional bullets. To Rarity’s shock and horror, she saw jets of fire, ice, and lightning crack through the fog and stream toward them. It was only because Dash snapped around, seized her by the wrist, and dragged her aside that she wasn’t hit by it. Even so, they were stuck on a mountain switchback path with nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. To their left was only a cliff drop off to the next tier, while to their right was the rock wall. Opting for the latter, Dash yanked Rarity over to it as the magical gunfire continued to shoot at them. Part of the cliff bulged out just enough for an outcropping, and she quickly shoved Rarity behind it before she followed. Pinkie bounced after them, and all three inched away from the edge as several other lightning blasts ripped pieces of rock away from it.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen bullets like those…” she mused.
“Those Trottingham creeps who shot up Flaxonville!” Dash sneered.
“How in Greater Everfree are they here, though?” Rarity cried.
“That jerk in the armor must have tipped them off that we were heading into the mountains! They just waited for us at the exits! Or maybe he even led them here! He said he could track you though that thing on your leg, right?”
Rarity groaned. “This is why I think tattoos are horrid…”
The gunfire cut off. The three were silent and still. They heard the sounds of movement and reloading, but no footsteps. Dash moistened her lips and pressed herself to the side of the cliff, inching toward the edge as near as she dared, before turning back to Rarity. “Got a mirror?”
“More or less,” she sighed as she reached into her pocket and pulled out a shard from a former compact.
“It’ll do,” she answered, plucking it from her hand and holding it up angled around the path.
“What do you see?”
“A dozen of them at least… I think two of them are the big guys from before.”
“What the-?!” a voice suddenly yelled from the unseen crowd. “You all didn’t hit one of them?!”
“Uh, but Snips, you said to shoot as soon as they saw somethin’, so they didn’t have time to aim.”
“Ugh! Snails, why didn’t you shoot?”
“I did. Mine doesn’t go that far.”
Dash frowned. “Ok, now I know the guys from Flaxonville are there. I can just make out the shack for the alarm behind ‘em.” She lowered the mirror and frowned. “They got a bead on us, so I don’t know how I can get out to beat ‘em all up.”
“I’m not sure we have time for that even if we can,” Rarity nervously answered. “At the moment, if the Nighttouched come they’ll either attack us here or cut us off. We need to get past them and trip that alarm then get away.”
“Alright. But that still leaves the question of how we’ll do that when they can shoot me as soon as I pop out. I’m still sore from buckethead in the mines. I don’t think even my symbol will let me do it.”
“Oh, oh! Pick me! I can do it!” Pinkie cheered.
Both women turned to her, looking a bit dubious. “I appreciate the volunteer, dear, but I don’t think you can outrun these kind of, um, bullets.”
She snickered. “Who need to outrun bullets when you only need to outrun trigger fingers?”
Both Rarity and Dash were perplexed by that, but Pinkie didn’t stick around any longer. She stuck her hand with her symbol into the air. “Member of my house, I command you to come to me! Sage Geologist—Maudileena Daisy Pie!”
Rarity and Dash both pressed themselves back in alarm at the eruption of the white aura, nervous about what it would mean to touch it. Again, the same visage of the woman formed before it spilled over Pinkie and turned her into the same roguish character as before. She giggled once, then darted right out from behind the rock wall into the open.
The guns began to fire off again almost immediately, causing Dash to snap back just as she was reaching out to try and stop her. Pinkie, however, went into a graceful cartwheel and easily slipped past it completely. She giggled again as they changed their aim and fired once more, but easily spun around the first few shots before somersaulting forward to avoid the others. She actually sang a little song as she got up and gracefully began to “serpentine hop” toward the crowd.
With her drawing their fire, Rarity and Dash looked out in astonishment to see her easily weaving around the deadly attacks blasting holes and craters all along the mountain path, but not so much as putting a speck of dirt on her.
“Sheesh, how is she even doing that?”
Rarity was about to stammer that she didn’t know, when she paused and cupped her hand to her chin. She remembered what Pinkie had said back in the cavern…
Before she could voice it, Pinkie, still giggling and laughing, nearly reached the front line and was still dodging even at point blank range. At last, the attackers ran out of ammunition and, to their visible frustration, they frantically tried to reload while they could. She kept bouncing a bit closer, before a loud squish went out. At once, her nimble flipping and hopping slowed to a crawl.
Dash was puzzled before she looked down to the ground. It was hard to make it out from here, but a trail of whitish goop was streamed along it. At once, she remembered the one called Snails saying he had fired, but that it hadn’t gone far. “Oh no…”
“Aw…!” Pinkie frowned, almost pouting at how her body was now moving in slow motion. She tried to begin another move, but it was like her body was passing through molasses. The agility she had before was gone. Seconds later, the soldiers had reloaded. They took aim and Rarity cupped her hands to her mouth on the thought it was over.
Before any could shoot, a squat shadow among them yelled. “Stop!”
The soldiers held their fire, although their guns remained aimed. A pair of swishing sounds rang out as the shadow deployed his blades from either hand, confirming him to be Snips. He advanced on Pinkie, still in a mid-air skip, and held his weapons to either side of her neck.
“Alright you two!” he shouted. “Get out here right now or I’m taking her head off her shoulders!”
“You idiot!” Dash yelled back. “You’re going to kill us all anyway!”
“She’s got a point, Snips.”
“Shut up, Snails!” His voice got an edge on it. “Alright, have it your way if you want. You can either try to go out like a hero and save your friend, or you can just stay back there like a big chicken and let her croak without a fight. You got thirty seconds to pick. Start countin’, Snails!”
“Uh, hang on. It’s hard to get my pocketwatch out in this.”
“Just count!”
“Ok. 1, 2, 3…”
“I meant count down from 30!”
“Oh, ok. 30, 31, 32…”
“I said down!”
“Oh, ok. 30…” A pause. “Uh, what comes next?”
“Gah! Someone else count!”
A sigh from a soldier. “30, 29, 28…”
Rarity and Dash both pulled back in and looked at each other nervously. “We can’t just sit here and let her be decapitated!”
“Yeah, but those soldiers will be waiting for us! And even I can’t go fast enough to dodge them all!”
“And I certainly can’t do anything.” She began to fish around in her pockets. “I’m not sure I even have a reasonably pointy object to throw at them at this point…” A moment later, she yanked her hands back out, revealing only a clothing pin in between two fingers. She slumped. “I don’t think hemming their trousers is going to help very much.”
“20, 19, 28…”
“Great…” Dash groaned as she rubbed her nasal bridge. “Normally I can’t stand using this power, and the one time I need it it’s not enough…”
“Wait… That’s just what I was thinking about. Remember what Pinkie Pie said?”
“Huh?”
“She said we weren’t using our symbols correctly…or something to that effect. I think you have to say something like what she was saying.”
Dash crooked her eyebrow. “You kidding? You actually want to take her advice on something?”
“It’s not like we have many other options, right?”
“12, 11, 10…”
Hearing the count getting dangerously close, Dash winced, and finally sighed. “Alright, alright… Couldn’t hurt. I’m going to have to make a run for it either way.”
Rarity looked a bit concerned. “Um…I don’t suppose you know what title she had, do you?”
Dash wistfully smirked. “Sure do. There was only one title for her.” She took a deep breath as she held up her symbol. “Here it goes.”
Steeling herself, she turned her head skyward as the count reached six.
“Member of my house, I command you to come to me! Leader of the Wonderbolts—Captain Spitfire!”
Dash’s own eyes bulged in shock along with Rarity’s as the symbol resonated, and her body began to emanate light just as Pinkie’s had. It wasn’t the white color, however, but blue this time. And as the light streaked forth to create a visage over her head, it wasn’t of the woman from before either.
Instead, both Rarity and Dash saw a woman who had a more youthful energy in her eye, but also a ferocity and boldness to her features. A wry smirk was on her face, as if she was inviting or even daring danger to come for her. Her wild hair was cut in such a way that even swept back it looked like a flame trailing.
And for a moment, Dash’s mouth hung open at seeing her.
“Spitfire…”
The visage and light broke and swept over her. Her already loose clothing mostly vanished, leaving her only with a light vest, a collared necklace of beads, and loose pants with a sash. Her socks and boots were gone, leaving her only with bare feet, and only a few bands of cloth acting as bracers along her arms were left behind. Her own wild rainbow-colored hair was tied back by a much simpler bandanna than Pinkie’s, being only a strip of cloth. Her muscles, however, which had already been powerful enough, instantly tightened, toned, and solidified even more strongly. While her overall frame remained the same, in moments she looked like she was made practically of marble.
The glow dimmed to a faint aura and Dash looked over herself in amazement. Rarity was likewise awed; definitely not expecting that.
“Good heavens…” she breathed. “I don’t suppose…you feel strong enough to possibly make the run, do you?”
In a snap, Dash looked up at Rarity with a smug grin.
“Just watch.”
“3, 2-”
Dash spun around, and Rarity let out a gasp for she was instantly gone. She saw only the faint sign of a blur before she was left staring at open air. A second later, the one counting stopped doing so to the tune of the sound of air rushing out of their lungs. Alarmed, Rarity went back to the side and looked.
She was awed on seeing how fast Dash had moved; having already stopped and poised right in front of the soldier who had been counting. The soldier herself was completely bent around her fist, her tongue hanging out and nearly looking as if the Huntsman not only knocked the wind out of her but almost everything else with it. And that was with the same protection measures they had been using back in Flaxonville.
Her speed had left the group too stunned to even fire. As for Dash, she had never grinned so wide before.
“Now this is awesome!”
With a move so fast it cut the air, she swung her foot up behind her. The end of another soldier’s gun barrel was hit hard enough to spin skyward, and she followed up by snapping around and driving her foot into her head. Her helmet was shattered from the impact and, once again, the device she was using for protection was no help as she snapped backward and dropped to the ground.
With Dash in their midst, their larger and more errant weapons were no use, and so the nearest soldiers fumed as they dropped their guns to the ground and snapped their knives free as they had in Flaxonville. They advanced on her as soon as they were able, starting off with two from either side swinging for her head and her middle respectively. Still smirking, Dash planted her feet and snapped both of her arms out, one going high and the other going low. They ended up smacking against the flat of the swinging blades and blocking both.
The soldiers quickly repositioned as another one leapt at her with a stabbing motion from behind, but moving just as quickly she changed her posture and, while blocking the two of them again, bent forward and let the third knife sail over her head. A fourth one jumped in for the next slice, leaving her fully surrounded, but she merely twisted her body around, balanced up on one leg, and dodged one before letting her three limbs deflect all the others.
“Heh, here! Have a free hit on me!” she called. As the soldiers leaned back to rush forward and stab again, she lowered her leg and planted her feet, flexed her arms, and stayed right in that position. The knives all darted inward for her exposed skin and muscles…
Only to glance off of her body as if she herself was iron.
The Trottingham soldiers recoiled in shock. Other than leave a few scratches on her skin, she had taken the blows. Glancing back to their knives, they were surprised to see two of them had actually dulled.
Dash herself snickered once more before she dove for one and drove two of her fingers into an underarm pressure point. The soldier cried out, spasmed, and let her knife fall uselessly to the ground as her arm went limp. She snapped around and jabbed another in the face, then used the moment he was stunned to wrap her arm around his neck, bend him over, and bring her foot up and around from behind to smash into the top of his head. He dropped to the ground uselessly a moment after. The third tried to stab for her eyes, but he barely made it half way before her arms reached out, clapped along his arm and wrist to snap the knife free, then drove in for another hit to his own underarm to immobilize him from a pressure point strike. She followed up with a more solid blow to his head to drop him. The final one tried to drive her knife into her side from the back, only for Dash to whip out her arm, snare her, and then drop and sweep kick her legs while simultaneously twisting her arm behind her back. With a sharp cry, she not only fell to the ground but was left lying on it face first with the Hunstman pinning her. One more sharp blow to the neck put her down as well.
“Hey Rarity!” Dash yelled as she stood up, seeing Snips, now furious, advancing on her with his humming blades. “Hurry up and get Pinkie and then sound the alarm!”
Rarity had been so in awe of Dash’s enhanced ability she had almost forgotten about that. “Oh…oh yes, of course!” She nearly stepped out right then and there.
However, she paused before going too far. She looked back at herself, thought a moment, and then shrugged as she held up her own hand.
“Member of my house, I command you to come to me!”
She paused, and her face began to look uncertain.
“Um…Wonderful Teacher—Daisy Cheerilee!”
While the aura did light up around her again, Rarity was dismayed to see it was the same as last time. She winced.
“Er…uh… Member of my house, I command you to come to me!” She swished her mouth. “Let’s see… Great Instructor—Daisy Cheerilee!”
This time, no change at all. Her faint aura remained the same.
“Leader of the Classroom—Daisy Cheerilee!”
Still nothing.
“Mistress of the Chalkboard—Daisy Cheerilee!”
Again nothing. She opened her mouth to try again.
“Rarity!” Dash’s voice yelled. “Quit wasting time and get over here!”
She groaned and sighed. “Coming, coming…” she muttered as she ran around the edge.
At this point, Snips gave his own war cry and advanced on Dash. Much as he had last time, his squat appearance and seemingly limited intelligence belayed a competent blade user. However, Dash looked sharper and stronger than before too. She easily evaded the first two swipes, and it wasn’t until he advanced and cut for her middle that she was forced to step back. She raised her arms to block the next blows but, on seeing how the blades were humming, ended up lowering them and backpedaling for the next strike.
“Ha!” he mocked. “You may got fancy feet and tough skin, but not only do my blades cut anything, you ain’t gonna get anywhere near me when I got a long reach and you just got your-OW!”
The armored soldier suddenly snapped back and hopped up and down on one foot painfully; the end result of Dash darting in and dropping her heel on his boot. Despite being armored, his sabaton was now dented where she landed.
“Heh, don’t need to when you keep leaving yourself open like that.”
Snips fumed, before furiously swiping his blades again. Dash backstepped to avoid the first swipe, then backstepped for the second, but by now her opponent was attacking out of anger. He overextended himself, and she used the moment to dart in and give him a blow to the side and to the helmet. In spite of his armored protection and how light the hits were, he still spasmed in visible pain from both. He yelled again and swung back out for her, but by then she was snapping back already. Angrily, he swiped out vertical slices next, but she merely sidestepped while pivoting backward for each one. As soon as he got into a rhythm, she waited for a key moment then stepped forward and gave him a smack in the nose.
His head snapped, forcing him to take a step back that time, before lowering it again with a fresh yell. However, he hesitated at that point. A second later, he advanced in a stabbing motion, and Dash quickly backstepped to evade it.
Yet she didn’t stop there. She had noticed the hesitation even with his face covered, and responded. She kept backing up even more, before she snapped around and drove her fist straight out…and into the face of Snails.
“Eh?” he managed to get out, right before her palm knocked his helmet partially off of his head. Both of his arms had been aimed to fire his paste again, but now he not only found himself jarred backward but blinded by the mid part of his helmet going over his eyes. He staggered and reached for it blindly. “Darnit, this helmet’s still a size too big, Snips!”
Snips fumed yet again, but this time he wasn’t alone on his attack. The remaining four soldiers had discarded their weapons and were advancing with their own knives.
At the same time, Rarity continued to puzzle over the right name, muttering to herself, as she dashed over to Pinkie. She had landed on the ground again, but had immediately begun to hop once more and was currently still stuck in midair. As she approached, she grinned at her. “Hey Rarity! Check this stuff out! It makes everything super slow! Any way we can save some for later? This would be really great for picking fruit from really tall trees or washing windows, or making sure you don’t hurt yourself if you fall off a really tall building…”
The designer merely sighed on reaching her, looking dismally at her own dress. “I suppose I was going to cut this into rags anyway…” she moaned as she tore off a strip. She went up to Pinkie’s foot and used it to wipe the material clear. As soon as it was gone, Pinkie immediately descended to the ground at normal speed, landing a bit awkwardly and wobbling.
“Wh-whoa!” she quickly waved her arms out and stopped herself. She turned to Rarity with a smile. “Tee-hee! Watch that first step! It’s a doozy!”
“Um, yes…quite. Now let’s get go…”
She trailed off. Two of the soldiers hadn’t pressed their attack on Rainbow Dash. Instead, they were now advancing on the two of them with their knives at the ready.
As Pinkie looked to them as well, Rarity swallowed. “Um…er…Masterful Scholar? Elementary Professor? Teacher of Children?” She frowned. “That last one wasn’t even that clever…”
The nearest one went for Pinkie, stabbing out for her middle. She didn’t look too worried. Still smiling, she promptly began to dodge and sidestep the knife without even needing to step backward. The other one, however, dove at Rarity soon afterward.
Cringing and shrieking, she did the only thing she could do and backed up. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, her heel caught when she did, causing her to spill backward onto the ground but also letting the thrust of the knife sail over her head. Now on her back with the soldier looming over her, she did the only thing she could think of and frantically kicked out for him for all she was worth to try and keep him at bay.
The blows struck at his limbs, but with whatever device he was using protecting him all they really served to do was tangle him up momentarily. He struggled to bat her legs down long enough to get in a stab.
As for Pinkie, she dodged the latest knife swipe from the soldier only to shoot forward and move past him. He spun around to her, but when he did he saw her holding up a belt and giggling as she waved it to and fro. “Look what I found!”
The soldier was surprised a moment, before the weight of his utilities suddenly yanked his pants down. He looked at it in alarm and struggled to move, but his legs got caught and he ended up stumbling and staggering. Just as Rarity’s soldier finally managed to get her legs down and readied to stab, Pinkie’s lost his balance and fell right into him. He cried out as both were bowled over.
Rarity quickly swallowed and began to step to her feet. Pinkie went ahead and bounded forward, before looking back and beckoning her on. “Come on, Rarity! The way’s clear now!”
The designer finished getting to her feet, huffing once, before quickly running past the two soldiers as they struggled to untangle themselves. She cast a glance at them quickly to make sure that neither of them were going to be following soon, then turned back to Pinkie as she turned about and began to skip to the shack.
She was just in time to see one of the soldiers Rainbow Dash had knocked to the ground but not fully out suddenly spring up, brandish her own firearm with her knife attached to the nozzle like a bayonet, and drive it right into Pinkie’s midsection.
Rarity froze on the spot and gasped in horror. From the angle she was standing, Pinkie’s back was to her and obscured her view of the attacking soldier. Yet there was no way she could have avoided it. She saw the knife flash on the end of the weapon, she saw it thrust true, and she even saw Pinkie halt and back up a little. It had to have hit.
And yet, Pinkie didn’t move after halting. She simply stood there silently and motionlessly. For a moment, Rarity thought the realization of what just happened was settling in on her.
Then, most suddenly, she looked up to the soldier still driving her weapon forward and giggled.
“Excuse me? I think you forgot this!”
She held up one hand. To Rarity’s shock as well as the soldier’s, she was holding the knife-turned-bayonet. She let it fall to the ground casually soon after before raising her other hand. That one held an ammunition cell for one of their weapons.
“And this!”
She let it fall as she reached down and popped back up with a trigger mechanism.
“And this!”
She let that fall as her other hand went back and came out with bolts for fastening a barrel down.
“And this!”
She soon was popping her hands down and pulling out more gun pieces, as well as straps, buttons, fasteners, and ammunition of all kinds. “And this! And this! And this! And this! And this! And this! And this! And this! And this!”
The soldier was still stunned at her initial recovery, but now looked around in utter bafflement as her gun suddenly fell apart in her hands before her armor, metal harness, and even uniform fell off afterward…leaving her crouched on the ground in nothing but her underwear. She could only gape, clearly not knowing whether to be aghast or embarrassed, and clutch for her own military brassiere as Pinkie giggled and skipped right by.
Rarity kept staring in bafflement, knowing what she saw just then. Even with her angle, she found it almost impossible to believe that knife hadn’t gone in… However, the fact the other soldiers behind her were still rising snapped her out of it as she rushed after Pinkie. They both reached the shack together, Pinkie opened the door, and Rarity ran inside.
It was completely dark and there wasn’t even a window for visibility. The only light came from the glow of the open doorway, but old, rusted machinery arranged around the tower’s central pole was within along with an old chair and some rotten food tins. She frantically began to look around. “Switch, switch…there has to be a switch in here somewhere…”
She kept looking until she saw what looked like a box with cables on it that had a conspicuously large lever. Assuming that was it, she reached over and grasped it. She frowned on realizing that it was rusted tight, even with her added power. Nevertheless, she clutched it more tightly and struggled to bring it down.
A small jingle went through the shack as she started to pull; the sound of machinery shaking. She stopped where she was, not moving an inch. A moment passed where the only sound was the ongoing fighting outside. Then she heard another jingle, a bit stronger this time. She also felt a small tremor on the ground.
Her face paled. “Oh no…”
Dash continued to back away from Snips as he and his companions swung again at him, while only half of those Dash had knocked down were even moving, let alone trying to get up again. Yet just as Snails finished putting his helmet back by banging his own head against the rock cliff, the ground shook enough to dislodge a few pebbles. That caused both sides to slow. Another impact went off that dislodged a bit more.
Everyone stopped at that point. They looked to the sky.
Dim as it already was, it was growing darker.
Dash’s smile finally disappeared. “Oh crap…”
“Wh-what was that…?” Snips spoke up nervously.
“Uh, Snips?” Snails called out. “Ya’ think it might be that big Light Eater we saw on the way here?”
He didn’t answer. Another tremor went out, and this time they heard a creaking with it just on the mountaintop above them. It sounded like a tree being broken by twisting in half. At that point, they began to hear other things. Wings flapping. Scurrying. Claws and scratching echoing down the tunnel over their heads. Another tremor, this one much closer. The sky darkened further and one of the soldiers pointed.
“Look!”
Everyone who could see up the mountain did so. Through the smog and closing darkness, a very large shape was slowly rising. It got a bit closer with every tremor.
Rarity, not seeing any of this but hearing the group outside, snapped back to the handle. She clutched and pulled at it, but it still wouldn’t give. Gritting her teeth, she grasped it desperately with both hands and strained herself. The rust began to grind but still it held.
Another tremor went off as the shadow loomed larger. This time, smaller shadows became visible around it, and they quickly grew bigger. Soon after, they parted through the smog and revealed themselves to be massive droplets of inky blackness that gleamed like stars; scattering from the footsteps of the big one on impact. Most of them flew everywhere along the mountainside with the ever-growing noises of things around them. One of them, however, splattered on rock cliffs right next to them. It gave a horrible wet, squelching sound, and as it spread out it left that area of space as dark as night.
The rush of wings suddenly changed pitch, and on the tier above them a cloud of darkness erupted from the train tunnel—darkness with hundreds of yellow glowing eyes in it.
Dash whirled to the shack. “Rarity, we got to get out of here now!”
Snips and Snails alike seemed to forget about their quarry as they nervously started to backpedal. Most of the soldiers still standing with them turned and began to run. Only one or two brave ones held back to try and get their comrades to rise up. The light dimmed further as the massive shape lumbered closer and stepped again, not only making things darker but casting its own shadow over them.
Crying out, Rarity lifted herself up and put her whole weight on the switch. With one final groan, it snapped downward. Gears and springs went off within the machinery, and in moments the tower over her head rattled a few times before a siren slowly began to blare over her head in a single long note. Rarity gave it a brief smile of relief before turning and bolting.
As soon as she stepped outside, she was nearly knocked off of her feet as another tremor went out. The strongest yet. Nevertheless, as the Trottinghamites began to scatter, with those who were down but conscious trying to drag themselves for it, the two trying to drag two of the unconscious ones away, some of them running, and others panicking and freezing in the wake of the oncoming Nighttouched and giant monster, Dash rushed over to both her and Pinkie. Although both of them ran to meet her, she quickly reached out and seized them both by the hand and pulled them away from the shack. She glanced up several times as she yanked them toward the next switchback.
“We got to get off this mountain! Start running!”
Another tremor went off as the sounds of two more trees being snapped loose echoed. Dash looked skyward again and only paled even more. “Go! Move!”
She tugged both her and Pinkie along to get them started, and Rarity quickly increased her speed into a run, but as she did she looked up and back too. She gasped on seeing the starry droplets for the first time, once more being shed off of the monstrous shadow looming over them. One of them landed only a short distance ahead of them with a massive splatter, causing Dash to quickly force them to one side to get around it. The others, however, splattered all around the mountain, both up and down on the side.
All save one.
In the midst of the soldiers either frozen or scattering, Rarity spotted one of them suddenly snapping around and going into a full run. He wasn’t fast enough. With a whistling sound like a falling cannon shell, the droplet came down and struck him, splattering him and engulfing him.
He was immediately forced to the ground as the black tar-like material covered him from head to toe. Yet he didn’t stay there. Almost immediately, he snapped his body back up and began to scream. Rarity had never heard such a horrible scream in her life. Before Dash could yank her away, she caught one final glimpse of him.
In spite of the fog and darkness, she could have sworn she was seeing not only his armor and clothes melting off of him…but his skeleton seeming to push its way out of his skin…
As Dash forced heron and dragged her down and around the hairpin, even in the midst of the Nighttouched and the massive shadow, she heard one of the Trottingham soldiers call to her comrades.
“Kill him! Hurry!”
Rarity’s heart caught in her throat as the weapons thundered behind her. She nearly gagged, and if it wasn’t for Dash dragging her down the next tier of the mountain she would have frozen where she stood. Only when they were another hundred feet down, she looked back at her. “What…what happened to…to that…man?”
“Forget him,” Dash stated quickly as she kept yanking her on. “Nobody can help him now. I just hope they did kill him before he got too far for his sake and ours.”
Rarity had far too much on her mind already, and couldn’t afford anything else distracting her. She left it at that and forced herself not to give what happened back there another thought.
For the next several minutes, all the three did was run down the mountainside hoping that they were actually gaining distance on the monsters pouring down it. Rarity had the worst time of it, as both Dash and Pinkie seemed to now be able to at least ignore their hunger and exhaustion. Her own was barely dulled and Dash had to pull her along. It gave her the opportunity to look around though as they headed down the switchbacks. Looking up the mountain, she saw Nighttouched continuing to flow out of the tunnel until they finally went too low to see it any longer, but she kept seeing them popping out in patches of one, a few, or a couple dozen from other parts of the mountain.
The bulk of them, however, seemed to be heading down the slope directly across from the tunnel. That included the massive Light Eater. In doing so, it looked like they were going to miss going right through the center of the city along with the three of them, but they were still going to trample through most of it. At one point, she thought she heard the sound of an airship engine and assumed it was the Trottinghamites, but she didn’t really care so long as it meant they were staying away from them.
Suddenly, a long-legged shadowy creature, like a horrendous goat, trampled across the trail in front of them. Dash halted and stopped the other two as Rarity gasped. Two more soon joined it, but all three of them just kept going right across and down the mountain on the other side. As soon as they had left, Dash looked up to make sure the way was clear. As for Rarity, she looked around, and shrieked again on seeing a group of what looked like tailless rodents with incisors the size of her finger run behind them in much the same way.
“Relax, relax!” Dash quickly shouted, before pulling Rarity on again and getting Pinkie to skip after them.
“R-Relax?! We’re surrounded by Nighttouched!”
“Only a few of them! And it looks like they don’t even want us! They must see the lights down the mountain from the city!”
Rarity seriously had her doubts, especially with the smog, but as the three of them ran along and continued to see periodic Nighttouched rush past them, she couldn’t argue with it. Even as the sky grew darker they continued to only come sporadically as they ran down two more tiers, eventually seeming to stop all together. By now, the giant Light Eater was reaching the foot of the mountain, but was still heading slightly away from them. The shadow it left in its wake, however, didn’t move; making them all realizing this was a true surge. All the way down to the end of Griffonstone.
Finally, as they reached one of the last hairpin turns, Dash stopped for a moment and looked over the edge. Although she was completely out of breath and rather dizzy, Rarity couldn’t help but call out as Pinkie bounced next to her. “Why…are we…stopping?”
“Trying to see what we’re getting into. Look down there.”
Rarity glanced that way. In spite of the closing darkness of the giant Light Eater, they were now close enough to the foot of the mountain themselves to get a much better look at Grifftham City extending beneath them. They could see tiny shadows running off the mountain and flowing into it on the edges and scattering through the streets. Just faintly, Rarity could hear the sounds of screams below, before they were answered with sounds of gunfire. For a few moments, she could make out the nice, ordered lines of gaslights up and down the streets. However, they rapidly began to get snuffed out, leaving the city behind in darkness.
“Merciful heavens. Are those monsters doing that?”
Dash shook her head. “They aren’t moving that fast. They must be shutting off the gas lines. Leaving the place dark so nothing attracts them. Now their own army is moving in. They gotta keep these things back until the people get out.”
Rarity looked to her nervously. “And…can they?”
Dash winced. “I…think so… They’re all going to run for the gunfire if it’s the only light out there. So long as they can draw them in one big bottleneck, they can keep them pinned in one spot…at least until that big thing or any smaller Light Eaters get there. Just need to lead them to a wide street or something…”
“Oh, oh!” Pinkie piped up, pointing out to the cityscape. “Will that big bridge do?”
“Huh?” Dash looked that way. Far along on the edge of the city, where lights were still it, they could make out a canal that went from one end to the other; nearly splitting the city in half. Only one large bridge served as a crossing point from what they could see. She shook her head. “Nah, not that one. They got to keep that open if they’re going to evacuate this half of the city.”
“Aw, that’s too bad,” Pinkie frowned, before gesturing below. “‘Cause a bunch of Nighttouched are already headed that way.”
“Wait, what?”
Both Dash and Rarity looked. About a quarter of a mile to the right of them, there was a cavern in the side of the mountain that looked like a natural spillway. It drained down a broken-down passage into the canal itself. At the moment, a flood of Nighttouched of all shapes and sizes were running out of it like they were living water. As a mass of them gathered, they began to rush down the canal and inevitably in the direction of the bridge.
Rarity cupped a hand to her chin. “Oh dear…”
“Great… Without any light to distract them, they’re just going to go blindly in the path of least resistance. It’s going to take them right to that bridge and into everyone going across it!”
“Really?” Pinkie chimed in, looking over their shoulders for a moment, before looking back at them and grinning. “Ok then! We know what step two of saving Grifftham City is now! Stop them from reaching that bridge!”
Dash and Rarity looked back at Pinkie, then back to each other.
“I…don’t suppose you have any ideas?”
“Maybe… Come on!”
She took off into a run again. Rarity had scarcely finished catching her breath, but sighed and began to run after her. Pinkie cheered before bouncing along after them.
“I haven’t been to Grifftham City in a long time, so look around down there! See if you can find anywhere that’s got a whole bunch of Steel Lions!”
“What’s…” Rarity shouted back between pants. “A steel…lion…?”
“Ugh…trackless engines! I thought the yard for them was on the edge of town! They don’t want anyone stealing them!”
“I see ‘em! I see ‘em!” Pinkie shouted again. She pointed down the mountainside once again. The three looked as they ran down the trail. Rarity had a hard time making it out in the dimming light, but she saw what looked like a large number of oddly smooth train engines haphazardly arranged in a square-shaped yard. However, her companions had better eyesight, and soon Dash grinned.
“Great, we’re in luck! They must have set up the yard right here from when the tunnel was still under construction! Here’s the deal! We’re gonna grab one of ‘em and use it as a tank to smash through this city to the bridge!”
“Er…smash…?” Rarity nervously answered.
“Yippee! I always wanted to go for a tank ride!” Pinkie cheered. “But, uh, you think they’ll mind?”
Looking again at the yard below them, the three noticed that there were several dark shadows looming over them already. A good eight Nighttouched were already flocking around the yard. One or two of them looked rather big.
Dash kept grinning as she cracked her neck. “Nothing to it! I feel way tougher now! Just get them in front of my fists and I’ll take care of it!”
She continued to lead the way to the final hairpin turn and beyond. As they ran back one last time, this time headed straight for the yard, they finally left the gravel trail and descended onto the dingy, cracked streets of Grifftham City itself. By now, it was practically pitch black out, but that only spurred Rarity to run on faster. She could hear the sounds of Nighttouched darting to and fro everywhere, but none of them tried to set upon the three of them right away and she wanted to make use of that as long as she could. At any rate, they were still in isolated numbers for the time being. Most of them had to be charging across the rest of the city.
There was just enough light left to see the gateway to the yard up ahead. Dash apparently was right about the vehicles being used for tunnel construction, for large amounts of long abandoned materials and tools were piled up haphazardly just outside of the gate. She halted for a moment on seeing the first set of yellow eyes moving about in it, and ducked behind the materials for cover.
As the two fell in behind her, she turned to them. “Alright, here’s what’s gonna happen. Me and Pinkie are going to go right in there and bust some heads. Rarity, since your, uh…um…‘glowing gal’ isn’t working as good, you find a working Steel Lion while we’re covering you and start it up.”
“Wh-wh…me?” she retorted. “I haven’t the slightest idea how to run one of those engines!”
Dash shrugged. “Well, neither do I. Pinkie?”
“Nope!” she answered, happily shaking her head.
“So we’re all gonna have to do this on the fly. How hard could it be? Folks in Griffonstone use ‘em all the time and most of them never even went to school.”
“Oh dear…” Rarity sighed, before quickly looking about herself. After a moment, she spotted an old barrel with several old tool handles protruding from it. She walked over and winced as she looked at them, nervously withholding her hand all the while. After a moment, she grit her teeth and drew one out delicately.
Dash gave her a look. “Uh…what are you doing?”
“If I’m going to be charging into the jaws of death, I might as well be armed. I only enrolled in one quarter of fencing as an elective, and I found it far too sweat-inducing for my tastes, but hopefully I can remember some of it.” She hoisted what looked like the remains of an old fire poker that had been discarded in the trash, grimacing all the while. “Ugh…must everything in this town be caked in rust and soot?”
“Alright, alright,” Dash called out, whirling back around, “let’s not make ourselves a Nighttouched target any longer… Time to be awesome!”
Without another word, she barreled straight for the main gate. Pinkie let out a cheer before skipping after her. That left Rarity, who reluctantly grasped her poker with both hands and ran after them.
There were two Nighttouched visible as soon as they neared the gate, both appearing to be twisted, oversized versions of groundhogs. They whirled to Dash as she approached, let out a violent chittering noise, and ran toward her. Fighting any wild animal with nothing but skin and fists was normally ill advisable no matter how strong you were, but she didn’t balk in the least. She ran right up to one and, barely even pausing, brought her foot up and dropped the heel down in an axe kick. The skull was split right open in her wake.
“That’s one!”
The other reared up and gnashed it teeth as she approached, but she nimbly stepped and pivoted before swinging her foot out and smashing it across the face. The creature was snapped up and flung across the yard, before smashing into the side of a half-dismantled trackless engine with a bone-crunching noise.
“That’s two!”
A screech went out over her head. Dash looked up and saw a bat the size of a large stingray swooping down on her. Its claws were oversized along with its teeth, and it spat out foam as it dove on the unarmed woman. However, her only reaction was a smile. Crouching a bit to store power, she waited for it to get closer then sprung up. As she leapt to meet the bat, she drove her fist skyward in an uppercut. The blow connected in its middle and another crunch went out. The broken creature collapsed to the ground before Dash landed a moment later.
“Three down, five to go!”
By now, Pinkie had bounced up to Dash’s side and braced for anything else, while Rarity, huffing and bringing up the rear, finally passed the gate and began to look around. After a moment, she staggered toward the first engine that looked intact, while Dash bellowed a war cry. “Come on, you creepy crawlies! I know you’re out there! Come get me!”
No sooner had Dash finished shouting that challenge when a deep, thundering roar erupted from around one of the ruined engines so loudly that her ears hurt.
Dash’s smug confidence quickly began to wane as deep, rhythmic tramping echoed through the yard. A shape about half the size of one of the engines slowly walked around it. The yellow eyes alone that zeroed in on her and Pinkie were as big as a human head, but the shape of the monstrosity drew far more of their attention as it was the figure of a gigantic male lion. It drooled so much from its massive jaws she could actually hear each small splash hit the ground along with the sounds of its claws raking the dirt.
Worst of all, however, was as it came around it swished its tail behind it, only it wasn’t a normal tail. It was segmented and long like a scorpion’s—complete with a large barb. As it turned its head to Dash, the tail curled around once before casually flicking to one side and into the engine behind it. With a massive clang, the entire engine block shifted slightly from the force.
“Uh…” she muttered, taking a step backward. “On second thought, stay there. I’ll come to you.”
The thing let out another roar so booming that Dash’s hair actually blew back, and then took off in a charge right for her. Quickly tightening up, she dove to one side just as it reached her; sailing right past and smashing into the side of another engine. The headfirst impact was enough to dent in its side, and for a moment its legs faltered beneath it as it stalled. Dash nearly tried to seize advantage of the moment, but before she could she heard a smaller yet still-fearsome roar, like that of a jaguar, behind her.
She turned about, and yelled in surprise as a much smaller cat-like monster, this one seeming to be the distorted and engorged remains of a real cat, leapt at her with claws outstretched. Worse than that, two more were right behind it wanting to join in. She managed to sidestep the first, but the two others quickly leapt and swiped out for her neck, forcing her to duck and go into a forward roll to evade them. By that point, even she was blanching at having to fight four Nighttouched at a time. Especially as the biggest one pulled itself up at last, spun around, and charged at her again. Scarcely out of her dodge roll, she rose up only to see it nearly on her. Wincing, she relied on a more unconventional move and turned herself to the side before diving back at the giant monster. Just barely, she managed to slip in between its outstretched claws and under its massive jaw, letting it continue to charge by. As for her, her sideways dive landed her on the ground for a moment. The other three monsters spun about to take advantage of it by pouncing on her together.
Yet just as they were about to spring, Pinkie Pie, singing a little to herself again, performed a spinning cartwheel right in front of them. The sudden shift of something in front of their target caused them all to miscalculate their leaps, and they ended up aborting them early and touching down at the wrong spot. This allowed Dash to quickly get to her feet again and caused the three monsters to hesitate on landing. A second later, two went for Pinkie while the third went for Dash’s throat.
Unfortunately for the beast, Dash had already shifted targets to it and quickly ran forward to meet it; leaping into the air at the same time it did. Yet as it extended its claws to her, she snapped her body around in a twirl and brought both feet down on its head. The first slammed the skull into its own lower jaw, and the second resulted in a snap from its neck. The monster went limp and crashed into the ground.
“Tag, you’re it!” Pinkie cheered as she blew a raspberry at the two headed for her. “Nyah-nyah!”
The twisted cats hissed and lashed out for her, one of them pouncing and the other running forward and swiping at her. She whistled and dodged the claws from both before springing backward, flipping in midair to land on her hands, and then flipping off of those as the first monster tried to slash at her again. She giggled again before she took off her own bandanna and brandished it like a bullfighter’s cape, taunting both monsters further. One growled and lashed out at her, but she merely let it flow underneath the cape. She swished it around for the next and it dove at her as well, only for her to snicker as, instead of passing through the cloth to the other side, it ran headfirst into a metal panel of a nearby engine. The impact was so hard that it ended up knocking itself senseless.
She put her bandanna back and got ready to brace herself against the remaining one, but stopped on seeing that the much larger Nighttouched had whirled on her as she was the closer target. Nevertheless, she giggled again when it reared up a paw and slammed it down for where she was, simply hopping back to evade it. It did so again a second later, but she not only nimbly leapt back from this one as well, but swiveled her body backward to let the second feline Nighttouched shoot by in front of her in a failed pounce.
This made the big one growl. Its segmented tail curled once before it snapped out like a gunshot. Even Pinkie wasn’t able to do more than shift weight before it came about and smashed into her with an audible noise. Dash halted in midstep trying to attack the monster from behind on seeing her turned into a pink blur before she was driven deep into the side of another Steel Lion; enough to leave an impression with her body.
While she gasped at that, what was even more shocking was that rather than being turned into a smear Pinkie merely looked a bit dizzy and dazzled.
“Ok…” she half-moaned. “I’m it…”
Rarity, at the same time, was quickly abandoning one engine after another trying to find a working one. It wasn’t helping that every so often the big monster’s gestures would ruin another engine through a missed strike. Finally, she spotted one that looked mostly intact and wasn’t in immediate danger of being struck, and quickly ran across the battlefield as the remaining monsters turned their full attention on Dash. She reached the side, undid the bulkhead, and quickly entered.
Fortunately, the engine room was right in front and not sectioned off at all. She ran into it and looked about, and saw that the controls didn’t look that old either. Unfortunately, beyond that, she didn’t know what to think. The various valves, levers, doors, and the like made about as much sense to her as a book written in Olde Ponish. Scratching her head a few times, she finally recognized a door at the front. She opened it and saw an assortment of half-burned black rocks inside it.
“Alright, that’s coal…and I’m pretty sure it needs to be aflame…” She looked around a bit more, before she spotted a canister a bit like a watering can hanging up near the front. She took it down and removed the lid, grimacing at the contents. They seemed like some sort of oil or tar. She looked around a bit more and found a strange device hanging near it. It was a lever holding two pieces of metal together like a set of tweezers. She took it up and gave it a squeeze, and saw it made a small flurry of sparks. Realizing this was some sort of starter, she looked back to the door to the coal and opened it wider before nervously getting to work.
Dash wasn’t nearly as nimble as Pinkie was, and found herself forced to backpedal further as the remaining feline Nighttouched and the lion-like one continued to attack her together. The smaller one continuously leapt and pounced at her, while the bigger one alternated between smashing its paws at her, snapping its jaws, or, worst of all, using the scorpion-like tail. Every time it whizzed by Dash felt it cut the air so strongly it almost yanked her off her feet even with enhanced strength, and each time it missed it punctured steel or ripped against the ground.
The assault was forcing her back to where she didn’t want to go: a small cul-de-sac made from several ruined engines. Once she was there, she knew she’d be pinned with no out from their attacks. Yet as she neared it, she glanced behind her once and got an idea. Moistening her lips, she continued to let them drive her into it rather than escape.
The big one snapped its jaws at her again, and she used the moment to backstep twice, putting herself at a distance from it but well in the surroundings of the wreckage. The smaller one quickly dashed forward and yelled before pouncing again. She sidestepped, but the monster was all too ready to shoot by her. As soon as it had, it landed on the side of the wreckage that now surrounded her and used that as a springboard to pounce and try and get her from behind.
Unfortunately for it, that was what Dash was hoping for and quickly dropped into a duck where she was as the larger monster stomped forward. The feline shot over her head and ended up landing in front of her as the giant Nighttouched brought its paw down. With a bone-crunching noise, the smaller Nighttouched was flattened.
Dash grinned. “Heh! Missed me!”
The beast roared on seeing its failure and immediately snapped its tail out again. However, Dash was waiting for this as well and moved as soon as she saw it begin to coil its appendage. It lashed out a moment later right past her and into the metal barrier with a resounding crunch. The barb blasted out some of the metal wreckage while embedding itself in the rest.
The Huntsman hoped that the monster would have destroyed the blockade for her, but much to her pleasure when the Nighttouched tried to bring its tail back, it shifted the metal a bit but remained stuck. It snarled and pulled harder, but it stayed anchored. After a moment, she grinned again on seeing it immobilized. She quickly whipped back her fist and started to advance, meaning to inflict a final blow…
A loud screech interrupted her. She looked skyward only to cry out as a second bat dove on her with claws outstretched. She had to bring her arms up to deflect them before it could scrape for her eyes or face. However, the flying Nighttouched didn’t stop at one attack. It continued to swipe and slash out for her, screeching all the way. And as she struggled with it, the larger Nighttouched slowly began to yank its tail loose.
Rarity, meanwhile, to the tune of a rather pungent odor, had managed to get a fire going inside the engine. Quickly shutting the door before it got too hot, she began to look around more frantically than before now that there was a light source to attract more Nighttouched. Unfortunately, most of the controls and levers were still a mystery to her. She tried to trace a few of them with her eyes, before she finally shrugged and reached for one. After hesitating a moment more she gave it a pull.
The sound of a sharp clang, like something had just fallen off, came from the back of the engine. She went a little wide eyed, before backing away from the lever as if it had just bitten her.
“Come on, Rarity… It can’t be harder than a steam taxi, and you take those all the time…although you try not to stare too long at the drivers…”
Dash kept trying to form a fist long enough to drive a blow into the bat, but not only was its angle making it impossible to aim a killing stroke but it was battering away at her too hard to get ready. She had to constantly smack its talons aside as she couldn’t simply block it, or it would cut up her hands while she was trying. And, much to her displeasure, she was still struggling to deflect it when the monster finally yanked its tail free of the metal debris.
She struggled to face it, but the bat chose that moment to reach out and seize her wrists in its surprisingly strong grip. It leaned over and attempted to bite for her face, forcing her to reach up and seize it by the jaws. She managed to hold it back, but couldn’t get free, and soon she began to panic on seeing that lion-like Nighttouched open its mouth wide enough to engulf half of her and ran forward.
“I’m coming, Dashie! Wheee!”
While the big monster kept bounding toward her, Dash turned on hearing Pinkie’s voice. To her surprise, she had straddled the stunned feline Nighttouched from earlier. While it had recovered from its blow, she was now yanking it by the ears and directing it toward the Huntsman as it struggled to dislodge her. On spotting her, the smaller monster seemed ready to pounce again on her if it couldn’t get Pinkie off its back.
Dash spotted it, then glanced to her other side and saw the big Nighttouched still coming. An idea came to mind. Smirking, she let both keep getting closer as she held back the monstrous bat, and finally at the last moment she let her feet go out from underneath her while forcing the bat upward.
The feline Nighttouched leapt at the same time and Pinkie, seeming to know what she was going to do, leapt off as well. As a result, the cat sailed through the air, missed Dash entirely, and clamped its jaws around the neck of the bat instead. The thing screeched and let Dash go as it was carried through the air and right into the waiting jaws of the lion-like Nighttouched. Better yet, the two didn’t merely land in its mouth but continued to sail in until they plugged the thing’s throat.
Dash quickly backward rolled to avoid the charge of the monster, but it planted its own paws a second later to grind to a halt and retched. Soon it began to spasm and twist while holding its mouth open; choking on its own companions. Its deadly tail flicked about behind it randomly, but offered no more threat.
The Huntsman got to her feet and, seeing the thing temporarily stunned, grinned again and tightened her fists. “My turn!”
Breaking into a short charge, she leapt into the air, enough to go over the monster’s head, and then came down. The thing looked up to her, but was helpless to do anything but see her fist smash into the space above one of its eye sockets. There was no bone there, and as a result one of its eyes was partially dislodged from her punch. Its head snapped downward, and Dash quickly landed and unloaded. Her fists went off like thunderclaps, first driving into its lower jaw and splitting it along its mandibular symphysis, then smashing its entire head to the side in spite of its size and power, before driving her hand in and smashing it in a pressure point at the neck joint. In spite of its colossal size, the Nighttouched was left stunned and partially immobilized, allowing Dash to advance on it and pound her next blows as hard as she could right into its snout. More bones breaking echoed and two teeth fell out as it actually staggered back.
Finally, it bellowed again and reared up, bringing its broken and bloodied face away from Dash, flashing its claws, and ready to slam down on top of her. However, she kept on smiling as she put her arms at her sides. As the beast came down, she let herself fall onto her back. In spite of its efforts to slash and crush her, the monster missed her entirely and positioned is chest right over her body.
Immediately she swung both of her legs up together and drove them hard and deep into its sternum. Multiple cracks went out as the bone was dislodged from the rest of the rib cage and went inward, crushing the heart and lungs.
The already-choking monster heaved out the remains of the other two Nighttouched, but it only gave a wet gurgle afterward. As it staggered, Dash quickly rolled free, before it sank to the ground a moment later. As it went still, the black material began to slough off of it…signifying its death at last.
Dash quickly sprung to her feet as Pinkie came over, pumping her fist. “Yeah! And that makes eight!”
Pinkie made an excited squeal and nearly answered, before her face fell. Dash turned and saw that she was looking past her and actually looked a bit frightened. “Um…you don’t suppose we did enough to scare that Light Eater over there into not attacking, do you?”
Dash’s own smile disappeared. “What?”
She wheeled around and saw it. Sliding and gliding over the top of one of the wrecked engines was a glistening gleaming entity of blackness, shining all over like a starry night. As vague as it was it was hard to tell if it was imitating a snake or slug, but it hardly mattered. All that did matter was its dim moonspot eyes were focused on the two of them and the auras they were emanating. And now that it had them, it quickly began to pick up its pace.
“Uh, Rarity?” Dash called out; her own voice breaking in fear. “I think we need to get out of here!”
Misinterpreting that as a need to hurry up, the designer made a tiny fist and smashed it against one of the consoles, only to cry out and hold it back on hurting it on the rough metal. Nevertheless, she scowled at it. “This is ridiculous! I’ve had to take apart and put back together a Harpist-brand sewing machine to finish an overnight deadline and I can’t figure out this outdated contraption?” She groaned. “Oh, let’s face facts… I’m no sort of engineer.”
She stood a moment, but then drew herself up indignantly.
“But pish-posh to that! I just have to dig deep to that time we learned about steam engines. Ms. Cheerilee even brought that one in she cobbled together from…”
Rarity suddenly looked up. Her memory triggered.
In her mind’s eye, she saw back to when she was a little girl at a desk. She watched Ms. Cheerilee walk in one day; holding in her arms a rather clunky and odd-looking contraption. She explained how she would be talking about steam power that day and set it on her desk for all the students to see.
And when she had, she knocked the embroidered frame over that she said one of her first students made for her. It had been so flattering that she kept it there not so much as a title but a personal motivation to give her best every class session. Day after day, Rarity had seen that walking in and coming out of the school. All of her students had for years. She could see her setting it back up, and she could see the stitched lettering on it.
Ms. Daisy Cheerilee—a guide to a child’s inspiration.
She thought about that a moment longer before she raised her hand to the sky.
“Member of my house, I command you to come to me! Inspiration’s Guide—Daisy Cheerilee!”
Rarity cried out as her aura immediately flared to full life. Just like with Pinkie and Dash, the light came forth, although this time hers was a purple or lavender. It traced out a visage over her head, and for a moment she found herself looking up and seeing Ms. Cheerilee smiling down on her; the perfect picture of her health in the prime of her life. Just how she remembered her as a child. She would have tried to touch her if she hadn’t still been crying in shock, but before she could the image shattered and fell over her.
Rarity actually shut her eyes for the next part, as she could feel power and vitality seeping into her. She could also feel the fabric of her clothes lengthening, altering, and changing form into something new. She continued to hold until she stopped feeling it, then opened her eyes and looked herself over.
She was quite surprised.
Her attire had not only fully mended, but had improved dramatically. She was now clad in a splendid coat with great showy buttons and an intricate trim. Her dress had been replaced for looser pants with tall, freshly polished boots, and her hands were covered with long black gloves. Over the ensemble she wore a high collared cape with a white scarf, likewise trimmed gold. Finally, her hair had been cleaned, combed, and restyled before being topped off with a feathered chapeau tilted ever so alluringly over her brow.
Rarity took a moment to inspect herself. “Hmm…” she muttered as she looked over her shoulder. “A bit outdated, but also quite stylish and charming. I dare say I feel like the lead in one of those new age operas.” She held out her hand and turned it over, admiring herself a bit more before smiling. “Although I could get quite used to it.”
“Rarity!”
Hearing the cry, she quickly snapped out of it. “Oh, right, right…” She reached for her poker, only to grimace again. She looked at her glove regretfully. “It’s such lovely new suede… It seems such a pity to stain it already. Well, such is life…” Sighing, she plucked up the tool.
She nearly dropped it again as not only was it far easier to lift, but her aura quickly spread down over it next. In moments, it transformed too. No longer was it a rusty poker but an elegant rapier with a blade and hilt that gleamed like silver, complete with inlaid gemstones.
“Oh-ho! Much better!” she smiled before turning and running for the hatch. It took her only moments to reach it and charge out. “Rainbow Dash! Pinkie Pie! Take a look at...AAAH!”
Her momentary joy at “using her symbol properly” was smothered on seeing the long, snake-like Light Eater coming their way. Dash and Pinkie were already backing up. Neither of them risked getting anywhere near without even having a weapon to their name. However, it was so long it was spreading its body out widely from side to side as it kept closing.
Dash looked behind her for more room to back up, only to glimpse Rarity. “There you are! Why didn’t you come out when I shouted the first time?” She paused, looking her over. “Don’t tell me you were changing your clothes this whole time!”
Pinkie looked around at her next and smiled again. “Ooo! Rarity’s using her symbol the right way too!”
The Light Eater, on its part, picked up its speed now that it had three light sources in front of it. Rarity stiffened a moment, but then swallowed and steeled herself. “Well…if everything else about you two is stronger, maybe I can manage something better.” She held her free hand out and aimed for it.
“Don’t try and fight it!” Dash yelled. “Just run this way before it cuts us off! You can’t hurt-”
“Fireballfireballfireballfireball!”
Just as she hoped, the power she had used before not only came to her but came to her faster and stronger than before. Her entire hand lit up like an ember before a fireball the size of a cantaloupe snapped out for the Light Eater. Dash groaned as she ran over to grab Rarity by the extended arm, meaning to drag her on.
Before she could pull her, the fireball struck part of the Light Eater’s lengthy body and burst into a campfire-sized flame on it. At once, the Light Eater stopped slithering forward and began to writhe over itself like a worm that had been pierced by a hook.
Dash froze where she stood. Rarity, who only now had enough presence of mind to realize what she had just done and how it should have failed, stared in open-mouthed surprise.
“Did…did that…?”
“Did that just…?”
Pinkie herself looked amazed, watching as the Light Eater kept squirming until it pulled itself off the rapidly dying flames, but even then it seemed to need a moment to recover. During that time, she began to look curious and calmly started to walk toward it.
Both Dash and Rarity spotted her, becoming even more surprised. “Pinkie, what are you doing?! Stay away from that thing!”
“You can’t let one of those beasts touch you!”
She ignored them and kept walking until she stood only a foot away from it. The thing continued to calm, and finally smoothed itself out and began to turn to her. Before it fully did, however, she simply pulled back her foot, stayed standing on one leg for a moment, and then swung it forward and kicked the side of the creature.
The foot connected, and it winced and recoiled. A moment later, it reared up before its amorphous head split open and revealed a face full of long fangs. Before it could strike, however, Pinkie let out a loud and exaggerated gasp. She turned around and ran back to the others just as the thing snapped for where she was.
“Dash, Rarity, you won’t believe this! But I think this magic shiny glowy stuff around us actually lets us hit Light Eaters without getting hurt!”
Both stood there dumbfounded. After eight years of living in terror of things that were considered anywhere from demons to living nightmares, it was hard to just accept that. However, they did part from one another. As for the Light Eater, it reared back up and drew itself even higher. A moment later, it spun to all three of them and cracked its mouth open wider. Both Dash and Rarity looked up to it, prompting Pinkie to turn as well, before it hissed and struck for them.
Out of a mixture of instinct and risk-taking, Dash winced, closed her eyes, and swung out her fist for it as the head came down.
A smack rang out as its head was snapped to one side and its jaws clamped on nothing.
Dash opened one eye, looking nervously back, but then opened the other on seeing nothing happened. She pulled her hand back, looked it over, but it was unmarked. No stains or defilement. “It…it worked… Pinkie’s right! I just punched that thing and I feel fine!”
The Light Eater shook its amorphous head, before opening its jaws again with even more teeth. It drew more of its body around and reared up yet again. Before it could go any further, Rarity, also acting mostly on panic, advanced and drove her newly-made rapier forward. Remembering her one quarter course, she found herself instinctively yelling: “Thrust!”
The blade pierced right into and through the middle of the creature, causing droplets of its material to shed and deteriorate into black mist. Once again, it went into a violent fit, causing Rarity to rip her sword out and back up with the others for a moment. Yet as it continued to spasm, she realized she had indeed hurt it. And on that note, she winced, cringed, and finally dove forward to swipe out again. This time, her rapier sliced right through the middle of its body.
The Light Eater’s two halves toppled to the ground. They flipped and flopped on the ground a moment, but then went still. Soon after, its starry material bubbled and dissolved into black mist before their eyes.
The three were left staring in dumbfounded shock; slowly realizing what they had just done. The lot was silent for a few moments.
Finally, Dash burst into a smile.
“We are…sooooo awesome!” She yelled, suddenly reaching out and wrapping her arms around the two of them. Pinkie grinned back enthusiastically while Rarity was still left stunned. “Did you just see that? We just killed an actual Light Eater! Get that? An actual Light Eater! We’re, like, the only people in the world who can do that! Do you know what this means?”
“Oh, oh, I know!” Pinkie shouted enthusiastically. “It means we’re going to get to kill a lot more of them in a couple minutes when every last one of them is attracted to all the light we’re giving off so they all come running at us together!”
Rarity’s look reverted to dread. Dash’s own face became far more uncomfortable. “Uh…good point. Let’s celebrate how great we are later.” She spun fully to Rarity. “Did you get the engine running?”
She hesitated. “Well…in a manner of speaking.”
The three were soon back inside the engine’s main compartment, much to Rarity’s relief. The light they were giving off did indeed start attracting more Nighttouched, and she knew now Light Eaters wouldn’t be far behind. Even if they could touch them safely, that didn’t mean they wouldn’t fight back. And the three of them couldn’t kill every last one of the monsters in Grifftham City.
She gestured to the controls. “I started a fire in that coal compartment, but I haven’t the foggiest idea what to do next.”
Dash looked around for a moment before looking at a gauge. An indicator was on it, and it was slowly building up. At the moment it was moving out of a zone marked in yellow and black, but beyond that was a long green zone before a yellow and finally a red one at the far end. She gestured to it. “I think this is for the boiler. It’s building up steam. We should be able to go in just a bit. Good thing they built these things after they made the quick-starting engines…”
“Thank goodness,” Rarity sighed. “Greater power or not, I don’t want to risk getting bitten or clawed by one of those monstrosities again… Now we might be able to find a way to stop that flood before it reaches that bridge, though.”
Dash looked up to the can and lighter that Rarity had used to start up the boiler. She still saw some gunky tar caked around the nozzle.
She smirked as a thought came to her. “I think I might help with that…” She turned back around and started to head for the hatch. “Come on.”
Pinkie bounded after her, but Rarity was aghast. “Are you mad? We’ve been lucky so far, but we don’t want to attract any more of those things!”
“We’ll only be out long enough for the boiler to finish building! Remember all that equipment they had for tunnel building we ran past?”
“Yes, but what does that have to do with anything?”
“Heh, I got an idea…”
Three minutes later, the fence to the engine yard was knocked down as the trackless engine burst through like a living battering ram made of metal. It immediately began to fishtail one way and another as it wavered and skid toward one of the roads.
Within the control area, Rarity shrieked at Dash’s steering as she seemed to randomly turn the control wheels. She clung to Pinkie in fright, who, in turn, took it all as a game.
“Tee-hee! I like screaming on a fun ride too, Rarity!” She put her arms back around her and cried out too. “Wheeeeee!”
“Would both of you cool it?!” She shouted behind her. “I’m just getting a feel for her!”
“You’re about to run us into that building!” Rarity shouted back.
“Oh…whoops!”
She quickly snapped the wheel around again, making the engine lurch so hard one way that it nearly spilled over completely. However, just barely, they scraped by the building before it swiveled back onto the road. While it took out a pair of street lamps along the way, it slowly got back onto the main drag. After that, Dash smirked as she pushed it up to as high as the throttle would allow given their steam buildup.
“Alright, we’re off! Full speed ahead! We got a lot of ground to cover!”
The truth was even the three minute delay was too much for both them as well as the people running across the bridge to the east. Rarity’s worst fears had been justified as more Nighttouched began to arrive. With their new enhanced abilities, they were able to take out the first few with ease, but larger and deadlier ones soon followed, and this time they brought much bigger and deadlier Light Eaters with them. To be honest, none of them wanted to risk attacking one again for fear the first one had somehow been a cosmic fluke. However, Dash insisted on grabbing one particular wagon and attaching it to the back before taking off.
Now they were driving a tankard full of tar used for railroad track paving behind them, plowing down the streets of Grifftham City. Most of the crowd that had been gathering behind them had been left in the dust, but ones that could fly or run particularly fast were still coming after them. None of them could catch up or stop the engine, however. And whenever they came across an abandoned bit of debris or wagon ahead of them, their engine just smashed right through it or rolled over it barely losing speed.
“Alright, so which way to the canal?”
Rarity swallowed, fanning herself a little. “This garment may be fashionable, but it’s definitely a little on the warm side…” Once composed, she looked out the side window, and gestured. “Hang a left at this next intersection.”
“You sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure! This will run us alongside the canal perfectly! I saw it from the mountainside!”
“You only got a glimpse of it, though!”
“Darling, if there is one thing I possess, it’s an eye for patterns. Trust me.”
Dash exhaled. “Alright. Hang on then!”
She swung the steering wheel sharply once again, this time flinging both Pinkie and Rarity to one side. Pinkie giggled the whole time while Rarity muttered a silent prayer, but although the engine scraped up part of the curb they managed to straighten out again and keep going. On steadying it, while Rarity was still getting her bearings, Dash looked out the window to the right.
“Hey, whatd’ya know? You’re right!”
Rarity clutched her chest as she inched over to the window and looked. There was a row of buildings still blocking their view, but in between the gaps she could look out and see the canal. More importantly, she could see the thousand of eyes scurrying around inside it all moving their way along.
“My word…” she nearly gasped. “I’ve never seen so many of them moving together…”
“Oh, I have!” Pinkie chirped. “Right over here!”
Rarity looked up and saw her pointing at the other window. She glanced outside. It took her a second or two, but eventually enough wide alleys went by where she managed to look past to the adjoining street. Much to her surprise, she saw not only collections of yellow eyes over there as well, but several of the shapes in the lead looked like the massive lion creature they had fought before. This time, however, there was a whole “herd” of them.
“Oh dear…” She looked up. “Rainbow Dash, I think we have a bit of a problem.”
“You’re telling me!” she shouted back. “We’re starting to get right into them!”
Rarity puzzled about what that meant, until she suddenly heard a knock against the metal chassis of the engine. She looked up, only to hear another soon after. A third came not long after that followed by a fourth. She glanced again to the window, but this time looked forward. She winced at what she saw. The Nighttouched from either mass were starting to spill out into the adjoining streets, including theirs. Every so often one would crawl out of an alley, a doorway, or a gutter and rush toward the engine. They ground each one that tried to bits, but she knew right away that if too many of them massed even they couldn’t smash through them.
Nevertheless, that was only part of the problem. She looked back to Dash. “I meant to say that there’s another stream of those monsters to our left!”
“What? You’re kidding me!” she shouted back angrily, before groaning. “Forget them for now! Let’s deal with the original problem! Both of you get to the back!”
Pinkie immediately began to move that way, but Rarity paused. “Wait, why?”
“I need you to open up the rear hatch, then Rarity…you use your little magic trick to light that tar tank on fire!”
“Wh-wh-what?! Are you trying to set us on fire?!”
“Trust me! Pinkie, as soon as I yell back, you cut it loose from the back!”
“Okie-dokie-lokie!” she cheerfully answered, not questioning in the least. Rarity was left aghast and staring between the two a moment, but realized they didn’t have the luxury of questions. Groaning, she turned and headed for the back of the trackless engine herself.
They soon reached it, where another bulkhead for another hatch was waiting for them. Rarity grimaced a little at the thought of hearing those periodic knocking sounds on the Steel Lion, making her think that it had to be more of those monsters trying to force their way in, but nevertheless she simply held up her sword and braced herself as Pinkie grasped the handle and gave it a spin. With a hiss of hydraulics, the hatch slowly opened up, and the two of them were confronted with the bleak Griffonstone air and the sound of a dirty engine chugging as they watched the city fly by. Much to Rarity’s displeasure, she could see at least five sets of eyes behind them still following them.
Nevertheless, she swallowed one more time before raising her free hand. She had to force herself to say it, but finally she chanted. “Littlefireballlittlefireballlittlefireballlittlefireball…”
On the fourth repetition, a tiny ball of flame no bigger than her thumb popped off of her outstretched hand and sailed onto the tankard. It was hardly enough to burst it open, but the small flame was enough to set much of the gunk residue around the opening on fire. It quickly ignited into a decent sized flame and began to spread over it. Rarity immediately grew uncomfortable, realizing it wouldn’t take long for the fires to penetrate it and risk an eruption.
However, she soon had something far more immediate to worry about, for the new light soon diverted the attacking Nighttouched. The sounds of them striking the sides of the engine cut off, only for them to fly to the rear and begin hovering over the trailing tankard. Rarity cried out on seeing several more of the giant bats along with giant birds beginning to descend, especially when some of them spotted the two women. Screeching, they readjusted their pattern and moved in.
Rarity nervously brandished her rapier. “Pinkie, if you have any manner of weapon on you, I suggest you produce it!”
“Weapon?” Pinkie echoed, before giggling. “Rarity, that’s just silly! Gaitians are pacifists! We only fight when something’s about to attack us! I don’t have any weapons on me!”
“Wait, what?” However, she had no time to follow up that comment, because one of the birds pitched into a dive and shot for the hatch opening. She shrieked before quickly swiping her blade out at it, managing to tag it and take off a wing. Unfortunately, the rest immediately moved in and mobbed her together. Some dove while others flapped in and clawed, but soon she was swamped.
Rarity managed to drive her rapier point into the next one that came, but as it fell it weighed her sword down. That enabled the others to quickly move in on her while unprotected. Two large bats reached out and clawed and tore at her immobilized arm. She tried to wrench it free, but they held fast and started to tear into her coat sleeve.
Her eyes widened, then creased in anger. “I just got this brand new coat!” she fumed, and pointed her free hand in their faces. “Icicleicicleicicleicicle!”
Not one but three razor sharp darts erupted from her fingers, much sharper and stronger than before, and pierced the bats like deadly knives. Neither was killed but both screeched and fell back. That only allowed more to flow in behind them, though. They extended their beaks and claws as they tried to sweep into the hatch opening, and she responded by quickly raising her sword and slashing at the air in front of her. Two of them reached for her only to get lacerations across their digits, causing them to abort and flap back, but they continued to swarm—trying to hook around her swiping blade or get a peck in edgewise.
Just as Rarity was beginning to feel her arms tiring, a flurry of white granules suddenly flew over the entire flock. The bats hissed and spat as it fell into their large eyes and nostrils, forcing their flights to abort and to fall back. The birds, on the other hand, had the granules slip in between their wing feathers, and as a result they began to falter and fall out of the sky all together. Rarity was suddenly in the clear, and, puzzled at what had just happened, turned and looked behind her.
Pinkie, who had seemingly produced a small bag of salt out of her poofy hair, was now shaking it out and letting the wind around them blast the creatures with the material. She snickered as she closed up the bag and stuffed it back inside. “I knew bringing ma’s special seasoned salt was a good idea!”
Rarity was a bit dumbfounded, but could hardly argue. She looked back outside, raising her sword and waiting for more attacks. However, although Nighttouched were still in pursuit, her main concern was the fact that the fire had spread across the entire tar tankard. It could burst at any moment, and when it did both she and Pinkie would be covered with the flaming gunk.
Before she could worry any longer, however, the homes on one side of them broke, and she saw nothing but the canal, as well as the flood of Nighttouched coming down it, just as their own vehicle managed to inch in front of the leading edge. At that moment she heard Dash yell. “Cut it loose!”
“You got it!” Pinkie answered, heedlessly going right to the edge of the engine and actually stepping out of the hatch. A moment later, she reached over, grabbed the bolt securing the trailer to the rear of the engine and simply pulled it out.
At the exact same time, Rarity was flung to the ground as the engine took yet another sharp turn. She heard the gears whine and the wheels squeal as they dug into the road enough to rip off some of the pavement. She cried out in alarm again as she saw the world swing around behind them, and their engine go one way while the flaming tar tankard was left to go the other. She was still being flung for a loop as it rolled to the edge of the canal and over the side…
A loud, gooey pop went off a moment later, sending out an eruption of flaming tar bits everywhere. She quickly yanked herself inside as many of the enflamed fragments came their way, and she saw several smack on top of their trackless engine before Pinkie Pie, ignoring this entire calamity, simply hopped inside and pulled the hatch down again before shutting it. Swallowing, Rarity forced herself back up again and pressed her face against the rear window.
The flood of Nighttouched were blocked. She was just in time to see them all begin to halt on finding the canal filled with flames. Using it as a barrier was perfect. If stopped any other way the monsters might have fled or tried to get out of the canal, but faced with a light source all they could do was encircle it.
Rarity risked a shaky smile before she pulled away from the window. Both she and Pinkie ran back up to the front and moved on either side of Dash. “It worked! We stopped them!”
“Alright! Now let’s see if we can stop that other group. Look out and tell me what you see!”
Rarity and Pinkie moved to either window, with the former of the two taking the one closest to the Nighttouched gathering. She grimaced again on seeing how many of them there were and how ferocious, but she also managed to look ahead further along the road. She blinked a few times before leaning in her head closer.
Her eyes widened. “My word…”
“What is it?”
“I think there’s been a gas fire! There’s a pillar of flames right down the middle of that street on our side of the canal!”
Dash scowled. “Fantastic! What idiot did that? It’s going to attract every Nighttouched and Light Eater in this town that gets close enough to see it through the smog! And it’s right along the main road to the bridge! It’s practically lining everyone up for an execution block!”
“Hey, I got it!” Pinkie chirped. “Let’s set another big fire and get them to go running away from everyone!”
“We can’t do that now! We only had the one tar tankard! We’ll never be able to make a fire big enough!”
“Not to mention what fire we are making probably isn’t what’s preferable,” Rarity moaned. “Rainbow Dash, I don’t know how to tell you this, but that last explosion ended up being a bit too severe. I’m pretty sure several pieces of flaming tar landed on top of the engine.”
Dash straightened. “Wait…” she spoke much more quietly. “Did you just say we’re on fire?”
“Yes!” A pause. “Why are you sounding like that’s somehow a good thing?”
She didn’t answer, only smirked wider. “Both you and Pinkie better hold on tight. I got another idea!”
“Wha-aaaaat!” Rarity’s question was cut off as the engine suddenly made another sharp turn, courtesy of Dash swinging the wheel wildly again to the side. In response, the trackless engine made a sharp lurch over to the left, moving it closer to the stampede of Nighttouched. However, she stopped short of turning it completely around. Instead, she looked out to the controls, and finally reached and grasped one they identified as the steam boiler release. She quickly cranked it up all the way, and Rarity and Pinkie were both thrown to the floor as it accelerated even faster.
“What are you doing? We’ll run out of steam like that!”
“Just need to crank it for a bit farther! Long enough to get ahead!”
Rarity didn’t argue. Instead, she reached out and grasped for whatever she could find that was solid enough to hold her steady. Pinkie, on the other hand, leapt up and cheered at the acceleration. The engine itself sped up to 55 km per hour and then blasted past that to 65 and finally 75. The streets began to fly by far more rapidly, but still they could see the Nighttouched running alongside them and so Dash kept pushing it. The train tore through any other creatures that tried to attack it, going so far as to smash one deer Nighttouched that ran in front of it into ground beef. Going as fast as they were, they lost some speed each time but still managed to go faster than the stampede.
Finally, as the burning gas line up ahead got much closer than any of them wanted, they finally reached the head of the column. Dash kept letting them chug onward beyond that, even as the boiler began to hiss and whine. She looked out the side window as she kept driving the engine, glancing at the passing buildings while they kept plowing forward. A large metallic snap went off from one side of the engine, and a fierce rattling went out soon later. Rarity stiffened on realizing the engine finally pushed itself too far and she feared in moments they’d lose more than whatever broke loose.
Yet that fear was soon compounded as Dash swung the wheel about in the sharpest manner yet. This time, the engine kicked up enough to go onto half of its wheels, and Rarity screamed while Pinkie laughed as the whole compartment lurched enough for her to slide against and onto one of the walls. She thought for sure they would tip over, until the entire engine smashed hard into a building side. Rattling pounded against the engine as it gouged a rift into the brickwork, and it lost so much speed that it seemed if they didn’t fall they would still smash the engine completely. Again, however, by some miracle, the smash into the building instead acted to shove the engine back and right it; leaving it free to keep chugging forward again.
That last move had taken something out of the Steel Lion. A high pitched whine came from the main engine. The steam boiler had to have cracked. Another whistle like a loud kettle joined it soon after, indicating more damage. The rattling on the wheels below them increased as well. Yet none of that was nearly as intensive as the sounds of scraping that burst out on either side of the engine soon after.
“What in heaven’s name are you doing?!”
“Driving this hunk of iron right down an alleyway!”
“Have you completely lost your mind?!”
“Just get ready, because we’re gonna smash this thing up in a few seconds!”
Rarity didn’t even bother crying out this time as the engine around them continued to whine and deteriorate. She only moaned before cringing into a ball and putting her hands behind her head and neck and shutting her eyes.
“Hey, keep ‘em open!” Pinkie shouted to her. “That’s the most fun part of a ride!”
Dash grit her own teeth and braced herself as the engine kept going. It lost more speed as more parts of it snapped and broke loose, but for the most part continued to chug forward far faster than any of them could run. Excess heat began to pour off of the controls, and a smell of burning wafted through the air. She risked looking out the window, but for several more seconds all she saw were buildings flying by; most of them getting damaged by the engine as it struggled to squeeze through the narrow space.
Finally, it broke as the engine burst out into a street…just as a pair of the lion-like Nighttouched rushed into the engine’s path. The vehicle slammed into both of them with its remaining momentum. It was hard enough to break bones on its initial impact, but assuming they both survived they would find themselves swept up in front of the train and brought along with it. Moments later, the trackless engine smashed them along with itself into the side of the building across the street so hard that half of the side of it collapsed on top of it.
The three occupants of the engine were rattled about like beans in a can, tossed to and fro and into controls, seating, panels, and assorted other irregular metal objects. Even at the low speed of around 55 km per hour at that point, if they hadn’t all been enhanced by their mysterious symbols they would have been suffering far more serious injuries and broken bones themselves. As it was, all three were left sore and in a disheveled pile on the ground when they finally settled, including Pinkie.
They lay there for several moments as the machine around them hissed, sputtered, and slowly let out the rest of its steam. The sound of fire burning on top of it slowly became more audible. At last, Pinkie raised a hand.
“And that’s…step three.”
“Yay…we’re awesome…” Dash half-muttered.
Rarity groaned and finally started to move. “Let’s just get out of here. Between this engine burning and that fire up ahead, they’re going to be on us in…”
She trailed off, and the other two went still as well. As they lay there, they realized they felt a light tremor. After a moment they felt another one. And then another after that, a bit stronger, soon afterward.
All three began to look fearful.
“Uh-oh…I remember those giant footsteps…”
The three scrambled to their feet, fueled by fresh anxiety. Soon all three were rushing to the intact side hatch. Rarity reached it first and quickly grasped it and gave it a sharp rotation, undoing the hydraulics and popping it open. She filed out with Dash right behind her and Pinkie bringing up the rear.
Fortunately, their engine was now forming an effective, burning roadblock against the Nighttouched that would have otherwise flooded the street; leaving them with an open road ahead leading into a square at a junction between two roads. It took them only moments to realize this square was the very same source of the fire they had seen. The broken gas main was just up ahead belching a pillar of flame into the sky. In fact, the sky looked like it had actually cleared up enough to where the same fire could be seen over half the city.
However, that only held their attention for a few moments. What truly caught them was the fact that three individuals were standing their ground and facing them now. A woman clad in a white robe with red trim cupping her hands to her mouth, a more dangerous-looking woman hefting a warhammer in light armor, and a woman in a black cloak and wide-brimmed hat brandishing what looked like a wand in their midst.
All three of them were emanating the same soft glow as Rarity, Dash, and Pinkie. They seemed to recognize the same thing as they stared right back at them.
Rarity and the wand-bearer spoke at the same time.
“Who in Greater Everfree are those people?”
Nightwatch: Through the Fire and the Flames, Part I
In spite of the still-approaching threat of the Tantabus, both Twilight and Rarity reared back on hearing what each other said.
“Who are we?” Applejack echoed. “Who are you? And how are y’all glowin’ like us?”
Dash frowned back and crossed her arms. “Might ask you the same thing.”
Twilight blinked and raised the brim of her hat, looking a bit closer at the three across from them. “All three of you have Promethian Sigils? And you’re actually using them?”
Rarity looked confused. “What in Greater Equestria is a ‘Promethian Sigil’? Are you talking about those symbols that appeared on our hands?”
Pinkie lit up. “Oh! So that’s what the Magic Circle-y Circles are called! That’s…” Her face fell after a moment. “…actually pretty hard to remember. Can we just keep calling them Magic Circle-y Circles?”
“Oh…they appeared on you too?” Fluttershy spoke up mildly. “Oh dear. I don’t suppose…um, well, that is…uh…have you three happened to notice anyone from Trottingham following you around?”
Dash and Rarity gave the white-robed woman a deadpan stare for several seconds. Rarity’s eye began to twitch, and Dash slapped her palm across her face and ran down it as she grit her teeth. “Are you kidding me?!”
Before anyone could say another word, the sounds of cannon fire burst from the part of the city already claimed by the Nighttouched. All six turned and looked. The fires from the ruined Steel Lion engine were beginning to rise higher and spread to the buildings around it, but it still served to keep the Nighttouched at bay. Nevertheless, the monstrous Light Eater was still closing, and at this point enough of it had emerged into the newly-cleared skies that they could make out its shape.
Just like the smaller ones, it took the vague form of a real animal. This one was a horse, only with a wild, flowing mane, smaller manes on its tail and legs also flowing backward, and a long, spired horn protruding from its head. In addition, the space around where its snout would be parted occasionally, revealing a mouth full of crude teeth.
The noise they had heard was from a single cannon deep in the city. It fired off another shell after the first, but the six saw both shots simply sink into the Light Eater’s body and ripple out the other side. Even if they hadn’t, the thing was far too big to be stopped by just a few shells.
Twilight grimaced. “Don’t know why I really expected anything different…but it doesn’t matter how big it is. The Tantabus is still just a giant Light Eater which means nothing can hurt it.”
“’Cept us,” Applejack spoke up, hefting her hammer again. She looked at the three in front of them. “Whoever y’all are, ya’ best clear outta here and let us save this city.”
Rarity turned her nose up. “Excuse me, but we will not be ‘clearing out’ anywhere. Not when we’re here to save this city.” She paused, suddenly realizing what she had just heard. “Wait, excuse me?”
“If you’re gonna try and save this city, do it somewhere else!” Dash interjected. “Some idiot set a gas fire that’s gonna be a signal beacon to that thing!”
“Oh. We’re the idiots who did that,” Fluttershy quietly answered, before wincing at what she said. “I mean, we’re the ones who did that.”
Dash and Rarity’s eyes bulged. “Are you nuts? Why the hell are you trying to bring that giant monster right over here into the middle of the city?!”
Twilight let out a sigh. “Because we’re trying to keep it away from the ocean!” she nearly cried back.
“That’s just nonsense! Why in the world would you rather it trample through the center of a major metropolitan area instead of…” Rarity trailed off in the middle of her scolding, suddenly realizing something. “Wait a moment…” She turned nervously to her two companions. “Ms. Dash, do you remember what was coming off of it when we came down the mountain?”
Applejack gaped. “Hold on now…y’all actually went over that mountain chain? When that giant son-of-a-gun was walkin’ over it?”
Dash ignored Applejack’s comment, but shrugged to Rarity. “You mean those big black spots that came off? What about ‘em?”
“What do you suppose would happen if that monster polluted the ocean with them?”
It took her a moment, but Dash began to look as nervous as Rarity. Pinkie swallowed anxiously as well. “I think that’d mean no one is going fishing again until, um…never.”
“Unless we stop it right here and right now,” Twilight answered. “I don’t exactly know how we’re going to do it…only that Applejack and me are the only things I know of that can actually hurt Light Eaters. So you three really need to get out of here before it gets here.”
“And…how do you plan on stopping it?” Rarity asked.
The mage winced before nervously looking away. “I…I don’t know. I’m trying to think of something now, but…but we can’t defend anyone else while I’m doing that.”
Dash snorted. “Who said anything about defending us?” She grinned and pumped her fist. “I don’t know what a Promethian Sigil is, but I know the three of us can all hurt Light Eaters too. We killed one just fifteen minutes ago at the most. If you need more ways to hurt that thing, then you need us.”
“Yeah!” Pinkie chimed in. “The more the merrier!”
Rarity looked uncomfortable at being volunteered at first. However, when she glanced back at the Tantabus, she sighed and looked ahead again. “I really, really don’t care much for heroics, but seeing as I know my rapier and magic tricks seem to be capable of doing some damage I don’t have the luxury of opting out. You can count me in as well, dear.”
Applejack raised an eyebrow. “Ya’ say ya’ managed to kill a Light Eater, but I only see one of ya’ with a weapon.”
Dash grinned wider. “Heh, I got all the weapons I need right here.” She hefted both fists.
“It’s true, madame,” Rarity added. “Ms. Dash here punched one across the face not just a little while ago. It seems whatever these auras are that we’re radiating, it’s protecting us from being infected by these ghastly phantoms.”
“Wait…what did you say?” Twilight suddenly exclaimed. “You’re saying you actually made physical contact and nothing happened? Are you sure?”
“Sure we’re sure!” Pinkie added. “I kicked one too! I’m not sure if that’ll help that much against the big one, though.”
Twilight hesitated. She bowed her head and began to think aloud. “I…suppose it would make sense. When you don a spirit, it fills your entire body. So if it has the ability to alter the nature of my spells so that they can harm their bodies, that same energy wavelength has to be permeating us. That would explain why Applejack’s hammer was able to hurt that one. It might actually shield us too so we could grapple with one if necessary…”
“Uh,” Dash spoke up, “if you got any ideas over there, ‘Witch Hazel’, how about sharing them with the rest of us? Make it quick ‘cause that big thing is getting closer.”
Twilight looked back up. She glanced over the three new arrivals for a moment. “Looks like…a Rogue…a Disciple…and a Magician type… They’d at least give us more options. But…”
Applejack saw her hesitation, and finally frowned and shrugged. “Hell, Twilight, they got my vote. We’re more than a little short-handed as-is. We only got two of us to begin with…although I guess with what they’re saying, Fluttershy might be able ta’ jump in if we could get her a weapon.”
“Um…we, uh, don’t really have to find out if we don’t need to…” she quietly muttered.
Twilight looked up again and saw that the Tantabus had closed half the distance since turning toward the gas line. By this point, they could see its massive limbs tearing smaller buildings apart to walk forward. She stared at it a little longer, her mind racing, before she finally took in a deep breath and let out a long exhale.
“Everyone…including new folks…gather around. I only have time to say this once so you’re going to have to go with most of it.”
Applejack and Fluttershy readily stepped up, although the latter was a bit nervous. Pinkie also had no problem happily moving in. Dash and Rarity hesitated, but of the six of them that were gathered the mage was the one who spoke with authority and know-how, which was more than the rest of them could say. As a result, they moved in too.
“If we try to outright kill that thing, I don’t think we have a chance of stopping it,” she began. “But I’ve noticed a lot of odd things about it that I’m starting to think about. First…the Light Eaters leave our world in a state of permanent night, but this is the first time I’ve ever seen a Light Eater, gigantic or otherwise, take the initiative. Every other time they’ve always made their surges during nightfall, and the world stays permanently dark the next morning. This one actually looks capable of ‘bringing night with it’.
“Second…I noticed that the Light Eaters actually made a move that required planning this time. They staged a fake surge in Appleloosa so that none of the armed forces would be ready to leap on the Tantabus now. But think about that for a moment… Why? You just saw cannon shells go right through it. It was like Constable Gruff said. Even if everyone was fighting it, it should have just been able to walk right through it without stopping or slowing.”
The women looked intrigued. They had been so busy trying to fight and stay alive none of them had really paused to think about that.
“Third…it’s occurred to me that there seem to be two natures to Light Eaters. Like I said, just now we saw cannon shells go right through it. Along with bullets, blades, fire, and anything else that tries to hurt them. It’s like nothing physical in our world can interact with them. And yet look over there.” She pointed to the approaching monster, just as it stepped again and tore the edge off another building before flattening an abandoned trackless engine. “It’s interacting with this city just fine. It might have to in order to even move itself forward. More than that. All of that stuff it keeps shedding off of it has a physical quality to it that stays.”
“You’re right,” Rarity suddenly spoke up. “Back on that mountain, I saw…” She hesitated, swallowing a lump in her throat. “I saw someone get struck by the material. It knocked him off his feet and to the ground. It wasn’t just ‘darkness’ but something tangible.”
“And because of all these things, I have a radical theory,” Twilight spoke up again. “There’s a chance it’s actually straining itself to keep itself moving. That it actually takes a bit out of it in order to make part of it ‘solid’. That’s why pieces of it keep breaking off every time it takes a step. If that’s the case, then I think part of the reason it crossed the mountains and is moving in through Grifftham City is because it couldn’t risk a whole armed force trying to hurt it. If enough things were shooting at it, it would have to become so amorphous that it would deteriorate and fall apart because it wouldn’t be able to keep moving and negate everything.”
“So what does that mean for us?” Applejack spoke up.
Twilight took a deep breath. “I think if we can pin it in one spot long enough while Grifftham City is powered down, with all of its gas and steam engines cut off, the smog will dissipate and the sunlight will start shining down on it again. Even when we ran into it on the river, the sun was already headed down and it had the shadows of mountains to hide in. Here, it either has to blot out the whole sky or it’ll face the early morning or noon day sun. And I don’t think it can for long. Not without straining itself to the breaking point.”
“Do you really think so?” Rarity asked.
Twilight winced a little. “If you’re asking if I know for sure…no. Maybe it can blot out the sun no matter what time of day. I’m making a ton of guesses and crossing my fingers.”
That wasn’t the most comforting note to end on, and all of them shared that sentiment as they looked to one another. No matter who they were, they were working with three strangers they had just met against a monster that no one had ever faced.
In the end, Applejack exhaled. “Got nothin’ better, so I’m in.”
“Same here. Better than any ideas I got and you seem to know what you’re talking about more than me,” Dash added.
“Very well,” Rarity sighed.
“Ok…” Fluttershy nearly whispered.
“Yipee!” Pinkie finally capped off.
Twilight stared at them a moment. “…I’ll take that as we’re all in. Right.” She turned to Dash. “Um…who are-”
“Rainbow Dash, the Sonic Rainboom.” She smiled and pumped her fist at that last part.
“…Right, Rainbow Dash. You and Applejack pick a spot near that thing’s ankle and start attacking it every chance you get. There’s no way we can reach the main body and even if we could if it’s anything like a Light Eater it doesn’t have any vitals, but it’s limbs should be a true target. If we can lop off two of its limbs that should mostly cripple it like any real animal.”
She turned to Pinkie next. “Alright, um…”
“I’m Pinkie Pie! Nice to meet you!”
“Er, Pinkie…you don’t have a weapon or any way to attack, so what you have to do is run a diversion. Since you’re a Rogue type, you should be able to outrun it and dodge it so long as it can’t move any faster than it does now. If you can’t get its attention, try to distract anything else that might come up and interrupt us.”
She turned to the white robed woman. “Fluttershy, you may be a Healer type, but without any spells the only way you can help us is either by accelerating our mana regeneration or natural healing, or by trying to exert your will on the Tantabus itself. You have to jump on any of us the moment we get hurt if we get hurt so we can get in and keep swinging. Don’t go out of your way to try and work your will on the Tantabus, though. Save it for any incoming Nighttouched and Light Eaters, and get Spike and the rest of the animals to help out if you can.”
“Um…excuse me,” she spoke up nervously, “but…what did you mean by ‘the rest of the incoming Nighttouched and Light Eaters’?”
“There’s going to be more of them coming to this fire along with the Tantabus. You’ve got to work to keep them off us so we can focus on it.”
She sank a bit more into her hood. “Oh my…”
Finally, Twilight turned to the last person. Before she could say a word, the designer sighed. “Rarity, darling.”
“Rarity…um…what spells do you happen to know?”
Rarity thought for a moment. “Well, I can hold my hand out at something and say ‘Fireball’ four times, and a little fireball comes out. Or I can hold out my hand and say ‘Icicle’ four times, and a few icicles come out. Oh! And if I hold onto someone and keep saying ‘all better’, they heal faster. Now let’s see…I think I managed an electric spark once…”
“Those are your spells?!” Twilight nearly cried. “Those aren’t spells! They aren’t even cantrips! They’re things that students back at the academy used to do by mistake on their first day!”
Rarity frowned. “Well, I haven’t foggiest idea what academy you went to, dear, but last I looked it is not part of the standard curricula in Manehattan to learn magic tricks.”
“Ugh…a Magician who doesn’t know a single spell…perfect…” Twilight groaned. “Just…just do what you can. Aim for the same spot everyone else is hitting or use your sword or…or something.”
She almost huffed at the insinuation that there was nothing for her to do, but she hefted her blade. “This is a rapier, dear, and I can assure you that I can handle myself better than you think.”
“Alright then. Let’s head up the side street or we’ll run into the mass that got blocked on the road. Try to go around from the side and avoid everything you can but the Tantabus.”
Twilight finally exhaled, turning around and readying her own wand. By now, the Tantabus had closed another quarter of the distance. Its massive head was lowering closer to the emerging pillar of fire. They didn’t have more than three minutes before it reached it.
With that in mind, she held up her wand and shouted. “Everyone…attack!”
Applejack and Rainbow Dash broke into a full charge, although between the two of them, and much to the former’s astonishment, Dash quickly took the lead. Twilight did her best to run up from behind, already beginning to manipulate her wand and chant her first spell. Rarity ran alongside, keeping pace as she held her own rapier at the ready. Fluttershy beckoned the animals on, causing them to fall in behind her, and Pinkie laughed as she skipped off into the fray.
The side street was mostly clear, just as Twilight hoped. All of the remaining Nighttouched and Light Eaters were being attracted to the fire of the engine or the gas main. What few Nighttouched did get into Dash’s path she readily punched or stomped on to clear away, and whatever ones escaped her soon came across Applejack’s hammer so that Twilight and Rarity had smooth sailing the whole way.
There were still airborne ones, but Pinkie quickly took care of that. As soon as she found the nearest fire escape, she leapt up and easily scaled it all the way to the top and onto the roof. From there, she ran across and nimbly leapt from one building to another until she approached a flock of Nighttouched hovering over the area. For a moment, they spotted Dash and altered their flight path toward her.
Before they got too far she cupped her hand to her mouth and shouted. “Hey Nighttouched! I got the bestest candy in the world, but I’m not sharing! Nyah!”
It was unlikely that they actually cared about what she said, but the fact she was loud caught their attention and confirmed to them she was a closer target. They quickly swooped around and went after her, but she merely laughed and began to hop away across the rooftops. The sound of her laughter plus spotting their companions turning to her caused the others wandering below to spin around and go after her as well; giving those below even more breathing room.
Soon after, Dash spun down an alley and into the main road, just as the Tantabus’ massive limb, easily the diameter of a building itself, smashed down on the street with pavement-fracturing force. It was so intense she actually had to hop into the air to avoid the impact knocking her over, but even then she found herself slowing in her step a bit on finding herself staring at a seemingly unbreakable pillar of starry blackness. Before she could lose too much resolve, she grit her teeth and charged right for it. As she reached the thing, she vaulted forward and leapt into the air with a flying roundhouse for her opening move.
The side of her foot smashed into the edge of the leg and raked across. Like it was made of nothing but black goo, five gallons worth of its body were broken off and splattered to the ground; leaving more of the dark stained space around it. Dash herself landed a moment later and glanced at her leg, making sure it was good. Fortunately, what pieces of the material had landed on it were fizzling away like water on a hot burner. Nevertheless, she quickly had to backstep as the colossus lifted its foot forward a moment later and nearly swept her away.
By the time it touched down again, Applejack was breaking out. Yelling a war cry, she barreled straight at the leg with her warhammer behind her head and unloaded on it far more ferociously. Three huge swings went out one after the other, smashing away huge chunks of black material with each strike. She tried to swing a fourth time, but by then it was moving again and forced her to back up.
As soon as it landed again, Twilight and Rarity came out. Twilight was still generating her own spell even now, but Rarity moved away from her and aimed her own hand at it. “Icicleicicleicicleicicle!”
She was pleased to see four darts came out this time and shot into the appendage, slicing out a cup full of material with each swipe across it. Applejack, on her part, gave Rarity an odd look on seeing her smiling at the move.
As for Twilight, she finally stepped forward and aimed her wand, lighting up an icy blue sigil around her. Rarity’s satisfied smile turned into a frightened shout as she saw a monstrous, jagged icicle the length of a Steel Lion erupt from her own wand and shoot like a javelin into the Tantabus’ ankle region. It pierced in deep, shedding even more of the blackness, before it erupted in an even larger collection of ice shards that tore and lacerated into it. An entire tankard worth of its black goo spilled out from it.
Only that final attack, however, had made a noticeable mark on its body. And as the leg stood there, the rest of its matter that constituted it rose up in inky tendrils to link together and reform the injury within three seconds.
Dash groaned in disgust. “You got to be kidding me! That’s all we did?”
“Well, don’t give up yet! If it’d be easy, it wouldn’t be so damn big!” Applejack shouted as she hefted her hammer. “Just keep chippin’ away at it!”
“Um, I don’t mean to alarm anyone,” Rarity nervously spoke up. “But has anyone noticed that it’s stopped moving?”
The four went quiet. Sure enough, the Tantabus was only standing there motionless now. They watched it for a second, wondering if their attack actually had an effect after all.
Twilight finally spotted something. “Up there! Look under its belly!”
The others did so. Something was happening to it. The surface was rippling without anything striking it. Bubbling, even. And it continued to get stronger for a few moments and protrude more from its body.
Finally, a large piece of it bubbled off entirely and fell the long way to the ground. It landed there a moment later, but it didn’t splash or scatter like all the others did. Rather, as soon as it landed, it compressed and coalesced like a lump of slime momentarily, before it drew itself up, poked out six misshapen limbs, formed a head with pincers, and grew a pair of moonspot eyes. In moments, a new Light Eater had formed and began to scurry toward the four of them.
Seconds later, five more plops hit the ground and began to grow into Light Eaters themselves, one with wings, one like a rat, one like a giant millipede, one like a starfish, and one like a land-crawling shark. More droplets quickly began to fall off as well, and as it kept shedding them the Tantabus started walking forward again.
“I think we got its attention!” Rarity shouted anxiously.
“Don’t stop attacking!” Twilight shouted as she quickly began to prepare another spell. “If we weren’t a threat to it, it wouldn’t be trying to stop us!”
“That or it’s just swattin’ the flies bitin’ it!” Applejack shouted back as she ran right up to the insectoid Light Eater and greeted it with the claw of her hammer as it reared up to meet her. “But I’ll take that chance!”
The rest of the newly forming Light Eaters quickly moved out, and the four responded. Dash followed Applejack’s lead and ran right into them fists swinging. She dove on the one with wings before it could take off and immediately put her fist through its body, then ripped it out and swept around to slice off three limbs from the millipede one with the force of her strike. Twilight struggled to keep her wand aimed at the Tantabus, but with more Light Eaters coming off and rushing to her she couldn’t finish the whole spell. She was forced to break off and send her next icicle through the body of the rat Light Eater to kill it. Rarity on her part continued to mostly stab and slash errantly, but it got the job done by slicing off pieces of the starfish Light Eater as it tried to crawl toward her.
Dash finished breaking the millipede one into pieces and tried to run past the new ones before they could fully form, making a beeline for the Tantabus to keep attacking. Yet just as she was about to snap free of the crowd, the shark Light Eater suddenly snapped its body toward her. Before she could realize it was coming, it formed crude teeth and clamped down on one of her forearms.
She cried out in pain and wheeled around to it, seeing blood already oozing freshly from where it had bitten. Not having time to tense about if it had corrupted her, she instead made a fist and smashed it in the nose as hard as she could. Bits of black material flew from the wound, causing it to angrily snap its head around and cast her violently aside with it. Her body slammed into a stack of garbage cans before hitting a building wall a second later.
She only lay there a second before knocking the cans off of her and trying to rise, only to cry out in pain. She looked to her forearm and, although it wasn’t stained in any way, several free-flowing bloody wounds were gushing out of it from where she had gotten bit.
“I’m coming, um…uh…Rainbow Dash!”
She looked up, just in time to see Fluttershy, who seemed to have been cringing in an alley before now, pop out and run up to her. Several of the animals followed behind her, including Spike, Angel, and her bear. As soon as she reached her, she clamped her hands down over the wounds and began to speak so softly that Dash couldn’t hear her over the din. Yet after several seconds, she looked up and ahead of her.
“Uh, you can’t do that any faster, can you?”
Fluttershy glanced up and let out a panicked whine. Six of the “timber wolves” had focused on the two of them as the easiest targets and were moving in. However, now that they were close enough, they each snarled and ran at them both.
The animals with Fluttershy quickly rushed to her aid. Spike ran up and charged right at one construct, causing both to topple to the ground and fight. The bear snarled and came forward, causing two of them to latch onto his arms. They made him roar in pain, but mostly anger as he began to slam them around on the ground to beat them apart. Angel tapped his foot a few times before rushing forward and launching himself at the fourth one like a furry bullet. On impact, he shattered it into bits.
Unfortunately, all that was left for the final two were a couple mice and a woodpecker. That didn’t stop either of them from leaping into the fray, however. The mice dashed forward and onto the legs of the closing creature, then quickly ran up through its body and to the glowing yellow orbs set in its head. They gnawed frantically on both, causing the monster to howl and stumble to one side just before it could hit Fluttershy and Dash. Finally, the woodpecker did what it did best and hovered to a wooden part of the monster’s skull before pecking away furiously at it; hard enough to knock up wooden chips. The thing stopped, snarled, and tried to swipe and snap at it, but it merely flew out of the way a short distance before returning and pecking further.
Soon the bear and Spike had finished their own opponents and turned to lend a hand with the others. For a moment, Dash risked a relaxed sigh. “Nice. Those critters of yours really bailed us out.”
Fluttershy, who had been hiding under her hood again while helping out Dash, looked up only to tremble all over again. While the wood constructs had been torn apart, three of the newly formed Light Eaters had seen the two of them and were beginning to shift and lumber toward them.
The animals turned to face them, but then immediately backed away as well. All of them seemed to have the intelligence to realize they were no match for them. While they tried to look threatening and at the ready, they were forced to back away as the three slid in closer. None of them wanted the animals, however. They saw the light coming from Fluttershy and Dash and were zeroing in on it.
Tensing up, the Huntsman turned to her. “Let me up! I’ve got to try and stop them, arm or no arm!”
Fluttershy didn’t move. Instead, Dash heard her audibly gulp, before her head snapped up and stared at the three of them with sudden ferocity. “Stop right there!”
The surface of the three Light Eaters actually rippled and their moonspots contracted. As if pushed by an invisible force, they all slid back a few feet before stopping. They began to approach again, but Fluttershy kept staring at them and, as a result, they moved at a snail’s pace. She had more than enough time to hold onto Dash for a few more seconds before finally releasing. The Huntsman, a little surprised at all of that, looked down to her arm. The bleeding had stopped and the wounds had all scabbed over and healed partially. Enough to keep going at least.
“Heh, you are handy. Thanks a lot!”
Smirking again, she ran forward and put her fist through the first still-mostly-immobilized Light Eater.
On the rooftops, Pinkie continued to happily bounce along singing a song; heedless of the flock of Nighttouched struggling to peck and claw at her from the air above and the ones below struggling to crawl up the building side to get her. One particular dog-like one managed to bound up a fire escape to the top, and took off for her snapping and snarling. She cheerfully bounded over him; letting him sail right by and off the opposite side of the same roof. The flock pursuing her gathered for a dive, but just as they moved in she dropped into a roll, somersaulted to the edge of the current roof, and then leapt off onto the lower, adjoining one. The monsters shot by and hit nothing but air.
Pinkie spotted a bit of the flaming tar on her current roof and grinned as she ran over to it. She passed a weather vane along the way, and reached out to pluck off two of its arms. Holding them in either hand, she ran up to the tar, dipped them in, and pulled out a bit of fire on either end. After that, she spun around and began to run backward. “Come on, everybody!” she sang, waving them around in different maneuvers. “Come catch me!”
The flock of birds and bats massed up together and attempted to charge again, but as they gathered Pinkie ran over to a clothesline with several linens hanging from it. As they dove, she quickly darted behind it. The Nighttouched were moving so fast and recklessly that after only a few passed by, some of them got hung up on sheets or the line itself. As a result, they caused a logjam that quickly led to far more getting tangled up within it.
She giggled at her ingenuity, but even with them temporarily incapacitated she didn’t have much time to rest. An entire group of Nighttouched began to crawl their way to the top of this lower roof, and as soon as they were on it they tore straight for her. The first was a fox-like one, which she simply matched leap-for-leap to get away from. Another was a hissing raccoon-like one, but as it swiped out for her she answered by holding her now flaming batons out near its outstretched claw, and the heat made it recoil in pain. Another dog-like one charged for her as she bounded back toward the edge of a roof. However, she simply did an extra tall leap to go off of it and onto the next one along, while the dog ran right off the edge and crashed into the alley below.
She laughed as she hopped back along this roof a bit more, still swinging her batons at the Nighttouched massing on the other roof and readying to leap over. “Don’t stop, everybody! Everyone come and join along on the Pinkie Para-”
Pinkie’s voice was drowned out by the sound of one of the monstrous lion creatures, just as it shot up and over the top of the roof in a massive leap, opened its jaws wide, and clamped them down on top of her enough to swallow half of her body whole. The rest of its momentum crushed down on her body and smashed her right through the top of the roof—sending them both into the building below. As a resounding calamity continued to rise from the hole, the other Nighttouched roared and snarled before leaping over to the roof and going down the same opening after her, just as the flock gathered and swept down and into it as well.
The fate of their companion went unnoticed by the group on the ground below, who were still struggling to get whatever hits they could on the Tantabus against an ever-rising tide. Applejack, gritting her teeth and breaking a sweat as she smashed her warhammer through Light Eater and Nighttouched alike, struggled to dig her way through the flood coming at her. As she finished flattening the nearest one, she finally got an opening to go for the leg.
However, she only managed two steps in its direction before a scorpion barb lashed out and smashed her in the face. Even with her fortitude, she was slapped into the street so hard she ground out several bricks of pavement. As the lion-like Nighttouched responsible sneered and began to stomp forward, trying to get a better view of its quarry, she had to lie still a moment before she could look up again. When she did blood was oozing out of her nostrils but her eyes were fiercer than ever.
The thing growled and swung its tail at her again, but she quickly shifted to the side. The blow still struck where she had been and sent up pieces of stone everywhere. She crossed her arm to block her face, but one still struck her in the shoulder and caused her to wince in visible pain, yet she used her free hand to swing her hammer around and latch the teeth into the joint of the tail. When the monster yanked it back, it found out too late it was pulling Applejack up and to it at the same time. Before it could react, she used both her own momentum plus that of it yanking her to it to swing the solid part of her hammer into its skull.
A few seconds later, she touched down on the ground again, groaning a bit and dizzy, but the lion-like monster fell as limp as piece of dead meat. She took a deep breath or two as Fluttershy pushed through the crowd to assist her.
Twilight was having no luck whatsoever. With a constant stream of Light Eaters coming at them now, she had no opportunity to gather any real spells. She constantly threw fireballs at the ones that were emerging, engulfing them and trying to use their resulting flames to attract the others. Unfortunately, more kept constantly pouring out. In frustration, she finally held her wand skyward and painted a yellow, gleaming symbol. The sky thundered and sent out a large bolt of electricity which split as it neared the ground. Most of the bolts hit encroaching Nighttouched and Light Eaters, but one loose bolt managed to strike the limb of the Tantabus. It let out another few gallons of its body at that, but it didn’t slow.
Dash, furiously pounding away at anything that came near, saw it rapidly getting near the gas fire. With that in mind, she looked above the crowd of opponents and focused on all of the Light Eaters that were going airborne. Gritting her teeth, she suddenly ran forward in a lunge and leapt as one slashed for her middle. She ended up not kicking it but landing on its head and using it as a vault to launch herself onto a slightly taller one. From there, she leapt again on top of a low-flying one, and then proceeded to use them as stepping stones to quickly cross over the crowd of enemies until she was clear to the Tantabus again. Tightening herself up, she vaulted off the last one, twisted around, aimed her heel out, and sailed for the limb.
The resulting blow struck almost as powerfully as Twilight’s spell, knocking off nearly as much of its body. However, on touching down Dash couldn’t follow up. Two of the lion-like monsters had just arrived from the adjoining street, and on seeing her apart from the other Light Eaters and Nighttouched bellowed and began to charge for her. Dash had just finished straightening when she spotted them coming, and risked a moment to glance at the Tantabus again.
It had hesitated just a moment, but then regenerated and resumed walking while still producing more Light Eaters.
“Aw, come on!” she yelled. Groaning, she ran to meet the first lion monster.
Rarity continued to furiously swipe her rapier away at anything and everything in front of her. The only good side to this was that, single minded as the monsters were, they mostly ran themselves right onto her blade. Nevertheless, it was all she could do to get a hand free and point at the Tantabus. “Fireballfireballfireballfireball!”
Another melon-sized ball of fire shot out and hit true, resulting in a small fire that lasted perhaps all of four seconds before dying out.
“This is ridiculous!” she bellowed as she sliced her way through another Light Eater. “‘Magician’ my foot! What’s my power, pulling rabbits out of this fetching hat?!”
At that moment, Fluttershy, who was still struggling to heal up Applejack, gave out a yipe as one of the Nighttouched squirrels leapt on her back and began to claw through her robe to the woman beneath. Panicked, she closed her eyes and shouted. “All of your monsters stop!”
Just as before, the Light Eaters rippled before halting for a second, and the Nighttouched actually backed down. For a moment, the field was clear and gave the women a much-needed breather.
Rarity, however, had another plan in mind. At once, she clenched her jaw and barreled forward through the crowd straight for the Tantabus.
Twilight, panting from overuse of mana but still struggling to cast another spell, looked up in alarm. “R…Rarity! What are you doing?”
“I’m not going to slay this beast throwing birthday candles and snowballs!” She brandished her rapier as she ran. “This will be far more effective!”
“You’re not as strong as Applejack and Rainbow Dash! That thing only needs to shift to crush you!”
“Desperate times call for desperate measures!” She held her blade aloft. “For Manehattan!”
Finally reaching the side of the Tantabus’ leg, she took only a moment to ready herself for a proper move before thrusting her blade all the way to the hilt into the monster.
Almost immediately, the area around the weapon began to smoke and bubble. It started off small but swiftly built in intensity, like water on a burner. Rarity continued to look fierce for a moment more before her look turned to puzzlement and finally a touch of anxiety. She began to more tentatively hold the end of her rapier as she saw what was happening…
Suddenly, the space around her blade began to melt away and shot out in a jet of oily black liquid, spraying all over her.
“GAH!” Crying out in a mixture of fear and disgust, Rarity quickly backpedaled in alarm. She frantically wiped at herself while shrieking. “Ghastly! Horrid! Wretched! Putrid! Oil-based!”
She continued to throw a fit just as long as it took for her to realize the substance that landed on her was rapidly dissipating into nothingness from closeness to her aura. And as she calmed down, she glanced back to the Tantabus.
It now had a gaping and free-flowing wound around where the rapier had pierced. At least, it did so for a moment. Then the rapier suddenly reverted back into the dull, iron poker it had been before, and as soon as it did it fell through and out of the monster as if it was no more than thrown into water. The wound rapidly closed itself up and the Tantabus resumed its trek.
Rarity was left staring dumbfounded. As for Applejack, she finished tearing herself away from Fluttershy just in time to grapple with what looked like a Nighttouched bull. She dug her feet in and crossed her arms in front of her just as it charged, bracing it with her hammer and struggling, but also looking back up to the giant Light Eater. “Damn it all, don’t anythin’ make it stop?”
Suddenly, a light went off in Rarity’s eyes. She spun around. “Keep striking it for a few moments, won’t you, darling?” she shouted before she quickly ran to the side of the street and began to look around.
Applejack gnashed her teeth as Fluttershy quickly ran back to help the rapidly-weakening Twilight. “What’dya think I’ve been doin’ this whole time?!” With one final surge of strength, she flung the bull to one side. Not stopping to finish it, she took off in another charge for the monster. This time, she kept on running after pulling her hammer back, and swung it around in a great whirling arc as she reached it. Bits of the starry material flew everywhere in the wake of her assault, but for all she knocked off it wasn’t even enough to get it to pause.
Still scowling, she planted her feet only to get her lasso free, tied it around the end of the hammer, and once again produce her “bolo” weapon. She swung it around several times and then lashed out with it, punching out a large section of the Tantabus’ leg. Still for nothing. It was simply too big and recovered too fast. She snapped her hammer back and got ready to fight again, only to feel herself pounded in the back and launched into the air by the Nighttouched bull. No sooner had she slammed back into the ground than it whipped around, aimed its horns at her, and dug her off to try and gore her death. Soon she was forced to focus entirely on grappling it.
Twilight, on her part, was sweating beads as she struggled to conjure a big enough spell to leave a serious mark, but even with Fluttershy reaching her and struggling to help her out she saw there were dozens of Nighttouched and Light Eaters still coming and at the ready. By now, there were enough present where any one of them would have to deal with a half dozen at once at minimum. Still she struggled for all she could to try and at least squeeze off one more good incantation.
Yet as she tried to take aim, she hesitated on seeing that the Tantabus had stopped moving of its own accord. Over the force of monster combatants, she looked down and saw it was right next to the gas fire. Its massive head region was staring down right at it.
It was still for a second before lowering its head further. Its great shadow seemed to make its surroundings darker yet, and the gas flame itself visibly dimmed and diminished just from it drawing nearer. It paused once its moon spots were nearly touching the reduced fire and it held for several seconds more.
Then, it raised one of its massive, tower-like limbs and planted it on top of it like it was no more than a snuffer for a candle. Metal groaned in its wake. After a few seconds, it pulled back, and revealed the fire and light was now gone. The pipe was bent in half.
The Tantabus slowly rose from it and then turned its head another way…back toward the ocean shore. After a moment longer, it slowly began to pick up its huge feet and walk toward it again.
“No…no!” Twilight shouted. “It’s going back to the sea! We have to…!”
She trailed off. Monsters were closing in on her again even as she struggled to maintain her spell. Fluttershy was sporting several claw marks and scratches and her resolve was fading. Applejack was finishing pounding away at the bull that had charged her, but she was starting to slow. Dash had somehow managed to kill one of the lion-like creatures, but she was struggling to stay alive against the other. She couldn’t even see Rarity or Pinkie.
On seeing all this, her pupils shrank as the realization slowly came on her. She had said herself that a small group of them would never be enough. That they’d need a hundred. Now it looked like it was true…
“I say…tally-ho!”
In the face of her growing despair, however, Twilight heard Rarity’s voice. She looked up and saw a rather bizarre sight.
Barely managing to do so, she was propping up what looked like a Griffonstone flagpole with a pointed tip and rushing clumsily at the Tantabus like she was a knight on horseback. It seemed like the most reckless and ineffective thing she could have done. At least…for a moment it did.
That was when Twilight noticed her aura was spreading to it just like any other article-turned weapon. It began to glow with the same light, and soon solidified and lengthened into a long, resplendent, silver lance. Using all of the enhanced strength she had to muster, Rarity grit her teeth and forced it up at an angle, and then for all she was worth plunged it into the leg of the Tantabus. She drove it in until a good fifteen feet of it was left embedded in the Light Eater’s limb.
The entity, surprisingly enough, actually slowed a little. That limb seemed harder for it to move now, and soon it was clear why. Rarity kept clinging to the end and embedding it into the thing, and as a result its body was hissing and melting around it. Soon huge amounts of it were pouring out from the wound as its substance peeled away from the weapon like paper to a flame. Yet she left it in there and held for all she was worth, and as a result the wound would not heal. Its attempts to regenerate it only caused it to shed more of its body.
When Twilight saw that, she understood. “Of course…”
Fluttershy, in spite of her fear, risked a look up. “Wh-what?”
“Our weapons! Anything we touch becomes…I don’t know…‘insulated’ like us! Anything we hold onto and in it becomes a weapon!”
Before the monsters could get any closer, Twilight quickly snapped her wand around and finally discharged her spell. It wasn’t as powerful as she wanted, but it still made for quite a monstrous and massive thunderbolt. This time, it struck completely in the area where Rarity had opened a wound, and gouged a major rift right out of the extended limb.
The Tantabus, just barely, actually faltered on that limb. The other three of its tower-like appendages halted where they were. It was forced to stop again. Soon, the regenerative efforts around Rarity’s spear doubled as it struggled to put itself back together again enough to get away.
“Rarity, keep holding it there!” Twilight shouted, before quickly doing the first wind spell she could manage to force the encroaching attackers back long enough for her to do something better. “Everyone else, hit it in the wound!”
As Twilight gave a shout, back on the adjoining street at the building that Pinkie, the lion creature, and the fifty other odd Nighttouched had crashed into, the doors suddenly swung open wide. The pink-haired woman walked out. A bit of loose fur and feathers were on her clothes, which she promptly dusted off, before she looked to her shoes. Seeing a touch of red liquid on them, she took a moment to wipe them off as well before perking up and looking around again. “Ok! Got to get back to Rarity, Twilight, and the others! Um…” her look grew confused. “It was easier to find my way around when I was on the rooftops… Oh well!”
She immediately began to skip out into the street, looking one way and another for any indicator of how to get back to the main battle. She began to make her way to the sounds of the most commotion, glancing down the alleyways as she did. She passed the first one easily enough, but after passing the second, she froze where she was before skipping backward and looking again.
Abandoned in the middle of that street, apparently by the Griffonstone army when they realized that Light Eaters were involved, was a fully primed, oiled, and ready field gun. It even had a few spare shells of ammunition next to it.
Pinkie gasped in delight. “A cannon! A real honest-to-goodness cannon! I’ve never seen one up close!” She quickly shot to its side and began to marvel all over it. “Oh, there’s the wheels! There’s the barrel! There’s the fuse! There’s the long fluffy rod thing you use to clean gunk out of it!”
She paused, then lit up. “Say, I bet this would help out a lot against all those Nighttouched!” She grinned a bit, but then paused and suddenly looked downcast. “Aw…but Ma said Gaitians can’t own firearms for any reason. Even when I just wanted a little cannon to shoot off at parties… I know what she’ll say…”
She looked over to a nearby puddle, just shiny enough to barely reflect her face as she impersonated her mother. “Absolutely not, Pinkamena Diane Pie! Thou knowest we spurn all implements of warfare!”
She looked anxiously back at the puddle. “But…but…it’s for a really good cause!”
“Now, Pinkamena, thou knowest what the road to damnation is paved with, do you not?”
She half-sighed, half-whined. “Can’t I make just one teeny-weeny, itsy-bitsy exception just this one time?”
“Certainly not! The Pies have forbidden to have anything to do with engines of destruction, and we never shall! Thou can not have a cannon!”
“Aw…” she whined again, looking to the side for a moment. Suddenly, she lit up again. “Buuuuut…what if I only borrowed someone else’s cannon?”
At once, the reflection smiled and nodded back to her. “I like the cut of your cake, Pinkie.”
“Why thank you, mud puddle!”
To be continued...
Nightwatch: Through the Fire and the Flames, Part II
Back on the road with the Tantabus and its accompanying horde, Rainbow Dash and Applejack were hardly in much of a position to seize the opportunity. Dash was against the ground, struggling against the jaws of the lion-like creature as it tried to simultaneously bite her in two while stabbing for her head with its long tail. Applejack was doing her best to cut her way through the remaining monsters, but she was halted as a Nighttouched stag burst out and charged for her. Again she braced herself, but this time her strength was slipping and she ended up only able to block it. Even so, it pushed her back slowly but surely, and kept her pinned while other Nighttouched began to clamber for either side of her. The only good side was the Tantabus had stopped making more smaller Light Eaters as it focused on trying to heal itself, but none of them could seize the opportunity.
As Applejack felt a weasel-like Nighttouched suddenly bite her leg and a hawk-like one tear into her shoulder, she struggled to summon her strength to overpower the deer and fight back…
Several loud gunshots made her eyes snap back open. She was just in time to see the blood splatters from the body of the deer Nighttouched fall before it slumped to one side. Another gunshot caused the hawk to screech once before it went limp. Shocked, but also freed, Applejack seized the moment to crush the weasel with the end of her hammer before looking for her saviors.
Much to her surprise, as well as the others who had been alerted by the gunfire, they saw a squad of about thirty Griffonstone soldiers quickly taking position and aiming at the Nighttouched.
Even more surprising…Constable Gruff was at the head brandishing an ancient, rusted, commerative sword.
“Those freaky women can actually hurt those inky sons of bitches, so we’ll take ‘em in once they’ve gotten rid of that big one!” he shouted to the soldiers around him. “Until then, fill the rest of these ugly bastards fulla lead and give ‘em room!”
The Griffonstone soldiers instantly opened fire en masse. Their bullets simply zinged right through the Light Eaters as if they weren’t even there, but they began to cut down one Nighttouched after the other. Ten of the soldiers discharged their weapons into the lion-like one pinning Dash down. While it didn’t do anything much other than annoy it, it did divert its attention, which was all the opening she needed to drive her fist up and rip right through its hard palate into its upper jaw. It reared back and off of her, and she quickly sprung out from under it, leapt into the air, did a backward flip, and slammed her heel down on top of its head. It wasn’t strong enough to be fatal, but a breaking sound did ring out and the monster fell to the ground. She left it to be dealt with by the Griffonstone soldiers as she spun about to the Tantabus.
Twilight didn’t risk preparing another major spell. Instead, as Fluttershy clung to her and kept healing, she readied her wand and sent out one eruption of icicles after another to embed into the Light Eaters. She slung out spells as rapidly as she could, struggling to thin them out into nothing and leave the two fighters be so they could focus entirely on the Tantabus.
It wasn’t a moment too soon. Suddenly, Rarity let out a shriek as the monster managed to lift its limb slightly. Not only was she pulled off the ground a little, but the lance almost slid out. “I could use some help here!”
“Ya’ got it!” Applejack yelled as she rushed up to the side of the monster. She quickly began to hack away for all she was worth at the base of it, pushing herself to swing more forcefully again. Unfortunately, she was well below the point of greatest impact, and aside from knocking off a few bits that easily regenerated she was achieving little. She seemed to realize that as she kept swinging, much to her frustration. Nevertheless, she kept hacking away in hope of success.
“Hey you!”
Hearing Dash shout behind her made her stop. She turned around just as she saw her arrive at her side and clap a hand on her shoulder. Her opposite hand went out and clutched her free limb. “Need a lift?”
Before she could say anything else, Dash suddenly seized her, twirled her around once, and then used her own super strength to fling Applejack into the sky and at the Tantabus’ limb. Shocked and stunned, the farmer cried out in alarm as she found herself sent sailing over and above the major wound area on the giant Light Eater. However, her senses kicked in quickly, and she realized where she was and what she was doing. As she shot toward the gaping wound, she steeled herself, readied her hammer, and swung it down just as she landed.
A geyser worth of dark substance burst from the wound as Applejack dug her in; seeming to almost tunnel through the monstrosity. The thing was immobilized again as she kept smashing. A practical creek worth of its starry dew flowed out of the damaged area as it was torn open larger and deeper than before. Unfortunately, Applejack was still off center. When she finally cut all the way through, the limb was still connected to the rest of its body by a little less than half of its material.
As for Applejack, she righted herself and landed on the ground soon right next to Dash. The Huntsman smirked back at her, and, after a moment of frowning, the farmer smirked as well.
Right before she reached forward and clapped her own hand on her shoulder.
“Your turn.”
Dash merely grinned as she found herself hoisted off the ground and flung straight into the wound. She purposely put her arms to her sides and became a living missile, and as soon as she was within the damaged area her hands came out and began to beat away inside of the thing like jackhammers. The flow of black fluid running out of the wound intensified, and more and more pieces of it were knocked loose and free.
She kept tearing away as much as she could, struggling and determined to sever the limb. The amount of material still connecting the foot to the body shrank to a third. Then a quarter. Then a fifth…
Suddenly, the regeneration halted. Rarity gave another yipe as the Tantabus suddenly yanked its body forward so fiercely that it pulled her off of her feet and to the ground, but also knocked her already weakening grip on the lance loose. At the same time, by not healing itself, it allowed its fluid to freely flow off and into Dash; rushing into her like a mudslide, catching her up in it, and pushing her out of the wound. She was left shocked and flailing as she slid right out of it and fell back to the street. The Tantabus itself continued to bleed as it moved that limb away from its attackers as quickly as it could, and even for its slow pace it only needed to take a step or two to leave them dozens of meters behind. Applejack, Rarity, and Dash, as soon as she landed, realized it was trying to get away and quickly broke in pursuit, but even they couldn’t match its stride. Soon it was a good enough distance to start closing the wound again.
“No!” Twilight cried as soon as she finished incinerating the last of the Light Eaters. She struggled to aim her wand, but even with Fluttershy’s help she was too dry. “We were so close!”
Still uncontested, its body rapidly started to rebuild itself. In only three seconds, the limb was already back to one quarter of its previous thickness…
When the roar of a cannon went out, and an explosion instantly destroyed the thinned part completely. With a tremendous wet squelching sound, the lower half of its limb broke off and slammed into the ground before melting like gelatin in the sun. Soon it was splattering fully and disintegratng into nothing but blackness. The Tantabus was left standing with only three limbs.
Applejack, Dash, and Rarity halted where they were, and they along with Twilight and Fluttershy gaped in shock.
“Was that…a cannon?” Fluttershy meekly asked.
The five of them turned and looked, along with several stunned Griffonstone soldiers.
They saw a grinning Pinkie slowly pushing out a still-smoking field gun onto the field; only gleaming with her same aura. “Hey everybody! Guess what? I thought, ‘hey, if Rarity can make a flagpole into a lance just by touching it’, I wonder if I can make a cannon work if I hold onto it when it shoots! Pretty neat, huh?”
Four of them continued to stare in amazement at Pinkie, but Twilight only glanced at her a moment before looking back at the Tantabus. Its stump of a limb was dribbling the starry dew like blood, but no new Light Eaters grew from it. Its massive head looked down to it, as if pondering that injury. It continued to stand still as the others also turned and looked back to it.
After a moment, it finally raised its head again.
It focused its moonspots fully on the six of them.
Applejack couldn’t help but swallow. “Well, congrats, Twilight…I think we officially got it to think we’re the biggest threat to it.”
Rarity clenched her sore hands and sighed. “It took us everything we had just to remove that leg. I don’t know if we can deal with the rest of it…”
“Oh…” Fluttershy half-whimpered. “Just as things were starting to look brighter…”
Twilight looked up a little when she said that. “Brighter…?”
She glanced up and around herself. By now, the gunfire of the Griffonstone soldiers had died down. It hadn’t been due to being attacked, however. It was the fact that, in spite of being a light source, their weapons weren’t attracting any more Nighttouched. She could see why. Even with skies choked by smog, the air was a bit brighter over the intact city. The sun had raised higher yet, and there was a good chance the thinning smoke and increasing light was driving them into hiding. Furthermore, the Tantabus wasn’t making any more Light Eaters of its own, and its one limb remained missing as she hoped.
Quickly, she shouted to the others. “Everyone! Don’t get discouraged! It’s working!”
Everyone turned to her. The Tantabus began to shake the ground as it turned around toward them, but she kept speaking louder.
“Look! It’s not able to spread its darkness as much now! It can’t spit out any more Light Eaters or stop oozing from that limb! We’re bringing it to its limit!”
“But it’s already spread darkness over half of this city, Twilight!” Rarity called back. “Even if it loses its power, the smog can still cover it all the way to the ocean!”
“I’ll take care of that!” Twilight shouted as she swept her sleeves back and raised her wand. “I’m going to make another wind storm! This one to clear the smog all the way to the heavens! Keep attacking it! Get it weak enough to where it can’t produce any more darkness of its own, and this will finish it!”
Fluttershy swallowed, but then began to advance and reach out to Twilight.
“No!”
She suddenly stopped on hearing Twilight shout at her, and saw her staring back at her.
“Get the animals back! Keep anyone from touching that blackness! We’re the only ones who can hurt it without getting corrupted by it! Once they’re away, worry about helping them when you’re not trying to concentrate on it! If you can even just slow it down that’ll help!”
“But…but can you make that wind storm by yourself?”
“This one won’t be as big as the last! The smog’s clearing up on its own from all the industries being shut down anyway! But you have to help the others keep it in one spot! I only have enough power to do it once!”
Everyone heard that last part. Spinning back to the Tantabus, they saw it finish turning about. In spite of missing a leg, it began to move back toward the others.
Dash held her fists up. “Alright, you heard the lady!”
“Keep on pushin’ ‘til it drops or you do!” Applejack shouted back.
As Twilight began to start chanting and making another sigil, Applejack, Dash, and, after taking a moment to pluck up a broken iron grating bar to turn into a new rapier, Rarity began to charge at it. Fluttershy ran back to the animals and started to call out to them as Pinkie grunted and moved the cannon closer.
When Dash reached the monster, it didn’t idly this time. As she tried to go for its leg, it suddenly snapped its entire head down. The spire-like horn slashed down and cut into the surrounding buildings and street pavement with scarcely any resistance; slicing a wide gash across the entire road in her path that forced her to stop. Yet as she halted, Applejack quickly charged on past the wake of the cut and ran right at the leg of the monster. With another cry, she swung out and smashed another piece of it loose. In response, it heaved forward so much it shook the ground, forcing her to halt, before swinging its foot out for her to try and catch her.
She halted by quickly grinding herself to a stop and leaping backward, barely dodging it as it swung by and smashed in the side of a building. As it yanked it back, however, Dash quickly snapped forward and leapt into the air as hard as she could after it. With her added power, she managed to sail up several meters before bringing her fist down on it; knocking out even more of the starry material. It slammed its foot down a second later, shaking and fracturing the street before Dash landed, and snapped its horn down upon her. Quickly, she backflipped to avoid the first slash downward, but it quickly drove its horn in the rest of the way into the road and advanced while snapping it up; cutting a wide swath across the street in its wake. Dash was forced to keep backflipping further to evade it, but it kept moving after her—pursuing her with the blade-like horn.
However, by lowering its head to the ground, it brought itself in range of Rarity, who waved her hand and sent out another ball of fire—this time for one of its eyespots. The mark hit true and erupted in a small amount of flame. It wasn’t enough to permanently blind the monster, but it was enough for it to rear back up again. Not losing her resolve, Rarity forced herself to run forward after it just as Applejack charged as well. Since it used its one remaining foreleg to force itself up, it was still holding weight upon it as Applejack swung her hammer into one side while Rarity slices out for the opposite one. Both weapons hit and shed more of its body.
Suddenly, the Tantabus shook its head with such force that the air around it rippled, and reared itself back on its hind legs to raise its hoof and snap it out. Rarity managed to quickly duck and roll to one side, but the flailing appendage caught Applejack hard. A loud smack echoed down the street as she was taken off of her feet and flung headfirst into a gaslight fixture. In spite of being a glancing blow, her head hit hard enough to dent the metal inward, and she slumped completely to the ground and lay there, for the moment, unmoving.
As Rarity scattered from its wake, the Tantabus heaved itself forward to try and finish Applejack with a follow-up stomp. Yet as it put its weight on the leg to try and make the push, the cannon thundered again. A good portion of the leg was knocked totally loose, and with a monstrous crack and groan the Tantabus faltered down to its breast. Pinkie, from behind them all, let out a triumphant yell before she began to reload as quickly as she could.
Applejack’s senses, fortunately, returned, but she was still staggering back to her feet when Dash ran back in. Gritting her teeth and tightening her knuckles, she didn’t bother with the injured limb but instead went right for the Tantabus’ faltering head. To everyone’s shock, she ran straight at it, leapt up again, and landed on the tip of its snout. She kept on running up its face like it was nothing more than a ramp until she reached the forehead, snapped back her fist, and drove her palm in as hard as she could. The entire upper “face” of the monster rippled as part of it gushed out from the eye sockets. She quickly drove it in again and knocked out even more.
She nearly drove in a third, when suddenly it snapped its head violently to one side. She was catapulted off the top of its head and flung hard against a pile of rubble in the monster’s wake. In spite of the speed and power, she managed to right herself in midair, but the best she could do was brace her legs beneath her before she slammed into it; scattering the debris everywhere. The sound of her crying out in pain echoed over the battleground.
The Tantabus began to heave itself up again now that its leg had a chance to regenerate, only to get another spell in the eye; this time of ice. It reared up once again, forced to put its weight on its front leg once more, and Rarity used the moment to charge in and drive her rapier into its leg. She quickly braced her arm against the pommel and forced her body forward, making it gush out in a growing, ever-enlarging wound while she pushed the sword in deeper. The thing tried to move to crush her, but its limb was deteriorating around her attack and it couldn’t bring its body close enough to actually hit her with anything.
Suddenly, it reacted by snapping its entire leg up in a sweeping move. Doing so made it falter again, but it managed to hook part of its intact limb around and up. It caught Rarity beneath the jaw, and her head snapped skyward as her hat flew off from the potent force. Her body spilled back and sprawled on the ground, letting the rapier clatter out of her grip as she now sported a gash across her chin from where she had been struck. She lay there senseless, and the Tantabus struggled to push itself back up to finish the job.
Before it could, howling again, Applejack barreled at it from the side. She was bleeding and bruised, particularly from a wound staining her straw-colored hair a shade of red, and she staggered as she came, but she still managed to swing out the teeth of her hammer and hooked them into the Tantabus. She raked down and tried to gouge it for all it was worth, and the end result was the black body of the thing tearing and gushing out even further. The Tantabus tried to pull the limb away, only for Applejack to cry out from the strain and force her arms back, letting it hurt itself by digging its own body against the teeth.
This lasted only a moment, before it suddenly snapped its leg up all together. Applejack’s cry cut off as she was flung into the air, and a moment later was slammed into the street as its swung its limb back against the ground with her on it. A cracking went out on impact with the already ruined road, which could have easily come from either her armor or a bone. It was impossible to tell which—only that Applejack’s face showed she was agonized as soon as she landed. Rarity, on her part, was barely turning her head by now and far from recovering.
The Tantabus quickly brought its neck back, readying to swing its horn down again on the two of them and slice them apart. It began to sweep around, once more cutting through the surrounding buildings and aiming for the street…
When Fluttershy suddenly ran out into the middle of the road, covered with sweat and shaking, but also looking right into its moonspot eyes and holding her hands up. “Stop!”
For all its size and power, when the moonspots made contact with her eyes and heard her voice, unbelievably, the monstrosity actually slowed. Its horn which had previously been coming down like a sword slash, suddenly dropped in speed to a mere pantomime of the gesture. Fluttershy, in spite of trembling like a leaf in a gale, continued to look into its monstrous eyes and forced herself not to blink.
Applejack, although it clearly agonized her, forced herself back up. Rarity was still blinking and coming around when the farmer pushed herself to one knee, before using her hammer to push herself up higher. Even then, however, she was breathing harder.
“Applejack!”
She paused, looking behind her on hearing her name. Dash was finishing yanking herself from the rubble and was rushing forward again. However, she was no longer going at her blinding pace. One of her legs had a limp on it and bloody gashes were over one of her arms and abdomen. Nevertheless, she nodded up to her. “Give me another boost! I can’t jump anymore!”
Applejack, unable to yell back, only nodded back tiredly before shifting the hammer to one hand. The Tantabus continued to try and bring its horn down, struggling in vain to complete the swipe, but couldn’t overpower Fluttershy’s stare in time. Dash arrived first and Applejack immediately reached out and seized her. Although it hurt her strained body more in the process, she flung her skyward toward the monster.
Dash let herself sail into the air again, before she aimed herself right at the falling horn. Aiming both of her legs out and holding her hands up, she grit her teeth again as she turned her body into a living lance. She aimed at the thickest part she dared and let herself descend down, before striking it with the most vertical she had managed yet. While it made her cry out in pain from her injured leg, more of the black fluid exploded everywhere as the end of its horn was severed completely from its head.
She landed a moment later, crying out again as she instantly stumbled. Unfortunately, the shock of her yell caused Fluttershy to look to her with concern; breaking her stare. Rarity, finally getting her bearings back, began to lean up again, and Applejack, seeing what had happened, looked anxious as she hefted her hammer and readied herself.
Now able to move freely again, the Tantabus, at first, simply reared back and shook its gushing skull from where it had lost its horn. Yet it didn’t last as long as they liked. The eyespots vanished for a moment only to reform, this time aimed below and away from Fluttershy to avoid her gaze. It nearly reared up to try stomping again…
A third shell went off, and struck it right in the face. To the tune of an explosion of black gel, the Tantabus was knocked back off of its front foot and slammed its “rear” down onto the street enough to cause the two buildings on either side of it to collapse. The resulting quake nearly broke Twilight’s focus as all the others save Pinkie were knocked back into the road. As the rubble around them continued to fall and the echo of the cannon shell died, the monster’s face was left smoking and smoldering.
After a few moments, a passing breeze cleared it and revealed what was left. Most of the horse “snout” was gone, and the eyespots had enlarged into deep craters that almost went through its head. Instead of an elongated mouth, it now had a squat one filled with jagged, irregular teeth.
It glared down at the group for an instant, but then began to rise, if possible, even faster than before.
Seeing it still coming, the others struggled to react as fast as they could. Fluttershy steeled herself and tried to rise to look it in the eye again. Rarity got to her feet but didn’t charge, instead throwing every ball of fire and ice she could manage at the rest of its body before throwing in a small lightning bolt as well. Applejack and Dash forced themselves up in spite of being the most injured, then staggered forward for its forelimb, which it was still forced to put most of its weight on. Fortunately, it was still rising when they arrived, and they quickly began to carve away at it again; frantically punching and pounding. In spite of their panic and fury, they noticed that, just barely, it seemed to be regenerating a little slower…
Yet they couldn’t stop it from rising again. As soon as it did, its monstrous mouth opened wide. Ignoring the limb, instead it swept its head down…much more quickly now that it didn’t have a long horn or snout. The broken remains of its original horn flashed across Applejack, and the raw force tore her away and flung her to the side of the street. She yelled in pain as a streak of blood flowed off her chest and painted the sidewalk, right before her body slammed against it. The Tantabus snapped its body around and struck Dash next with its misshapen chin, smacking her away and driving her body through the air and into an intact building. This time, unfortunately, she went shoulder-first, and an audible pop rang out as soon as she hit. When she fell to the ground, she went rigid and clutched for the limb screaming from clenched teeth.
Keeping its fearsome head down, it began to heave forward. Rarity readied her sword, but was still dizzy from her previous blow as well as fearful now that she had faced it. She managed to be brave enough to run forward and thrust for its jaw as it came near, but the colossal creature merely yanked its head down and snapped her to the street with it, before making a casual gesture to the side to rake her along the rubble. The splintered cobblestones beat and slashed through her clothes to bruise and gash her entire front side, knocking what fight she had back out of her and leaving her lying in the street stunned and agonized.
Fluttershy now found herself facing the monster alone. Yet hearing the pain from Applejack, the screams of Dash, and seeing what happened to Rarity caused her resolve to melt away. She couldn’t get the bravery to look it in the eye, and even if she could there was no stopping it now. Finally, she panicked and turned to break for it, and as a result she managed to avoid a direct hit from the Tantabus. As it was, it flashed its teeth out for her, and the sound of her robe tearing echoed as another long yet relatively shallow cut was opened across her back. The force still flung her to the ground harshly and left her sprawled out, but the monster didn’t follow up for the kill.
It was going for the most severe threat.
At the field gun, Pinkie was actually looking worried for once as she struggled to reload it with one of the remaining shells as fast as she could. Yet she was still cleaning the barrel when the Tantabus began to shake the ground so severely that she lost her grip on the ramrod. She turned and saw it coming and casting it shadow over her. Its great foreleg took only one step nearer before it suddenly went back on its hind legs and reared up. As it towered over the entire surrounding city, it hefted its building-sized limb up and above her.
She gulped once, staring at it in genuine fear, but then did something that could best be described as pure insanity. She reached out, seized all three of the remaining shells and, in spite of them each weighing a good hundred pounds, hefted them and held them in her arms with their cones aimed upward. She stared unblinking as the Tantabus’ foot came down like a sound of thunder, and smashed down on her so hard that the road around her and the cannon caved inward two meters.
Only Twilight and Fluttershy had enough of their wits to actually see it happen. Yet as they opened their mouths to shriek “no”, it was swallowed up by another thunderous noise. By smashing the upward-facing shells into the ground, she hit them with sufficient force to fire them up and directly into the middle of its leg…each one still imbued with Pinkie’s own aura. A pillar of erupting fire burst from the inside of the limb, rising higher and higher as the combined power blew into it. Its darkness was splattered all up and down the street enough to paint the surrounding buildings the same night color. The colossal monster reared up again, but this time not of its own volition, as fire and smoke rose in its wake.
As it towered into the sky, Rarity managed to get enough of her own bearings to look up with Twilight and Fluttershy to see the aftermath. A second gushing stump was left where its front leg had been. The thing actually staggered on its rear legs for a moment, before, with another resounding crash that seemed to heave the world around them, it actually fell back and landed onto several of the remaining intact buildings. Debris and smoke flew everywhere as they were flattened in its wake, and yet another cacophony was sent throughout the entire city and for miles beyond.
However, as soon as it was down and the quaking had diminished enough, Fluttershy forced herself up and moved as quickly as she could to the crater it had made with its monstrous foot. Considering it had stomped that hard, and the fact that an explosion had gone off that Pinkie was holding onto, it was an utterly foolish move. There was no way anything would be left, and she began to realize that as soon as she reached the side.
Yet on glancing over the edge, she couldn’t help but give a surprised gasp.
The clothing of the “Rogue” had vanished, and some of her original clothing was now dirty and torn. She herself looked soot-stained and beaten about. And yet Pinkie still lay there; in one piece and not even bleeding.
Fluttershy almost thought she was imagining the whole thing or looking at a ghost. Yet in spite of her doubt of her own eyes, she tentatively and nervously stepped over the edge of the crater and came closer. Pinkie didn’t vanish, however. She only continued to lie there all the way until she reached her side.
Still nervous, she bent down next to her. “Pink…Pinkie? Are…” She hesitated, almost wondering how she could be asking this question. “Are you…alright…?”
Pinkie’s eyes cracked open, a clearly-dazed look in them. “Did you get the number of that locomotive…?” she half mumbled before shutting them again, apparently passing out.
In spite of the fact she would obviously be ok, Fluttershy couldn’t help but stare at her in disbelief. She knew full well what she had witnessed wasn’t possible. Anyone in the world could have watched that and known that nothing should have been left of Pinkie but what could be scraped off of the remains of the street, and yet there she was. Finally, she swallowed, before reaching out and grasping her to try and pull her up.
She didn’t manage to touch her before the area around her shuddered violently, causing her to yelp and recoil. Outside of the crater, Rarity and Twilight both looked as Rainbow Dash and Applejack only now grew composed enough to bite back their pain. Suddenly, more buildings were shaken apart as the two-legged, faceless remains of the Tantabus suddenly heaved and rolled itself over onto its belly, smashing enough of the surroundings to be seen sprawling out by all of them.
Tired and weary as they were, Dash forced her good arm into a fist and with Applejack, who was clutching her bleeding chest with one arm and holding her hammer in her other, start to pull themselves up. They watched and waited for the monster to make the next move.
Eventually it did. Its massive rear legs pushed up its rear, but it didn’t try to heave the front part of its body. It merely pushed its backside up as best as it could on the two legs. It held there for a few seconds.
Then, to the sound of the rhythmic tremors again, it began to drag itself along as quickly as it could. Its upper body was left on the ground and began to scrape it, smashing through whatever was left in its way like a living bulldozer, but it kept pushing regardless.
Away from the six of them…and toward the darkness it had left in its wake and, beyond that, to the seashore.
“It’s trying to get away!” Dash yelled.
“No, it’s trying to get to the ocean while it still can!” Rarity shouted back.
Applejack whirled back to Twilight. “If ya’ got that spell ready, do it now!”
“No, it’s still spreading darkness around it! Look!”
The four glanced back momentarily. Sure enough, the air around the Tantabus was much brighter than it was before, but around the immediate area, extending only a few feet from the rest of its body, an air of “night” remained.
“It still needs more! This won’t hurt it!”
Applejack winced but tightened up, hefting her hammer, and then began to hobble after it. “Just cast the spell!”
“What?!”
Dash, getting what she meant, nodded as she began to limp after it too. “She’s right! Just cast it!”
“We’ll take care of its last defense, darling!” Rarity yelled before she ran after them.
Twilight wanted to protest, but by now she had summoned so much energy to herself, not to mention had to regain it after her numerous distractions, that she couldn’t hold it any longer anyway. She was dripping sweat all over, her legs were weakening, and her arm muscles were on fire. Looking at the Tantabus and praying she was aiming right, she aimed at the sky just a bit ahead of it. Moments later, her sigil gleamed. A fierce gale erupted from it so powerfully that she was nearly bowled over.
The Tantabus, fortunately, couldn’t move as fast as it wanted now that it was dragging itself. Applejack and Dash managed to reach the side of it and, once there, they began to attack it again. Sadly, their assault was almost as pathetic as its attempts to flee them. They were too hurt and exhausted. Applejack could barely chip away with her hammer, and it was all Dash could do to punch at the side of it with her one good arm. It was still so massive that the small blows weren’t phasing it, and the dark aura about it remained whole and intact.
Twilight began to cry in pain again as she kept sending out the titanic wind from her sigil. It shot over the city with enough force to shift loose bricks and bits of iron, but its true power came when it reached the designated spot. Once there, it quickly began to whip up and circle around itself. As the veins and tendons of her body began to grow visible beneath her skin, she started to turn her arm around. The still-emerging wind kept pouring and condensing before it began to spiral, and slowly it started to pick up dirt and debris around it into a dust cloud. The smog far overhead slowly began to get drawn into it.
Rarity, still in relatively good health, reached the side of the Tantabus at last. She brandished her newly-restored rapier and nearly moved in along with Applejack and Dash, but only took a few steps before she slowed. She looked to her tiny weapon, still but a toothpick compared to it. However, she also noticed the beautiful, flawless, shining silver it had been transmuted into. Twilight’s twister was continuing to grow and sweep away the smog. And as it did, through the haze and gloom overhead, a glow of morning sunlight was slowly starting to come through.
She suddenly put her sword to her side and doubled her speed…running right past it and Applejack and Dash. Both tiredly glanced at her. “Where d’ya think yer goin’? The fight’s right here!”
“I have a plan! Just keep it busy!”
“We can barely run, let alone hit it!” Dash shouted back, but Rarity was already long gone.
Applejack tiredly chipped away at it again, heaving and sweating heavily now, but only knocked off a chip of the material this time. “I…I think my glow is…is dyin’…”
Dash looked and saw she was right. The golden aura was starting to dim. The armor she was wearing was starting to look shabbier and more ordinary. The hammer even seemed slightly smaller.
“I think we’re at our limit…” she managed to say back.
“So…what now…?”
“One last try… Run as hard as you can, and when I say so…drive the teeth of that hammer into its side.”
“Yer crazy… It’ll just drag me along ‘til I fall out…”
“Trust me…”
Applejack let out one more exhale, but then tightened up. With all her remaining power, she ran forward as fast and hard as she could. She was soon red-faced and gasping, and seemed to drive herself into more pain with every step, but she pushed herself to go faster than the Tantabus again. She slowly gained more and more on it, passing its hindquarters, its chest, and beginning to reach its shoulders and thick neck region. As she did, Dash ran after her as hard as she could hobble. She noticed her own aura rapidly began to dim, but she ignored it and pushed herself on even harder.
Finally, she saw Applejack begin to stumble. Her gait began to falter. Dash cried out. “Now!”
Still panting, Applejack weakly swung her hammer into the side and drove the teeth of it into the monster’s neck region. She nearly collapsed…
But before she could, Dash seized her body, wrapped her good arm around her, and with all of her own strength dug her feet into the ground. As a result, she forced Applejack to hold firm as the Tantabus kept moving; ripping the hammer into it. With a tremendous shredding sound and another flood of starry material, the teeth cut into it all along and down from its neck and shoulders all the way to its lower torso. The thing visibly slowed as it realized it was gashing itself open, but by then Dash and Applejack could bear it no longer. Both of them stumbled and collapsed.
However, the damage had been done. The black aura shrank to almost nothingness against its body, and the monster itself slowed even more as the ambient glow through the smog-choked clouds about it began to affect it. What more, Twilight was summoning her windstorm, and it was still dragging itself right into its path.
Finally, as she fell to her knees, Twilight pushed out the last bit of the wind and focused only on manipulating it. It at last coalesced into a true tempest, and as she forced it forth the final bit of clouds were removed. Over the skies of Grifftham City, everyone for several blocks all around could look and see a ray of true sunlight spill down for the world below like a beam from Heaven; right in the path of the Tantabus.
At first, the thing only seemed focused on the patch of night that was now only a block away, still lingering even with the fading smog, and continued to push itself toward it in spite of the fact the sunlight was now directly in its path. One of its massive legs raised as its body stopped its latest drag only a scant few feet away, the next push sure to force its body completely into the light…
And halted.
Twilight could barely see from where she still stood, but she just made out the bulk of the Tantabus had stopped moving. She didn’t even have the strength to cry out in anguish at the failure; still focusing everything she had left to keep the tempest together.
The monster simply lay there not moving; patiently waiting for the last of her power to give. Once it did, it would push itself back into the safety of its darkness. The best they could hope for now would be that it would retreat, but in the blackness it might regain enough power to continue to the ocean. Either way they couldn’t stop it. Applejack and Dash looked up weakly from where they lay on the roadside, their own power fading and their clothes reverting. Fluttershy, with Pinkie on her back, was struggling to move forward only to stop and gasp on seeing the final move fail.
However, the Tantabus only was able to lay there idly a moment longer.
A ray of light suddenly swiveled out and touched it in the middle of its head—which instantly began to melt and bubble away like lava on a piece of ice. It quickly began to spasm and flop uselessly around on its front side; showing the first expression that could be classified as pain.
And standing before it in the light, using her own shining blade, Rarity was grinning as she aimed the sunlight’s reflection right onto it.
“Like the rapier, darling? Isn’t it simply dazzling?”
The Tantabus continued to wriggle, desperately trying to push itself out of the deadly light as Rarity kept aiming it at its head. She raked it all up and down along its face, leaving bubbling starry ooze sloughing off in her wake. It tried to move to one side. It tried to push its legs forth to shove it around her and the light and into the darkness. Yet it couldn’t. Pushing itself further forward would expose it to more light, and it couldn’t bear it.
Twilight saw that it was immobilized mere feet from her tempest. She looked to the sky and hesitated. Taking three deep breaths, trying to force her eyes and dimming vision to focus, she continued to aim her wand at it and spin while also pulling back. The pain radiating through her arms almost made them numb. She fell down to her waist, nearly collapsing all together, but somehow she pushed her upper torso up and maintained control.
The smog was slowly stripped away a bit closer, and the glow bore down closer and closwer toward the Tantabus. Just as it finally got its rear legs underneath it enough to try and flop itself to one side, Twilight cried out and dropped her wand.
The spell broke, but not before sending its wind blasting in all directions. Doing so, it was just enough to push aside the smog cover and expose the Tantabus’ entire upper half to pure sunlight.
Not even Twilight had ever heard a Light Eater “scream” before, but some sort of horrible wail came from it as its darkness was pierced by radiant sunlight. Rarity snapped back and dropped her rapier in alarm, and everyone else cringed as they listened to it give that horrendous noise. From all about the city, in every place someone was still holed up from Nighttouched or running from Light Eaters, from the soldiers engaged in street fighting to those manning various airships in the heavens, they heard that monstrous shriek it made and saw it was coming from the gigantic monstrosity.
For a moment, every last one of them thought of a friend, loved one, parent, child, instructor, comrade, or companion they had watched their soulless, unfeeling, unstoppable enemy take from them, and on hearing the sound of one of the same creatures writhing in the same agony it had made them all feel for eight years…a long cold and quenched spot inside them felt a tiny spark.
The monstrous face of the Tantabus turned up into the morning light one last time, still shrieking, before its entire body convulsed. Every last remaining piece of its inky blackness suddenly imploded in upon itself, like all of space was a drain in which it now flowed down. All was drawn in to one single condensed black mass for a split second, and then burst.
The six women shielded themselves as a black mist rolled out and past them, scattering in a potent shockwave throughout Grifftham City and for miles beyond it. From the sky, all airships could see a black ripple of mist blast away and into the heavens. Yet it bore no corruption in it and was soon gone. While all of the places that the Tantabus’ foul presence had defiled remained shrouded in eternal night, much of Grifftham City was still free to the effects of day. The long trail of destruction it had left from the mountains through the city to the ocean, back to the gas main, and finally back around in an attempt to escape were all that was left of it.
The Tantabus was gone.
To be continued...
Nightwatch: Through the Fire and the Flames, Part III
Twilight’s hat and robe had vanished, her wand arm was still numb, and she could barely walk by the time she finally managed to stagger up to the others. They were in the middle of a street, though one could hardly tell. They were surrounded by rubble on all sides in the wake of the devastation. And with Twilight’s spell gone, the smog had rolled back in. It had lessened somewhat overall, but between the numerous ruined buildings and fires throughout the city, there was more than enough smoke and dust to make up for it. It was practically night all over again when she arrived.
Of the six, only Fluttershy and Rarity still had their Anima Viris. Fluttershy was still moving sorely considering the gash slowing her down, and was struggling to heal Pinkie who was still quite unconscious. Rarity had only taken a few blows but, not being nearly as durable as Dash or Applejack, was wavering around and holding a hand to her bleeding forehead. Dash was lying on the ground and Applejack had barely pulled herself up into a seated position near her.
Everyone was panting and tired. They barely had enough stamina left to stay alert, let alone be enthusiastic about it. However, on spotting her, they nevertheless greeted her with a smile between gasps. After a few moments, she was able to weakly smile back at them. She hobbled only close enough to get to the remains of a bit of brickwork and leaned her body against it.
Dash slowly raised a hand. “I know… I say this a lot… But we…were…awesome…”
“I feel like the cow done chewed me up, swallowed me, spat me back up, chewed me some more, swallowed again, and finally dumped me in a pile on the lawn…” Applejack spoke up wearily. “But…damn. Seein’ that big bastard die was worth it…”
“That…w-w-was quite…something…” Rarity spoke up shakily. Now that things were calmer, she seemed to be realizing just how crazy all of what happened was. She wiped for her forehead. “Right now, I don’t think I ever want to see another Nighttouched or Light Eater for the rest of my life.”
“Wha…?” Applejack echoed back. “We can’t call it quits now… Look what we just did!” She turned her head toward Twilight. “Still think puttin’ all these Light Eaters down fer good ain’t possible after that?”
Twilight grimaced. “That thing might have been big…but who knows how many more of them are out there? For all we know, there could be a hundred of these things in Equestria…”
After saying that, however, she smiled ever so slightly.
“But…then again…we did manage to kill this one. And when most of you didn’t know much about your own Anima Viris or any spells. That does have to count for something…”
“Um, if no one has any problems with it,” Fluttershy spoke up, looking up a bit. “For now, could we just go some place to rest? Pinkie’s still out of it and…um, well…I don’t want to sound rude, but…most of you look terrible.”
Dash grimaced. “Don’t worry, I look better than I feel…”
“Um, don’t you have that backward?”
“I wish…”
Twilight groaned and began to push herself up. “Fluttershy’s right. We need to get out of here. We…”
A rustle echoed down the road ahead of them.
The five women immediately tensed, knowing full well the city was still rife with Nighttouched, Light Eaters, and possibly the local authorities. They looked to the source, just in time to see a brick that had been loosely kicked, apparently on purpose, slowly clatter down the road. In moments, all five spotted both the foot responsible and who was attached to it.
With her hair spread out like a wildfire, and glaring at them with green, glowing eyes, a woman dressed in black stood at the end of the road.
She smiled at the six of them with a ravenous gleam, like a predator sizing up prey. After a time, she drew herself up and began to walk forward. She held up her hands and offered a slow, methodical clap.
“Bravo, bravo,” she cooed. “You know, when I got off the airship, I thought for a moment that I’d have to actually kill that Tantabus myself just to make sure it didn’t kill you first, but you six actually pulled it off.” She smirked. “Considering your rather sad excuse for using your powers, that really is something.”
“Who are-” Twilight began, before her eyes widened. “Wait…what did you just say?”
“Did…did she know what that monster was?” Fluttershy asked nervously.
“Who in Greater Everfree is she?” Rarity spoke up.
Dash, however, narrowed her eyes. “I got a pretty good idea…” she muttered, before speaking up loud enough to be heard. “You’re that Trottingham fire witch, aren’t you?”
“Uh, did you say ‘fire witch’?” Applejack nervously asked.
The woman stopped. She put her hands on her hips for a moment, smiling rather smugly. “My official title is Lady Sunset Shimmer of Queen’s Lynn, but that doesn’t matter to you six anymore. I’ve been running around the past few days trying to find you so let’s cut to the chase.”
She shifted one of her black gloved hands over to the other and began to unstrap it. Her cyan eyes focused entirely on Twilight. The mage recoiled a little to see her grinning at her.
“So tell me, what’s your name?”
Twilight looked a bit caught to be put on the spot. However, she firmed up after a moment and stared back defiantly. “Why should I tell you that?”
“Aw, don’t be that way. We’re both alumni from the same school, after all. Besides,”
She smirked a bit wider.
“Wouldn’t Headmistress Celestia frown on you being so ‘unfriendly’?”
Twilight snapped back as if she had just been stung. The others quickly noticed her reaction.
“Er, Twilight? You alright?”
“Do you know this woman?”
“N…no…” she slowly answered, never breaking eye contact with Sunset and sounding confused herself. “I…I…”
She hesitated a moment longer, but then boldened up and called out to the fiery-haired woman.
“I’ve never seen you before in my life. You couldn’t have gone to the academy.”
“I couldn’t have? Well then, how in the world do I know about magic, mana, Promethian Sigils, Anima Viri, Household Seals, the royalty of Canterlot…” She shrugged. “Need I go on?”
Twilight was struck dumb. She could only stare at the woman in open-mouthed surprise.
Sunset finished unfastening her glove but left it on. “Come on, tell me your name. I’d rather call you by something other than ‘hey you’.”
She stared at her a bit longer. The other women looked between the two of them, seeing the growing tension.
The mage finally frowned. “Twilight Sparkle.”
“That’s better.” She flashed her teeth. “Ok then, Twilight Sparkle. You have two choices. You can either come with me right now…”
She yanked off her glove and bore what was on the other side to the women, who all mutually gasped on seeing a Promethian Sigil with five large runes on five of its six points.
“Or we can see how many of your friends I need to kill before you agree.”
Twilight nearly stammered. “F-F-Five? You have…five?!”
“Things will be a much easier for you if you just tap out now,” Sunset went on. “You see, now that I’ve found you, I don’t need to bother going around killing everyone else in Greater Everfree with a Promethian Sigil on their hand trying to track you down.”
The faces of the others fell.
“You mean…” Applejack began to say, “that woman who got shot up at Fort Chestnut…and all the people who got hit by those cannons…”
“Ms. Cheerilee…” Rarity half-whispered, “is dead because…because of…”
“You… You’ve been going around killing people,” Twilight spoke up in a mix of shock and disbelief, “just to find me?”
“There was one lesson I taught Celestia before we ‘parted ways’, so to speak,” Sunset answered, not the slightest remorse in her voice. “Nobody keeps me from what I want. Looks like you might need to learn the same lesson. And right now?”
She snickered as she began to lift the hand with the sigil into the sky.
“I think it’s almost cruel to even use an Anima Viri the way you six look, but since you somehow managed to kill a Tantabus I actually want to see if you can give me a decent fight. Last chance, Twilight.”
Twilight trembled, not just from the woman’s imposing presence but what she had been saying to her. Nevertheless, Rarity tightened up and forced herself to step up to her side, in spite of the fact she had discard her rapier again. Fluttershy, shaking and cringing but nevertheless realizing that she was still one of the only two who could use her Anima Viri, forced herself to move in closer behind Twilight. Dash and Applejack were only able to pry themselves up and stare.
Sunset snorted. “Have it your way.” She paused only long enough to reach behind her and pull out a small metal object. Once it was around, she pressed a button and deployed a spring-loaded blade. After that, she glanced over her hand for a moment. “Let’s see…who to open things up with…? Oh, I know…”
Focusing entirely on Twilight with a look both of victory and superiority, she held her hand to the sky.
“Member of my house, I command you to come to me! Wondrous Beauty—Mistmane!”
Much to the dread of the others, Sunset’s own aura erupted as her five-pointed sigil came to light. She seemed to grin wider yet as her aura blazed red before snapping free and streaking over her head. The image that it made this time was of what looked like an elderly, venerable woman, but nevertheless with a fortitude undeniable in her gaze and a vitality, even beauty, that seemed to radiate even through her decrepit features. In moments, it broke and fell over her.
Sunset seemed to relish the sensation as her black clothing altered. Most of it became tighter and clung to her body in a more skin-tight format, only shifting to break in key parts while being fastened with a belt and buckles in other spots. The jacket separated from her sleeves and grew longer, thicker, and swept around her neck. It could be considered a robe, only it swept back over her shoulders to let her body be clearly visible beneath. She held her knife out, and it rapidly lengthened in her grip until it became a long, twisted wand in her outstretched hand. Finally, a wide-brimmed hat, a darker color than Twilight’s own when she transformed and fixed with a crescent moon symbol, swept up and capped the top of her head. Her cyan eyes gleamed with a yellowish tint like a pair of jewels beneath the shadow of her brim.
The aura receded, revealing the new form. While she definitely looked different from Twilight’s own, there was no mistaking she had assumed the Caster role.
The group was quite nervous, especially knowing what Twilight was capable of. For the first time, images of what would happen if that same magic was turned on them began to flash through their minds. They were so petrified staring at her that none of them noticed that Twilight’s face was the most shocked of all. Her jaw hung loose as she began to step back.
“No…” she nearly whispered. “No…it-it-it….it can’t be… You didn’t… You couldn’t…”
“What’s the matter, Twilight?” Sunset sneered. “Cat got your tongue? What’s so scary?” She took a step forward. “My Caster form?”
She took another step forward.
“The fact that I’ve got five Anima Viris to your one?”
Sunset advanced one final step.
“Or maybe it’s the fact that I just used Headmistress Celestia’s own Anima Viri?” She brandished her gleaming sigil. “And because of that you can probably guess what the other four are, can’t you?”
“You…” Twilight half-gasped, taking a step backward. “It’s not… How…? How did you…?”
“And guess what? I only need Starswirl the Bearded from your hand to make a complete set. So while it would be more than easy enough for me to turn you into a soot stain right now, maybe, just maybe, you’ll realize how stupid of a decision it would be to pick a fight with me if I let you take your best shot.”
The others all reacted in surprise. “Wh-what?”
Still smirking, Sunset stood tall and held her arms out. “I’ll go ahead and let you cast one spell totally for free. Don’t think I won’t try to block against it…and definitely don’t think I won’t hit you back…but you can cast whatever you like. I’d like to see if you were half the student I was.”
Twilight didn’t move. Everything Sunset had said clearly shook her up too much. She was almost pale and shaking even more than she had been from her previous exhaustion. In a moment, she looked like she’d faint.
“Twilight!”
The sound of the harsh whisper from her left caused her to turn to it. She found Rarity looking nervously back at her.
“I don’t know who you are or what this woman is babbling about, but I do know she looks just like you do and, from what I’ve seen, that makes this a very big problem,” Rarity nervously whispered. “And I further know that if I was to try and fight you with my little flames, icicles, and oversized static shocks, I wouldn’t get very far, which means I can’t do anything against her. Neither can Fluttershy and neither can the rest of us!”
Twilight looked to her other side. Fluttershy was standing her ground, but was cringing and almost covering her eyes. Behind her, Applejack and Dash couldn’t even get up. While Applejack had yanked herself closer to Pinkie Pie to at least act like a shield, Dash could only grit her teeth angrily at Sunset. They were all defenseless, and while she was hardly any better, they were all looking to her now.
It was enough to make her at least concentrate more on the matter at hand. With that, she turned back to Sunset.
“As soon as it’s time, we’re grabbing the others and running for it.” She exhaled.
“Um, when ‘it’s time’?” Fluttershy nervously asked.
“You’ll know.” With that, she took a step forward closer to Sunset. She took a deep breath and held her hand up, then extended a finger and began to trace in the air.
“Oh?” Sunset laughed. “Taking me so lightly you don’t even think you need your Anima Viri? Or just too worn out even for one spell?”
Twilight didn’t answer. She kept inscribing the rune as she chanted, and the color of the sigil turned fiery red. It was far cruder and simpler than her other sigils, and yet it still seemed to tire her more than ever. By the time she was nearly done, her finger was shaking so much that the rune was ending up sloppy and she began to sweat and waver again, but she completed it none the less.
As soon as it was done, she shoved her hand into it and a rather large fireball, easily the size of her entire body, erupted and sailed toward Sunset. Yet large as the attack was, the others only needed to glance at it to realize it wasn’t nearly as focused or potent as her past. This one was far more diffuse and weaker in spite of its increased size.
Sunset never lost her smirk as she calmly traced a sigil of her own in the air, this one icy blue, and snapped her wand down. An icy wave rushed out and struck the fireball, instantly splitting it in half. The two pieces sailed on either side of her, striking the debris and rubble and instantly catching it on fire. In spite of how weak the attack had been, it ignited fast and quickly lit up a pair of blazing torches on either side of the woman. Not that she noticed as she saw Twilight’s arm fall, numb all over again, and watched her stagger.
“I didn’t expect much from you, especially without an Anima Viri, but that? That was one of the more pathetic things I’ve seen in a while. What did you hope to do with that miserable fireball?”
Twilight staggered a bit more, letting her own tiredness push her back to the others. When she finally regained her footing, she glared back at Sunset and smiled.
Sunset’s own look ebbed, puzzled at this, when she heard a flapping of wings over her head. Before she had a chance to look up to it, a series of snarls went out in the gloomy fog around her, before the ground began to shake with the sound of incoming feet.
“I’m not going to do anything. They are.”
They began to emerge from the darkness a second later. Yellow eyes circling in the air. Yellow eyes on either side of the road. Yellow eyes in front and in back of the group. All of them focused on the fires and the woman shining between them. Soon after, another mix of bats and birds began to descend. Larger, snarling land creatures, including more of the wood constructs, came out on either side of Sunset. The ground thudded and shook as two of the lion-like creatures emerged from either side of the road, growling lowly, and began to approach her.
Dash, Applejack, Fluttershy, and Rarity stiffened soon after as a swarm of Nighttouched rats scurried past their bodies; apparently more attracted to the light around Sunset as well as the glow she was radiating. However, Twilight didn’t wait for the chance of getting their attention. Instead she turned around and hobbled over to Applejack. “Go now!”
The others snapped out of it and sprang to life. Fluttershy moved back over to Pinkie and quickly started to get her on her back again. Rarity went alongside Dash and, although it still took her some effort, managed to pull her off the ground with her enhanced strength and put one arm over her shoulder. Twilight herself managed to get Applejack to her feet, and as soon as they could began to flee down the road.
Sunset herself watched as the scores of Nighttouched approached her from all sides. She particularly glanced at the ones above and the two lion-like ones in front of her, before looking behind her and seeing the wolf-like ones. Finally, she looked forward and saw the six using the opportunity to escape.
The whole time, her face appeared as if she found the whole thing funny.
“Oh Twilight,” she called out, holding her wand up and rapidly beginning to draw a sigil. “Didn’t your mother ever tell you? You play with fire…”
She finished snapping a much neater, intricate, and blazing sigil of fiery red a moment later.
“You get burned.”
Swinging her wand out, a pillar of fire erupted from the end of the sigil and streaked over the encroaching Nighttouched, down the road, over the heads of the six women, and finally arched down and smashed into the ruined pavement with an explosive force. It was so massive it not only instantly blocked off the entire route in a wall of fire, but the flames flared up violently from it and washed over the bottom of Fluttershy’s robe and one of Rarity’s sleeves.
Both women screamed in alarm and dropped their passengers. They quickly recoiled and began to tear and pull furiously at their clothes before the fire could spread to engulf them completely. Twilight was horrified, nearly dropping Applejack herself. She tried to hold out her hand to cast a spell to help, but all she got was a sharp headache that nearly made her collapse for her effort. Fluttershy and Rarity continued to rip and tug at their attire for a moment, before, without warning, it burst all around them into the same fragments of aura that their colors had been. Both women collapsed to the ground soon after. Fluttershy cringed and clutched for her legs, while Rarity held her arm out and writhed.
Their injuries were minor, only first-degree at best, but Twilight quickly picked up on the true reason that Sunset had done that. Neither of them were donned with their Anima Viris any longer. All six of them were now back in their normal bodies.
The flames didn’t stop with the initial eruption. They quickly spread in either direction as if they were alive, racing around the area. Twilight looked and quickly realized that they were making a wall of fire around the area. She was cutting off their escape…
As for Sunset herself, still smiling, she lowered her wand. The Nighttouched were still closing in, but the fresh flames she had ignited distracted them. Many of them were now pausing and looking around at them instead of her. She used that moment to flip her robe back a bit more and hold her hand with the sigil up again. She looked past the monsters and down to Twilight, stared back with growing anxiety.
“Nice try. You even caught me off guard for a second. How about to thank you I show you something I’ll bet Celestia never waved around?”
She held her gleaming sigil up, the point for Mistmane still burning bright.
“Emblem of the Caster, right? Well…watch carefully.”
Her face seemed to grow wild as she held her hand up again and bellowed.
“Member of my house, I command you to come to me! Bravest of Champions—Flash Magnus!”
Twilight let out a gasp, stricken with fresh horror, on seeing a second rune light up on her hand at the same time. The aura that erupted was so powerful that she was nearly blasted into the fire wall by the wind, while the nearby Nighttouched were all forced back several steps. Even the lion creatures.
Sunset herself held her hand to the sky triumphantly and watched as light streaked out from her in a much more blazing red than before, this time etching the emblem of a bold, young, and fearless warrior in a broomed helmet. Soon after, the light broke and flowed over her, and she changed again.
Her tight footwear became broader and more rugged and padded, for kneeling and heavy-duty traveling, but remained its black color. The rest of her clothing separated from her body slightly and lengthened with a short skirt, gaining a bit of a reddish tint more akin to her hair color. The cape shrunk behind her but the hat remained, losing the brim and steeple to cover the upper part of her head in a hood before brandishing a pair of small wings alongside of it. Her hands became covered in long, thick, durable gloves that exposed the fingers, and the wand lengthened both above and below drastically until it was nearly the size of her, before snapping and bending backward. The collapsing cape suddenly became conical and slung over one shoulder before dozens of shafts with fletching emerged from it, and a tight string attached to either side of what her wand had become…now fully a longbow.
She held her hand out for Twilight to see clearly even from her distance. Twilight wondered why for a moment, before she saw the emblem on her hand shift.
“What the…? That’s…that’s not possible!”
“Maybe for some common student who never got to the advanced courses,” Sunset called out mockingly.
“There’s…there’s no such thing as that role! There’s only six!”
“Didn’t you ever wonder why they were called ‘base’? What’s the matter?”
Her light died down, revealing the newly transformed Sunset standing there radiating more power than ever. With a move as quick as one of Dash’s own runs, she reached behind her, yanked out an arrow, and knocked it in the bow.
“Your first time seeing the Archer role?”
Without another word, she snapped her bow to one side and let an arrow fly at one of the lion-like creatures with the speed of a rifle bullet.
A wet ripping sound went out. The monster froze momentarily before the entire upper half of its head slid off the rest of its skull. The body fell lifelessly to the ground a moment later.
Sunset soon drew another arrow and sent it through the heart of the other lion-like creature. A third one shattered two of the wolf-like constructs in one shot. The fourth one shattered five. At this, the other Nighttouched roared and began to run forward, but Sunset didn’t even shift her footing. She merely yanked out one arrow after another and let it fly at whatever monster was nearest. Not only did each mark kill its opponent, not only did each shaft get fired with enough force to usually vivisect them, but the arrows almost always went on to cut through the ones beyond it as well.
Twilight only had to watch the one-sided massacre for a few moments before she realized that there was no way to fight what Sunset had become. She turned back around, dragging Applejack with her, and faced the wall of flame now blocking their way out. Rarity and Fluttershy had bit back their own minor burns to start rising again, but Dash and Pinkie were still on the ground and only one of them conscious. She stared at the roaring flames for a moment, but couldn’t see any way around them. They were already sealed off and, even if they weren’t, they didn’t dare risk running closer to Sunset now.
Applejack finally shook her head. “No use! Ya’ gotta run through it! Maybe if we break fast enough we’ll only get a little crisp!”
“That’s crazy!” Twilight shouted back. “Even if that’s possible, we can’t run through them when we’re bringing you with us!”
Dash rolled her head back and looked up behind her. “Rarity! You can do those tricks even without being in that form, right?”
Rarity groaned. “There’s no way I could possibly…”
She trailed off on seeing everyone looking desperately back at her, and she quickly realized there was no other choice. Giving a bit of a whine of her own, she aimed both hands at the blaze in front of them.
Soon, the small shards of ice and slush began to fly. If it had been only one of them, it wouldn’t have managed more than just a bit of slush on the fire that would have quickly evaporated. Yet she kept concentrating until she too began to sweat, and kept letting the small bits of ice and slush flow. They kept hitting the fire one after another, and gradually they managed to wear away enough of it to hit the ground where it was burning. As she kept going, flames began to slowly get snuffed out and the blaze gradually began to lessen.
Twilight gripped Applejack a bit tighter and braced herself. “Ok, the moment it looks good enough, we’re-”
She was cut off as a man leapt right through the fire, reached out for her, wrapped his hands around her throat, and tackled her to the ground.
Applejack was knocked loose and flung into the dirty road as well, but she scarcely had a moment to look up before a housewife burst through the fire wall and leapt on top of her, seizing her by the head and attempting to get enough leverage to beat it against the street. Rarity looked up in shock and alarm before a twelve year old came out next, grabbed her by the wrists, and with violent force wrenched her to the ground to try stomping on her sides and stomach. A Griffonstone soldier soon followed after and seized Fluttershy, violently wrestling her as he looked nearly ready to bite her throat out, before an apple cart vendor jumped forth and seized Dash by the leg. Much to her shock, he began to drag her toward the flames, not caring that he himself was soon set ablaze by wandering into them. He simply tried to pull her in with him.
At least a dozen others popped out as well. Many of them were singed or even lit ablaze when they did, but that didn’t stop them from violently assaulting all six girls. Biting, clawing, beating, some grabbing rocks and attempting to bash their brains in while others trying to cut their throats or simply set them on fire with their own bodies. Twilight herself was being throttled while two more grabbed for her legs as if they meant to rip her in two. She glared at them in panic and shock even as she was choked, yet also managed to catch one thing about them.
Every last one of them bore a Promethian Sigil that was burning wild.
She seized the hands on her throat, but even if she had the full feeling back in both she couldn’t pry off the iron grip. She craned her head back and saw Sunset had already killed half the Nighttouched and was easily on the way to killing the other half. It might not have mattered, because they were now not only trapped but fighting for their lives…and losing.
She began to turn red and then blue faced as she struggled for air, but was powerless to move or fight off anything else. Even healthy she couldn’t fight away three of them together. In spite of the fact the two got a grip on her legs and began to pull apart, her vision began to grow hazy and dim…
Like at the end of a tunnel, she heard a bear roar, before a purple dog streaked in front of her vision and latched onto the neck of the man throttling her. Without pity or mercy, he bit in and tore savagely. Although her chest was splattered with warm, red fluid before the man was ripped to the ground, his hands were yanked off, and Twilight instantly gasped for air. She didn’t even notice as a flock of birds swooped around and furiously pecked at the eyes and hands of those grasping her legs to force them to let go. She was too busy lying there struggling to get her bearings back.
As soon as she had her wits, she sat up and saw their saviors. Smoldering a bit themselves, for they too had to leap through the fire, were the larger animals of Fluttershy’s group. They were now fighting off the attackers for all they were worth. It didn’t take her long to see Spike himself had come to her rescue as he pulled himself off the remains of the man to go and attack another. Angel was stained red and rising from the Griffonstone soldier’s body, while Fluttershy’s bear had just finished slapping down a third and fourth attacker. The rest of the animals that could make it were pecking and scratching at the remaining citizens in an attempt to keep them back.
Twilight immediately held out a hand to them. “Stop! Stop it! Don’t kill them!”
“Why?!” Dash nearly screamed as a trio of raccoons managed to scratch off the hand grasping her ankle, leaving the man to succumb to the flames he had pulled himself into. “They’re trying to kill us!”
“Damnit, it’s the things on their hands! They don’t know what they’re doin’!” Applejack shouted as she struggled to help out her own defenders by punching wildly at the ones clinging to her. “Twilight, can you use that seal thing on them?”
“I’m too drained! And we can’t hold them all down! We just have to get away from them!” She shouted back as one of the nearby attackers clinging to Applejack abandoned her and turned to go after her instead. Spike immediately snarled and barked angrily at him, inserting himself between the two.
The attacker took one step forward, face soulless and motivated only by burning anger, but then stopped. He slowly looked up and away from her and down the street.
He wasn’t alone. The other attackers slowed in their own fighting after a few more moments; looking down the street as well. Sunset Shimmer was still the biggest light out of all of them, now more radiant even than the blazing fires. And she had killed all but the last third of the Nighttouched. Even the ones in the air had gone down two or three at a time from her arrows.
The six gradually stopped fighting and even the animals slowed after a moment on realizing they weren’t being attacked anymore. Instead, they looked up to them and saw them silently stare at Sunset without moving a muscle.
Then, as one, all of them began to walk—right past the six of them and toward Sunset. They quickly began to pick up the pace until they were breaking into a run.
Sunset was still picking off a few Nighttouched when she looked down and saw the mob charging for her. Letting out a little laugh, she reached for another arrow and she zeroed in on the nearest.
“Wait!” Twilight shouted. “They don’t know what they’re doing! They’re just civilians!”
Sunset pulled back her bowstring.
“Your point?” she answered before sending a shaft into the chest of the nearest one.
Remarkably enough, while the force snapped the crazed woman back, it didn’t go any further. She buckled for a moment, staggering there, before she aimed her crazed look forward and charged again. Sunset raised an eyebrow in amusement before knocking another arrow. This one went into, and through, her heart. After that, she went stiff before falling flat.
Now having a “feel” for it, she pulled another arrow and put it through the heart of another one. By then, the mob had reached her; far more direct than the Nighttouched. In response, she began to backpedal at last, but never lost her smile or poise. Even backing up from them she easily knocked another arrow and took off a third’s head. A fourth managed to reach her at last, but she simply shifted her grip, wielded her longbow like a staff, and knocked her to the ground before evading further.
Twilight was stricken with helplessness and hopelessness. She turned back to the others and the animals, but they could do nothing now. In the aftermath of the assault, all had been injured too much to make it through the flaming barrier, but even if they could they’d never get away. They couldn’t fight back either. They were trapped and all they had left was the time it would take for Sunset to finish off the last of her attackers.
Her face nearly sank in futility, when a loud sound right in front of her snapped her out of it. Not only her but all of the women and animals too. A sound of grinding rubble and pavement, as if being shoved out of the way. Soon it was accompanied by a loud, chugging steam engine. All of it was coming right from the other side of the flaming wall before them.
Seconds later, everyone snapped back as the front end of a trackless engine burst right through the wall of flames, heaving dirt and debris over it to smother it enough to make the trek. It only rolled far enough through to expose the side hatch before halting.
The group was flabbergasted and shocked in the wake of its arrival. The hatch on the side, however, began to turn even as it was coming through the fire wall. With a hiss of hydraulics, the door opened up wide a moment later.
Twilight’s jaw dropped yet again on seeing who was on the other side: the same woman she had run into in Fillydelphia the night of the surge.
“Y…you?”
The woman, however, was looking about as nervous as the rest of them and far more frantic. “Get in! Now!”
Twilight was stuck rooted to the spot, but fortunately the others didn’t need much prompting. Rarity snapped out of it, rolled herself up, and clambered over to Dash. Putting her hands under her arms, she started to drag her inside. Applejack began to pull her own body toward the open vehicle, but fortunately she didn’t have to do so long. A pair of individuals, a man and a woman, suddenly emerged from behind the Fillydelphian and quickly moved to assist. One grasped Applejack and pulled her up to quickly bring her inside, while the other went to Pinkie and got underneath her enough to drag her in. The bear and rabbit actually moved to either side of Fluttershy and quickly got her up and brought her forward. The Fillydelphian gave them an odd, and somewhat frightened, look as they pushed past her and inside, which was only compounded when she saw the flock of birds go in as well, followed shortly thereafter by the rest of her critters, including the ones who had been trapped on the other side of the fire and now used the trackless engine itself as a bridge to climb over and into the open hatch.
Spike let out a sharp bark, finally snapping Twilight out of it a second time. She saw him looking back to her as he ran into the hatch as well, along with the Fillydelphian frantically beckoning her. Twilight stared back a moment, then back behind her. Sunset was now being closed on two sides by the wild people, but even so she was slapping them away with her bow easily. There was no doubt who would win, just as there was no doubt she couldn’t do anything for them now or hope to stand against her.
At last, she turned away and rushed into the trackless engine as well. She was still going in when the Fillydelphian reached up and began to pull the hatch closed again. “Get us out of here as fast as you can, Diamond!”
“Don’t need to tell me twice!” a voice yelled from the cockpit.
Moments later, the engine yanked itself back over the wall of fire as the hatch was still closing. It didn’t waste time turning around. It simply accelerated to full speed in reverse to put as much distance between itself and the Trottingham noble as possible.
Sunset did, in fact, see the engine pulling away. It happened at the worst possible moment. If it had arrived at any other time, she could have sent out an arrow to shatter the engine, but three of the maniacs were grasping for her at once. In the time it took her to get free enough to take aim again, the engine had vanished into the smoke and smog. With her new abilities, she could have spotted them from twenty miles away under clear conditions, yet the industrial waste and fires made it impossible. She had no choice. As soon as she finished slaying the last of the Nighttouched, she turned about to return to the landed Rising Sun as fast as she could. The airship was docked in the one place it could guarantee to be untouchable, right in the midst of the shadows from the Tantabus, and in the chaos it seemed no one had ever even noticed it had come down before she took off on it again.
The airship was already flying in pursuit before she reached the bridge. By that point, she was back in her innate body as she quickly stormed up to her position. “Where are they?” she half-demanded.
“There’s too much cover from the fire and coal dust!” the marksman called from her station. “I can only give a general direction! I keep spotting an engine moving due west! It’s nearly to the Fillydelphian border! I might be able to give the gunner a target-”
“Intercept! I specifically said intercept! I need one of them alive! Where’s the Prodigy and the Legacy? Are they anywhere near to cut them off?”
“The last signal we saw from the Prodigy they were still behind us. We can’t find the Legacy in this smog.”
“Terrific…” Sunset sneered. “Griffonstone’s best defense is its own filth. And Flash is still gone so no help there…” She clenched her hand into a fist. “Just catch up to them! It’s taken us this long to find them! I don’t want to lose them now!”
The crew silently turned back to their respective stations. Sunset herself wiped back a strand of her hair before advancing closer to the front windows. Her eyes remained on the ground below, but it was a testament to the skill of her marksman that she was able to find anything in the mass of smoke with the occasional fire burning below. However, they were quickly reaching the more open skies of the city parts that had escaped destruction. From there it would be much easier to see where they had to move.
She was just beginning to conclude this to herself when a blast from outside of the ship rocked the air so much that the entire ship buckled. She stumbled in place from the violence while the rest of the crew quickly grasped for anything solid to brace themselves.
She glanced about in surprise. “What just happened?”
“My lady, look!”
The first mate pointed off the bow. In the emerging light, the shadows of several airships arranged in a row right along the border hovered far in the distance. She could just make out a plume of smoke rising from one of them—signifying a fired cannon.
She held up her hand. “All stop!”
The helmsman quickly went to work, not only cutting the forward facing engines but activating the rear facing ones. They didn’t get more than a hundred meters closer before dropping to a halt. As they hovered in midair, Sunset quickly glanced from port to starboard in the distance. After a few moments she had made out eight different airships; all bearing the standard of Fillydelphia. Each one was aimed in such a way that the fore cannons had to be pointed at them.
After about half a minute, a signaling light began to radiate from one of them.
The operator quickly followed the patterns and rapidly jotted down the resulting message. Unfortunately, it was a rather long one. Two solid minutes of signals came from the Fillydelphia squadron and still there was no end to it. Sunset, on her part, felt her impatience flare again. Her hands griped the railing nearest her so tightly she almost chipped the paint.
“Well,” she finally spoke up the moment they ended transmission, “what is it?”
The operator swallowed, clearly uncomfortable to have to be the messenger for this. “My lady, they said that was their only warning shot. If we approach any closer they’ll open fire. They say they have been advised to be on the lookout for a trio of Trottingham airships that have been attacking Appleloosa and that coming any closer will constitute a military hostility. They have orders to destroy on sight in that case.”
Sunset ground her teeth and glared almost murderously at the airships ahead of her. A covetousness swelled forth inside of her, even a passionate need, so strongly that everyone around could see it.
She hadn’t replaced her gloves, and she began to raise the hand with the sigil. “Full speed ahead.”
Half of the individuals on the bridge looked at her as if she had lost her mind. “My lady…” the first mate began.
“I said full speed ahead! Now!”
The crew shook all over, although it was impossible to tell if it was fear of carrying out the order or fear of retribution if they didn’t. The first mate somehow found the boldness to speak up again. “My lady…there are eight Fillydelphian airships out there to the Rising Sun. We can’t even guarantee backup from the Prodigy. We can’t possibly win…”
“Oh yes we can,” she half-sneered as she held up her hand to the air. “Carry out my order. You’re all about to witness some real power.”
She paused, before turning her head behind her.
“On the other hand, if you’d like to get a more first-hand look at this power, by all means…keep sitting there staring at me stupidly not doing as I told you.”
Several crew members paled and withered. A few actually began to tentatively reach for their controls. The first mate, however, swallowed and spoke out as boldly as she dared.
“My lady, attacking those ships is nothing sort of suicide. We’ve been running out of port for days over half of Greater Everfree. We’re running low on fuel as well as munitions. We have no chance of outmaneuvering eight of their vessels now. Even if you do have a power that will allow you to triumph over them, the odds that they won’t be able to fire at least once on us before that is effectively negligible, and only slightly worse than the odds of their disabling the ship on the first shot.”
She hesitated, then finally spat it out in an almost fearful sputter.
“With all due respect, my lady, I don’t believe even you have a power that would allow you to survive an airship crash from this height.”
Sunset wheeled on the first mate like a cat on a lame mouse. Several crew members stiffened. The bridge became deathly silent. At any moment, everyone expected her to lash out. They expected her to leave the first mate in ashes or in pieces, and any of them could be next. Time slowly ticked by, and no one moved or even dared breathe.
Finally, Sunset’s fist relaxed. Her jawline shifted and she straightened.
“Fine. Get us out of here, and be quick about it.”
The first mate saluted, looking like an elephant had gotten off her chest, before turning back to the crew. They quickly went about executing the orders. As for Sunset, she stood there rigid and still frowning for several moments. After a while, she looked back up and to the airships. She stared at them a moment before looking down below, where she knew the trackless engine had to be moving.
“You’ll find staying away from me won’t be nearly as easy now that I know your name and your face, Twilight Sparkle.”
“Are you ready? I’ve done this before, but…this is going to hurt.”
“Do it.”
“I mean, it’s really going to hurt.”
“Do it.”
“I mean, um…it’s really, really going to hurt.”
“Just do it.”
“I’m…I’m not sure you understand. You see, it’s really, really, really-”
Dash grit her teeth and fumed. “You’re not making it any easier telling me that! Do it now! The faster it’s over the faster it can stop hurting!”
Fluttershy gulped, nervously looking nearby. The Fillydelphian likewise swallowed. She was hanging from a railing over the middle of the trackless engine; her feet positioned on Rainbow Dash’s shoulder. Fluttershy herself was holding Dash’s arm out and steady, and after a moment she closed her eyes and nervous nodded. Taking a deep breath, the Fillydelphian swung back and then drove her feet forward.
A loud snap rang out, and Dash went purple faced as she clenched her teeth so hard it looked like she’d crack them. Even so, she couldn’t stop herself from letting out a scream of pain between them. The Fillydelphian looked at her nervously as she lowered herself, and Fluttershy continued to whimper as she put her hands on her to try and stop the agony. After a time, Dash finally began to breathe stiffly and turned her head away.
“Uh…um…all better?” the Fillydelphian suggested nervously. On seeing her continuing to try stabilize herself, she looked away. “I’ll just, um, help out Applejack over here next.”
As she moved over to her, the other woman emerged from the rear compartment. She looked as uncomfortable as anyone else on seeing the group injured and lying about, which wasn’t helped by the fact she had to step around a sleeping bear in order to get into the main area.
She looked at them apologetically. “I wish I could help more, but we’ve only got a first aid kit and Starlight’s the only one with any field medical experience.” She hoisted up an old satchel. “The only thing I could find was some of this old hardtack I made up five weeks ago I still had left over, and someone would have to be pretty desperate to risk chipping a tooth on-”
Before she could say another word, Rarity reached over, seized the satchel from her, and immediately tore into the bag. As soon as she pulled out one of the near-fossilized crackers, she began to furiously gnaw away at it like a dog with a bone. The woman was left staring dumbfounded.
The Fillydelphian herself continued to look over Applejack’s wounds, particularly on her scalp and her chest. Twilight Sparkle, on her part, was still shaking and didn’t have full use of her hands, but was slowly doing better. Spike had moved over and put his head on her lap, but she couldn’t summon the strength to pet him. Instead, she kept her eyes on their unexpected savior.
After a moment, the Fillydelphian leaned back. “The head wound looks like it’s scabbed over, although it could probably use a cleaning. As for your chest, normally I’d say that needs stitches, but seeing how fast you heal whenever your friend over there holds onto you that will probably do it.”
“What about her?” Applejack spoke up, indicating to Pinkie Pie. Like most of them, she was laid out on the floor. It wasn’t the most comfortable of situations, especially since aside from a few blankets and extra clothes there was nothing for padding or bedding. The other man was just finishing tucking a roll of cloth under her head, and he shook his own at the farmer.
“Don’t worry. Starlight didn’t find anything broken. She’s just sleeping right now.”
The Fillydelphian looked back in her open first-aid kit, which by now was running a little low, and got out the bottle of alcohol and some gauze. She dampened it, gave Applejack a look of regret, and then reached up to dab the wound. She clearly didn’t like it but she bore through it until it was clean. When that was finally done, she exhaled and leaned back. “Alright, I think that’ll do it.” She looked back up front. “How’s the road look?”
“I think we’re in the clear,” the driver shouted back. “The one good thing about this whole mess is it’s really going to keep the authorities busy. The farther away from them we get the less likely they’ll care about stopping us even if they spot us.”
“Great. Keep the engine pumping. We need to get as far away as we can.” She looked back to Twilight. “Great news. We should be in the clear.”
“Um…nice to hear,” Twilight uneasily answered. “Just one question. Who are you again?”
“Oh! Sorry about that… Was kind of in a hurry to get out of Griffonstone… Starlight Glimmer.” She held out a hand. “Nice to meet you…er, again. Didn’t honestly think the second time would be under worse circumstances than before…”
Twilight hesitated but finally reached out and shook. “Um, a pleasure. But that really wasn’t what I was asking… I thought you were working in Fillydelphia?”
She grimaced a little as she pulled her hand back. “Work visa, to be honest… I’m a legal resident of Griffonstone but I’m sure at some point looking around Grifftham City you probably noticed that they’re not really doing that well economically. Fillydelphia was doing a bit better,” she frowned, “and by ‘better’ I mean there were lots of cruddy entry-level jobs that were glorified slave labor that owners could use to cheat migrant workers out of half their pay, but that’s where I was when I ran into you.”
She brightened up a little. “But the real truth of the matter is that was just a side gig. Well…maybe it was a side gig that was ending up in an extended layover that was slowly turning into a dead-end career…but really I ended up taking that job just to pay the bills and get a spot close to the border to Equestria.”
A few of the others began to listen to this conversation while Twilight looked intrigued. “Really?”
She smiled in pride. “The truth is we’re part of the Lunar Discovery Society! I’m the founding member. Over here,” she gestured to the man next to Pinkie Pie, who waved. “Is Party Favor. I met up with him when I resettled. We were kind of in the same boat, uh…figuratively and literally. Nearby,” she gestured to the woman, who smiled back, “we have Sugar Belle, who’s really bailed us out on commodities. You’d be amazed how many different ways she can whip up flour and salt. And up front,” she gestured ahead to the cockpit, “Double Diamond. He’s really helped our financial backing.” She winced. “Um…the fact that the Nighttouched forced his family’s ski lodge to liquidate may have had something to do with that. Anyway…”
She turned back. “We’ve devoted ourselves to discovering the truth about the Lunar Fall, including its origins, nature, and impacts, with the ultimate goal of finding more effective ways to protect humanity and mount countermeasures to halt or even reverse it!”
She rattled off the ‘mission statement’ with quite a bit of admiration. As for the group, they simply stared back in puzzlement.
“Uh, no offense, but…y’all haven’t really done that good of a job,” Applejack spoke up.
“But I’m sure you’ve been trying your best!” Fluttershy quickly threw in, in the voice that a teacher might give to a child who had colored a picture of an apple blue.
Starlight’s face fell. “Uh, yeah… You see, it turns out in order to actually be able to investigate things about the Lunar Fall, you have to be able to gather things like experimental research, evidence, specimens, and samples. And since whenever anyone tries to explore in Equestria or stand their ground the Nighttouched and Light Eaters tend to…you know…leave no survivors, that doesn’t really give much opportunity for that. Doesn’t help that every government we’ve ever gone to for funding has turned us down flat…”
“Hence the whole dead-end job part,” Party Favor spoke up.
Starlight flashed him a look. “Yes, thank you for pointing that out…” She sighed. “At first we managed to find a few scraps here and there, but most of it was things people already knew. Light Eaters are invulnerable to everything…both Light Eaters and Nighttouched are attracted to light…Nighttouched appear to be normal animals that got some sort of infection or corruption on making contact with a Light Eater and surviving…Light Eaters transmit this corruption but Nighttouched do not… Yadda, yadda, yadda. All public knowledge now. We did get a few things that offered new information but none of them were anything we could prove or, in some cases, even understand. It’s been a good four years since we’ve found anything new. All these ‘side gigs’ we did to try and fund the cause ended up becoming permanent jobs and we were starting to lose hope.”
She smiled, leaning in closer to Twilight and causing her to recoil.
“But that was all before I met you.”
“Wha, me?”
“Seeing someone out there who had powers like that? Like magic? And was able to actually kill a Light Eater with it? It was like someone relit a candle inside me. It got my mind churning and in a couple days I had my old spark back from when I first founded the Lunar Discovery Society. And better yet, I just started calling up the old gang when all the rumors and news stories started to pour in.”
“Um…rumors?”
She laughed and waved her hand. “Oh, you don’t have to play innocent with me. By now, we’ve put it all together. All those stories rolling in about being on the lookout for people with symbols on their hands? New forms of weapons or even living weapons? Destruction and chaos in their wake? Trottinghamites potentially invading just to find them? Double Diamond has a pretty good spotting scope he used to use to investigate mountain passes for avalanches, and we’ve got it mounted right on top of the Steel Lion along with a camera. Seeing what happened down there tonight? The six of you taking out that gigantic Light Eater? And then none other than the ‘fire witch’ of Trottingham showing up herself and showing her own stuff? Right before we spotted those Griffonstone citizens running in like a bunch of zombies?”
Twilight suddenly yelped as Starlight ducked even closer and tapped the top of her sigil with her index finger.
“It’s all in these. That’s what the rumors say along with the few eyewitness reports we managed to listen in on. Whatever these sigils are, they’re the key to all of it. Some folks go crazy and some of them end up…well, like you six. All of these people start popping up with these symbols on their hands, and they just happen to be the ones who can kill the Light Eaters. Coincidence? I don’t think so.”
She grimaced before leaning back again. “Although based on what I saw the fire witch do back there, it looks like you’re not all, um, on the same side. Still, you both have one thing in common… You’re the only two people I’ve seen with those emblems so far that do that thing where you draw a symbol on the air to make some of your magic happen.”
Now Twilight really did begin to look uncomfortable, as if she had been caught in an act.
“Which, to me, means you know a bit more about them than the rest of us.” She turned her head a little. “I don’t suppose…you actually come from Equestria, do you?”
Twilight began to sweat all over again. “Well, no, I mean…that is…I, uh… Well, lots of people passed through, but…but, uh… That is to say-”
A cough from Applejack caught her attention. She looked over and saw that the farmer was leveling her gaze and beckoning over with small chin gestures.
She grinned sheepishly at Starlight. “Excuse me a moment.” Immediately, she scooted off of her place and moved over to Applejack. Fluttershy quickly drew herself near as well.
However, no sooner had they huddled up when Rarity suddenly pushed herself in and Dash, in spite of her sore arm, began to drag herself over before forcing herself to sit up in their midst.
“Uh, ‘scuse me. This here’s a private conversation.”
“Like hell it is,” Dash retorted. “You think after risking our necks back there you’re gonna leave us out of the loop?”
“I have no idea what that ‘fire witch’ wanted from you, but Trottingham has been trying to kill us for days. I’d say that means this concerns us just as much as you,” Rarity added indignantly.
Applejack rolled her eyes and sighed. “Fine. I hate all this sneakin’ around private stuff anyway…” She looked at Twilight and lowered her voice. “Why ain’t ya’ talkin’, Twilight?”
“We just met these people!” she whispered loudly back. “We have no idea who they are!”
“Um, didn’t you meet Starlight Glimmer before though?” Fluttershy asked.
“If by ‘met’ you mean I stopped her from getting eaten alive by a couple of Nighttouched and a Light Eater during the last Fillydelphian surge, yeah. But she has to have been looking for us ever since then if she showed up here!” She turned to Applejack. “I already told you what happened to my class and my headmistress! Someone had to have known about that! How do I know these people weren’t involved?”
“Well, this is just my opinion, darling,” Rarity spoke up again, “but I saw how you reacted back in Grifftham City. I’m assuming your headmistress’ name was ‘Celestia’?”
Twilight winced a bit, but nodded back.
“In that case, if I had to wager on anything, I would bet that Sunset Shimmer person has more to do with that than these people. You were talking as if she had something of hers, were you not?”
Twilight hesitated. So much had happened, it looked as if she hadn’t really thought of it until that point.
“And if she was working with Sunset, I don’t think they would have bothered saving us just now,” Dash pointed out. “And if they wanted to turn us in, they’re going the opposite way from all the countries that are interested in us.”
The mage frowned. “Just the same, even if she saved us I don’t feel too comfortable talking to her about all of this. It only took her a few seconds to figure out things that I don’t exactly want becoming public if more countries start acting like Appleloosa and Trottingham.”
“Well,” Applejack shrugged, “I’m pretty sure they ain’t gonna go nuts. Looks like whoever was gonna go off the deep end was in that bunch that attacked us. No symbols on them and not even an itch. ‘Sides, if we had folks from all over Grifftham City comin’ to us before, that probably would have included them.”
“And maybe they do know more about what happened with the Lunar Fall,” Fluttershy suggested. “If we really want to stop this, we need to know more ourselves.”
Twilight looked at her. “We? You’re actually interested in that?”
Fluttershy cringed a little. “Well…everything that happened in Grifftham City was scary… Very…very scary… But ever since I met you and Applejack I’ve been thinking, and I realized if I want to help Angel and the others then I need to know more. Maybe there’s even a chance of helping all the other Nighttouched.”
The mage took a moment to consider everything. She took in a deep breath. Finally, she pushed away from the others. They all went back to their own spots as she turned around and looked back at Starlight.
“I’m actually from Hoofheim,” she finally said. “But…I did spend a lot of time in Equestria. Let’s just say I had a special teacher.”
“Headmistress Celestia?” Fluttershy asked.
“Is this that academy you mentioned before?” Rarity added.
Twilight grimaced that two and two had been put together so quickly. “Yes, but…that academy is gone now and everyone with it. It was all lost the night of the Lunar Fall. In case you’re all wondering, yes, I think that if it was still here it might have been able to do something about all the Light Eaters. That chance is long gone now, though…”
Starlight looked a bit regretful. “Oh, well…I guess that makes sense… I’ve had to search high and low for anyone who survived from Equestria, and most of the ones who I found were people who only made deliveries or ran commerce. I’ve never met anyone who…got out of the interior alive…”
Twilight looked a bit more uncomfortable at the reminder, but Starlight looked up after a moment.
“But that’s alright! We’ll just have to…work with what we have, heh! Um, speaking of which, what exactly were you planning on next?”
Everyone immediately looked to Twilight. Even Spike raised his head. She sat there looking rather put on the spot for a moment. “Well…” she finally answered, “right now I don’t even think I can hold a pen, let alone use another spell, and the last thing I want is to hang around here waiting for Sunset to come back with those airships. That includes being tied down by any of the authorities…”
“Uh, I got news for you,” Dash spoke up uneasily, “There had to have been thousands of people who saw us there. One way or another, this is getting out.”
“Well, most of them weren’t close enough to see our faces,” Twilight shrugged. “Either way, right now I want to get away from here and find a place to hide out and recover.”
“Oh, I have just the place!” Rarity spoke up. “Back to Manehattan! My family’s residence is built right into the Carousel Couture main facility!” After a moment, her enthusiastic look dimmed. “And it will be mine for at least another two months, until the bank forecloses on it…”
“I’m not sure I want to try and go all the way to Manehattan,” Twilight answered uncomfortably. “That’s pretty far and across several other borders.”
“It’s perfect!” Starlight spoke up.
Everyone, including Party Favor and Sugar Belle, turned to her.
“I’ll admit getting there might be hard but if you could stay there it’d probably be for the best. It has a dense population, lots of communication routes, and, best of all, it’s very far away from Appleloosa and Griffonstone. They’ll probably be expecting that you’ll try to hide out in the surrounding countries. They won’t think you’d risk going that far and getting caught.”
That made Twilight uneasy. “But…can we even get that far?”
“Oh, you bet! Just leave it all to us!” Starlight smiled back. She paused, then suddenly turned to the driver’s area. “Uh, Diamond, we can get all the way into Manehattan, right?”
A groan echoed back. “We’re going to have to ditch the Steel Lion at the border and cross over through the garbage wagons, but so long as we stick to the back country, go all night, and outrun the borders being closed, we should make it.”
“Um,” Twilight spoke up, “did you say ‘garbage wagons’?”
“Heh-heh…” Starlight nervously answered. “Well, we don’t really have much in the way of money to be able to afford anything great like a boat or airship. This is Diamond’s father’s old Steel Lion. The wagons we load up with garbage to get around without having to worry too much about customs, papers, or bribes. If you pick the right, uh, materials the stench can get so bad no border authority wants to deal with you.”
All six women gave an uncomfortable moan, but it seemed there was nothing for it. Twilight simply exhaled and leaned back, getting ready to settle in for what would no doubt be a very long trip.
“Say Twilight…”
She glanced up, seeing Applejack looking over to her.
“What do ya’ know ‘bout that Sunset Shimmer?”
Almost immediately, everyone else looked up as well. In the chaos and the struggle to escape to safety, everyone had nearly forgotten about her.
Twilight, however, could only sigh and bow her head. “Nothing, I’m afraid… Right now, I wish I could have asked her a lot more.”
“Nothing to know about her,” Dash snorted from the floor. “She’s a little bitch from Trottingham, and she and her puppies have been going around killing anyone with symbols on their hands. That makes her someone who needs to be taken out.”
“So she was telling the truth?” Rarity spoke up. “She really was the one behind what happened in Flaxonville? And the attack on the train? And the mountains?”
“Not to mention Fort Chestnut…” Applejack grumbled. “And the fact she sent us down the river. First chance I get, I’ll knock that smug block off her head.”
Rarity winced. “That might be a bit difficult; considering what we saw just now. I didn’t have my sewing glasses, but I saw five runes on her own sigil.” She looked up to Twilight again. “You seemed particularly unsettled by that.”
Twilight frowned, inhaling deeply and exhaling. “Five emblems means she has five different Anima Viri, which is incredible enough as it is. The very fact all six of us are here and each of us has their own Anima Viri is, frankly, incredible. That’s not what shook me up, though…” She frowned. “I don’t suppose I’m hurting anything showing you all this now… I don’t think you’re going to act like those people back in Griffonstone did…”
She held up her hand a moment later for all to see.
“This is Starswirl the Bearded. He’s an Anima Viri that died at least a thousand years ago. He wasn’t any relative of mine and I didn’t find any object that had his spirit tied to it. Rather, Headmistress Celestia freely gave him to me from her own Anima Viris right before we left on our summer trip.” Her head bowed. “The last lesson she ever taught me was how to summon him…”
“Er, whatd’ya mean she gave it to you?” Applejack asked.
“One of the only ways to gain an Anima Viri is to freely transfer it to someone else. Otherwise, the Anima Viri either attaches to its original source object again if it can or…disappears completely. That’s another reason why they’re so hard to find. What few ones are out there could disappear before anyone had a chance to gain them.” She looked at her hand. “Celestia told me her family had been passing Starswirl the Bearded down from mother to daughter for at least a thousand years…”
She grew quiet. “But then, for some reason, she passed him to me. And she never got the chance to tell me why…”
“Whoa,” Dash spoke up incredulously, “she had all that power and she just gave it up?”
“Actually,” Twilight exhaled, looking up again, “she had five others.”
The group looked doubly-surprised. “Five?”
“She was the only person I ever met who had a rune for every point on her symbol. But…”
She grimaced, growing increasingly uncomfortable.
“The day she gave me this symbol, she was wearing a bandage around her hand. She kept wearing it through the trip. I thought she had hurt it doing something, or that maybe she injured it giving me the Anima Viri. I’ve thought that for years. But now…” She looked up again. “Tonight, I saw Sunset Shimmer, and she not only had five Anima Viris but two of them were definitely from Celestia. Mistmane and Flash Magnus.”
“Merciful heavens,” Rarity echoed back, sharing Twilight’s uncomfortable look. “Are you saying she gave those Anima Viris to her?”
“It doesn’t make any sense…” Twilight fretted, clearly struggling to think. “I’ve never seen or heard of a ‘Sunset Shimmer’ before. I know I wasn’t the most sociable of students, but that academy wasn’t that big. I knew everyone’s name at least. And yet…there’s no way to steal an Anima Viri from anyone else…”
“Maybe…just no way that you know about?” Fluttershy suggested hopefully.
Twilight frowned. “Even if there was, she knew too much. Whoever she was, she knew Headmistress Celestia when she was alive.”
Applejack frowned. “Then ya’ think, jus’ maybe, she knows somethin’ ‘bout what happened to her in Hoofheim?”
The mage looked the most uncomfortable at this. “I don’t know… But I know this. Until today, I’ve never heard of an Archer role before. I thought there were only the six roles. I don’t think she just has those five. I think she knows how to combine them to bring out even stronger powers.”
“Great…” Dash moaned. “So how do we stop her?”
“We don’t,” Twilight answered. “We stay away from her, which is exactly what we’re doing right now.”
“I don’t understand…”
Twilight looked over to Fluttershy, who’s head was bowed as she was deep in her own thoughts.
“Don’t understand what?”
She looked up. “Why would Sunset be wanting to get rid of everyone with a Promethian Sigil on their hands? She has one too, doesn’t she?”
Rarity grimaced. “Yes, but it sounds like she was after Twilight the whole time, dear.” Even saying that made Twilight more uneasy.
“Yes, but why Twilight? She just said she never heard of Sunset before. And Sunset hadn’t heard of Twilight until tonight either. She didn’t even know her name. Why would she want just her?”
The chamber was silent. No one had an answer for that, including Twilight. It was something new on top of the ever-deepening mystery. Several seconds passed.
Finally, she sighed and shook her head. “This is too much for me to think about right now. I just want to take it easy for a little while…”
“Um, Twilight?”
She tiredly looked back up, finding Fluttershy now staring at her. Like she usually was when nervous, her head was bowed and she was almost hiding under her own hair.
“You kept saying back there that I couldn’t really be a good Healer because I didn’t know any spells. Well…” She looked around the engine. “There’s…a lot of people hurt right here. I was wondering if you could, um, maybe…teach me any? Since you did go to a school for it and everything?”
“Actually,” Rarity spoke up as well, “I’ve been feeling rather like a fifth wheel myself ever since you said that I didn’t know any ‘spells’. I have little love for any pagan superstitions or witchcraft, but I can’t deny that being able to do the sort of things you could do the next time we got into a fight would likely swing things more heavily in our favor.”
Surprisingly enough, Twilight looked even more nervous now. “Um…are you saying you’d like me to teach you magic? I’ve never tried to teach anyone before…”
“Well, darling, considering you’re the only one in this cramped, rusty vehicle that has any experience in the first place…”
“Hey!” came from the front.
“I’d say that makes you the seasoned veteran if not the expert to our novices.”
“And, if you know any healing magic, I’d love to see if it would work on Angel and the others,” Fluttershy added. “Please?”
Twilight looked between the two of them for a moment. Her face showed a mixture of personal hesitation as well as exhaustion from the previous battle. Finally, she sighed. “Fine… It would help us out a lot more if Fluttershy could actually heal people…”
“Um,” Starlight finally spoke up again, looking rather uncomfortable, “if you three start slinging around spells in here, considering what I saw back in Griffonstone…”
“Don’t worry. I’m only going to show them the basics of using magical runes and sigils for spellcasting. I won’t actually have them invoke any.” She paused. “Uh, just the same, nothing in here is flammable, right?”
Starlight let out an unhappy mutter.
“Ooo!”
Everyone looked up at the noise, and found themselves wheeling to Pinkie. She was fully alert with eyes open, but still lying on the ground.
“A slumber party! Neat! But don’t we have to take care of the Tantabus first?”
Sunset swallowed a little when the door closed, especially when the seam that represented the frame vanished along with it. She and the headmistress were now shut up in the circular room. Although it had windows all around (which was puzzling enough considering the fact she knew one side of it opened up into a hallway a moment earlier) and the sun was shining brightly, and the room was mostly just open space, she continued to look nervous and even a bit fearful.
Celestia walked away from the door and to her side, still smiling kindly. “Alright Sunset. Are you ready for your first magic lesson?”
Sunset wasn’t sure whether to nod or shake her head. She felt a mixture of both sensations right now.
“Don’t be scared. We won’t be doing anything dangerous, even if it might look just that way. Now, normally I would start beginner students with something simple like shaping clay or making some wind, but I’m wanting to jump ahead to something a bit more advanced with you.”
That alone made Sunset swallow.
“Just to measure your potential. Don’t worry. This is mostly for assessment, and I’m accounting for the fact that this is your first time. Just the same, you should remember the rules that you can’t perform magic outside of classrooms. No exceptions to that rule for beginner students. Do you understand?”
She nodded back.
“Alright. Today I’m going to teach you how to make a small fireball.”
“F-F-Fire…?” The nervousness on her voice had doubled. “I…I don’t do too well with fire…”
“And that’s why I want you to learn that spell first. So you can learn not to be afraid of it.”
“But…but can’t I already make fire?”
Celestia knelt down, putting herself at eye level with the child. “Yes, you can. That’s the side effect of your abilities. For people like you and me, we both have a large amount of a special power moving through us that we call ‘mana’.”
Her nervousness easing in light of curiosity, the girl turned her head. “What’s mana?”
“Hmm, it’s a bit hard to explain. The best way to think about it is air.”
“Air?”
Celestia nodded. She gestured around herself. “All around us is air. Air is full of oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen…but for simplicity’s sake, we can think of it all as air. Now look up and around you. Feel it for a moment.”
Sunset was puzzled, but she looked up and began to glance around. After a few moments, she looked confused at what she was supposed to be feeling.
“Feel anything?”
She shook her head. “No… Am I supposed to?”
Celestia shook her head back. “No. Now, I’m going to wave my hand alongside your head while humming. Listen carefully.”
At that, the headmistress began to hum. She reached up and waved her hand right next to Sunset’s left ear as she did. She waved several times before lowering it again.
“Now, what can you tell me?”
Sunset thought for a moment. She nearly opened her mouth to say “nothing”, but on pondering a little longer she answered differently. “The sound of your voice…it changed a bit when your hand passed by my ear.”
“Right. Think of it that way. If all of the air in this room is mana, then what I just did could be the same as your small fires. Normally, your mana just acts like air. It doesn’t do anything and doesn’t change anything. Occasionally, however, just by doing something small yourself, like a certain gesture, feeling, or even a really strong thought or memory, you can make it do just a small thing. On the other hand…”
She took a deep breath, leaned in close, and made a “pst-pst” sound in Sunset’s ear. Giggling at how it tickled, she smiled even as she covered her ear up.
“A spell does several things. First, it allows you to channel your mana more effectively. That would be me taking in a deep breath. Second, it allows you to release it in a controlled, concrete manner. That would be when I blew it out. Third, it accomplishes a purpose that you have for it.” She smirked again. “In this case, giving you a bit of a tickle.”
Shifting herself, she began to go over to Sunset’s side. Realizing it was time for the lesson, she quickly straightened again. Soon both of them were looking forward across the empty room. “Now, for a spell, just like there are three purposes to magic there are three components. One is you have to be able to concentrate your mana, which is what we’ve been working on until today. Only while we’ve been working on making sure it doesn’t ‘leak’ until now, now we want to force it out but in the right way. The second is your hands.”
She turned to Celestia. “My hands?”
“You need a focal point to trace an emblem in the air. For really focused spells, you need something to focus your attention on like a wand or stave, but today…” She extended a single finger. “This will work. Go on.”
Sunset hesitated, but then slowly held up her index finger.
“We’ll start with just the pattern. For your first spell, it’s going to be a bit hard and we’ll have to practice. But you always start by drawing a circle. Like this. Start at the bottom, and work around to the top, then back to the bottom.”
She demonstrated slowly and carefully.
“You try.”
Sunset swished her mouth, then tried it out.
“Not so fast,” Celestia corrected. “Slowly. Neatly. Like you’re actually tracing a circle that’s already there.”
She concentrated and tried again.
“Good! You got it on the second try! Ok, that’s the first part, now for the next. Once you hit the bottom, you bring it back up like this…”
A good thirty minutes was devoted simply to learning the pattern, and thirty minutes after that was devoted to practicing it until Sunset started building some muscle memory. She had a few flubs as Celestia kept adding more steps to it, and before she was done she was marveling at how eight steps were supposed to be a “simple” spell, to say nothing of how she could get it out in less than fifteen seconds. At last, however, she seemed satisfied.
“Now the final piece. While you’re pushing your mana out and drawing the symbols, you also have to say the proper incantation. There’s one word for every one of the eight steps I’ve told you, and you have to say it before you finish doing that part of the sigil.”
Sunset looked a little overwhelmed, which only made Celestia laugh a little.
“Yes, I know. I was almost dizzy the first time I learned it, but you’ll be amazed at how easy it is. Let’s just work on saying the words at the same time as the symbols first. The first word is excatint. Say it as slow as you need to finish the circle.”
This part took much longer, as Sunset not only had to remember the symbols but now had to memorize eight bizarre words along with them and say them while simultaneously doing the symbols perfectly. Yet even though she thought taking another forty minutes to do it was a long time, Celestia was more than pleased with her progress.
“Very good!” she said at the end. “You’re catching on very quickly, Sunset! Alright, it’s time to tie it all together. Do everything you just did, but this time force out mana with it. Again, you’d normally use a wand for more advanced spells to focus it, but just concentrate on the end of your fingertip.”
Sunset looked forward again. By now, most of her initial anxiety was gone. After all that practice, all she did was take a deep breath, swallow, and hold up her finger. After taking a moment to remember everything, she concentrated and began.
She gave only a small start when she first saw the fiery, red light begin to come out of her hand. She botched just the edge of the first symbol on that. However, she quickly stabilized her focus, stared harder at her work, and kept going. Celestia had actually nearly told her to relax when she kept going.
After several seconds, she had the first seven parts of the sigil drawn. She finished the last part of it, saying the final word, and ended it just as she touched the final point.
The sigil immediately began to glow more brightly, causing Sunset to pull her hand back in alarm. Soon after it broke and a large, concentrated fireball erupted from it. She actually let out a bit of a gasp as she saw it sail across the room and strike the wall. The flames erupted into a bonfire-level pillar. Both she and Celestia actually felt the heat ripple over them for a moment.
Sunset was struck silent. She only gaped as the fire she made slowly died down. She kept blinking until it diminished to only a few small flames on the floor. Only then did she turn to Celestia. “Headmis…”
She trailed off. She saw something she definitely hadn’t expected. Celestia looked as astonished as she had been, still staring where the fire had been.
It lasted only a moment, though. She turned to her soon after.
“Sunset…” she immediately smiled. “That was amazing!”
The girl was taken aback, more shocked now than after the spell. “R-Really?”
“I’ve never seen a student able to perform that spell so powerfully so quickly! You did wonderfully!”
A light began to gleam in her eyes. “I…I did?”
“You got it so well on the first try too! Can you do it again?”
Sunset was still a bit taken aback from the praise, but she managed a nod. Holding her hand up again, feeling just a slight bit bolder and more confident, she performed the spell again. This time, she not only drew the sigil perfectly but was two seconds faster. As a result, an even larger fireball was produced that made a blaze that reached all the way to the ceiling.
“Very good, Sunset!” Celestia congratulated, even more delighted the second time.
“Oh, well…” she answered, beginning to turn a bit red. “It’s not so hard once you get the hang of it…”
“You just pulled off a spell that would take most beginners the first year to perform successfully.”
Sunset’s jaw dropped. “Seriously?”
Celestia nodded back. “Now, keep practicing with this one. Let’s see how short we can get your casting time. If you do well enough, I’ll start you on your next spell tomorrow. Maybe even two.”
Sunset grinned excitedly. Almost immediately she turned around and began to cast again. Soon she sent off another fireball. After that, she sent out a fourth.
As she was working on the fifth, Celestia reached out and placed a hand on hers.
“Pace yourself, Sunset. You’ll run out of mana at this rate.”
“Oh…oh right,” she answered more meekly, lowering her hand. “Sorry.”
It was good that Celestia stopped her, for magical fatigue set in soon after. She winced as she felt a sharp headache, and held for her stomach as a bit of a queasy sensation went through her. She managed to weather both and keep standing however. As for Celestia, she moved to one side to observe.
After a few moments of recovery, she spoke up again. “Are there many spells to learn?”
“As many as you can think of, Sunset. Many of them are written down, but many others are lost to the ages or known only by the best mages. Know this, however. With the right command and a strong enough spirit, anything is possible.”
Sunset thought of that as she held her hand up to cast once more.
“Anything…” she whispered before beginning the incantation.
“…is possible.”
A metallic knock nearby distracted Sunset from her thoughts. She stopped looking at her re-gloved hand and looked up to the bulkhead.
“Come in.”
The hatch turned and the door swung open. Doing her best to look like her normal, attentive self was the first officer. She walked in struggling to keep her head held high. However, Sunset could tell her fear already by the easy omission she made.
She gestured behind her as she walked closer. “Shut the bulkhead behind you, please.”
The first officer hesitated. After a moment, she nodded, then turned back to do what she was told.
The hallway of the airship was a bit of an unusual choice for a meeting place. The conference room would be more appropriate. However, Sunset had elected on the current locale for a private conversation. Part of the reason was it provided an excellent position to monitor the situation outside. This was, after all, one of the only places on the ship with portholes as it was a rather non-essential corridor.
Outside, it was pitch black with a beautiful moon shining, in spite of the fact that according to Sunset’s watch it was precisely 2 o’clock in the afternoon. The moon and stars weren’t the only lights out there. There had to be at least three hundred sets of yellow eyes and the occasional set of moonspot eyes mingling in a tight-knit oval around her ship and the Prodigy. The Endeavor itself was still landing, using its own signal to gradually clear away Nighttouched and Light Eaters from its spot.
The nice thing about having the ability to repel the monsters in Equestria wasn’t just that it offered an easy corridor to get anywhere they liked. They could take whatever they wanted that was abandoned and left behind. And although many of the towns and stockpiles were destroyed in the early Lunar Fall, their main airship landing hub was still mostly operational. It had been under construction at the time but near completion, and Trottingham had found the effort to repair it was well worthwhile as it had plenty of tools and facilities for airship repair…provided whoever was manning the airships could stomach being surrounded by bloodthirsty entities during their entire docking period.
Several crewmen were nervously milling about in the darkness, bumbling and tripping over each other. In spite of the fact Sunset had assured them that the Morning Glories were keeping them safe, they refused to light up so much as a candle to help them see. Hence, resupplying was taking quite some time.
That wasn’t her concern right now, however. As soon as the first officer finished shutting the hatch, she turned and faced Sunset. Again drawing herself up, she crossed her hands behind her and swallowed. “You wished to see me, captain?”
Sunset smirked back. She notd her unusually tight pose, her stiff talking, and most of all the sweat on her brow.
“Relax,” she calmly cooed, in a voice that wasn’t too terribly reassuring. “I just called you in here for some quick business. Something that doesn’t need to involve the rest of the crew. Something involving your actions as of late.”
The woman swallowed, but kept her eyes forward.
Sunset began to walk closer. “As you know, Commander…” she paused. “Commander… What was your name again?”
She opened her mouth to respond.
“It doesn’t matter,” Sunset idly dismissed. “As you know, I hand-picked each and every member of the crew for this operation. Each one of you was selected by me individual by individual, and, I dare say, only the people on board this ship have any true inkling of what I intend for the future of Trottingham. To that end,”
She stepped in closer.
“Loyalty is paramount. After all, what I’m doing might be considered insurrection. Treason, even. We all know what the penalty is for treason in Trottingham, don’t we? Especially now that we’re in the middle of a war?”
A pause of silence.
“Commander, I believe I just asked you a question.”
She nodded. “Yes, captain. I am fully aware.”
“Really.” She crossed her arms, raising one to lean her head on it. “What is the penalty of treason?”
She stiffened once, her posture shifting a little, before she spoke the word quietly. “Death.”
“Pardon me?”
“Death, captain. Death is the penalty of treason,” she forced herself to say more loudly.
“And in a time of war, if someone is accused of treason, do I even need to bother returning to home port, commander?”
Another moment of silence, but she responded this time. “No, captain.”
Sunset smirked as she turned away and walked to the porthole. “I love the air, commander. So much freedom. So much authority. All you need is a ship and a crew and it’s like you’re an island nation all to yourself. Even without any Trottingham laws, the fact remains I could pretty much do anything I’d want to do to you out here. Why…”
She turned back to her.
“I could throw you out to the Nighttouched right now if I wanted. It’d really save bullets.” She chuckled. “But why be so grandiose? Hangings have worked for years. Then again, that wastes rope and makes a body to clean up. I say…” She grinned. “Just take a long walk off a short plank as soon as we’re airborne. Problem solved.”
By now, the first officer was struggling not to squirm. Sunset relished it, but simply turned back to her.
“Relax, commander. You didn’t really think I brought you in here just to tell you I was going to execute you for mutiny, did you? Over something so small as a dissenting opinion?” She snickered. “Please…that’s why you’re first officer to begin with. To call me out at the proper time. And you’re right. Going after Twilight Sparkle at that point would have been too costly. You made a good call back there.”
The first officer still looked rather tense, but calmed a little at this. Sunset took a moment to moisten her lips before beginning to approach the first officer again.
“That being said, I can’t say the same for your subordinates.”
She looked puzzled. “My subordinates?”
“When I give an order, I expect it to be obeyed. Getting an alternative proposed by you is one thing, commander.” She frowned. “Telling my crew to follow an order only for them to just sit there staring at me, as if waiting for you to say something to contradict me, is something else. If you had yelled to belay the order before explaining the situation, that would have been one thing. They didn’t even try to respond, though. A good eight heads in all. I counted.”
The first officer began to look uncomfortable again. Sunset shook her head in an exaggerated act of sadness as she reached for her cigarette case and began to tap the tobacco down.
“Oh, that’s a real shame. It’s a real problem we have on our hands, commander. I already told you how important loyalty is right now. Probably the most important thing we have.”
Realizing where this was going, the first officer swallowed. “Captain, may I speak freely?”
She nodded as she kept tapping.
“The crew was just a little shocked is all. They didn’t know what move to make in the face of such a situation. We had just taken off from an actual invasion of Nighttouched. We saw things that were impossible, we were flying through all that smoke and fire…”
Sunset snickered, causing the first officer to trail off. She opened her cigarette case, pulled one out, and then offered it to her. “Care for a cigarette, commander?”
She stared at the case a moment silently. “I…don’t smoke.”
“What is it you do do when you’re not manning an airship?”
“I, uh…garden. It’s kind of my hobby. I was going to do it as a profession but then…then the, uh…”
Sunset nodded. “Then the Lunar Fall happened, the attacks of the Nighttouched, the ensuing wars, the draft, and all that fun stuff. I get it.” She jammed the cigarette in her lips. She reached for her lighter next. “But you’re pretty good at it, aren’t you?”
“I…” She bowed her head a bit. “I, uh…suppose I am.”
“Level Seven pay grade, last I checked. And due for a bonus in a few months. It’ll be six years then.”
“Um…yes.”
She smiled and nodded as she lit her cigarette up. She took a moment to take a drag and flick off the first few ashes. “Ok then, commander, I’ll get to it. We know full well that Regent Cinch wouldn’t tolerate excuses. Neither would the Admiral and neither will I. We have some dark and gritty business about us. First and foremost, thinking which of those lovely options I gave you a moment ago would be best to deal with eight deck officers convicted of mutiny.”
“Captain, ple-”
“Or…” Sunset cut off, jabbing her cigarette out to make a point. “Or…we could avoid throwing around that dirty little black word. Everyone hates it. Even if it’s not directed at them. Drives everyone wild.” She stuck her cigarette in her mouth as she reached into her jacket. “We both know some evils are better than others, commander. We also know full well that money talks. Trottingham, Manehattan, Fillydelphia, the Dragonlands…they all abide by the golden rule.”
She produced a piece of paper and handed it over to the first officer. She looked a bit confused but slowly reached out and took it.
“He who has the gold makes the rules.” She pulled out her cigarette after another drag. “Officials tend to get awfully sloppy and forgetful when they hear the sound of precious metals jingling in their pockets. And since no one likes that dirty word I mentioned, they might be apt to hearing a much nicer one. Insubordination.” She smiled and gestured with her cigarette again. “A little slap on the wrist and you’re good there. Take away your rum and meat rations for a month and then we forget the whole thing ever happened. But…”
The first officer opened the paper and began to read what was inside.
“They do need a decent amount of jingling. A little just won’t do. And they’ll expect a separate jingle for all eight.”
The commander read the contents of the paper for a few moments, before her jaw dropped on the final line. Especially the figures in the amount written there. “That…that much…?”
“They’ll never afford it on their salary. You could, though.”
She looked up alarmed. “M…me?!”
She shrugged. “If it was your neck on the line. I’m just stating a fact you’d be able to scrape it out of that sizeable salary of yours. Of course…I’m just supposing…”
She began to turn away as she put a hand on her hip, but then suddenly looked up. “Oh, hello? What’s that we have here?”
She turned back around and produced what was in her pocket, much to the commander’s unease. A ball-point pen.
“How did this get here? Heh, I don’t need this. I have plenty of pens. Here…”
She leaned over and practically placed it in between two of the commander’s knuckles holding the paper.
“You hang onto it.” She took another puff from her cigarette. By now, the first officer was shaking again and staring at her nervously without blinking. However, deep in her eyes, there was the spark of a small fire of helpless anger.
“Now then, commander, should we postpone what we intend to do about the problems with our crew? Give ourselves some time to think about whether or not this was just a minor insubordination after all? Or shall we throw that scrap of paper in the nearest trash bin and think about what would make a better example: falling or being flayed alive?”
The first officer stared back silently. The anger grew a bit more, but she also knew she was in over her head. She glanced down at the paper again. She stared at it and the figure for a long time.
Finally, clenching her hand into a fist, she quietly took the paper over to the wall and quickly filled out her own signature on the line on the bottom. When she was done, she hurriedly came over and passed it to Sunset.
She nodded as she accepted it from her. She took a moment to unfold it, look it over, and then nod as she put it away. “Never a good thing to make a rash decision. You taught me that, didn’t you, commander?”
The first officer stiffened again. Before she could say anything else, another knock went out on the bulkhead. Sunset immediately looked up to it, losing a bit of her cool in place of eagerness. “Come in.”
The hatch once again turned. On opening, the first officer looked a bit surprised to see the royal guard walk inside. His armor had seen better days and appeared to actually be missing pieces, and he himself walked with just a hint of exhaustion in his step. Nevertheless, he approached Sunset at once and saluted readily. “My lady.”
Sunset at first had looked to receive him earnestly, but on seeing his haggard appearance her enthusiasm dimmed somewhat, and it sank like a stone on noticing he was carrying something in his hand: an envelope much cleaner than him and sealed with a familiar-looking insignia. One for the office of Regent of Trottingham.
“You’re dismissed, commander,” Sunset said quietly, never looking at the first officer. She needed no further prompting. She readily turned and left. She didn’t salute when she did, but Sunset hardly seemed to notice. Her eyes were fully on the royal guard as the hatch shut again.
She crossed her arms and frowned at him. “I was afraid you might not have any good news to report.” She gestured to him. “I take it this sad state I see in front of me is confirmation.”
“Forgive me, my lady.”
“Oh…I can’t wait to hear why I should do that.”
“I tracked down three of them, but one of them, one with pink hair, was able to fully wield her Anima Viri. That wasn’t all, though. She had power beyond that. Durability and strength far greater than that of a normal wielder.”
“Please,” Sunset snorted. “I saw her myself, and she was unconscious the entire time. So the three managed to defeat you, huh?”
“No. A swarm of Nighttouched came. A true surge. I hadn’t seen anything like it in eight years. It was all I could do to make it back to the chariot and take off.”
“Yet it seemed to take you a couple days to find your way back to us.”
“I tried to rendezvous, but some of them came after me even while I was in the air. In the time it took me to get rid of them, the chariot took too many hits. I did what small repairs I could but I couldn’t get it to full flight capability, and as a result the envoy from Trottingham found me. Rather than risk any more time spent within the Equestrian borders than necessary, they ordered me to pass along this message.”
He held up the sealed envelope to Sunset. She frowned at it, but eventually snatched it from the guard’s hands. She quickly split the seal, snapped it open, and began to look over it.
Her frown deepened after a moment before she simply sighed. “Well, Trottingham is in an uproar. Appleloosa and Griffonstone are both demanding answers from the Regent, and not only about me but about what I’m doing has to do with the people with the Promethian Sigils. Apparently Fillydelphia is citing the country for breach of treaty, which means Manehattan will be in on it soon. And, of course, the Regent herself is demanding an explanation and isn’t going to wait for me to decide to come back of my own accord.” She crumpled the message into a ball before extinguishing her cigarette in it.
“My lady, if she gets the Admiral to come after us…”
“The Admiral doesn’t care to do what Regent Cinch says any more than I do, and I wouldn’t have picked now as the perfect time if I didn’t take into account that he has his hands full with the Dragonlands. He hasn’t even sent a report in four months. Besides, I’m not going to cause any trouble.” She shrugged. “Not yet, at any rate. The message said her representative will meet me here, and here I am. We’re already stuck in dock long enough to get the ships ready to go again anyway. This would almost be a nice little vacation if it wasn’t for the fact that every second we waste here Twilight Sparkle gets a bit farther away from us.”
“Twilight Sparkle?”
“I happened to catch her name in Griffonstone.” She frowned. “And yes…before you state the obvious, I did try to get her myself. And I might have succeeded if someone driving a Steel Lion hadn’t butted in and Fillydelphia hadn’t decided to follow suit.” Her teeth grit as she turned back to the portholes. “The first thing I’m doing once I get the sixth Anima Viri is finding who did that and sending them into a gravity well…”
“Even so, you’re asking the Regent to overlook quite a bit. We’ve caused an international incident. One that might cause another war.”
“I’m more concerned with how this is going to start tipping off every country to what we’re doing, especially if it comes back around to Regent Cinch that magic was involved. If we play it right, though, we should be able to let her give us a break. At least enough to stay out a bit longer.”
The bell at Rarity’s bedside gained no response at first, but after waiting only sixty seconds it rang again. After another thirty second pause, it went on continuously.
A light moan came from underneath the covers. A shape shifted underneath it, causing a curled up cat nearby to meow angrily before getting up and running off. Soon after, a hand came out and fumbled for the bell a few times before pulling the covers down. Rarity’s face and upper torso were revealed, although with the curtains drawn and a face mask over her eyes it was likely still quite dark for her.
The bell stopped of its own accord before she was fully awake and as a result, after a few moments, the doors to the room cracked open. A young woman took only a second to peak inside before she pushed it open the rest of the way and ran in with her arms full of papers.
“Sorry to barge in like this, Miss Rarity, but you told me if it was an emergency, past nine, and you didn’t answer the bell for five minutes to invite myself in.”
Rarity let out a bit of a mumble as she slowly became alert. “Wh…what?” she half-muttered. “Miss Pommel? Is that you?”
“Yes, it’s me, and we’ve got a lot of tall orders to fill today,” she spoke hurriedly as she quickly went to her bedside. She reached out to her work desk, pulled the rolling chair over, and sat herself down in it. “We’re already coming up short in staffing for that new contract, half the brass buttons are three days late, the designer stitching on the cuffs will take twice as long as we planned, and Boiler #2 is still out. The maintenance man is saying the part is custom.”
Rarity suddenly froze. A moment later, she pulled her eye mask off hurriedly. Her eyes glanced about the room. First to Coco sitting next to her. Then to her bed. Then to the ceiling, the walls, the design table, the mannequins, the fabrics, the hallway out into the rest of the residential area of the factory, the bed that her cat, Opalesence, was unhappily settling in, and the Manehattan sun shining through the window.
She looked back to Coco again, seeing her still eagerly looking to start discussing business as she clutched the papers on her lap. Finally, she sighed and leaned back.
“A dream… It was all just a horrible dream…”
“Um, Miss Rarity…”
“Oh, Miss Pommel!” she suddenly cried, turning to her. “It was absolutely ghastly! I was on this horrid road trip over half of Greater Everfree desperately trying to get a contract signed to keep Carousel Couture in business, and everything went wrong! First I had to hire a Huntsman to take me across country when the train was stopped, then we were ambushed by other Huntsmen, and then we almost got shot and blown up by Trottinghamites, and then this man in gaudy, tacky, outdated armor tried to skewer me before I found this brash woman from Griffonstone to take us under a mountain, only it was filled with all manner of horrendous Light Eaters and Nighttouched, before finally I found I had magic powers and I had to help these other women kill this gigantic celestial horse… The worst part was I still failed to save the business and I couldn’t get a single conditioning the entire time!”
She leaned back in relief. “But it was all just a terrible nightmare… I’m back here in Manehattan with you and the business and my dress-making and lovely, comfortable, designer imported bedsheets and…”
“Yo, Rarity.”
The designer looked like someone had just dropped ice down her back at the sound of that voice. Stiffly and mechanically, harboring dread in her eyes, she slowly leaned up from her pillow.
Standing in the open doorway in nothing but her underwear and her cowboy hat was Applejack, gesturing down the hall. “That fancy, schmancy porcelain crapper of yours clogged up again after it ran outta paper.” Without another word, she turned and kept walking.
Rarity looked at where she had been standing, twitched a few times, and then glanced to the back of her hand. A sigil was there with a rune on one point.
She let out a wail as she threw herself back on her pillow and began to sob.
Coco let out a sigh of her own. “Do we have to go through this every morning…?”
“Um…hello? Rarity?”
Fluttershy quietly and timidly moved outside of the designer’s normally under-utilized kitchen and into the hall beyond. She was still acting the same way she had ever since she arrived: timid about everything. The entire fancy look of the dwelling and everything in it, including the furniture, drapes, artworks, and wallpaper, seemed to overwhelm her. She struggled not to touch anything for fear of leaving a spot or a stain (especially since Pinkie Pie’s first mishap with chocolate on arrival had earned quite a healthy amount of ire).
She gradually made her way to the living room, but saw there was no one there save Rainbow Dash. The Huntsman’s clothing had been fully mended and repaired as well as cleaned, and she herself had fully recovered and was now lounging on Rarity’s fainting couch; crossing her arms behind her head and crossing her legs over each other as she napped. Nearby, the window curtains were drawn back and allowed the morning sun to shine in.
Fluttershy slowly walked up to her, cringing a bit more as she did. She seemed intent on speaking with her but also didn’t want to wake her up. As a result, on reaching her side, she stared silently and confused for several moments. At last, she motivated herself to reach out and touch her shoulder. “Um…Ms. Dash?”
Seeing as it was hardly more than a whisper, all she got was a snore for her trouble.
“Ms….Ms. Dash?”
Another snore.
She leaned in closer to her ear, but that only made her drop her voice into a smaller whisper. “Ms. Dash?”
Naturally, she didn’t hear that either. Yet while she was doing this, a small white rabbit hopped up into the entryway into the living room. On seeing Fluttershy’s rather meager attempt to wake the Huntsman up, the rabbit seemed to give her an irritated stare. Soon after, it hopped inside right next to her, leapt up onto the fainting couch, and batted Dash’s head with one of his big feet.
“Hmm…wha?” she muttered, opening her eyes. She turned and saw the woman staring at her. “Oh…it’s you, Fluttershy… Whatd’ya need?”
“Oh…um, have you seen Rarity around? Twilight wants to give me another lesson in fifteen minutes, but before that I want to finish feeding the animals and Angel’s fresh out of carrots. I tried offering him some cabbage and radishes but he tends to be just a tiny bit picky, so I wanted to make sure she didn’t have any more at the ready.”
Dash grimaced and looked up to the ceiling. “Based on that shriek I heard about a half hour ago? I’m guessing she’s in her bedroom and just finished throwing another fit over waking up and realizing she’s got a soul stuck in her hand. You figure she’d be used to it after a week of being home…” She closed her eyes and leaned back for another nap. “If being stuck on ‘house arrest’ means living in a posh joint like this? I’ll plead guilty any day…”
“Oh…thank you.” She began to lean up, but then stopped on seeing her lying right next to the open window. “Um, I don’t want to disturb your nap, but shouldn’t we be keeping the curtains shut? I mean, if you like, that is. Just, you know, it might let…um…people know where we’re hiding.”
“Eh, relax,” Dash waved off. “We’re on the second floor. ‘Sides, I’m not napping. I’m doing surveillance.”
“Um…surveillance?”
Without opening her eyes, she raised a hand and pointed to the ceiling. Fluttershy looked and saw that one of the polished silver ornamental plates that Rarity had nestled in a corner was repositioned just enough to be angled toward the view at the open window, such that Dash could recline on the couch and still easily see outside on the street below.
“You’re…watching the road?”
“Come a bit closer. See it from where I’m looking.”
Fluttershy puzzled as to how Dash was looking at anything, but did as she was told. From her angle, she realized she could not only see the street but could actually see people standing on the side of it across the road. Manehattan was a busy town morning, noon, and night, so there were plenty of people on the sidewalk. She watched as several people went up and down the street while steam taxis and wagons rolled by periodically.
“I don’t understand…”
“See those three guys?”
Fluttershy looked again and, now that Dash called it out, she did notice three men in particular. While most people either walked by or only milled about for a few seconds before walking again, those three seemed to just be standing around and looking across the road at Carousel Couture.
“They’ve been there almost two hours now. They were there yesterday too.”
Fluttershy realized that none of the three looked particularly friendly, clean, or interested in clothing. It made her shrink a little. “Who…who are they?”
“No idea,” Dash answered, finally cracking her eyes open again. She stretched out her arm underneath the fainting couch, and after feeling around grasped a discarded newspaper lying there. “But you know how Rarity said she had to get back with that contract in order to keep her business going? Turns out this other designer was trying to make a deal that would’ve pulled the rug out from under her, which is why she was headed out east to begin with. Once she got there, she told me the same designer was trying to buy up the guys making materials too, but she managed to get the contract with him before he could sign with her…just so long as she got back in Manehattan to get her own contract with the government’s order set in stone.”
Fluttershy looked puzzled. “Wait…I thought Rarity kept saying on the way here that she didn’t get back in time.”
“That’s what I thought. But check this out.”
She nearly tossed the paper into Fluttershy’s arms, making her jump in alarm. On calming down, however, she took it and opened it up.
“They finally got the telegram lines open again, so news is coming in from out in Appleloosa. Just skip on past all the same-old, same-old about mysterious weapons, military maneuvers, witch-hunting, and the ninetieth story about what happened in Griffonstone…”
Fluttershy looked down to the bottom, not exactly sure what she was supposed to see, until she finally spotted a column with a headline that grabbed her attention.
Local Manehattan Designer Investigated for Involvement of Suicide-Turned-Homicide of Appleloosan Textile Producer.
She let out a shocked squeak. “Oh my…”
“Read it.”
Fluttershy composed herself a moment before beginning to read aloud. She grew more nervous with each new sentence.
“The controversy surrounding the untimely death of Colonel Cotton Gin, owner and president of Fabrichique, continues to escalate. Earlier this week, his accidental death in his farmland’s pond was declared first a suicide but then changed to homicide. As a result of police investigation, an ever-growing cloud of suspicion is being cast over a rising clothing manufacturer in Manehattan: Polomare’s. The investigation reveals the company was involved in contracting out several Appleloosan textile producers in a move that shows inclinations of cornering the market. Combined with a series of aggressive power plays to win new business in Manehattan proper, as well as the discovery that Fabrichque passed over Polomare’s for a contract with a smaller company, has led some to suspect that this might have been an attempt to send a message to more rural producers: contract with Polomare’s or else.”
Fluttershy let the paper fall and cupped her hands to her mouth. “Oh dear…”
“And I thought smugglers were cutthroat… They got nothing on these Manehattan businesspeople,” Dash whistled. “Rarity told me on the way back that Cotton Gin wasn’t going to honor the contract unless she sealed the deal back home, but no one ever saw the contract itself except Rarity and Gin. All anyone would have known is he contracted with her company over Polomare’s. Whoever was next in line would have probably stuck with Gin’s thinking, but looks like whoever they hired got sloppy. They found it out and now that they got this shadow hanging over them both Fabrichique and the Manehattan government canceled their deal. They ended up going with Rarity’s company instead.”
She leaned back a bit more. “Wish I could say this was a happy ending and justice was served, but all this really means is Rarity’s business broke Polomare’s little monopoly up. These three guys out there might be looking for a way to cause another accident.”
The woman whimpered, but Dash simply rolled her eyes at that.
“Relax. I’m here, and with these things in our hands we can’t lose. Just keeps me on edge is all. And we gotta hope they don’t try to break in and recognize anyone.” She off-hand gestured to the top article on the paper, which read that another country had agreed to extradition if the six individuals who were reported fighting the Tantabus in Griffonstone were located in their borders. “Looks like we got enough people trying to find us as-is.”
“I, um, think I’ll go ask Rarity about those carrots now…” Fluttershy finally said before slinking off. Her rabbit followed her, almost seeming to give a look that said “it’s about time”.
“Hey, ask if she has anymore cider while you’re gone, would ya’?” Dash shouted back before resuming napping.
Twilight tapped the pen on the table a few times, concentrating on the piece of paper a little longer. She absent-mindedly reached out and pet Spike, seated nearby, before reaching for her tea and taking a sip. Moistening her lip, she reached over and wrote a bit more on the paper, but a second later, she scratched it out, shaking her head, and wrote a correction. Yet after a moment more, she frowned and did it again; reverting it to the way it was. She nearly wrote the next part, but paused to think about it first. Finally, she reached down to finish…
“Hi Twilight!”
She nearly jumped up from the dining room table, and Spike himself bolted upright so quickly he banged his head on the bottom of it; earning a whine and a growl. Twilight herself looked up and nearly jumped again on seeing Pinkie’s face was now hovering right next to hers. She took a moment to stabilize herself before sighing in relief. “Oh…hi there… You startled me a bit…”
“Sorry, but I was just so super-duper excited to get to the kitchen this morning! Rarity has so many ingredients that are hard to get in Trottingham! I haven’t been able to bake with chocolate, in, like, forever!” She looked over the paper she was writing. “What’cha doin’?”
“Oh, this? I’m trying to remember as many of Celestia’s spells as I can.”
Pinkie let out an exaggerated gasp. “Oh no! Don’t tell me you forgot all your spells!”
“No, no! It’s not that. The thing is Celestia only taught me chaotic magic because that was the only kind I could cast. Celestia herself, though, could cast both chaotic and harmonious. I’m trying to remember which spells of the latter she did so I can try and widen Fluttershy and Rarity’s repertoire.” She sighed as she looked the paper over. “Right now I’ve only been able to show them a couple spells for basic healing. There’s a lot more than that which would be a big help.”
“Neat! Here’s a snack to help you think!”
Twilight leapt back again as Pinkie pushed an entire tray full of cupcakes in front of her.
“Try one of my chocolate-frosted, chocolate, chocolate-chip cupcakes!”
She sat there silently for a moment before she smiled apologetically. “Um, thank you, Pinkie but…I think it’s a bit early for cupcakes.”
Pinkie thought about that for a moment. “Oh…ok then!” She removed the tray and turned away. “Give me a couple minutes and you can try one of my chocolate, chocolate-chip muffins!”
With that, she happily skipped out of Rarity’s dining room and back for the kitchen. Twilight watched her go, before turning back to her paper. Even then, however, her thoughts were now distracted. She glanced back up to the kitchen, then back to her paper. She tapped the pen as something other than the spell she had been trying to remember dwelt on her mind.
She looked up a moment later on hearing the sound of the back door opening. She grimaced a little, as since they had holed up in Rarity’s house there had been very careful rules about what to do to keep a low profile and out of anyone’s sight; especially now that physical descriptions of them were being leaked to the papers. Nevertheless, after a moment she looked back down to her paper. She began to write a bit more.
A much louder sound, this one resembling an Anima Viri emerging, soon echoed down the hall. This caused her to look up again far more readily. Soon after, noises of a scuffle mixed in with it. This caused Spike to perk up. She rose from her chair, intending to see what was wrong.
Before she could, Pinkie, fully in her Rogue role and gleaming, popped her head out.
“Um, Twilight? We have just a teensy-weensy little problem in the kitchen.”
Quickly, the mage left her paper and pen behind. Spike fell in next to her as she rushed out and followed Pinkie back out of the dining room, down the hall, and into the kitchen.
Remarkably, there wasn’t much of a mess. Not one of Pinkie’s cupcakes had fallen off of the tray, and the kitchen was mostly intact save for the aftermath of her baking. However, there was one noticeable change.
A woman was wriggling furiously on the floor, bound and gagged with Rarity’s napkins and tablecloths hastily twirled into ropes. Her eyes had a mad, soulless look in them. One of her hands bore a symbol that blazed like a hot coal. Nearby was the remains of a broken glass bottle she had obviously been wielding as a weapon.
Pinkie stood to one side as she struggled to wiggle her way to the two of them even now. “Could you do your, um, bindy-seal thing?”
Twilight sighed tiredly. She stepped forward and squatted next to the woman, who struggled to loosen her gag in order to bite her. However, this was getting to be routine for her by now. In no time at all, she drew the symbol before slapping her palm against the woman’s forehead.
Her eyes glazed over as she stopped struggling. The symbol on her hand dimmed before she slumped to the ground unconscious.
Pinkie cheered before quickly dropping her Anima Viri and moving back to her cupcakes. Twilight didn’t look terribly relieved as she kept squatting next to the woman. “That’s the fourth one in three days… I was afraid having six of us together would act like a flame attracting moths.” She sighed. “I have no idea how we’re going to be able to get this one out of here either… It’s not like we can leave her for the milkman. Now I’m wishing I could remember Celestia’s post-hypnotic suggestions.”
“Aw, cheer up, Twilight! You know what makes me happy?”
Twilight leapt up again as she saw a cupcake-turned-muffin (courtesy of its frosting having been removed) offered to her.
“Chocolate, chocolate-chip muffins!”
Sighing, she finally shrugged and accepted it. As Pinkie bounced back to work on the others, however, she didn’t eat it. Instead she continued to look at her.
“Um, Pinkie?”
“Yeah, Twilight?”
“Good job on…disabling her so quickly.”
“Oh, tee-hee! It’s no problem! We used to have Nighttouched back home too. Big sister Maud showed me how to deal with them, so people who’ve gone all Burning-Hand-Crazy are no biggie!”
She went back to her work, but Twilight kept staring.
“Pinkie, um…this…might seem like a bit of an odd question, but…when’s the last time you’ve ever had a scrape?”
“Nine minutes ago!” she cheerfully answered. “You wouldn’t believe how hard I had to scrape to get a bit of the burnt chocolate off of Rarity’s pan. Why do you ask?”
She opened her mouth, but closed it again soon after. She turned back to the woman on the floor. “Uh…no reason. Forget I asked.”
“Ok…go!”
Rarity and Fluttershy both went to work at the same time. Either one had donned their respective Anima Viri and both raised their arms. Rarity had transmuted a common parasol back into her rapier, while Fluttershy, after much coaxing, had taken up an old bedpost to turn into a staff. Both of them proceeded to draw similar symbols on the air with the ends of their respective tools. While Rarity seemed to have a bit more confidence, both of them took a bit of time to do it to make sure it was right; especially when they tried to speak the words at the same time. It took Rarity about twenty seconds to finish hers while it took Fluttershy twenty-seven seconds for her own.
Nevertheless, both seemed to do the trick. Across the room in a pair of pots were some of Rarity’s flowers. Either one had a branch set on fire a few moments earlier that was still smoldering. However, on completing their respective symbols and speaking the word of command, a fair, whitish-green light illuminated either one. The branches began to regenerate soon after that.
Twilight, watching from one side, looked at their execution carefully until she saw the lights of either one dim. Following that she walked forward and inspected the results.
Not exactly what she had hoped for. Either branch had five leaves and a flower consumed in the fire. Rarity had managed to bring back three of the leaves, but Fluttershy had only managed a single one.
“Fluttershy, you need to be a bit more commanding in your incantations. As a Healer, you should have been able to regenerate the whole branch.”
“Oh…sorry,” she answered shyly. “I thought that I was speaking louder that time…”
Twilight grimaced, but didn’t bother arguing the point she had already made days ago. She simply backed away. “Just try again. See if you can get more back on the second go.”
Dash groaned from the wall she was leaning against nearby. “We’ve been watching you three practice these boring spells for days. How about letting the rest of us practice a bit?”
“Oh, I know why!” Pinkie chirped up from nearby. She pointed to one of the walls…or, rather, the lack thereof. Only a jagged outline where the plaster and wood had been remained. “It’s because after you threw a punch Rarity yelled something about saying she didn’t want these two spare rooms made into one!”
“Oh yeah…” Dash nervously recanted.
A knock went off on the door to the room. However, it wasn’t a “standard” knock, but rather to a beat and tune of a local musical. As a result, everyone remained at ease as the doorknob turned and swung open. A rather unhappy-looking Applejack entered, followed closely by an uncomfortable-looking Coco Pommel, bearing a folded newspaper under her arm, and Sassy Saddles.
“How’d it go?” Twilight asked.
“Well, we took care o’ the one who busted inta’ the kitchen this mornin’,” she half-sighed. “Turns out you fancy folks ship out your bulk laundry. We bundled her up with some work aprons, stuffed her in an unmarked sack, and threw her in with the rest of your tagged laundry. She’ll either come to or they’ll find her when she’s mixed in with the rest.”
“You don’t think anyone noticed?”
Applejack grimaced. “Sure hope not… Unless someone’s lookin’ fer her…”
“Like the last one we had to deal with…” Coco spoke up uncomfortably. “She actually had a picture that made it into the missing person’s part of the paper before she turned up…”
“And not to be the one to compound bad news, Rarity,” Sassy spoke up, “but tomorrow morning is when the new shift comes in for the first day of major production on the Manehattan uniforms. I’m afraid this room won’t be usable for your…shall we say…unusual exercises during daylight hours. We might be able to continue to keep everyone hidden away in your parent’s home, but I’m not sure how we’ll be able to explain any other mad people coming here.”
Rarity looked regretful, but nodded. “It’s quite alright. Both of you have already been an absolute godsend ever since I’ve returned. Not to mention I’m terribly grateful for everything you’ve done to adjust not only to…my unconventional ‘scarring’, but also to help the rest of these ladies.”
“And I’m very thankful to you too, Rarity,” Twilight spoke up. “This is the closest I’ve come to living in a real home in eight years. But that being said…” She sighed. “I don’t think we can stay here much longer.”
“Aw, really?” Pinkie spoke up unhappily. “And it was so nice having so much stuff to bake with…”
“I think we may have already overstayed, to be honest. The first three people might have been one thing, but by now all of the governments have to know at least something about people with Promethian Sigils. And now they’ve got a rash of people disappearing only to reappear a couple days later. They’re going to examine them and see that all of them have sigils of their own, and then they’ll try to find what they all have in common. They could find it’s all right here.” She turned to Rarity. “That doesn’t only ruin us; it could ruin your company too.”
“I’m afraid you have a good point with that, dear,” Rarity sighed, before turning back to her staff. “Ms. Saddles, I’m terribly afraid of overburdening you on this, but it looks as if I’ll have to leave the factory floor and expanding our clientele to you and Ms. Pommel of you for a while. I suppose I can try and spend the last bit of time here setting up our next line at least…”
Applejack frowned at the whole thing. “Any of y’all think maybe we’re goin’ ‘bout this the wrong way? Maybe instead of runnin’ and hidin’, we should be goin’ right up to your mayor or governor or whatever and let them know we were the ones who licked that Tantabus? Maybe we’d get some support.”
“Maybe even some medals on top of that,” Dash threw in. “I mean, we did save thousands of people’s lives and stopped the Light Eaters cold.”
Twilight rolled her eyes. “If by ‘cold’ you mean we barely managed to stop it from reaching the ocean and almost got killed doing that…”
“My point is,” Applejack broke back in, “I’ll bet everyone in the world wants us to be fightin’ the Nighttouched and Light Eaters right now, and they’d be more than happy to lend a hand. I know the Apples would.”
Twilight didn’t answer immediately. She gave Applejack a long glare. “Have you been keeping up on the newspapers since we got here?”
The farmer hesitated, then blanched. “Uh, usually in Appleloosa we got things by word o’ mouth… Couldn’t afford any of those fancy subscriptions, and they didn’t deliver out there anyway…”
Without looking away from her, Twilight spoke up. “Ms. Pommel?”
“Oh, um,” she sputtered, not expecting being addressed, “Yes, um, Ms. Sparkle?”
“You brought the evening edition, didn’t you?”
She glanced down to her side, remembering the newspaper tucked under her arm. “Oh…oh yes.”
“Would you mind reading just the headlines to everyone?”
Swallowing, she reluctantly pulled the paper up and unfolded it. She looked over the top for a moment then cleared her throat. “‘Manehattan Officials Encourage Local Citizens to Be On Lookout for Six Involved in Griffonstone Attack’.” She stopped afterward.
“Keep reading.”
“‘Trottingham Continues to Deny Involvement, Weapon Testing Rumors in Strikes on Appleloosa, Mount Aris’.” She looked uncomfortable at the next headline.
“Don’t stop.”
She took a deep breath. “‘Appleloosa Confirms Nine Violent Attacks Involving ‘Marked’ Individuals, Resulting in 13 Fatalities’. ‘Griffonstone and Appleloosa Pass Emergency Provision Calling for All ‘Marked’ Individuals to Be Temporarily Detained’. ‘Fillydelphia and Mount Aris Close Borders and Restrict All Travel’. ‘Dragonlord Ember Vows ‘Fiery Retribution’ on Trottingham in Wake of Accusations of Weapon Testing’. ‘Griffonstone Reports Shadow Over Grifftham City Not Leaving, Orders Evacuation in Wake of Follow-Up Nighttouched Attacks’.” She looked up. “Want me to go to the next page?”
“That’s fine.” It was clear her point had been made. Not only were Applejack and Rainbow Dash both looking increasingly uncomfortable at all of that, but the others in the room were too. “The reporters and news aren’t even mentioning the fact we killed the Tantabus anymore. Everyone’s too whipped up in a frenzy that people with Promethian Sigils even exist. Maybe some of them like the fact that we can kill Light Eaters, but a lot more of them are going to be worried that anyone with these sigils can go crazy and start attacking people in a heartbeat. And you can bet Sunset shooting up any place she could find people with Promethian Sigils wasn’t exactly doing us any favors.”
“It’s true, I’m afraid,” Sassy added with a regretful nod. “Over at the local newsstands and tea rooms, most people are focused on Trottingham and what they know. There’s even a few rumors that the whole thing was staged by Trottingham to show off their new weapons. Griffonstone is their tentative ally, after all…”
“Ooooh…so that’s why they let Sunset fly right in and fly right out, huh?” Pinkie suggested.
No one else was nearly as enthused. Applejack frowned, snatching her hat off and slamming on the ground. “Don’t that just beat all… Appleloosa on top of all that? And after Burnt Oak was on our side, too!”
Twilight slumped and sighed. “Don’t blame him. He’s one person. Who knows how many people Sunset attacked?”
Dash scowled and crossed her arms. “I’d like to say I’m surprised at all this, but seeing how everyone’s been at each other’s throats and I got to see it firsthand? It’s just business as usual…”
“What’s that old saying?” Rarity muttered. “Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t know? I’d almost swear they think we’re the bigger threat than the Tantabus…”
“Maybe I should have stayed in my basement…” Fluttershy muttered.
This, however, got Applejack to look up and pound her fist against the wall hard enough to cause everyone to look at her. “Damn it all, quit talkin’ like that! I don’t care if the government thinks we’re a bunch o’ Trottingham varmints! We still got this power and we still gotta use it!”
Rarity stared back a moment, but then took a deep breath and straightened further; dropping her Anima Viri at the same time. “Applejack is absolutely right. This may make things a bit more problematic, but it doesn’t change what we need to do. Greater Everfree is counting on us.”
“That’s right!” Pinkie excited chirped. “So let’s get out there and get to work! What’s our next move, Twilight?”
Twilight’s demeanor hadn’t improved. “That’s just it…I have no idea.”
Everyone turned to her; somewhat incredulous. “What?”
“What do you mean ‘no idea’?”
“Well, while we might be stronger fighting together, there’s still just six of us. And like that news report said, simply stopping the Light Eaters isn’t going to restore any of the areas they corrupted. And that’s assuming we could even kill all of them, which I’m not sure we can. Even assuming the Light Eaters are finite, that could take years. And as of right now, we’ve only seen some of the ‘worst’ Nighttouched. Those ‘parasprites’ and ‘timber wolves’…maybe those lion monsters too. If there’s things even worse than that in Greater Everfree, we’ll be torn apart before we can ever get to killing all the Light Eaters. Frankly, I don’t know where to go or what to do.” She frowned. “And I don’t really relish the idea of asking the six of you to start wandering around with me and Spike…”
The room was silent. Everyone looked around, from one person to another, but no one proposed anything else themselves, and none of them had any genuinely good ideas to risk trying.
Finally, Rarity exhaled. “Well, standing around here won’t do much… At the bare minimum, we should be making ready to leave for whenever we do decide on something.”
Applejack nodded. “I’m with her. If the authorities do end up breakin’ the door down ‘round here, we gotta be ready to leave on a moment’s notice.”
“And…I don’t think I want to be taking everyone with me if we’re going to be going into any more danger…” Fluttershy nervously added. “I think I’ll need to have them stay someplace while we go out and…you know, do what we need to. And I still have to make sure to come back to them from time to time.” She turned hopefully to Rarity. “I don’t suppose they could stay here a little longer, could they?”
“You mean, all of those birds…and rodents…and that bear and…?”
She cut herself off on seeing Fluttershy begin to look both disappointed and worried.
“I…I mean certainly! Of course! We’re all helping each other out, and…and…what are new friends for?”
Fluttershy smiled happily at that while Rarity looked away and wiped for her forehead.
Twilight sighed and began to stand. “I guess I better start trying to plan something out… In the meantime, I need to make sure there’s no trace of us ever being here.”
On hearing the door open up into the foyer, Applejack raised the brim on her hat. She spotted Dash wandering in, a wine bottle in her hand. She looked around a moment, spotting the farmer in her chair while Pinkie was peeking as closely as she dared at the windows. Shortly after the group had arrived, they had been closed in with the heavy curtains, but there were enough cracks in them that, late in the day as it was now with crowds thinning out, it was enough to risk looking in them and out.
She yanked the cork out of it and took a swig as she walked inside, glancing between the two of them. “So…” she spoke on lowering it, “where’s everyone else?”
Applejack frowned just a bit. “Twilight’s still frettin’ ‘bout where we should head next. She might be holdin’ on fer that Starlight gal, though. Hate ta’ say it, but she seems ta’ know ‘bout as much about what to do next as we do. Rarity’s gettin’ her things together and Fluttershy’s tryin’ to tend to her critters.”
“How ‘bout you?”
She looked into her lap and frowned more. “Sore ‘bout how I still can’t get ahold of my family…and how all they know ‘bout me is what’s in those damn papers…” She looked up and raised an eyebrow. “Shouldn’t you be gettin’ yer things together ‘stead of gettin’ sauced on Rarity’s dime?”
Dash snickered as she took another swig. “Technically, she owes me twenty thousand. I’m really cutting her a break just helping myself to her glorified grape juice. And I got all I need on my back. Besides, what about you two?”
Applejack hoisted up her hammer. “Got what I need right here.”
“The hammer again? Really?”
“And just what’s wrong with a hammer?”
Dash shrugged as she plopped into one of the foyer chairs nearby. “I dunno… It’s just you can make up any melee weapon you can think of with your Animal Very or whatever these things are. Why not a sword or something?”
“I’m perfectly happy with a hammer, thank you. You make a sword if ya’ want it so bad.”
Dash snorted. “Even if I wanted more than my fists, I don’t think I can. That ‘Disciple’ role Twilight talked about is for people who are purely physical. Suits me ok, but…”
Seeing her trail off, Applejack looked up a bit. “But what?”
“Nothing. Just for a moment, I thought it’d be nice to have a little something from back in the Wonderbolts. But then?” She smirked as she took another long swig. It took her twice as long to drink this time, and twice as long to swallow. She exhaled as she leaned back.
“Then I remembered I wouldn’t be able to stand the sight of myself in one.”
The farmer’s formerly scolding look became uneasy. She glanced away. “Got somethin’ yer not too proud of?”
“I think they call it ‘survivor guilt’… Whatever… Sucks either way…”
Applejack didn’t look up. “Reckon we all got somethin’ we ain’t too proud of…”
Dash turned to her when she said that, but before she could ask more Applejack looked up. “What ‘bout you, Pinkie Pie? Ain’t ya’ got anything ta’ get ready?”
“Nope!” she cheerfully called back. “I was just wondering if there were any Gaiatian Temples around here I could say a prayer at before we left!”
Dash didn’t notice Applejack give a start when she heard that. She was too busy chuckling. “You want a Gaiatian Temple? Heh…try about four hundred miles east. You might find one that hasn’t been burned down.”
“Yer a Gaiatian, Pinkie?” Applejack asked, genuinely sounding surprised.
“Yup! The whole Pie family is! I was hoping that big temple-like building over there was one.”
“Oh, you mean the old Harmonium Abbey?”
Hearing the sound of Rarity’s voice caused all three to look up. At the top of the stairs, Rarity was standing; arms still full of clothes but looking down on the three. She motioned her head outward.
“I’m pretty sure there’s nothing in there that a Gaiatian would find aesthetically pleasing even if it were still open, but that abbey shut down years ago. Seven, if I’m not mistaken.”
“Wait…shut down?” Applejack spoke up, even as Rarity turned to go to an adjoining room and keep packing. “Why would it’ve shut down?”
Dash snickered a bit as she finished taking her latest swig. “Don’t know how things are in your neck of Appleloosa, Applejack, but ‘round here faith is a little hard to come by. People tend to lose their religion after they get invaded by a bunch of living nightmares and bloodthirsty, possessed animals that don’t seem to care how often you say your prayers before bedtime, y’know.”
Applejack frowned again. “Well…I’ll be the first ta’ admit I haven’t been in quite a while, but granny and her brothers and sisters always head out sharp at dawn at the end of the week. So do a lot of folks ‘round where I live. You’d think right now people would knuckle down on hope for help from up above more than ever.”
Dash snickered again, more bitterly, as she took another swig. “Yeah…seeing someone get shot to death while they’re still praying for protection kind of makes an atheist out of a lot of us folks who didn’t go to Weekstart School…”
Hearing that actually made Applejack stiffen and rise in her seat. She might have said something more, except a knock on the door interrupted her.
The three went rigid. The knock was totally normal…not the designated knock they had agreed on.
None of the three made a sound. Even Pinkie covered her mouth. Dash and Applejack looked at each other and nodded. Soon after, both of them sprang up and crept over to the door. Applejack took the side with the hinges while leaving Dash to take the side with the opening. Pinkie pulled back and put herself against the wall while Dash readied herself and nodded.
Applejack leaned over and grasped the handle. She turned and swung it open just enough for a person to pass through. Immediately, Dash snapped out, seized whoever it was by their lapels, and yanked them in. Applejack quickly slammed the door shut again as Dash threw the individual to the floor.
Papers, books, and photos flew everywhere as the person in question cried in a mixture of shock and pain. Dash quickly went over her and readied a fist while Applejack moved in behind and barricaded the door with her body. Pinkie herself popped off the wall and moved forward, only to see who it was.
“Oh… Hi, Starlight Glimmer!”
Dash nearly slugged her when she stopped herself. Stunned, baffled, and eyes spinning, Starlight lay there utterly dumbfounded. She got her wits back only to cringe. “It’s me! It’s me!”
The Huntsman groaned and pulled her arm back. “Ugh… Why didn’t you do the special knock?”
Starlight’s face slumped. “Maybe I would have if I had known you came up with a special knock… But forget that right now. Is everyone here?”
“Well, yeah,” Dash answered as she got off of her. As she stood to one side, Applejack grimaced before pulling off the door and reaching down to offer Starlight a hand. “Since we’re wanted, it’s not like we can just go off to any local cafes…”
“Although we were plannin’ on headin’ out as soon as we could figure out where to go next,” Applejack threw in. “Problem is, none of us got a clue to where.”
“I do,” she readily answered. “Get everyone together. I’ve got loads to tell you.”
In less than ten minutes, everyone was gathered in Rarity’s dining room. Not only because it offered a nice spot away from any windows but because it had a large table that everyone could sit at. All six women were there, along with Spike at Twilight’s side and Angel in Fluttershy’s lap. Sassy and Coco had already gone home for the evening, but rather than call them back Rarity elected to relay them the condensed version. Starlight herself was still finishing turning on all the gaslights when she began.
“You all remember how I told you that we only found a few scraps here and there, right? Well, most of those scraps seemed like they weren’t any use to us because our thinking about them was all wrong. Tell me, where do most people think the Light Eaters came from?”
Twilight shrugged. “Ghosts and spirits?”
“Natural cosmic phenomena?” Rarity suggested.
“Outer space?” Dash suggested, earning a look from Fluttershy. “What? Some novelist over in Fillydelphia wrote a book about it.”
“Beneath the bed! Ooooo!” Pinkie chanted in an exaggerated voice, like she was telling a scary story.
Starlight winced a little. “Uh…well, yes. The official scientific consensus was that this was some sort of astral phenomena or effect, but the most widespread opinion was that these things were somehow some sort of supernatural creatures or even from the underworld here to enact the apocalypse. And to be honest? For lack of any evidence, I was forced to think the same way for the longest time.”
She approached the table, pulled out a chair, and sat down. The materials she brought were collected and arranged in front of her, and she immediately looked to the nearest one of the six: Twilight.
“That all changed when I met you. I saw what you could do with those symbols…those…what did you call them again?”
“Promethian Sigils.”
“Promethian Sigils! Whatever power they give you, they let you kill Light Eaters. Not just with that magic you’re using. You’re immune to corruption when you use those spirits you have in there, and you can physically interact with them. And all of that got me to think one thing…”
She leaned in a bit closer; her voice lowering.
“What if…what was causing all of this…the night, the shadow, the Light Eaters, the corruption, and even all the Nighttouched…wasn’t a demon or god or phenomenon but an actual person? Specifically, a person who has the same power as all of you?”
The six were silent, but gave Starlight a puzzled look. They glanced between each other while Twilight herself stared back at her. Before she could venture a word, Starlight shifted weight and resumed.
“Do you know what really got me interested in all of this?” Her voice was quieter now, even somber. “I had a friend named Sunburst who worked in Equestria. Right in the Royal Palace of Canterlot itself. He did clerical work…scholarly stuff. Always spent his time organizing the books and helping keep the materials categorized. He’d be gone for two weeks at a time, come back and stay at the house we were renting for a few days, then head back. He loved his job. He always was excited to get out there, especially when he could bring something home. He’d never say a word of what was inside any of the books though. Not a thing. He always said he wasn’t allowed and that other people couldn’t know.”
Twilight looked a bit more uncomfortable on hearing that. Starlight took a deep breath.
“Our house was in one of the surrounding smaller countries that got eaten up by the Light Eaters in the first week. The night of the Lunar Fall…the exact night…we get the message that something’s happening in the interior. The international conference has been attacked. There’s a big shadow falling over it and monsters are coming out of it and killing everyone. Immediately he packs up a few things, gets dressed, and heads out. I tried to stop him but he said he had to go. Like it was the most important thing in the world. He heads in with the first military unit Griffonstone sends in and…”
She hesitated a moment, clearly uncomfortable.
“…and that’s the last time I ever see him. In two days time the first of the Nighttouched arrived. My mom…she doesn’t make it past the first attack, and me and the rest of the family move out to Griffonstone before the Light Eaters arrive and finish the job. Three days later, the Nighttouched are finally thinned out enough to where what’s left of people are being pulled out along with some survivors. In the tent dad and I are staying in, I hear someone shouting for Starlight Glimmer. I go out, and there’s a field nurse next to a man who’s almost been bitten in half. She tells me before he lost consciousness that there was a scholar from Canterlot who didn’t survive the last attack…”
She again stopped; this time needing a moment to take a few breaths to steady herself. She wiped at both of her eyes before she could continue.
“Sorry… He said that before…before…before you-know-what, he threw this book in his hands and told him to get it to Starlight Glimmer. She gives it to me and, well…here it is.”
She put her hand on top of the book she had placed on the table. Everyone looked at it. The lettering on top was in not only a vastly different language than the newspaper but in a different script as well. However, the image on the front of it was of a rather fanciful, medieval scene full of laughing children, animals, and a minstrel leading them on a parade.
“I couldn’t read a single word from it. I tried flipping through it but…it looked like it was a nursery book. All it had were big fanciful cartoonish characters and what I guessed were little stories next to them. I figured Sunburst had grabbed the wrong book and that this was nothing. I tried to look for any notes he might have given me for clues just in case, and all I ever found was a scrap of paper on the inside cover with his handwriting.”
She opened up the cover at that point, showing the scrap of paper was still there. Twilight leaned in and looked over it. As she saw the two words, she said them aloud to the room.
“‘Nightmare Moon’.”
It was odd. Even saying those words seemed to make the room a little darker and cooler. Everyone thought they imagined it, but Fluttershy clearly trembled.
Starlight shut the cover again. “I figured that was what the people there called the Lunar Fall before it happened, and I didn’t think anything else of it. Everyone I took the book to couldn’t read it. It looked like no one who was able to read this script survived the Lunar Fall, but to be honest I didn’t really bother looking. What good would some nursery rhymes do?
“Ever since then, I tried looking for other clues. Like I said, most of what I found was nothing. Nothing of any use to anyone, at any rate. There was, however, one ‘gem’ I happened to be lucky enough to come across. A couple years back I was touring secondhand stores in Fillydelphia. Specifically, I was looking for cameras.”
“Cameras?” Twilight echoed back.
“There’s never been a recorded picture of the Lunar Fall from within Equestria. It all happened so fast they assumed anyone who got any pictures or evidence died there and now the footage was lost. But I held onto the hope that maybe, just maybe, this happened at the site of the Continental Summit. Because if it did, there had to be photographers both professional and amateur around there. And if there was, there was the slim chance that they not only got a picture but tried to flee with their cameras. They might not have made it out themselves, but what if a looter came across them when they died in a field hospital and grabbed their camera and pawned it off? There had to be thousands of those running around out there, right? And what if those cameras still had undeveloped film?”
She smiled a bit.
“Turns out, after four years and a lot of patience, I was right.”
She drew out a picture from a stack and pushed it to the center of the table. Everyone looked to it, and this time everyone felt a cold chill run down their backs.
Based on the edges of the picture, it had to be from a mountainside or even mountaintop. The surrounding hills and valleys were accentuated in it. However, what truly caught their attention was a towering spire of raw darkness forming a black streak just off center of the photograph. It was like a fire that was made of ebony blackness; rising up and staining everything around it.
“This picture, near as I can figure, was taken right at the Castle of the Two Sisters. That black stuff is rising right out from where it once stood. However, I want to direct your attention to this…”
She reached over and tapped near the top of the rising black flames. Twilight looked closer, but didn’t see anything. After leaning in a bit closer, however, she noticed one thing. A speck of some sort was on the photograph. It could easily have simply been shoddy or dirty film, but Starlight was indicating to it.
“I took a chance after meeting you and blew it up,” she explained as she reached for another picture. “The resolution got pretty bad. This was the best I could get.”
She shifted another photo and put it on top of the first.
Sure enough, it was mostly a blur, and the speck still looked like mostly a speck…but a very large and detailed one compared to most shoddy film. On staring long enough, it actually began to look like something.
Something that might be vaguely human shaped…only…
Twilight’s hand went out and ran along it. “Wings…” she indicated on one part of it, then moved it over. “And a horn…a spired horn… Just like the Tantabus…”
“Now I don’t want to turn this into some sort of ‘ink blot test’,” Starlight went on as she reached for another set of photos, “but there’s more. You remember the scope and camera I had on top of the Steel Lion, right? As we were headed into the city, I snapped as many pictures as I could of the Tantabus and the attack.”
She began to set them on the table. While the shots were more than a little distant, they managed to get a view of the part of the city descending to the ocean while the smog had been lifting. As a result, although the quality on some of them was poor, they could make out the two-limbed body of the Tantabus struggling to push itself back into its darkness. One shot showed the gash that Rainbow Dash and Applejack opened in the side of it. Another showed it pulling back when Rarity aimed sunlight onto it, and still another showed the sunbeams coming down.
“Again, I got really lucky. Remember when it compressed on itself right before it burst?”
She passed out one last picture.
“This picture is the closest I could get to right before it exploded. I went ahead and enlarged that one too.”
She slid the picture over and Twilight’s eyes widened a little.
She had assumed, along with the rest of them, that the Tantabus had just crumpled into a ball before erupting. Yet even when it shrank there was a form on it. It was a bit vague, but it still distinctly had wings and a head region with a spired horn. Only what was below it was twisted and misshapen. Almost like it was humanoid instead of equine…
And glancing at the enlarged speck on the other picture, there was no mistaking the similarity.
Starlight let it sink in for a moment before she reached out and tapped the cover of her book. “I was thinking, if you were from Equestria or at least having lived there, that maybe you could read this. I flipped through it again, really looking at the pictures this time, and I hoped that maybe you could tell me what one page in particular says.”
She dipped her fingers into the cover and opened it up; this time to a marked page. She flipped it around and showed the group.
The picture alone was enough to cause a few small noises. While it was old and drawn in a somewhat exaggerated and child-appropriate manner, there was no mistake as to its nature. It was of a fearsome, dark, and even evil-looking armored woman surrounded by stars and night with pale green serpentine eyes and long sharp teeth. She had two large wings and a helmet with a spired horn.
Everyone looked to Twilight at that. She slowly reached out to bring the book over to where she sat. She let it sit in front of her as she stared at the image and the text. After a time, she moistened her lips.
“Can you read it?”
“…Yes. Celestia showed me how to interpret these.”
“What’s it say?” Dash asked.
She swallowed.
“‘Nightmare Moon, the Harbinger of Death. A bearer of night, fear, terror, murder, and doom, she is the god of darkness and mystery. Her coming…’”
She trailed a moment, stiffening.
“‘…her coming is meant to signal the end of the world.’”
The room was silent. Even Starlight was stunned. She looked at the picture in the book with mouth hung open.
“Does that mean…Sunburst was trying to tell me who was responsible for this? This…Nightmare Moon?”
Rarity suddenly let out a laugh, or at least attempted to. It was laced with anxiety. “Oh, heh-heh… Certainly not. That…that book is just a bunch of fairy tales, correct?”
Twilight didn’t answer. She reached out and turned a few pages. She paused on one, and then turned the tome out to the others. While it was in color, it looked like the insect-like Nighttouched that had attacked Fort Chestnut.
“There’s a parasprite.”
Applejack swallowed. Twilight pulled back and flipped through a few more pages before she held it out again. This time, it was a wolf made of sticks and logs. “There’s one of those timberwolves.”
Fluttershy began to whine as well. Twilight pulled back one more time before she finally frowned on another page. She held it out, showing a picture of the lion with the scorpion tail.
“And there’s those big cat monsters. It calls them ‘manticores’.”
“This…this is a joke, right?” Dash suddenly spoke up, nervously chuckling. “I mean…this is crazy. It’s something out of a storybook, for crying out loud. There’s no such thing as god or gods…” She hesitated, looking around the table. “I mean…right? Not in this day and age.”
Starlight winced. “Some of what you six did back in Griffonstone? Most people probably would have said that was impossible too. I’m one of them. And that Sunset person did even more with two of those sigils. Looking at your hands, I’d say you’d have room for six.” She turned to Twilight. “I don’t suppose you know what someone could do if they had all six, do you?”
Again, all eyes went to Twilight. She turned her eyes back down to the book. She flipped the pages over, going back to the one with Nightmare Moon. Even the eyes of that one seemed to stand out.
“Celestia never used all of hers at once, although…” she took a deep breath, “I honestly thought she would be like a god if she did. And she taught me that advanced Casters with enough mana and power can perform extremely powerful spells well beyond what she could teach me. Some can create familiars by putting a bit of their own spirits into other animals. Some of them can even take part of themselves and split it off into something else…an independent entity. She told me they refer to those pieces of themselves as…their ‘shadow’.”
The group exchanged glances; their own looks growing more fearful in the wake of this news.
“I just…never saw any of it demonstrated,” Twilight went on, “and I never imagined it would be something this big. But if someone could pull off those spells…and they had so much power that the truly could act like they were a god…then…then it might just be possible.”
“Wait, wait…” Pinkie spoke up. “so this means there’s either a big scary dark god out there who’s making all this…or there’s someone out there even stronger than Sunset Shimmer who’s gone crazy and is pretending to be her and doing all this?” She thought for a moment. “Um…now that I think about it, is either one really better than the other?”
“I highly doubt it…” Rarity muttered uneasily. “And to think I was so fearful at the prospect of that woman from Trottingham…”
“And I thought yer magic was the bee’s knees,” Applejack added worriedly. She stared at the table. “Maybe a real god comin’ ta’ end the world…”
“Oh, cheer up, Applejack!” Pinkie immediately reassured. “There’s no god but Gaia!”
Dash rolled her eyes. “Great…it’s just a homicidal maniac with enough power to destroy the world. At least we know why the Nighttouched and Light Eaters started ‘acting smart’…”
“Whoever or whatever it is, there’s a good chance it’s still at the ruins of the Castle of the Two Sisters,” Starlight threw in. “Everything seems to have radiated from there. Most of the world’s scientists agree on that. And it would make sense if an actual conscious entity was behind this…”
“What…what do we do?” Fluttershy timidly asked.
She looked around, but no one answered. Everyone had their resolve a little shaken now. The truth was none of them could conclusively say what the nature of this entity was; only that it existed now. Twilight herself stared at the image in the book without speaking for a full minute.
When she looked up, her face was firmer, and that was enough to get everyone to look at her.
“We find a way into Equestria, we get to the Castle of the Two Sisters, we defeat Nightmare Moon, and we save Greater Everfree.”
Sunset continued to act as she normally did prior to three days ago when she had first arrived and settled into Canterlot Castle. If anything, she seemed to be more withdrawn and afraid than normal. She appeared to be trying to sink into the large, cushioned, high-backed armchair in Celestia’s office, and had tucked her head in so much that she could barely see the headmistress over the lip of her desk.
At least, she couldn’t when the woman was seated. She had gotten up at the moment to fetch a three-tiered tray and set it in between them. She went on from there to set up some teacups and a kettle as well. Only once she had placed everything from the cart the servant had pushed in did she walk around and sit across from her. She purposely pulled her chair in closer so she could see the girl.
“Have you ever had tea before, Sunset?”
She shook her head.
“I know there isn’t much tea time in Hoofheim, but they have it all the time in Trottingham. Equestria adopted the tradition…or,” she snickered, “my family did. Here, let me get you set up. I know you haven’t had any before, so I’m starting you off on a very basic one. Easy Sunset. See? It even has your name.”
Her voice was so warm and friendly that even the normally-withdrawn Sunset smiled for a moment. Celestia poured, then leaned over and set the cup and saucer in front of her. “Take a sip.”
After a moment of hesitation, Sunset leaned forward and tentatively reached for the teacup. She seemed afraid to touch it, both due to natural anxiety as well as fear of touching something so fancy and fragile to possibly break it. Finally, she grasped the cup, holding it like a glass rather than by the handle, and brought it to her lips. She glanced at Celestia one more time, who nodded encouragingly, before sipping.
She made a small face.
“It takes a bit of getting used to. Would some sugar help?”
She was still again for a moment but then nodded. Her attention was soon aroused as Celestia went into a sugar bowl, especially at the preformed cubes. She was fascinated by them as the woman dropped one in her cup with a set of tongs. “Stir that up and take another sip. If it’s still not good, I’ll add another.”
Sunset, a bit more readily, did as was told with the small teaspoon before she brought the cup forward and sipped it. As she did, Celestia gestured to the tray.
“We’ll have a little something to eat too. I usually start at the bottom and work my way up. We’ll always have some scones with jam and butter, and then follow up with some small sandwiches. A little something sweet is on top but…” She smiled again. “That’ll be a little surprise. At least until you’re old enough to look over the top.”
Her wordplay caused Sunset to sit up more out of her chair in an effort to see the top. Unfortunately, the eight-year-old was far too short.
“What would you like to start with?”
“What do you start with?” she asked after a moment; the first thing she had said since being called to the office.
“Well, the scones are on the bottom, so I start with those.”
“I’ll have one.”
Celestia nodded and served her up one, leading her to marvel a bit at the size, but also the nature. It was unlike any bread roll or biscuit she had ever seen. “Would you like me to butter and jam it for you, or would you like to?”
She thought for a moment. “I’ll do it.”
“Alright. I think that’s best anyway. Some folks like to butter and jam each bite, some like to do entire halves at once…but only everyone knows what’s best for them.”
Sunset put down her teacup afterward. She nearly reached for her own butter knife as the older woman began to cut into her own scone. She actually had a pat of butter on her knife and began to use it before the child spoke up again. “Headmistress Celestia?”
“Yes dear?”
“Am I in trouble?”
She smiled reassuringly at her. “Not at all, Sunset. This is just a time for us to get together. Just the two of us. While we’re in here having tea, I’m not the headmistress. I’m just your friend. You can tell me anything on how you’re feeling or how you’re doing. How have you been? Are you liking your new room?”
Sunset paused. She leaned back in the chair. She resumed much of her former shyness, but she didn’t sink into the cushion. “It’s alright.”
Celestia set her scone and knife down. “Are you sure?”
Sunset looked down at her lap, but didn’t answer.
“It’s not uncomfortable, is it?”
After a moment she shook her head.
“It’s not too hard for you to get around in, is it?”
She shook her head again.
“But it’s new and different, isn’t it?”
A long pause before she nodded.
“Are you missing home at all?”
Sunset shook her head, far more readily this time.
“Really? You don’t feel just a bit lonesome?”
She shook her head again. “The rest of my brothers and sisters were always busy. Mom and dad never talked to me except at supper…”
Celestia showed some regret at that. She pushed her plate aside to lean in closer.
“Are you angry at your family, Sunset?”
The girl looked up. It seemed like she had never been asked that question before, and it surprised her a little. However, after a moment she bowed her head again. “No.”
“Do they make you feel sad?”
She shook her head.
“How do you feel about them?”
She was quiet for a very long time, not due to shyness but thinking this over.
“I feel…the same.”
“The same?”
“The same as with everyone else. They act just like everyone else around me.”
This made Celestia look more regretful yet. Her own expression fell. “I’m sorry, Sunset.”
The girl looked up, confused. “Sorry about what?”
“You’ll understand when you’re older. For right now, though, I want you to know something. I’ll always be here to listen to you.”
“Listen to me?”
She nodded. “You’ve wanted to say things before to your family and none of them wanted to listen, haven’t you?”
The child winced. Her hands grasped the folds of her dress and clutched them.
“Sunset, you can always feel free to come to me with anything. I’ll always have time for you. And if I don’t have time, I’ll make time. If it’s important to you then it’s important to me. I want you to know that and believe it. If you need any time or a favor, please never hesitate to come to me.”
Sunset stared at Celestia as she said all this, but her face softened. The expression was uncertain and puzzled…or even amazed. As if this was the first time she had ever heard someone say this sort of thing to her. And seeing the sincerity on the headmistress’ face only left her more astonished. However, it also seemed to set a warmth off in her. She was rising in her chair and slowly looking less nervous.
Smiling again, Celestia finally got up to reach over the desk. She put her hand on top of Sunset’s comfortingly.
“You can always trust me, Sunset. Because I’m your friend…and that’s what a real friend is.”
The Nighttouched and Light Eaters surrounding the shipyard hadn’t diminished in the least over the past few days. Far from it. The number had tripled, and more fantastic and grotesque ones had emerged from the gloom in that time. Many of them even Sunset had never seen before and, in all honesty, the sheer number combined with the fact that there had been a giant one not too long ago made even her begin to doubt the efficacy of the Morning Glories.
That, however, was all the more reason she scheduled the meeting on the top deck of the Rising Sun. So that all talk could happen in full view and exposure to the eternal night.
Sunset commended the Regent on her choice of ships. Unlike the more all-purpose Rising Sun, this ship had been selected right from the front lines of the Eastern Front. The Victorious Path, if she wasn’t mistaken—the Regent’s favorite. It wasn’t the favorite of the admiral by any means, but no doubt that was why he had spared it. And it was still outfitted with twice as many guns and far more armor than her own vessel. Worse yet was that every last musketeer stood at the ready on deck and it didn’t fly with the normal colors of being at peace. It was also flanked by two support skiffs, both with two heavy artillery guns.
Nevertheless, Sunset only smirked as she watched them slowly land. The fact that it was such a rough one made it clear that the pilot was terrified of aerial docking in the darkness of Equestria. When they finally did land and dismount, she could see the visible hesitation as well as how they looked around when they came over onto her own deck.
Only now, after making them wait in that darkness for three minutes, Sunset, flanked only by Snips and Snails, emerged from below and went out to meet the representative. It was a bit hard to pick her out from the twenty armed Trottingham soldiers that were part of her retinue, but she identified her in the ship gaslights while still far off.
“Well, well, if it isn’t Lady Sugarcoat herself,” she greeted. “I must really have the Regent’s attention if she pulled you away from the Eastern Front. I figured the admiral would have had you shacking up with him by now.”
Sugarcoat, her face almost perpetually in “poker” mode, crossed her arms. “The admiral has been delegating most of his authority to his new force captain, but that’s not what we’re here to talk about. You are to return to Trottingham immediately and to report to Regent Cinch as soon as you arrive.”
“Is that so?” she smugly retorted, crossing her arms. “Well, you can run on back to Regent Cinch and tell her I still haven’t gotten her what she sent me out for, so I’ll be needing to stay in the field a bit longer. Just remind her that I warned her about all this. She’ll know what I’m talking about.”
Sugarcoat didn’t budge. “This is non-negotiable. The Regent was very specific about that point.”
“Oh she was, was she? I don’t suppose she happened to mention what I’m doing out here for her, did she? Or at least gave an indication of how important it was?”
“She said that you might say something like that. She told me to tell you that getting Appleloosa accusing Trottingham of invasion, causing 37 international complaints, forcing her to spend two days trying to negotiate to keep a war from breaking out, agitating any potential military alliance with Griffonstone, getting dignitaries from four different countries to accuse her of illegal weapon testing treaty violations, keeping her up for a weekend trying to field demands for answers as to what Trottingham knows about the people with symbols, stirring up the Dragonlands to renew their offensive during a cease-fire, and not leaving her a single new weapon while robbing her of three of her ships outfitted with Morning Glories is a bit more important.”
Sunset’s smile had faded a little. She almost snorted at Sugarcoat’s signature prattling off of facts without missing a beat or pausing for air. Nevertheless, she remained calm and sighed, removing one of her crossed arms and rubbing it against her shoulder.
“Fair enough points. Though if the Regent really wanted me back unconditionally, I don’t think she would have bothered with sending a member of her council. She would have just sent the guns. Still…I can see her side.”
She rolled her eyes and let out a long sigh.
“Unfortunately she’s right. A lot of this operation has gone, oh…south would be a good word to use. And by now I really hoped to be done with it.” She glanced back to Sugarcoat. “I wouldn’t say you could lay most of the blame on me, however. There were other factors involved. And other people, for that matter. Things could have gone much smoother if not for them, but it seems that trusted individuals are a hard thing to come by nowadays…”
Sugarcoat leveled her stare at her. “Why are you telling me all this?”
“Well, as I said, I don’t think if the Regent wanted me back unconditionally she would have sent a representative. It sounds to me like what she really wants is the real ones responsible, and wants me to help out in picking them. If nothing else, I figure they would give something to throw to the wolves, so to speak. Maybe keep them from barking until I’m done with my task?”
Sugarcoat’s eyes narrowed. “And what are you thinking of doing if I decide to take you back whether you like it or not?”
Sunset look faux-shocked, even hurt. “Why…how could you suggest such a thing! I’m only doing my best to help Regent Cinch in this trying time, and in the wake of all this awful mess. I would never be trying to provoke a fight anywhere in Greater Everfree! Never in Trottingham, never over any other country, and certainly never in Equestria.”
She turned and gestured out there. “Why, just look at all those Nighttouched and Light Eaters. All chomping at the bit. All eager to get their hands, claws, teeth, or whatever on us. If it wasn’t for these Morning Glories, we’d already be in pieces ten times over since you arrived.”
She glanced back to Sugarcoat and her group. The bureaucrat managed to keep a straight face, but she could see the soldiers beginning to squirm and shift where they stood.
“Oh…on that note, I do hope I didn’t neglect anything when I taught the engineers how to use those devices. I’d hate to have left out a way that any hostile could use to disable them on another airship and leave it and its crew out like a buffet.”
The soldiers were very uncomfortable now. Sugarcoat still showed nothing, but she didn’t need to. The point had been made. She took a deep breath instead.
“What did you have in mind?”
“Oh, something that’s been on it for quite a while.”
The first officer pulled out her pocketwatch again as she walked along. It was only one minute until quarter past the hour; the exact time the captain had told her to meet with her on the upper deck. There was no such thing as a “casual order” when it came from a captain, and even less for Sunset. And in light of recent events she was making sure that she followed the order to the letter.
She climbed the access ladder up to the upper deck and turned down the corridor. Just ahead and around the corner was the exit hatch to the upper deck. In moment she rounded it and slowed almost to a stop.
The royal guard was there; back from his latest special assignment. However, he wasn’t taking his normal spot. Instead he was leaning against the wall right next to the outer hatch, arms crossed and spear balanced against his chest.
She stared at him as she approached more slowly. He glanced up as she neared, but then simply looked away.
In spite of the fact she normally stayed quiet, something in her prompted to ask a question. “Aren’t you supposed to report to the captain?”
“At twenty past. On the dot. She was very explicit.”
The first officer felt a little uneasy at the time, but looked away from him without a word. She reached the hatch soon after and placed her hand on it. She gave one last look to her watch, seeing the final few seconds tick down, before she put it away and gave the handle a turn. She swung it open wide and stepped out.
She was just in time to see a chorus of gunfire rip into four crew members of the Endeavor.
She froze after barely clearing the doorway. A muted gasp went out as her mouth involuntarily hung open. Her mind took a moment to take in the scene as the bodies of the crew finished falling. The entire bridge of the Rising Sun was on deck now, standing to one side, nervously watching the execution. A squad of Trottingham soldiers were finishing stowing their rifles, standing alongside the Minister of Defense. Snips and Snails were to another side, helmets off but grinning.
And as for the captain herself, she stood before them, arms crossed, and smiling slyly at the whole thing.
That lasted only a moment before she turned her head. For a moment, those confident, smug eyes met hers. Then, all at once, they broke into innocence and obliviousness. She uncrossed her arms and gestured.
“Oh, there she is, Lady Sugarcoat. I’ll leave you to do your duty.”
The first officer stammered. She was still trying to process what was going on when several of the Trottingham soldiers turned and marched to her. In seconds, they were flanking her on both sides. Two of them reached out and grasped her by the upper arms, and before she knew it she was being pulled out onto the deck. Seeing her rapidly being brought before the cold face of Sugarcoat and the still-bleeding bodies, she stammered. “I-I-I…what’s…what’s going…?”
“Commander Wallflower Blush?”
Sugarcoat’s unsympathetic attention directed her head forward. “Y…yes, what’s-”
“Commander, you are under arrest for conspiracy, mutiny, disobeying a direct order from a superior officer, violating rules of warfare, breach of international treaty, and willful and intentional endangerment of civilians.”
Her jaw dropped in shock. “How…? How can you possibly charge me with…with…?”
“So sorry, commander.”
The voice, not sounding terribly sorry, came from Sunset. She turned to her as she shrugged and walked forward.
“Sorry that I put so much trust in you to carry out my orders,” she sighed wearily. “Who would have known that you would end up committing so much insubordination? Creating such a mess? Using those four…” She gestured to the remains of the officers “…to fire on escapees on a riverboat? International tensions? And civilians to boot.”
Her eyes bulged; finally realizing what was going on. She spun back to the minister. “I didn’t do any of that! It wasn’t me! It was the captain! She’s the one who gave all the orders! I just carried them out!”
“Oh really?” Sunset coolly answered, still walking forward. She reached into her jacket, and emerged with a folded-up piece of paper. On looking at it the first officer went rigid. Sunset passed it over to Sugarcoat soon after. The minister paused momentarily before opening it up and looking over it.
“Then why, oh why, would you have attempted to bribe eight officers to stage a formal mutiny against me?”
The first officer paled. Her mouth slowly aped the word: “bribe”.
“I don’t know why you would have been so silly as to write out the document requesting the money from your own payroll, though, and leave it where anyone could pick it up. Perhaps you’re the sort of person who doesn’t read the fine print on something before signing it.” She grinned so wide she flashed her teeth.
Sugarcoat finished looking over the document and folded it up. “It’s all fairly clear cut. Enough to place an arrest.” She gestured forward to her gangplank. “Take her into custody and place her in the brig. She can state her defense to the Regent.”
“Along with everyone else,” Sunset threw in. “I imagine a lot of people want to hold someone accountable.”
The first officer was left immobilized in shock as the soldiers quickly went about getting out a set of irons and fastening them behind her back. She kept glancing to the document as Sugarcoat put it away, the dead officers, Sunset’s smug look, and her own sudden predicament. It wasn’t until she was bound that she came out of it. For a moment, a look of anger filled her eyes. Her arms and jaw tightened. However, it went no further than that. She relaxed soon after, realizing it was useless.
As for Sugarcoat, she looked back to Sunset. “We’re done here. You’re ordered back to Trottingham as soon as you complete your mission or within ten days. Whichever is sooner. The Regent’s final word is that if we have to come out to you again you better not expect us to dock for negotiations first.”
“Alright then.”
She turned and motioned to the soldiers before turning around to begin her own march back.
“Better hurry on back and relieve that new force captain the admiral’s so fond of.”
Sugarcoat stopped in her tracks, but didn’t turn around.
“Actually,” she threw over her shoulder, “when she heard that this mission was to potentially put you under arrest, I had to deny five separate requests that she be the one to lead the mission.”
Sunset turned her head around when she heard that, but Sugarcoat said no more. She resumed marching, and her soldiers began to fall in behind her as she reached the gangplank. Finally, Sunset simply ignored it and looked forward to watch her soldiers leave with their new inmate. She took one more look at the first officer, but she didn’t look back up to her. Her head was to the ground now, her eyes open and burning, but showing no other expression.
At last, Sunset turned away to go back to her own group.
“I’ll get you for this.”
Sunset stopped where she was, hearing the first officer’s quiet voice seethe at her. She merely smirked.
“I’ve already forgotten your name. In a week, I won’t remember you ever even existed.”
Whether she turned back to look at her or not, Sunset didn’t know. The soldiers shoved her on soon after. Soon they were on the gangplank as well, and not long after she vanished into the hull with the rest of them.
Within a minute, the gangplank was withdrawn and the engines began to turn again. The Nighttouched retreated slightly as the airship fully came to life and lifted off. Soon it was rising into the darkness and vanishing. Aside from the feeling of wind and the sound of the turbines, there was no sign it had ever been there. That faded shortly after. When all was said and done, Sunset, her own crew, and the bodies were left on the deck.
She reached into her pocket and pulled out her own timepiece. As she snapped it open, she was just in time to see the last few seconds tick off to twenty past. Sure enough, the royal guard stepped around and on deck not long after that.
When that happened, she spun around and faced them all. Her smirk vanished and turned into an angry glare.
“When I went out of my way to recruit each and every one of you, one by one, generously offering to give you each a share in the power that I would attain, I made myself very clear in each occasion that I demanded one thing out of you first and foremost: obedience. That means you follow my directives when I give them and you don’t try and cross me.”
She pointed to the bodies.
“Let that down there…”
She stuck her thumb in the sky.
“And what you just saw over there serve as a reminder to everyone that none of you are irreplaceable to me and that none of you will get away with snubbing me. You can also consider that a warning. The next person who tries to get away with ignoring me doesn’t get to wait for the Trottingham authorities to show up to get dealt with. Do I make myself clear?”
The crew stared back silently and at attention, clearly still tense from both her angry voice as well as what they just saw.
Sunset scowled. “I can’t hear you.”
“Ma’am! Yes ma’am!”
She gave them a long, burning look, but then finally waved her hand at them. “Get lost, already.”
Most of the crew quickly turned and began to file back into the ship; too fearful even to go and claim the bodies. Sunset herself stood there with arms crossed, looking out to the side of the ship, as they went in one after the other. Soon only the royal guard was left, who began to approach her.
“Was that really necessary?”
“This close to what I’ve been after for a decade, I’m not going to tolerate anyone undermining me. On that note…I think I liked you better when I addressed you first.”
The royal guard didn’t respond. He stood tall and at attention instead.
“So, what did you turn up?”
“The tracer I put in one of them is mostly gone, and by now they must be in a populated area to dilute it even more. The best I can figure is they’re hiding somewhere in Manehattan.”
She smirked again, but it was bitter and accompanied by a snort this time. “If trying to follow her into Fillydelphia was insane, then trying to follow her right into a major city in Manehattan is suicide one way or another.”
“Are we giving her up for now?”
“Of course not. Not when I’m already on a ‘grace period’ from the Regent. I want her and I want her now.” She turned about and began to walk back into the airship. “We’ve wasted enough time here. We’re taking off and resuming this afternoon. Let’s start finding a weak link on the border we can cross into.”
“We’re actually going to try and get her out of a large city when we don’t even know which one?” the guard responded as he quickly fell in behind her.
“Of course we aren’t. We’re just flushing her out is all. I think it’s time we helped the countries to the west find little miss Twilight Sparkle…”
Twilight finished writing the last line and finally pushed the paper to the center of the table. After that, she took in a deep breath, leaned back, and tapped the pen on the tabletop.
The others looked at it. In big letters, it had a relatively simple list.
1. Get into Equestria. 2. Reach the Castle of the Two Sisters. 3. Defeat Nightmare Moon.
“Alright…three steps,” she spoke up with an exhale.
“Three steps assuming Nightmare Moon exists, Nightmare Moon is the one responsible, and that Nightmare Moon is in the Castle of the Two Sisters,” Starlight pointed out.
Twilight grimaced a little. “…Right.”
“Well, if we’re brainstorming, how about we tackle the ‘deal-breaker’ right off the bat?” Dash spoke up. “How are we gonna take out Nightmare Moon when we find her?”
“I mean…she’s already keeping half the continent in endless night…controlling over half the animals…and has hundreds or thousands of big, scary, nightmare monsters on her side…” Fluttershy threw in nervously.
“Well, fortunately, that part will be the easiest,” Rarity spoke up.
The group turned to her as if she had just said her brain was made of pie. “Um, really?” Pinkie answered. “‘Cause it sounded super-duper hard to me.”
“Pish posh, darling. So long as we’re sure that this is nothing more than a woman with a Promethian Sigil, then it’s a simple matter of Twilight casting her Binding Seal on her.”
Applejack looked up. “Hey…that’s right! Ya’ told me when ya’ put it on someone they can’t use their sigil anymore! All you got ta’ do is slap her in the head with it and call it a day!”
Twilight winced. “You haven’t forgotten that I can’t do that unless I not only have a few seconds to cast it but that they stay still long enough for me to tag them with it, did you?”
The farmer sank in her seat. “Oh yeah…”
“M-M-Maybe we should think about how we’re going to get there…” Fluttershy nervously offered. “You know, because…um…no one’s ever survived going in more than a mile…”
Dash shrugged. “We could fight our way in. The six of us can take out a couple dozen Nighttouched.”
“I’m fairly certain it will be several hundred, dear,” Rarity uncomfortably answered. “I’m not sure we can do all that when we’re the only things around to attack.”
“We just need to get to this castle real quick. How far is it from the border?”
Starlight gave her a deadpan stare. “About 87 or 88 miles at the nearest point of approach, and that’s not accounting for the fact it’s in the mountains.”
Dash grimaced. “Ok…jogging is out of the question, then.”
“What we need is a transport of some sort. Something to protect us all the way there,” Rarity suggested. “Ms. Glimmer, what about that lovely Steel Lion of yours? Do you think you could persuade Double Diamond to-”
Starlight was already shaking her head. “Out of the question. If you could travel through Equestria with Steel Lions, they would have done it years ago. You saw the Steel Lions in Griffonstone. They may be able to hold up against the little ones, but they’re too slow to be able to take an assault from a lot of the large ones. Another Tantabus can just crush it under one foot. Even if it couldn’t, the country’s too rough.”
“I guess that rules out usin’ horses or a wagon too…” Applejack muttered.
“Ooo! Ooo!” Pinkie called out excitedly. “What about an airship? Just like Trottingham uses?”
Twilight shook her head. “Normal airships end up getting swarmed by aerial Nighttouched. The ones that Trottingham uses has some sort of technology that keeps them away, but only their ships have them.”
“It’d be swell if we could get our hands on some of that tech…but we won’t unless we manage to capture one of their airships,” Dash sighed. “That’s one of their most closely-guarded secrets. No one really knows how they pull it off.” Her eyes narrowed. “But after seeing Little Miss Sunshine in the flesh, I bet I can guess.”
Starlight began to look at Twilight at that. “Say…she said she went to the same academy as you. Does that mean-”
Twilight groaned as she shook her head again. “While I think the headmistress might have known a way to keep them back, she never taught me what it was. Or didn’t have the time to…”
“What about a train that was going really fast?” Fluttershy suggested.
“Oh, I’m afraid not, dear,” Rarity sighed. “You see, Equestria dominates the central part of Greater Everfree. Long before the Lunar Fall, everyone knew if they could ever take Greater Everfree in an armed conflict that they would share a border with almost every other country out there. So to keep that from happening, all railroads in Equestria were within the borders. There isn’t a single one that joins with the rail lines of a different country…much less one still not in the shadows.”
“Oh…” Fluttershy slumped shyly. “Nevermind then.”
“Well, don’t this just beat all,” Applejack snorted. “For years we’ve all been trying to stay out of that bloody night zone, and now when we need ta’ get inta’ it we can’t.”
“Actually…”
Twilight’s voice alerted the group’s attention. Her head was bowed, but her eyes were staring at the table.
“Actually…there was one train that did.”
Once again, Twilight garnered the attention of the others. She didn’t follow up right away. A look of discomfort had come over her.
“There is?” Applejack eventually asked.
“Sort of…” she finally answered. “No one was supposed to know about it. Celestia had it hidden in a place in Mount Aris. She only ever used it when coming and going out of Equestria, which really only happened when she brought in new students. I only rode it twice…once when I enrolled in her academy and once when I left on…on that summer trip…”
“Can it take us all the way to the Castle of the Two Sisters?” Rarity asked.
“Hopefully not getting us eaten alive by Nighttouched while it does it?” Dash added.
“It never stopped there the two times I rode it, but it did go by it,” Twilight answered. “And it moves like a normal locomotive, which means so long as we run dark we should be going too fast and strong for any Nighttouched to stop us.”
“But…won’t that mean we have to sneak into Mount Aris to get on it?” Fluttershy spoke up nervously. “And won’t that mean we’ll have to get around any guards posted around it?”
“There won’t be any guards. Like I said, Mount Aris doesn’t know about it. No one knows about it.”
“Well, nobody knew ‘bout it eight years ago, maybe,” Applejack began to protest, “but a lot’s changed since-”
“No, they still won’t know about it. Nobody can find that station who hasn’t already been there.”
Puzzled looks came from all around the table.
“What exactly does that mean?” Starlight asked uneasily.
“Exactly what I said. Unless someone who’s already been to that station takes you there, you’ll never find it. You won’t even be able to see it or touch it.”
The stares turned from puzzled to uneasy. After a moment, Pinkie quirked her brow. “Um…am I the only person here who’s starting to think Twilight’s headmistress didn’t learn how to teach at a normal school?”
“I’m starting to get about as curious about her as I am the Light Eaters and Nightmare Moon,” Starlight added. “How is any of that even possible? More magic?”
“I have no idea. There was a lot in Equestria and especially Canterlot I never got the chance to fully understand.”
“Well…forget that for now,” Dash waved off after a moment longer. “The important thing is we got a train that can get us where we need to go, so we’re all set, right?”
Twilight kept wincing. “Not exactly… I told you that no one could find the station unless they already knew it was there or someone who did took them to it. However, the train there isn’t like a normal locomotive. To use it, you need a key. And not just any key. A very special kind of key that can only open one special lock on the train, and after it does so the key shatters.”
Dash rolled her eyes. “Greeeeeat…”
“Dagnabbit,” Applejack groaned, “so we can’t use that neither?”
An uncomfortable look came over Twilight. “I…didn’t say that. Normally Celestia carried any key on her that she wanted to use, but every once in a while she would actually invite someone outside of Equestria to use the train themselves. Every time that happened, she’d send them a key weeks in advance.”
“But how does that help us now, darling?” Rarity asked. “You said the keys shatter as soon as you use them. There’d have to still be an unused key out there.”
“There…is an unused key out there. Or there should be,” she spoke up again with some difficulty. “It’s all the way back in Hoofheim.”
“Hoofheim?” Applejack echoed back. Her look became uncomfortable. “Ya’ mean, where…uh, where…”
Twilight nodded, keeping her from finishing that. “My hometown. Honestly, I really don’t want to go back there again. When I finally decided to leave I was ready to be done with it forever, especially since I never did figure out what caused everyone there to forget I ever existed. But…” A deep breath. “This is more important. I’ll just have to deal with it.”
“Yay!” Pinkie cheered. “Road trip for the six of us!”
“I think that would be an extraordinarily bad idea,” Rarity nervously answered. “We’re all wanted in one form or another, and a group of six of us will stand out like a sore thumb.”
“Then I’ll go alone,” Twilight spoke up. “I’m the only one who knows where to find it. I’ll come back here once we have it and then we’ll make our next move.”
“That’s…also probably not a good idea,” Starlight spoke up. “You haven’t forgotten that all of you being together is kind of attracting people with Promethian Sigils in this city to you like a moth to flame, right?”
“Good point,” Applejack added. “We were ‘bout ta’ get the heck outta here ‘fore Starlight got here anyway. Maybe we should split up. Y’know…just for this.”
Dash shrugged. “Fine by me. But who goes and who stays?”
Twilight looked over the table a moment. “Hmm…I guess Rarity should probably stay behind. That will give her more time to get her affairs in order for her business.”
“Oh, thank goodness, avoided another confounded road trip…” Rarity sighed in relief, before noticing she had said that out loud. “I-I mean…if you really think that would be best, then certainly.”
“Then I’m staying behind,” Dash added. “So long as those creeps skulking around outside keep sticking their noses around here.”
Rarity looked up a bit. “Ex…excuse me?”
“I pointed it out to Fluttershy this morning. Ever since that news of the murder of Cotton Gin got out and they started grilling your rival, they’ve been hanging around out here. I think maybe it’s better I make sure they don’t try anything. Near as I can tell, we still need a second or two to bring out these Anima Viris. That’s a second or two too long for a bullet.”
The news made Rarity tense up even more than before. “Oh dear… But r-r-really now, there’s no need for all that…”
“Eh, no problem,” she smirked. “Just make sure to get some more cider and we’ll be cool.”
“And I still need to watch my animals,” Fluttershy spoke up. “So I guess that leaves me out.”
“Shucks, looks like it’s back to the two of us again, Twilight,” Applejack shrugged. “Not that I mind that much. Only thing I hate more’n not bein’ able to talk to the family is bein’ stuck in a house not bein’ able to talk to ‘em…”
“Whee! I’ve never been to Hoofheim!” Pinkie cheered.
Applejack spun to her, looking a bit uncomfortable. “Uh, Pinkie, ya’ really don’t have to do all that. I know how much ya’ like bakin’ and there’s so many ingredients here…”
“Yes, and she’s running me out of house and home burning through them,” Rarity instantly replied. “She’s right, she should go with you two.”
“Three and three would be a good split, Applejack,” Twilight shrugged.
The farmer sighed. “Fine. Just…don’t do nothin’ that gets too many people lookin’ at us.”
“No problem! I’ll keep our new road trip song down to just two verses!”
“Ugh…”
“I’d like to go too, if that’s alright,” Starlight spoke up.
Twilight looked at her in a touch of puzzlement. She shrank a bit at being put on the spot, but shrugged. “I mean…well… You already know how excited I’ve gotten ever since I ran into you. Now that we’re finally to the point of putting an end to all of this craziness that’s been going on in the world, I don’t want to miss anything. I’m still interested in learning more about this magic you use. And besides…meeting you set off everything that got me to piece together all this stuff about Nightmare Moon. Who knows what else I’ll be able to find out if I hang with you longer?”
In spite of how much of a help Starlight had been to them so far, Twilight hesitated. The woman herself continued to stare at her with an almost child-like implore, like she was a kid begging her mom for a chocolate bar. After a bit, she finally exhaled.
“Well…alright. We could probably use your help anyway. With the three of us trying to go up to the northwest, we need someone who isn’t wanted to handle interactions.”
Starlight went wide-eyed, before turning a deep red. “Uh…right…who isn’t wanted…heh, you bet…”
Twilight stared at her a moment. “You mean…you’re wanted too?”
“Well, I did tell you about how I only had a work permit in Fillydelphia, right? By crossing into Manehattan to tell you guys all this, I, uh, kind of violated Griffonstone law as an unauthorized migrant without clearance to depart the country.”
“What?!”
“Oh, come on, heh-heh…” she laughed nervously. “That’s practically a misdemeanor in today’s society! Besides, uh…er…it’s not like you all aren’t guilty of the same thing at this point…except maybe Rarity…”
Twilight slapped her palm in her face. Dash groaned, Applejack swore, and Fluttershy muttered.
“But don’t worry! Not like I haven’t been border agent dodging for years!” Starlight reassured as she began to quickly push herself away from the table to excuse herself. “You all just, uh…keep these lovely materials I brought tonight for your own perusal…get yourselves ready…and I’ll head down to the station bright and early and get us the first rail headed to Hoofheim. Simple! See you all bright and early tomorrow!”
Quickly, she gathered up her non-essential effects, turned, and began to show herself out. The others looked back to one another; not so easy anymore. Finally, Applejack shrugged. “Well, we were gonna take a chance headin’ out anyway. ‘Sides, I think she’s right. Everyone’s gonna be lookin’ fer us, not someone who bailed on a work permit…”
“And luckily no one is really headed up to that part of the country these days. So maybe it’ll go smoothly,” Twilight added quietly.
“Okie-dokie!” Pinkie said as she leapt up. “You all get ready for tomorrow,” she smiled, “while I take care of the most important part… Ma’s Special Traveling Raisin Nut Bread!” In a snap, she took off for the kitchen.
“I’ll…just head to bed for now,” Fluttershy quietly added. “Just need to take care of the animals first and then…I can lie down…and try not to think about big, scary, nightmare gods...that we’re going to be fighting…very, very soon…”
“On that note, keep practicing while we’re gone,” Twilight told both her and Rarity. “We can work on our strategy more when we get back, but for now those spells have to become more second nature to you two.”
“And to think, I thought I had a lot to do for Spring Ensembles…” Rarity muttered to herself.
“Ugh…we really gotta wear this fancy frou-frou stuff?”
Rarity turned up her nose indignantly as she adjusted Applejack’s “new” hat. “I’m afraid that rustic country wardrobe you are wearing simply won’t do for Manehattan society, Applejack. You’ll stick out like a sore thumb.”
“Well, now I feel like a sore thumb…” the farmer complained as she shifted in the rather elaborate and stylish dress that Rarity had picked out for her. While wearing the waistline-clenching corsets and long, flowing skirts reinforced with flexible reeds might be the norm for most of Manehattan’s high society, Applejack had never looked more uncomfortable. “I can’t fit my hammer in this tiny bag, I can’t run in this ridiculous skirt, and I can’t even holler with this thing around my middle tryin’ ta’ crush me!”
Twilight, similarly dressed nearby, grimaced but was encouraging. “Please just try and deal with it, Applejack. We really can’t go out looking like how we normally do. Plus these big hats allow us to hide our hair and adjust the brim over part of our faces.”
“Oh, pish-posh to that, darling,” Rarity answered as she kept struggling to adjust Applejack’s outfit. “I assure you this design is so eye-catching it will be all the diversion you require.”
“Plus we can do this!” Pinkie called from nearby, in a dress of her own. Immediately, she squatted so that the hem hit the ground and began to move around, keeping her legs completely beneath the skirt. “Ooo! I’m floating! Spooooky!”
It was the following morning from Starlight’s impromptu meeting. Before the sun was even up, Sassy Saddles and Coco Pommel had both arrived and the news had been relayed to them. Since then, everyone had gotten up early to start cleaning everything up and getting ready. They left no trace of their presence in the main factory, and now Twilight, Applejack, and Pinkie had eaten and were all packed and ready to go. The others, even Rainbow Dash, had come down to see them off. All they had to do now was wait for Starlight.
As it turned out, they didn’t have to wait too long. The knock, done properly this time, rang out only soon after Rarity finished with the farmer. She moved up to the door and opened it, and Starlight, looking even more frazzled than yesterday and hastily-packed, practically stumbled inside out of breath.
“Ok…” she exhaled, “I got us a three-day rail with a six hour layover in Vanhoover to switch trains tomorrow afternoon. Sorry…best I could do. There aren’t any expresses going straight there. At least we got a sleeper car cabin just to ourselves…”
“Another five days, huh?” Dash winced.
“Oh my…I hope you’re right about less people coming around if we split up…” Fluttershy muttered.
Starlight frowned. “I think we may have bigger problems then that…”
No one liked the sound of that as they all uncomfortably looked at her. “Like what?”
She shifted her arms around to go for a newspaper. “They were delivering the morning edition at the station and I got a copy. Remember how we were all waiting to see what your ‘friend’ in Trottingham was going to do next? Well, it looks like she decided to do something…”
Unfolding the paper, she turned it around to show the group.
‘Marked’ Individual Attacks Kerosene Production Facility Last Night; Leaves 11 Dead, 37 Injured.
The group looked both shocked and uneasy to see the headline. Twilight tentatively reached forward and took the paper from Starlight, holding it up in front of her and reading it over. She only winced more at what she saw.
“It says the eyewitness reports showed someone with a ‘blazing light on their hand’ started setting off fires where they were storing the kerosene and triggered a massive explosion. A lot of workers didn’t make it out unscathed…” She winced. “Some didn’t make it out at all… They’re suspecting Trottingham but they said they can’t be sure as there were no sightings of airships in the area.”
Dash scoffed. “It was obviously her. You saw how fire-crazy she was. All the Huntsmen I’ve ever talked to say she likes burning things and leaves fire to do her dirty work.”
Twilight frowned and shook her head, putting the paper aside. “It doesn’t really matter if Manehattan finds out she was behind it or not. That wasn’t her intention.”
Starlight winced. “You figured it out too, huh?”
Rarity looked up, puzzled. “Pardon me but…figured what out?”
Twilight sighed. “It doesn’t matter if they think Sunset did it or not. If they blame us, then they’re going to know we’re in Manehattan and focus on stopping us here. If they think it was Sunset and Trottingham, then they have to know by now that Trottingham was looking for us when we went into Griffonstone even if they don’t know why. Either way…they know we’re in Manehattan.”
“And…” Starlight ruefully added, “they attacked a kerosene producer. That’s one of the fastest-growing industries in Manehattan, Lunar Fall or not. Now that they’ve roped in the business owners and it’s impacting the economy, pressure to find you six is going to be greater than ever.”
Applejack frowned. “How in the hell did that witch find out we were in Manehattan?”
Rarity looked uneasily as she stared at her back leg. “The scarring from that attack still hasn’t quite faded… They could still be tracking us using that.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Twilight answered. “All that matters is that we need to get to Hoofheim and back as quickly as we can. Our window’s just gotten a lot narrower.”
“Let’s head out and get a steam cab right away,” Starlight answered. “Luckily, this train leaves in 90 minutes. We won’t have to hang out at the station that long.”
She nodded back. “Alright.” She turned back to the others. “Just try to keep a low profile, stick with the knock, and if worse comes to worse send us a telegram. We’ll be in Vanhoover station tomorrow and Hoofheim the next day. I don’t plan on staying the night there.”
Fluttershy swallowed. “B-B-But…if they can track us…won’t they try to find us here?”
“I wouldn’t worry about that. They’ve had days to attack, but Manehattan’s too populated for them to risk it.”
“Er…Manehattan is, darling,” Rarity uneasily answered, “but what about a train bound for Hoofheim?”
The mage went still. She clearly hadn’t thought about that. “I…guess we’ll, uh…cross that bridge when we find it…?” She answered with a sheepish and nervous smile.
Rarity rolled her eyes and moaned.
“Uh…Fluttershy, keep an eye on Spike for me, will you? I think he kind of stands out…”
Fortunately, the ride to the station was without incident. The streets were already busy, but the group moved fast and kept a low profile. By taking a steam cab, as expensive as it was for Starlight (who was already running low on money after the train tickets), the four managed to restrict their appearances in public and got to the station in plenty of time. Trying to look as inconspicuous as possible, which wasn’t easy with how rigid and uncomfortable Applejack looked and how Pinkie kept trying to skip in her dress, the four made it to the ticket booth mixed in with a crowd of other passengers. They tried to keep looking forward as they were called in one after the other.
Once they reached the woman at the window, she looked over their tickets to verify them, but at the end, much to their relief, smiled and nodded. “Alright.” She pushed the slips back across the counter. “Everything is in order. Please present them to the conductor when the train departs and each day of your trip, and also when you exit and enter at Vanhoover.”
Starlight smiled back as she took them. “Thank you very much.”
“Your porter will see you safely on board,” she smiled. However, she had scarcely said this when she turned and looked through a window to the side of the ticket booth and saw no one in the staging area; causing her to frown. She almost flung open the side door and ducked her head out.
“Pipsqueak! Pipsqueak, get over here!”
The sudden anger in the voice was enough to even make Pinkie look uncomfortable. Soon after, though, a rather thin and scrawny-looking boy in a porter uniform two sizes too big, panting all the way, ran up with a push cart. He ground to a halt so abruptly he nearly lost control of it, stopping it just before it could collide with the ticket booth. This fact wasn’t lost on the counter.
“S-S-Sorry, ma’am!” he quickly shouted. A bit to the surprise of the group, his accent was distinctly Trottingham. “The last load required three trips and the trunk weighed almost as much as me!”
“Nevermind that, and watch where you’re pushing next time!” she snapped back. “You scrape the paint on this booth and you’re forfeiting a day’s wage to pay for the repainting! Now get these ladies loaded up and on the train! It departs in 30 minutes and we still have a lot to load!”
“Yes ma’am!” Quickly, the boy ran over and began to take up the bags of the group one by one and load them onto the cart. Normally, the three wouldn’t have packed much, but to make their trip less conspicuous each one had enough for at least a small bag to make it look as if they planned to at least stay a while. As a result, it took the boy a bit to get them all on.
“Snap to it!” she shouted as soon as they were all on. “You be back here in four minutes or I’ll box those oversized ears of yours!”
“Yes ma’am!” he shouted back, even more frantic than before.
In no time at all, he was pushing the cart practically at a jogging gait, which was a little hard on the others trying to catch up with the elaborate dresses. Nevertheless, he was slowed down when he reached the platform and forced to unload, allowing them to catch up. Although he almost seemed to be crushed under the weight, somehow he managed to grasp all four bags together (two to hands and two under his arms) and waddle into the train car. He pushed his way past other passengers and staff and gradually led the two to their sleeper car cabin.
“Here you are, ladies!” he called out as he quickly opened the door and went inside. The four followed, finding a room with two long cushioned benches that could no doubt flip down and convert into the four sleeper room. With some struggling, he quickly pulled down the luggage rack and managed to put them all up one after the other as fast as he could.
When he was done, Starlight began to reach into her own pockets for a tip, but the boy simply tipped his hat and ran back out the door. “Thank you for riding with us! Enjoy your trip!” he practically called out behind him.
Starlight was dumbfounded a moment, before she looked to the time. “Oh…three minutes. I guess he had to get back…”
“You’d think he’d have stayed for a tip at least,” Twilight commented.
“There’s a good chance a tip wouldn’t have done him any good,” Starlight shrugged as she went for her own bag.
“Why not?”
“You heard his accent, didn’t you? Doesn’t look but a few years past eight. My guess is he got displaced in Manehattan when the Lunar Fall came down. Since he’s from Trottingham, whoever employs him can pretty much run him however they feel like. Probably includes taking his tips.”
Applejack suddenly looked up at that. She first glanced at Starlight, but then back out the way the porter had gone.
Twilight noticed. “Something wrong, Applejack?”
She stared a bit longer before finally looking away. “No…no, it ain’t nothing. Let’s just settle in and get ready for bed.”
Starlight raised her eyebrow. “Bed? It’s not even 10 in the morning.”
“The sooner we get ta’ bed, the sooner we can get outta these circus tents Rarity calls dresses…”
Fortunately, the trip went far more smoothly than Rarity’s by far. Thanks to Starlight acting as their “front man”, the actual departure went without a hitch and soon they were headed northwest and then north. After that, it was a simple matter of keeping their sleeping cabin closed except for things like routine ticket checks. In spite of Pinkie protesting when she saw the dessert cart, they didn’t even expose themselves long enough for the meals.
That wasn’t to say that they weren’t constantly on edge. There was reason to be tense every time they came for a stop, they had to use the lavatory, or even heard anyone walk by their door. Fortunately, most of the train ride was on rather large stretches. And although all of them slept with one proverbial eye open, fearing that something unexpected might come in the night, that first evening went by safely as well. That only left the monotony for Starlight, who kept trying to ask for more detail on their respective abilities for more “clues”. Unfortunately for her, Twilight remained tight-lipped. Not knowing how thin the walls of the train were she didn’t risk it. Instead, most of the trip was filled with Pinkie Pie relating stories from the mine her family was being impressed into working, although she claimed her sister had told her it was really a “rock farm”. She seemed to actually believe rocks grew there and needed to be herded and tended.
Everyone was up early the next day both from lack of sleep as well as a need to hurry up and get their “disguises” on. They had already finished the food they had brought with them for breakfast before the sun was up.
“Alright, the layover to switch trains is today in Vanhoover,” Applejack sighed. “What do we do?”
“Get some of their world-famous fish and chips?” Pinkie asked hopefully.
“We’ll just hang out at the station platform,” Twilight spoke up. “We want to stay away from as many people as possible.”
“Good idea,” Starlight nodded. “On these layovers, usually the passengers try to hit up the local shops or cafes as fast as they can. Nothing to do at the station but wait and watch the crews work.”
A couple hours later, the train stopped at the Vanhoover station. It was the largest station they had hit since Manehattan, but fortunately it wasn’t too populated on the north-bound lines. After getting their new engine assignment and platform, the four dismounted and headed over. Fortunately it was mostly desolate with lots of different benches to sit at; some of which were well out of the way, over by support columns, and easy to go unnoticed in. The four set up there and sat down.
They waited a bit to make sure no traffic would come by, but all they saw was some of the porters moving the luggage from the previous engine to the new one. Even the platform watchmen stayed far from their bench.
Noticing this, Twilight exhaled and looked to the others. “Alright, I think we’re in the clear. We just have to hold out for about three hours, hop the next train, and then we’ll make it.”
“No problem!” Pinkie cheered back. She gestured behind her. “That means there’s plenty of time to stop by that Gaitian shrine we passed on the way into town!”
With that, a bit to the shock of the others, she immediately hopped to her feet and began to skip down the platform. Twilight gaped before quickly rising up after her. “Wait, what? Pinkie, wait!”
“Sorry, Twilight! I’m already far behind and we really, reeeeally need prayers for this trip! Be right back!” she called behind her, before skipping onward.
“Wait, she’s not actually…” Starlight began to sputter.
“You damn Gaitian idiot!” Applejack shouted as she started to rise. “Get back here!”
Unfortunately, she was already skipping away. Applejack nearly shouted again, but wisely kept her voice down. If she caused too much of a scene, the platform personnel really would get after them. Instead, she got to her feet and began to rush after her. Twilight quickly stood up and went as well, and as soon as they both took off Starlight, grimacing at all three, rose and began to follow afterward.
Twilight and Applejack, however, couldn’t gain ground on her very quickly. Somehow it seemed she had adapted to her disguise, and in no time at all she was quickly widening her lead on them while they were struggling to even manage a jog in the skirts. It was made even worse when she darted out into one of the main thoroughfares, and soon she was vanishing behind people walking one way and the other. Twilight groaned as she nearly decided to risk tearing her dress to increase her speed after her.
Before she could, though, Starlight gave a bit of a yell of her own as she rushed forward and grabbed both her and Applejack by the shoulder. Quickly she yanked them backward. “What do you two think you’re doing?!” she whispered loudly.
“What d’ya mean?” Applejack nearly shouted back. “Tryin’ ta’ catch that damn fool ‘fore she causes a scene and gets recognized!”
“Well what do you think is going to tip people off? Her just running around or her running around and the three of us chasing her?”
Applejack opened her mouth to answer before clamping it shut again. Twilight groaned, not having a response to that.
Sighing, Starlight released them both. “We know where she’s going. I saw that old shrine when we were pulling into the station. It’s only a little bit away. I’ll go after her. The two of you…head back and try not to make this any worse.”
She immediately moved on after that, at a normal walking speed this time. Twilight and Applejack glanced to one another. The latter frowned, but in the end both turned and began to make their way back to the platform.
It only took them a short distance to get away from the more populated areas again. Twilight did notice one watchman glance their way, but on seeing them walk back he simply turned and kept moving along. Soon they were alone enough to start talking aloud again.
“There’s somethin’ not right with that one, and I ain’t just talkin’ ‘cause she’s Gaitian.”
Twilight grimaced. “If this was any other situation, I might say you were just being paranoid or just say she was childish, but she doesn’t even need her Anima Viri to do some impressive feats. The Rogue role is supposed to make one nimble, agile, and even seem to tip the role of luck in their favor. It allows them to avoid attacks…not withstand them like the Warrior and Disciple.” She turned to her as they walked. “The Tantabus should have crushed her back in Grifftham City…”
“Well…she was a big help there. I just hope she doesn’t ruin it all by gettin’ us nabbed here…” She paused. “What d’ya think ‘bout Starlight Glimmer?”
“What do you mean?”
“We’re in the same boat as Rarity and Rainbow Dash and we’ve been shackin’ up pretty good for a while now, but you buy all that stuff ‘bout Nightmare Moon she was peddlin’?”
She frowned. “I wouldn’t be taking us on this trip if I didn’t. It does make sense. While I’d much rather be doing this with the entire Academy, the six of us right now seem to be the only people with Promethian Sigils we can trust to even be in the same area together.”
“So how exactly we gettin’ this key, anyway?”
Twilight was quiet, for at that moment an older couple passed by. She and Applejack used the moment to draw themselves up silently, and only when they were passed did Twilight respond.
“Do you remember what I told you about my family?”
Applejack’s face softened a little. “Yeah…”
“My older brother has a key.”
She looked surprised. “Wait…say what now? Your older brother? The one who don’t…” She trailed off, seeing Twilight getting tense just at the mention. “Just…wait, how did ya’ give him the key if he didn’t…didn’t, you know…?”
“Didn’t remember me?” Twilight answered. “Well, the truth is-”
“Hold up.”
Applejack suddenly put her hand out, slowing Twilight further and interrupting her. She was a bit puzzled, but ended up looking the same way that she did.
To one side of the platform were several of the child porters. One of them was the same one they had run into in Manehattan’s capitol. Apparently, he had commuted on the train to the next destination along with several of the others. At the moment, three of the bigger ones were surrounding him. Now that the two were quieting down they could hear them.
“Hand it over, kid.”
“No. I’m eating off this.”
“No you ain’t. You’re still in Manehattan. You think anyone here’s gonna sell you a bite to eat after hearing you talk? You don’t have enough to bribe ‘em this time.”
The Trottingham porter didn’t answer. He simply looked down at his feet.
“Hey!”
He looked back up, only to get a hard and sharp shove. Enough to push him back against one of the platform support columns.
“I told you to look at me when I’m talking to you, didn’t I ‘guvner’? You gonna hand over today’s wage or are we gonna throw you off the train halfway through this next leg?”
The kid looked back timidly. He looked down to the ground for a moment, but finally reached into his pocket. A moment later, he pulled back his hand clenched into a fist; seemingly around his money. He began to hand it out to the larger porter, who reached out to accept it.
Suddenly, he drove the fist forward and pounded him in the groin. The older boy’s eyes bulged as he grasped the region in pain, and the Trottingham boy quickly used the opportunity to try and run for it.
It was a stupid move at best. The other two porters easily caught him; one by either arm. They yanked him back and threw him against the wall rough enough to make him cry out, and then held him there. Unfortunately, his hit in the sore spot of the bigger porter wasn’t enough to disable him long—only make him angrier. He soon looked up again, glaring murderously at the kid.
“Think you’re pretty funny, you little jerk?”
He immediately punched the kid in the head hard enough to snap his head back, so that he got both an impact in the face and a second one smacking it against the brick wall. He quickly went limp, and the two kids holding him let him fall. Yet once he was on the ground, they quickly moved in and began to stomp and kick him all over. As painful as the hit had been to the wall, he was still conscious, and soon he was cringing into a ball and beginning to cry loudly.
He barely began, however, when Twilight spotted Applejack move. She turned to her, but she was already crossing the platform rapidly. “Wait!”
It was too late again. In moments, Applejack had closed half the distance. One of the boys looked up from stomping and saw her, and, as kids knew whenever they saw that look on an adult’s face, quickly turned to break for it. The others soon noticed as well and tried to do the same. Unfortunately for them, they were at an end of a platform. No doubt that had been intended to corner the Trottingham porter. They had to try and run past Applejack to get away, and no sooner did the first try to slink by than her hand went out, seized him rough enough by the arm to make him cry out, and flung him back the way he had come. She actually hit one of his companions with him and knocked them both down. As for the third one, the main instigator, he tried to run as well…but Applejack lashed out and seized him by his ear.
He yelled much louder than the others, quickly relenting when Applejack tightened her grip. He felt he’d rip his ear off otherwise. She continued to hold him and walked him back to his friends, who by now were trying to get up to run.
Without a word, she tossed that child forward roughly to the ground, and reached into the breaks in the hoop of her own skirt. On the second day, she had insisted on wearing her pants under it, and as a result it didn’t take long for her to whip out her belt. Seeing it, the children paled, knowing what was coming.
“It ain’t a switch…but it’ll do.”
She quickly seized one of the boys by the arm, yanked him up, threw his body down against a nearby bench, then yanked his shirt back. With ten rapid arm movements, the belt went up and down. He tried to squirm free but she twisted his arm more sharply to get him to stay put until she left ten long red streaks that would turn into bruises across his back. She tossed him aside as if he was nothing more than livestock, now crying himself, and seized the other one in spite of his attempts to get free. Without a word, she gave him the same treatment.
The third one put up the biggest fight, but she didn’t bat an eye as she wrangled him around. Soon she yanked his own shirt back. It wasn’t until she had already given the boy his ten, leaving him sobbing and howling, and began to add another five that she finally said something.
“You like makin’ people cry? How d’ya like it when I make you cry, huh?”
She practically threw him aside and finally stepped back afterward. She wheeled to the other two she had already struck, who braced themselves for more, before she pointed.
“Now get the hell outta here ‘fore I give ya’ all ten more!”
The boys cringed one more time before picking themselves up and running; a bit stiffly and sorely considering their now injured backsides.
Soon, all that was left was the boy from Trottingham. He finally looked up from the ground, a bit of blood trickling down his lips, and toward his savior. He stared at her a moment before beginning to draw himself up more.
“Th…thank y-”
“Do ya’ got clogged ears or somethin’?”
The porter recoiled on hearing her snap, and even more so when she wheeled on him soon after.
“I said get the hell outta here! All of ya’!”
He swallowed and cringed. “Y-Y-Yes, ma’am!” he stammered, before staggering to his feet. He was hurt much worse than the other porters had been, but he quickly put his head down and scurried away just as rapidly as they had. In a few moments he had vanished from sight too, with the only sign of him being there the echoes of his individual footsteps.
As the sound died down, Twilight and Applejack were both left standing there on the mostly desolate platform. Twilight glanced in the direction the porters left before looking back to Applejack, but still saw her just standing there looking where the boy had been. She had gone unusually still.
Finally, she exhaled and turned around. “Sorry… I know we’re supposed ta’ be stayin’ quiet, and look what I do.” She snorted. “I don’t even like Trottingham skunks at the best o’ times…”
Twilight didn’t answer. She hadn’t heard Applejack sound that somber in a while. She nearly said something, but it seemed the farmer knew what would come next. She slowly sighed.
“One winter a couple years back, the farm was on hard times. Worst we ever had. Thought I knew what it was like to go hungry ‘fore that…but this was somethin’ else. I never knew what it was like ta’ watch a man starve ta’ death ‘til that winter…” She shook her head. “Anyway…they kept sayin’ there was work in the big cities for folks. Even folks from other countries. Manehattan was lettin’ people put in for those work permits. We had some richer relations who suggested some of us apply and make steady money for ourselves and for back home. None of us wanted too…‘cept one: my little sis.”
She frowned, this time with a touch of anger.
“Once Apple Bloom moved out ta’ Manehattan, we started gettin’ letters from her with whatever money she earned a month later. I couldn’t care less ‘bout the money. I cared ‘bout how she was livin’. She sure as hell weren’t shacked up in no fancy house like Rarity. She was in some crummy flat sharin’ with other kids who were stuck in the same factory as her, talkin’ ‘bout how the city stank compared to home, how it was always dirty and loud, how they kept tryin’ ta’ cheat her outta her wage which barely had enough for her ta’ eat off of let alone send ta’ us, how the bigger and stronger kids would just take what they could get from the smaller ones if she didn’t hide it or find ways to run and hide, and most of all how she had ta’ learn real quick that as rough as livin’ next to Nighttouched are,” She clenched her fists angrily. “it’s a helluva lot more dangerous ta’ be livin’ as a girl in these dirty streets with dirtier men of all types…”
She clenched her teeth.
“Much as it ticked me off ta’ hear ‘bout all of it…I really wish the letters would have lasted more’n six months. At least with ma and pa, I knew when it happened and how…”
Twilight realized what that meant, much to her dread. “Applejack…”
“Eh…don’t get worked up on account of me. Part of the reason we believed in big families is we know a lot of ‘em ain’t gonna be around too long…” Although she said this casually enough, the tone of her voice showed her distinct discomfort. Definitely not the way she normally played something off. She heard her sharply inhale as her hand began to reach for her face, but she forced it down.
Her voice grew sharper soon after. “All this fancy stuff…these big railroads and factories and buildings…none of it means squat. Don’t care how big and nice they try and make this place look. It’s rotten to the core. For as great and safe as they make it out, they ain’t got no Nighttouched or Light Eaters but they don’t need ‘em. They eat their own kids alive and they get ‘em to do the same.”
Twilight looked rather uneasy, not knowing what to say in response, but Applejack shook her head soon after.
“Eh…can’t do nothin’ ‘bout it now. Shouldn’t have even brought it up…” she muttered, before motioning forward. “Let’s just head back ‘fore I cause more of a scene…”
For better or for worse, no one really cared what happened to the child laborers for the railyards, in particular porters. Most were usually orphaned, so it wasn’t as if they could run to their bosses and say they were assaulted by a passenger and expect anything to come from it. As for Starlight, she managed to bring back Pinkie soon enough, who was in a much better mood. They weren’t accosted until they got on the second train and the trip proceeded.
The second day was easier than the first. There were fewer stops now, and on one of them most of the passengers and train crew dismounted as it was the last major populated city on the route. Much of the land turned into open countryside or uncultivated wilderness, and towns were few and far between. That night, it was rare to see a single light out as they rode by, which might have explained why the area was relatively safe from surges.
The next day they went ahead and stuck with their normal clothes over the disguises; both as relief from the pain of wearing them around and due to the belief they were in the clear. The only change was Applejack donned a pair of work gloves to cover up her symbol while Pinkie and Twilight opted for more “traditional” bandages. The group only saw one more town pass by that day, but it was very small and the train didn’t stop there. At long last, early in the morning, they reached Hoofheim.
It was definitely the largest town they had been to in a hundred miles but was still very small. The train platform was another shack on a wooden stand, more or less, and all of the roads were dirt save for the main one. It lacked most of the industry, boilers, and steam engines of the rest of the world too, which Applejack and Pinkie both seemed to find nice on dismounting. All in all, between the cleaner, cooler air, the vintage architecture, and the fact that most of the transportation around the place was horse and wagon, it gave the sense of stepping back in time. Not that the sensation was unwelcome considering how they all remembered how the world used to be.
Applejack took in a deep breath as they stepped off the platform onto the street. “Whoo-wee! This is more like it! Out of a smoggy town and a cramped train! Clean air and open country! Too bad the soil’s so bad out here or I’d think of movin’ the family to a nice spot like this.”
“Yay! Look at all the mountains!” Pinkie cheered as she skipped along. “They still have snow on them! This place would be perfect for making Avant Garde Ice Cream!”
Starlight looked at her oddly. “But…it’s freezing up here most of the year.”
Pinkie grinned knowingly. “That’s what makes it avant garde.”
Starlight rolled her eyes. “This place is pretty nice, though. Reminds me a lot of where I grew up…only this one’s still, you know, standing. I guess you kind of lucked out, Twilight.”
She said this innocently enough, but on looking at Twilight’s face she immediately saw it sink a little.
She swallowed. “Oh…uh, right. Uh…” She fumbled for a moment at her mistake, before gesturing behind her. “I’ll just, um, go get the tickets for our return trip. I’ll leave you three to it. I think we should be ok up here. They don’t even bother sending copies of the news this far north.”
She quickly backed up and away before turning for the booth. Applejack looked at Twilight uneasily, but she took a deep breath, steadied herself, and started walking.
“Let’s get this over with.”
The town wasn’t too terribly large, but it was spread out enough to be a walk from the station to the main thoroughfaire. Many of the people didn’t seem to have the more hollow or grim expressions that were common in so many other parts of the world. However, there was one notable difference. Most of the people stared for a moment on glimpsing Twilight. Some of them simply looked away. Others let out a sound. Still others began to whisper and murmur among each other. Twilight ignored it all; trying to intentionally not look or pay any mind as she kept walking. It didn’t seem like she was having an easy time of it.
Twilight let out a short sigh. “They remember me from eight years ago…not before that.”
Applejack glanced at a few of them, who quickly turned their heads down when they thought that Twilight looked their way. “What’d ya’ do to stick in their heads so well?”
“Insisted I grew up here…” Twilight sighed. “I had nowhere else to go when it first happened, and honestly I didn’t know what to think or do. When I finally got my wits together and realized there was nothing for me in this town, I packed up and left on the first train I could get after pawning my more expensive school supplies.”
“And ya’ pawned off the key?”
“No, I…well…you’ll see soon.”
The three continued to walk past several other houses and shops, all small and locally owned, before they reached the main road at last. They walked up it for a few blocks before Twilight’s step slowed. The two did the same; seeing her growing more stiff and uncomfortable.
“You ok, Twilight?” Pinkie asked.
“There,” she said. “Right there. That’s where it happened, just across from my house.”
The two looked. The paving on the road was fairly uniform all up and down it save for one spot. There was a small space where the brickwork had been replaced with newer ones. And it stood out enough even after eight years to show it clearly wasn’t the same shade. Twilight slowed a bit more, but she managed to keep herself from stopping and eventually passed it.
It wasn’t until they turned the corner and walked another house down that she halted all together. This time, Applejack and Pinkie could hear her breathing uneasily and she took some time to compose herself. During that period, both of them looked forward, around the bend, and up the hill. A small one-and-a-half story house was there. Fairly well-maintained, with a small garden in flower boxes in the front.
Twilight paused so long they nearly asked her to continue again, but she finally broke and started forward again without a word. Applejack followed along a bit more uneasily this time, while Pinkie cheerfully kept skipping. Soon they were up the hill and in front of the door.
Once she stopped again there, Applejack looked at her. “Um, if this is really your house, and they really don’t remember ya’, what are we gonna do? Just walk right up and-”
Twilight cut her off by extending her fist and rapping on the door.
“-knock?” She stood there uncertainly afterward, not sure exactly what to say or do from there. Yet after a few moments she stood straight when she heard the locks and latch on the door turn.
It opened a crack, but no more. The three spotted an older woman’s face looking out, ready to shut the door again as it looked over the three of them. Applejack quickly removed her hat out of respect. Twilight couldn’t quite bring herself to smile. Pinkie Pie smiled and waved cheerily. The woman didn’t react to any of them save Twilight, staring at her uncertainly for a time.
Finally, she stiffened and opened it wide. She drew herself up, and smiled very slightly. “Hello…Twilight.”
“Hi mo…” She stiffened, her own weak look turning down. “Ms. Velvet.” She was quiet again for a moment. “You’re…looking well.”
The woman stared silently back a moment before she nodded. “You too. Have you been doing alright?”
“Yeah…yeah, I have. Getting by with the magic show and Spike, heh…”
“Good. Good to hear. I’m glad.” She looked out a bit more. “Are…these friends of yours?”
Twilight hesitated a moment, looking to either side of her. She seemed almost hesitant to say the next part. “Y…Yes. Yes they are. This is Applejack.”
Twilight instantly cringed. The woman herself looked rather uncomfortable to hear that. Quickly, the mage turned to her and shook her head. “Heh…I-I-I’m sorry… I didn’t make it clear enough to her when I told my story… I’m very, very…”
She held up her hand in a stopping gesture. “It’s…it’s quite alright. Don’t worry about it.” Another pause. “But I take it you still think the way you did that night, then?”
Twilight swallowed again. She once more went still, two contrasting emotions running through her mind. She moistened her lips. “I…I didn’t come to try and argue that… I’m not wanting…not…” She trailed, fumbling over her words. “We’ll…we’ll be out of here soon, but I need to talk to Shining Armor.”
“Oh…he’s out right now catching up with the neighborhood. He just got home yesterday. The train finally got through.”
“Oh…” Twilight echoed back. She looked uneasy for a while, glancing at the front of the house, before she finally swallowed. “We’ll just…wait at the end of-”
“No, no,” the woman quickly cut off, stepping inside. “Don’t be silly. Come in. Have a seat. Night Light’s out at the clerk’s office, though. I’m not sure how much time you have.”
Twilight took a moment before nodding. “Thank you. I think we’ll be gone before then.”
Leading the way, she stepped inside. Applejack was hesitant considering her reaction, but Pinkie readily fell in behind her, leading her to sigh and follow suit.
The inside of the house was as nice and quaint as the outside. It wasn’t terribly large. The entire first floor seemed to be mostly dominated by one general purpose room with the kitchen in a nook to one side and the sitting room taking up most of the rest. A staircase built into the wall led upstairs to where there was a second wall for rooms, but Ms. Velvet didn’t go that way. She led the group straight into the sitting area where there were a few hand-stitched cushioned chairs and a few end tables bearing small things, like a vase and a collection of books. A mantle clock ticked by slowly over the fireplace on the opposite side of the room.
“Hey, it’s all one room! Just like our house!” Pinkie cheered as she sat down in one seat. Applejack and Twilight took others, both of them looking a bit on edge.
“So…” Ms. Velvet spoke up as she kept walking, going toward the kitchen area. “Applejack and Pinkie Pie, was it? You’re both friends of Twilight?”
“Yup!” Pinkie cheered.
“Uh…er, that is…yeah,” Applejack spoke up more quietly.
“Long time friends?”
“Not…not exactly, ma’am.”
Pinkie giggled. “I only met her less than two weeks ago!”
Ms. Velvet stopped and looked back at that. Applejack winced and grimaced at the beans being spilled. Twilight herself looked a bit embarrassed. After a time, though, Ms. Velvet simply looked a bit sad and turned back.
“Oh…I’m sorry. I just hoped you would have known her a bit longer. I thought it would have been good for Twilight to…” She trailed off, shaking her head. “I’m sorry. It might be a little while until Shining Armor gets back. I’ll make some tea.”
She headed over to a part of the house but then stopped and sighed. “Just my luck. The water is out. I’ll have to go pump some.”
Immediately Twilight rose from her seat. “I can handle it.”
She turned back to her. “Really? It’s no bother.”
“No, no, please. I’ll do it.”
Ms. Velvet looked back a moment before nodding. “Alright. Thank you.”
Twilight nodded back, then moved over to the kitchen area. There was a bucket that was apparently used for carrying water to and from the neighborhood pump, and she took it up and turned to head out. Ms. Velvet herself shook her head. “Things are so backward here in some ways. Everywhere else seems to have plumbing.”
“It’s fine. Really. I’d like to do it. Who knows? Maybe I’ll see Shining Armor out there.”
She smiled a bit wistfully and nodded back. Twilight kept walking to the back door, then opened it up and exited. As the door swung shut with a click of the latch, it echoed through the now-silent home rather loudly. The two guests were left staring at Ms. Velvet.
She looked at them a bit longer before sighing. “I’m not exactly sure what she told you, but-”
“It’s alright, ma’am,” Applejack quickly cut off. “We understand that, uh…things ain’t quite normal ‘tween the two of you.”
“She told you that I’m her mother only I don’t remember it, didn’t she?”
Applejack squirmed uncomfortably. Pinkie, on the other hand, more readily nodded, which the farmer soon caught and quickly gave her a look.
Ms. Velvet smiled wistfully as she turned back to the kitchen, moving to the cupboard. “I thought as much… I’m not sure if you believed her or not, but I want to tell you the truth right now: I’m not. This isn’t her home and she’s not from this town. At least…not so much as anyone has ever seen.”
“Pardon me but…ya’ seem to be a bit friendly with her, regardless.”
“I am. The whole family is. We met eight years ago. Right on the very night when all of this…this mess in the world started. The worst part was what happened to her had nothing to do with Nighttouched or Light Eaters. There was a motorized carriage from Canterlot that came into town, she got out, and a moment later is blew up. Based on what she told everyone, she was part of a very exclusive academy in Canterlot and that blast killed her instructor as well as all of her classmates. She said they were on a trip to visit the hometowns of every student and this was hers, but…” She sighed as she started getting out the teacups. “No one in town had ever seen her before that day.”
“Wait…” Pinkie spoke up curiously, “if Twilight’s not from this town, then why would she say she was? And why would she say you’re her mom and this is her house? Did you all forget or did she forget?” She raised an eyebrow as her voice warped into a whodunnit tone. “Oooor…are one of you lying, hmm?”
Applejack looked embarassed, but Ms. Velvet shrugged and took it in stride. “Maybe it was a mixture of survivor guilt and trauma. For all we know, her real parents died in the Lunar Fall soon afterward. To be honest? There’s been a time or two when she’s been trying to convince me that I almost wondered if she was telling the truth.” She shook her head. “But it can’t be. We don’t even have a bedroom for her in this house. Nothing that she said she ever did here left any sort of record. None of the people in town who she claimed she knew ever saw her. I’m afraid she’s just mistaken.”
Applejack looked confused. “So why let her in like that?”
Ms. Velvet hesitated right in the middle of going for the teapot and sighed. “I don’t know exactly… When she came to our door that night, having just seen that horrible accident, not having anyone else to turn to, none of us saw any harm letting her stay with us until she could sort things out. She really is a sweet girl…woman, now. Never caused any trouble for anyone other than insisting she was from here. I just wished by now she would have realized the truth.” She turned back to the others. “I’m sorry for the chilly reception, by the way. I…I wasn’t sure how much she had convinced you two of. Or if she had realized anything yet.”
“It’s…it’s just fine,” Applejack answered. “Believe me, this ain’t the weirdest thing that’s happened to us so far. Not by a longshot…”
Ms. Velvet looked surprised to hear that, but as she opened her mouth to respond the door creaked. Applejack and Pinkie Pie both looked back, expecting to see Twilight coming back in, only to find it was from the front door. Soon it swung open wide and a man stepped into the room.
Based on his age, it was highly unlikely this was Ms. Velvet’s husband. He was far younger, with a fair amount of muscle, but also a youthful, energetic, and even bright-eyed look to him. Although, based on his work clothes, he seemed like he had spent a good amount of time outside that day laboring, it only seemed to invigorate him.
“Hey mom, I just got back from general store. The eggs are…”
He trailed off when his eyes turned to Applejack and Pinkie Pie. The former looked a bit awkward, but the latter cheerfully waved. “Hi there!”
He stared for a moment at the two of them before looking up to Ms. Velvet. “I didn’t know you were having guests over. I would have come back sooner.”
Ms. Velvet looked uneasy again. “No, it’s alright. They were a bit unexpected. They came with-”
Before she could finish, the back door opened again. Twilight, struggling not to spill anything, came half-waddling in with a bucket and made her way to the basin. On her way there, though, she stopped on seeing who had joined them. He likewise looked up on seeing her.
Yet unlike his mother, he almost immediately smiled. “Twily!”
For the first time since she arrived, Twilight smiled back. “Hey, Shining Armor!”
She quickly put her bucket down and rushed up to him. The two hugged on meeting each other and held a bit before parting. Compared to the reaction of Ms. Velvet, it was far more ready and warm.
“Hey, how have you been? Where have you been? You know how hard it was to mail you after that last letter finally went through?”
Twilight blushed. “I’m sorry, but…uh…I wasn’t making a steady enough income to keep paying for the PO Box…”
He gave her a look that said “what are we going to do with you”. “Same ol’ Twilight… Spike’s got to be working overtime looking out for you on the road. Speaking of which, is he here?”
“Er…no, I left him with some…friends for this trip. I just needed to stop by for a little bit…”
“What, you’re leaving again already? You’re not going to stick around a couple days?”
“I’d like to, but,” she uneasily looked to the side, “we really need to get back. Me and my other friends.”
“Other friends? Oh!” He glanced to Applejack and Pinkie, the latter of whom happily waved again. “Oh! These are your friends! And you have another friend watching Spike too?” He grinned. “That’s great to hear.” He looked directly at Applejack and Pinkie. “She got me really worried when she headed out and wrote back saying she was going to make a living as a magic performer. The roads really aren’t safe anywhere anymore. It makes me feel so much better knowing she’s got friends to look out for her.”
“Uh, heh…ain’t nothin’,” Applejack managed.
“What are friends for?” Pinkie more cheerfully answered.
He looked back at Twilight. “You really aren’t staying in town at all? You at least have to stay for lunch. It’s been too long since you’ve been home. We need to catch up a little.”
“Oh…” Twilight hesitated, but this time it was clear from her face it wasn’t totally out of anxiety. She had brightened for a fraction of a second only to reign it in. “Oh…I…I’d really like to, but mom…I mean, your mother’s already offered us tea and we don’t want to keep you busy… I just-”
“Oh come on. Just some stew and bread. It’s not much. I’ll make it for everyone so mom won’t have to do anything.”
Again, she hesitated. “That’s…that’s really nice, but really we just stopped by for a bit… I’m sure our train will be in soon too…”
“Twilight?”
The mage looked up and over. Applejack was giving her a more sympathetic look.
“I think we’ve got a bit of time before the next train comes in.”
“Yeah, and I’m sure what we’re having is way better than what we packed!” Pinkie chimed in.
She paused a little longer, but seeing the two behind her made her smile. She looked back at the man. “Well…if it won’t be trouble or take too long…”
“Really, none at all. Now go on and sit down. I’ll handle the tea.”
In only about thirty minutes, both the tea and the simple lunch that Twilight’s “brother” had planned were made, and all three joined Ms. Velvet and him at the table. Gradually, Twilight seemed more at ease and relaxed, especially as Shining Armor kept talking to her kindly and happily. While they had all come in on edge, everyone was feeling more relaxed now. Even Ms. Velvet seemed to be a bit more at ease. In all honesty, it was the first casual meal any of them had in a while.
“You know, that was my first time in the Macintosh Hills,” Shining Armor went on with his current story. “I kind of liked it. Real out in the country. I know a lot of the other guys in the reverse officer training regimen hate being out in places like that, but seeing as it’s away from most light sources I figured most people would be happy to be there. You ever been out that far, Twily?”
“Heh, just once,” Twilight answered, seeming almost conversational. “I don’t think I’ll be doing a show out there again. It may look rural, but you wouldn’t believe how strict they are on leash laws. I thought Spike was going to chew his off right in front of me.”
“I can imagine. I don’t think you’ve ever had him on a leash. He must have been miserable.”
“You wouldn’t believe! He didn’t look that unhappy when I had to pack him in a crate to ship him across Griffonstone! And that was on an airship!”
That made him laugh for several seconds, and it took even longer to compose himself again to continue with the story. “Anyway, so I head down to the station. Since we’re not going anywhere, I figured I might as well put our tickets to good use. And sure enough, I’ve barely walked up to the platform when I see two people stranded who seemed desperate to get on the train. So I passed off the tickets and I headed back. I ended up sleeping with my rifle the next couple nights, thinking any moment now we’d get hit by a surge.” He shrugged. “Then I learn about Griffonstone and none of the higher officers know what to make of it. Since I was a foreigner they had me just hang around at the fort a few days then put me on the first trip home.”
“I’m still so glad he made it back when he did,” Ms. Velvet added in between sips of tea. “Even if he’s not on the front line I get worried sick every time anyone says anything about a surge. Then I heard about what happened in Griffonstone and it seems the world’s gone crazy a second time. What are you hearing in your part of the country, ladies? Up here in Hoofheim we’re always the last to learn about anything. All we have is rumors to go by, more or less.”
“Oh, um…” Twilight paused; her relief temporarily overshadowed by a hint of anxiety. “Nothing…nothing much. Just pretty much rumors down south too.”
“Do they know if it’s true about the big rumor? That there was some sort of weapon that got used that actually killed Light Eaters? Honestly, I don’t know if I’d really mind if it was a Trottingham weapon or not just so long as it got rid of them.”
She swallowed a little. “I’m…I’m sorry, but I can’t say.”
“I think the army thinks it wasn’t just weapons. It was some sort of people in particular using them…maybe even the people themselves,” Shining Armor threw in. “You didn’t hear this from me, but one country after another is starting to scour their cities looking for anyone who they suspect might be it. It’s only a matter of time before Hoofheim puts in its own program.”
Fortunately, Pinkie seemed oblivious to this and helped offset Twilight and Applejack’s growing unease. “I…don’t suppose they told you anything that might help identify them, did they?”
He shook his head. “Not a thing. And like heck am I going to round up anyone just on heresay. Besides, I think mom is right. If they’re killing Light Eaters, it’s probably best for everyone that they stay free so they can keep it up. The Light Eater that attacked Griffonstone was gigantic. And I mean gigantic. Bigger than some airships. If whoever stopped it hadn’t stopped it, Trottingham agent or not, the whole southern part of the country would be dead.”
Again, the three said nothing, although they did look up a bit at the tone of voice that he was using. They hadn’t heard one so upbeat and enthused about the incident yet.
After a moment he shrugged. “Of course, some of the other stories say they’re going ballistic at random and attacking people around them. I don’t know. All I know is we never met one, but Appleloosa, Manehattan, Fillydelphia, and all the rest could sure use some on their side.” He glanced over to the girls, noticing their expressions. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset any of you.”
“Oh, no, no…ain’t nothin’,” Applejack quickly spoke up. “Just, uh…um…er…” After flustering a moment, she turned. “Say Twilight, ain’t ya’ s’posed to ask yer brother fer somethin’?”
“Oh…yeah, right.” Twilight took a moment to straighten herself before turning to him. “I wish I could visit a bit longer but we’re really kind of pressed for time right now. I hate to do this after not seeing each other for so long, but the truth is I need a favor…”
Fortunately, he didn’t seem put off by that at all. “Sure thing, Twily. Just name it.”
“I need your key.”
He looked a little puzzled. “Key? Oh, I’m just staying at home for a couple weeks. I don’t have-”
“No, not the house key. I mean…the special key. You know…” She looked at him a bit more seriously. “The key she gave you?”
Shining Armor’s casual look slowly faded. He stared silently at Twilight for a few seconds.
“Mom?”
Ms. Velvet looked up. He turned toward her but his eyes stayed on Twilight. “Do you mind if I talk to Twily for a few minutes alone?”
The woman hesitated, but after sitting quietly for a moment she nodded. “Alright. I wanted to run lunch to your father anyway. Walked out without it once again…”
She paused, as if waiting for a chuckle from Shining Armor, but he stayed silent and staring at Twilight. As a result, she grimaced before rising and going to gather the last bit of stew and bread to take with her.
As she went to the kitchen, Applejack nearly began to rise. “Uh, maybe I oughta go get some water fer washin’ up the dishes…”
“No,” Twilight immediately called out, also not looking away from Shining Armor. “No…have a seat. This concerns all of us after all.”
Applejack reluctantly sat back down again. Pinkie just seemed excited to be there as she rocked in her own chair. “I hope this means we get to look forward to a really great dessert! I’ve never had genuine Hoofheim pastries!”
No one said anything else as Ms. Velvet slowly gathered everything she needed. When she was done, she glanced back at Twilight and Shining Armor one more time before turning and walking out. As soon as the door swung shut behind her and latched, Shining Armor finally spoke up again. His voice was far quieter now. “Twilight, why do you and your friends need that key?”
“We need to use the Canterlot Express.”
“That train only goes into Equestria.”
She paused. “I know.”
His jaw shifted. “And knowing that, you still want it. Why?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“Why not?”
“You’ll try to stop me if I do.”
Now he frowned. “In that case, I already know what you’re planning on doing, and so the answer is no.”
“Shining Armor…”
“Twilight,” he cut off, squaring her in his gaze. “You have to let this go. No matter what happened it’s not worth your life. You’re not going to find anything back in that country other than what everyone else has ever found going back in there trying to find someone or something they loved: death.”
“It’s not about that,” she grew more insistent. “I swear it’s not about that.”
“Then what is it about?”
“I told you I can’t tell you.”
His fists clenched. “So you want me just to sit here and basically give you a way to commit an exotic suicide? Forget it.”
She sighed. “Shining Armor…I promise that I’m not looking to get killed doing this, but we have to do this. For everyone.”
“Wait…” he looked up. “Did you say ‘we’?” He looked to the other two. “What did she say-”
“I’m sorry, sir,” Applejack quickly cut off, “but Twilight’s tellin’ the truth. We can’t tell folks why it’s gotta be us, but it is important.”
“It’s an extra-special, super-duper, top-secret mission to save Greater Everfree!” Pinkie cheered.
“What? Save Greater Everfree? What are you-”
“The important thing is we need that key. It’s the only one I know about that will run the Canterlot Express. There might be a way to actually get rid of the Lunar Fall for good. No more eternal night. No more Light Eaters. No more Nighttouched. Everything can go back to the way it was before. But to do that, you have to trust me and you have to let me have the key.”
Shining Armor, oddly enough, didn’t argue. While he still looked concerned, he neither said nor did anything. He wasn’t even frowning anymore.
At length, he finally leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms.
“One condition.” He pointed right at Applejack and Pinkie Pie. “They come with me to get it. Without you.”
Applejack looked taken aback. Pinkie grinned as if she had just won a prize. Twilight herself was stunned. “But…why-”
“If you want me to give you the key, that’s the condition, Twily.”
She hesitated. She glanced at them nervously. Finally, she sighed and leaned back. “Alright. If you’ll give it to us.”
He took in a deep breath, then pushed his chair away from the table. He stared at the three, looking like his resolve was wavering a little, before rising. “Let’s clear the dishes. Then they can come with me.”
Several minutes later, Twilight was left behind to finish the washing while Applejack and Pinkie found themselves paired with Shining Armor, who didn’t take them upstairs but rather led them out the back door. Soon he was leading them away from not only the house but down a dirt street away from the other homes and buildings in town all together. The sounds of the town faded as the area around them transitioned to country, save for an old farm field left to fallow ahead of them. The walk grew quiet except for the sounds of their footsteps on the road.
By the time they reached the field, Applejack was rather ill at ease, not really knowing what to expect from this as she had let Twilight handle most of it. Pinkie still seemed casual enough, smiling and skipping along, but the mood that Shining Armor was giving off was anything but happy. They were far from anyone else now and there was an air not only of privacy but of seriousness when he finally spoke quietly.
“So you three are going to go into Equestria.”
Applejack winced again. “Well…er…uh…like I said before, it’s like Twilight said and-”
He cut her off with a sigh. “Will it help you be more honest with me if I tell you that I know not only are the three of you the kind of people everyone is looking for but that I know you stopped the Light Eater attack on Griffonstone?”
Applejack froze in her spot as if she had suddenly grown tree roots. Pinkie herself stopped and went wide-eyed. “Whoa!” She leaned in next to the farmer. “He guessed it, Applejack! He’s good!”
She stammered, looking at how Pinkie had just confirmed it. “Well…no! That is, no…not quite! I…er…uh…”
Before she could babble any more, Shining Armor just let out a small laugh. He turned to her and showed the first smile he had in a while.
“Relax. Twily’s terrible at keeping secrets. The look on her face during lunch when I mentioned all that was all I needed to know. They’re already looking for people with symbols on their hands and Twily’s had hers ever since we met eight years ago. I’m guessing you two are covering up yours, aren’t you?”
That did little to assuage Applejack. If anything she was even more distraught, and her hand trembled as if deciding whether or not to go for her hammer. Pinkie was only more overjoyed. “Ooo! He’s great at guessing games, Applejack! He pretty much figured out everything we did!” Suddenly, she looked puzzled. “Wait a second… Eight years ago? You mean you don’t remember being Twilight’s brother?”
“That’s what she told you, didn’t she?” he snickered. “Nah. I met her the same day my parents did, when she was pounding on our front door thinking we were her family. I don’t blame you for believing her, though. She’s almost had me convinced more than once, believe it or not.” He turned and kept walking.
Seeing him casually going on made Applejack puzzled. “Wait…hold up. Don’t ya’ gotta…report us or somethin’?”
“Report you for what? Saving thousands of people?”
As Pinkie bounced after him, Applejack only looked more confused. She finally began to reluctantly walk after him. “You…you believe us? I mean, that is…uh… Damnit, how do I say it… You…um…”
“You believe that we’re not going to go crazy and start attacking people and that we’re not a threat and that we really can kill Light Eaters and we were only in Griffonstone to help and everyone is blowing this way, way, way out of proportion and that we really can put a stop to all of this eternal night and big bad monsters crawling out of the darkness by going into Equestria?” Pinkie asked, punctuated by a deep breath.
He chuckled again. “As crazy as it might sound, I do. Mom and dad think that Twilight’s just a confused person to this day, but I know a bit better than that. I know not every fantastic story she told me was made up or imagined. For one thing, I actually met her headmistress once.”
Pinkie let out an exaggerated gasp, but Applejack herself nearly went slack jawed. “You actually met that woman she’s always talkin’ about? What’s her name…Celestia?”
“What was she like? Was she like Twilight only with a lot more magic? And maybe taller?” Pinkie threw in.
“She was definitely…odd,” he responded after a moment of thought. “She definitely didn’t seem like anyone from Hoofheim or anywhere else I’ve ever been. I don’t know if it was just how we met, but she seemed like she didn’t even belong in our society or in our time. I don’t know how to describe it exactly. It’s like…like she was seeing a world that none of us could see. Or maybe just thought about it in a different way.”
“So why did she come to see you?” Applejack asked.
“Let’s just walk a bit further first. We still have to find the key.”
Applejack was a bit curious about this, but said nothing. She kept walking along with Pinkie.
They eventually reached and passed the old farm, but they walked on beyond that until they came to a weathered, beaten dwelling that had been torn apart by time and the elements until it was reduced to a mere shack, surrounded by overgrowth and bees buzzing around wildflowers. He walked up to it, checking the path for anything that might have been in the grass and lazing about, and led the two up to the front step. It creaked and sagged as he stepped on it, but he brought them inside.
Aside from some dirt and old grass stems in the shack along with a cobweb or two, there was nothing. Most of the floorboards in there were half-rotted and loose and they stuck to his shoe and came up a bit as he led them in.
“Two years before that night where I met Twilight, I was at home painting the front of the house. Mom was out visiting a relative in another town and dad was working late at the clerk’s office. The sun was already below the mountains and I was cleaning up for the day to finish tomorrow, when I heard something coming up the street. I looked and I saw four horses more amazing than any others I had ever seen in my life pulling this elaborate carriage behind it. It looked like something that only the crown heads would have. I don’t know what it was about that night, but everyone else was already in or off doing something else on our street. I was the only one out and it pulled right up to me. That’s when she walked out of it.”
He slowed down, beginning to pick over the boards one by one, as if looking for one in particular.
“The clothes she wore were some material that you could never get in Hoofheim, and the design that was on it was something I’ve never seen anywhere else, so it had to have been from Equestria. What really struck me, though, was her hair. I’d never seen anything like it and I still haven’t. It seemed to shimmer like a rainbow whenever any light hit it, and although there was no wind it seemed to almost be waving behind her.”
He stopped at one board and dropped to his knees.
“She asked me if I was Shining Armor. I was quiet a minute, because I had no idea how she knew who I was and if I should answer. Really, I don’t know why I said yes to this day, but…I don’t know…maybe it was because how it felt to be around her. It was wild. The whole moment was so odd. Like I was meeting, I dunno, a fairy godmother or something. I said yes, and that’s when she said her name was Princess Celestia of Canterlot.” He shrugged. “That part might have actually been the truth. There used to be this really minor city-state landlocked by Equestria. I’m sure it had some landed nobility, just…none that anyone cared about. She reached back into the carriage and gave me this.”
Here, he pulled the board up and reached underneath it. After a moment he pulled out a small, dust-covered, and yet well-made and ornate chest.
As Applejack and Pinkie stared on at it, he turned around, set it in his lap, and opened it up for both of them to look inside. Lying right in the center of it in a small indentation was a strange toothed object that looked cut from a single large gem; sparkling slightly in the dim light of the room. Definitely not like any normal key. In fact, if they hadn’t been told what it was, they likely wouldn’t have suspected it was a key in the first place.
“She put this in my hands while I was still surprised. She told me: ‘In four years, take this to Falcon’s Point in Mt. Aris. Get on the train there and use it to come to Canterlot. Once you get there, I’ll tell you your destiny.’ Then she just smiled, got back in the carriage, and left.”
He closed the lid and exhaled. “One word. That’s all I ever said to her. I shouldn’t have believed it. I should have at least told mom and dad about it. But instead I found myself taking this key and putting it out here. And in four years, I decided to see what she was talking about. At least I did until the Lunar Fall happened. Even then, for about a year, I almost considered going there. That’s when I started seeing photos of the people who managed to make it out of there, both dead and alive, and I started to hear the stories about what the Nighttouched and Light Eaters were doing. I gave up on it then, and I just kept the key right here. Right until Twilight started to talk to us about her old headmistress and I realized it was the same person. That’s when I took her out here and showed her the key.”
He looked back up to the both of them. “Until today, we were the only two people who knew about it who were still alive…at least as far as I know.”
Pinkie clapped her hands at that, taking it to mean they had “won” something. Applejack gave him a more uncertain look.
“Know somethin’? I don’t really get you. I can understand Ms. Velvet. I know I’d be kinda freaked and confused if someone kept sayin’ there were my kid and I didn’t even know them. But as fer you? Ya’ acted like Twilight really was your little sis ever since you spotted her. Not ta’ mention all this stuff she’s been tellin’ us is so crazy even now I’m having a helluva time believin’ it’s all true. If you think Twilight’s nuts or at least confused, why do ya’ trust her so much?”
Shining Armor sat quietly for a second, not answering, before he started to get up. “You’re right when you say that I don’t believe I ever met Twilight before that day eight years ago. And actually I’ve asked myself a couple times why I want to bother getting to be so friendly with a total stranger who latched onto our family at random. I know enough people around here feel that way. Well…the answer’s pretty simple.”
He shrugged.
“Why not? There’s a lot of people like Twilight in the world right now. Especially people who barely got away from the Light Eaters. They have no family, no friends, no home, no nothing. I haven’t seen the worst from the front lines, no, but I’ve heard stories about hundreds of people drinking themselves to death, starving themselves sitting around graveyards or home ruins, or taking their own lives…sometimes with guns or poison but a lot of times just letting the Nighttouched eat them alive. Like they somehow thought that’s what should have happened to begin with. A lot of these people were teachers, doctors, businessmen, or just mothers and fathers. I kept thinking if they only had one thing to still hold onto then maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad.”
He let out a weak chuckle.
“It’s kind of funny… I always used to think of what it would be like to be a ‘big brother’. I realized I had the chance when Twilight came around. And if her thinking that I’m really her big brother gives her something to hold onto, if it makes her better now than she would be, then it’s definitely not doing her any harm.”
He looked down to the chest and tightened his grip. “And as for this, I quieted down during lunch because I’m worried that Twilight’s the kind of person who would be willing to get herself killed for something she believed; not because I think the three of you are crazy for going into Equestria and that you’re the only ones who have a chance of stopping this.”
Once again, the two were amazed. “Uh…really?”
“Twilight’s shown me some of the things she can do. I once asked her if she could kill a Light Eater with her power. She never said, but she looked just the same as she did at lunch. That’s how I knew it was true. That’s why I knew she had to be behind what happened in Griffonstone. I knew it the moment I saw it in the paper. There’s no one else in the world I could think of that could really pull that off. And while I don’t know how you did it, if you three did save Grifftham City, then I know you’re the only ones I can even imagine possibly stopping the rest of this. So…”
He trailed off again. His face began to look as anxious as before. He looked again to the key and looked back up again.
“If you two say that there’s an honest chance of saving Greater Everfree and that you’re the only ones who stand a chance, I’m willing to trust her and you with this.”
Pinkie grinned. “Don’t you worry one bit! It’s not just me, Applejack, and Twilight doing it! We’ve got three other best friends helping us! Besides, I already prayed at a Gaitian shrine about it on the way here and nothing big and unexpected is trying to stop us, so we’ve got nothing to worry about!”
Applejack glanced at her a moment, but then looked back. “Well, I don’t know if it’s gonna be all that easy, but she’s right in that there’s more than just us three involved. I for one seem to be doin’ more than I thought I could all the time, and Twilight seems to think we can do it. If yer askin’ my honest opinion, then I say we can. We gotta. I got my own family to worry about along with everyone else’s, so we have to win and we will.”
Shining Armor was quiet. He looked back down to the chest, then up to them. Finally, he exhaled and held it out.
“Alright. I’ll hold you all to that, though.”
Within less than two hours, the group’s short visit was over. They were back at the train platforms, this time escorted by Shining Armor himself. Twilight seemed glad for it, and not just because he helped act as more cover from anyone suspicious now that they knew word of what happened in Grifftham City had gotten that far north. As soon as they arrived they found Starlight nearly tripping over herself as she ran out to meet them.
“Perfect timing! We either had to leave in forty minutes or we’d be stuck here for the next two days! I was about to run and try to find you in case we couldn’t make it but you’re back! Let’s get on and get you changed for the next holdover!”
She practically threw their tickets into their hands before turning and rushing aboard the already-loading engine. Luckily, Hoofheim didn’t seem to be nearly as particular about security as Manehattan had been. At least not more than a quick glance or two. The three turned back to Shining Armor. He smiled back at them a little weakly. “This visit was…what? Close to three hours this time? I think it’s a new record for us, Twily.”
She chuckled, albeit a bit nervously, before glancing away to one side. She dug her toe into the platform. “I’ll tell you what. I promise I’ll visit more and I’ll rent a new P.O. box if we come back from this.”
His eyes narrowed. “When you come back from this.”
“…Right. When we come back from this.”
“Are you sure there’s nothing I can do to help? I can at least fire a rifle at a couple Nighttouched…”
She shook her head. “Where we’re going, there’s worse things than Nighttouched. Much worse. Unless you have a Promethian Sigil, they’ll be lethal in one touch.”
He frowned. “That doesn’t make me feel much safer for you. Why not at least tell the government about this? Even Trottingham might be able to do something…”
“So long as that crazy fire witch is with ‘em? Forget it,” Applejack snorted.
“Don’t worry!” Pinkie cheered. “We got three more awesome friends who’ll come with us and a train all to ourselves! What could go wrong?”
Shining Armor kept looking uneasy. “Twily…if this gets to be too much for you and your friends, you promise me this: you’ll get out of there.”
“Shining Armor, I-”
“I mean it,” he cut off. “No one knows what’s in there. If anything goes wrong, you’ll run while you can. If you don’t promise me, I can’t promise you I won’t tell anyone about the six of you.”
Twilight went wide-eyed. “What?”
“Sorry, but I’d rather know you were in a cell rather than getting ripped apart.”
Twilight stared back, but on seeing him not budging sighed. “Alright, I promise.”
He smiled again after a short while. “Alright.” He stepped forward soon after and gave Twilight a hug, and in spite of her more dim demeanor after the promise she was forced to make she returned it rather strongly. After holding for a few moments they parted, and he looked to the other two. “Everyone…be careful and good luck.”
Applejack tipped his hat to him while Pinkie excitedly waved. Soon after, he stepped back. Twilight gave him one last look before she backed up and finally turned to head for the train. The others followed and soon they were on board.
They headed to their own compartment, but on arrival Twilight looked out the window and saw Shining Armor was still waiting on the platform for them to depart. In spite of her attempts to busy herself with putting away the small chest in her hand somewhere secure and start getting changed, she couldn’t help but stare at him the whole time. Finally, however, the train gave the all-aboard signal, and a loud whistle later it pulled away.
Both Applejack and Pinkie noticed Twilight stared out the window and tried to follow the platform with her eyes until the last. Finally, she leaned back and sat in her seat, still unable to start getting dressed right away.
“I think you’re right, Twilight.”
This finally shook the mage out of it, and got her to turn and find Pinkie now sitting next to her and smiling. “What?”
“You should totally visit more after this! You look so much happier when you’re talking to Shining Armor! I really don’t think he even minds. I think he likes spending time with you even if he doesn’t remember you.”
Twilight was caught to hear that, left speechless and staring back at Pinkie, but she simply grinned and got up to resume getting dressed. The mage sat there a moment more, still staring, before she finally recovered enough to get up as well.
“I better warn you all in advance,” Starlight sighed, “Getting even this ride was no picnic. At tomorrow’s switchover, I could only get four tickets going straight back to Manehattan in a non-sleeper car.” She paused. “Actually, to be honest, Double Diamond said he found a lead to a site he wanted me to look at. We could always hang around there for a week or so instead…”
“No…no,” Twilight groaned, “we don’t want to leave everyone else in Manehattan any longer, and we don’t want to give Sunset a chance to do something else to try and get us in trouble. We’ll head back and head out as soon as we can.”
“You sure?”
She nodded. “The sooner we get back to the others, the sooner we can think about how we’re going to get through the next part of all this…”
Now that the key was obtained, everyone but Pinkie seemed more on edge on the return trip. All they had to worry about now was making it back safely, but as they were intruding into more secure territory instead of less secure and had Shining Armor’s own warning to worry about, they stayed in one spot as best as possible. They were all very grateful that there was no Gaitian shrine near where their train stopped or at least not one nearby, as this allowed them to all wait rather quietly on their platform and change into the next locomotive without incident.
Starlight did use the opportunity of the first stop to quickly send off a pair of telegrams; one to her own “society” and the other to Carousel Couture to let them know they’d be back soon. After all, they had been waiting in silence for a few days now for them to return and they wanted to give them some measure of relief.
Fortunately, even on the second train, where the four nervously had to take normal seats in regular view of the train workers and even other passengers, things went smoothly. No one gave them much of a second look, and the conductor treated them and their tickets normally. They were counting the seconds the last day, but finally they pulled into the urban area of Manehattan and, soon after that, they were disembarking. They quickly got their bags, Starlight hailed the first steam taxi, and they got on board for the ride back.
“Alright, we made it,” Twilight sighed in relief as soon as they were on the road.
“Yipee!” Pinkie cheered. “Does this mean I can find another Gaitian shrine now to say thanks?”
“I’d wait ‘til we’re back at Rarity’s first,” Applejack frowned. “Can’t wait to get outta this durn getup…”
“We did get back pretty easy. Easier than I thought, at least…” Starlight thought aloud. “You don’t suppose things got better over here with the government while we were gone, do you?”
“I don’t know, but so long as they’re not bothering us, I won’t complain,” Twilight answered. “We’ve still got a lot to do, and it gets worse from here.”
The woman winced. “Are you sure I can’t do anything? Or…anyone else, for that matter? Just the six of you going in there alone? Shouldn’t you try to at least…round up more people like you?”
She shook her head. “I thought about that, but I don’t think we can afford that kind of time.” She turned to Applejack. “You said it yourself back after the boat. That somehow Sunset knows how to track us from our powers. I think the more of us get together in one place, the easier we’ll be to find…either by the authorities or by whatever she’s using to detect us. And we don’t really have time to try and find more people and judge whether or not they can help us or they’ll try and kill us at some point.”
“I at least thought you should let me do a bit more research on your powers…” Starlight grumbled. “It’d be great if we could come up with a weapon that wouldn’t need your Promethian Sigils… Maybe whatever Double Diamond dug up will have something to it. I need to go check in on them when we get back. I’d like to say don’t leave without me in case I find something else, but…”
“We’ll see if we can stay put a bit longer or if we need to leave right away,” Twilight reassured. “Rarity and the others will know more than us. And honestly, you’ve been a real help already.”
She blushed a little. “Well, heh, here’s hoping I can keep it that way.”
A quarter of an hour later, they were pulling up to the entrance to Carousel Couture. Thanks to their unfortunate choice in trains, they managed to arrive before the official start of the work day. Wasting little time, Twilight, Applejack, and Pinkie dismounted with their bags. Starlight moved up to the window seat and looked out after them.
“I’ll send a wire by the end of the day if I can’t make it, alright?”
“Alright. Thanks again.”
Giving one last nod, she leaned into the steam cab, and the driver took off again.
As for the ladies, they quickly made their way to the front door as fast as they could. Twilight reached it first and gave it a rap with the special knock. The three waited for a few seconds, Applejack looking around behind them, before the latch clicked. It swung open soon after, and Twilight quickly squeezed her hoop skirt inside with the others following.
As soon as she stepped into the foyer, she noticed that it was empty—a bit to her surprise. She turned and looked back to see who had opened the door and was again surprised to see it was Fluttershy.
“Fluttershy? You’re answering the door? Where’s Ms. Pommel or Ms. Saddles?” She glanced around the empty foyer as Applejack and Pinkie pushed in behind her. “Where is everyone?”
Fluttershy didn’t say a word, but she did look far more nervous than usual. She was cringing as badly as she had in Grifftham City. She pushed the door shut again once everyone was inside, but kept pulling in on herself and looking at them fearfully.
Applejack soon picked up on it too. “What’sa matter, sugarcube? Somethin’ happen while we were gone?”
She swallowed once, before cupping her hands to her face. She seemed to nearly break into tears.
“I’m sorry, ladies. They made me…”
Twilight raised an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”
Applejack, however, picked up on it far faster. “Aw hel-”
She wasn’t able to finish. At that moment, the two doors on the first floor of the foyer and the two doors at the top of the stairs flew open. The entryways, along with the one to the dining room, were suddenly filled with men and women in traveling suits bursting out into the main hall. No sooner had they emerged than they each brandished a Manehattan-made revolver, cocked them in the same movement, and aimed them right for the heads of the four women. In a rush that lasted only two seconds, they were surrounded by at least eight people with guns.
While Applejack grit her teeth angrily, no one else made a move. They couldn’t. In the time it would take to call out for their Anima Viris, they’d already be shot. For a few brief seconds, the only noise was a few whimpers from Fluttershy.
The sound of footsteps finally echoed into the foyer. Moments later, another man in a suit, this one sporting a handlebar mustache and bowler hat, stepped just behind the two at the entrance to the side hall. He looked over the four once before focusing entirely on the mage.
“Twilight Sparkle?”
She couldn’t even answer. She only swallowed nervously.
“I’ll take that as a yes. I’ll have to ask that you and your five friends come with me. The Manehattan government has a number of questions for you.”
“Golldurnit, couldn’t you have let us change before stickin’ us in here?!”
All five of the other girls jumped on hearing Applejack’s outburst, especially since it had been the first thing they had heard since they had been gestured into the rotted, decayed, half-ruined room in the forgotten flat on the edge of Manehattan’s capitol. The twelve Manehattan soldiers stationed around the room all stiffened, and two of them actually grasped for their weapons for a moment, but in the end they did nothing and went back to standing at attention.
Rainbow Dash frowned. “At least you didn’t have to be ‘babysit’ by them for the better part of twelve hours before they moved you…”
Applejack shot her a glance. “Speakin’ o’ that, I thought you were s’posed to be a big time Huntsman. Why didn’t ya’ fight yer way out when they ambushed ya’?”
“First off, they didn’t ambush us.” She jabbed an accusing thumb at Fluttershy. “She let them in when they said they were with the Manehattan government.”
Fluttershy ducked her head down from her own seat, letting her hair fall over her face. “Well…we…didn’t want to get in more trouble with the law. I didn’t know they were looking for us…and no one else was around to let them in…and I thought it was rude to leave the door shut when someone was home.”
“Then,” Dash cut off, “I started to take care of it…” She gestured to two of the soldiers surrounding them. In particular, one who was still wincing from a bandaged and splinted hand, and another one sporting a head dressing still looked dizzy. “And I break one chair and Rarity tells me to stand down.”
“You were about to break my grandfather’s set of Abyssian porcelain he got on his wedding day!” Rarity nearly yelled from her own position, rattling her own wrist irons in the process. “That’s the only set of flatware I own that matches my entire winter ensemble! Besides, if you had fought them all off, that would have only gotten the factory shut down and then Ms. Saddles, Ms. Pommel, and the rest of my employees would be out of work!”
Dash rolled her eyes and groaned. “I thought my normal clients from Manehattan were bad…”
“Well, nuts to all this,” Applejack griped. “Let’s just-”
She cut herself off as Twilight lashed out and stomped on her shoe.
“Ow!” She snapped to her. “What was that for?”
Twilight didn’t answer. She merely gave her a sharp glare and motioned to the side at the guards. The implication was clear. So long as they were armed and surrounding them, none of them dared try to use their Anima Viris. And if they were this jittery about them, they had better not even give the impression of the same.
Applejack frowned and leaned back on realizing the truth. “Awright, but how long they plan on keepin’ us waitin’ in here? What they even arrestin’ us for?”
“I do say I don’t very much care for these cloak and dagger situations unless I’m reading about them in a Shadow Spade mystery…” Rarity sighed, before grimacing around her. “Especially the choice of locale.”
“At least it’s not a prison or jail cell…” Fluttershy timidly suggested. “Maybe that’s a good sign?”
“They want us to feel good; then get these boy scouts with guns out of here,” Dash grumbled.
“Let’s just sit tight a bit longer,” Twilight sighed, doing her best to fold her own shackled hands. “So long as they aren’t threatening us, there’s no need to worry just yet.”
“Is this a bad time to mention that I’ve needed to use the bathroom ever since we got off the train?” Pinkie spoke up. “Because I don’t think these guys will let me even if I ask them to walk me there.”
Before anyone could think of anything to say to that, the door finally clicked. As that was the first time since they had first been brought into the building and sat down in the room following their informal “arrest” at Carousel Couture and their transport to the far end of the city, all six were soon staring at it. As soon as it swung open, the man in the bowler hat walked in. He was followed by a somewhat obese and scowling man in a Manehattan military uniform who gave the six of them an unfriendly look. He advanced to a table that had been set in front of the women and their six seats along with an additional two uncomfortable soldiers.
Once all were inside, the man in the bowler hat stepped out and shut the door behind him. The military man sat down in the lone chair and was quickly flanked by the guards with him. He fixed them all with the look a guard bulldog might give a passing pedestrian.
“Alright,” he finally growled, “start spilling your guts. Otherwise a few weeks in a prison cell is the best you can hope for. Don’t think that you’ll get off easy just because you’re ladies. You can begin by telling us how you broke into the country and attacked that kerosene plant.”
Dash instantly burst out into a mocking laugh. “That’s what you Manehattanites are opening with? Some fat lieutenant giving a verbal warning? Please. If we were in the Dragonlands, they’d start with ripping off our fingernails before asking any questions.”
The lieutenant immediately flushed a shade red. Several members of the group looked nervous. Fluttershy whimpered at the mention of the fingernails. “Uh…maybe we shouldn’t try to make them mad…”
“Well arresting me for no good reason and dragging me out to some shack somewhere like this makes me mad.”
“You best watch yourself, Rainbow Dash,” the lieutenant sneered. “And yes, we already identified you. This isn’t Fillydelphia. Even if it was, amnesty from an ally will only get you so far. You were once against them and, by proxy, us. You’re definitely a prime suspect for planning a bit of revenge terrorism.” He wheeled on Pinkie. “And you. Gaitian or not, you’re from Trottingham. Maybe this was your condition for better treatment for you and your family?”
Twilight began to look progressively more uncomfortable. Rarity picked up on it, and quickly leaned over with a soft smile. “Don’t worry, darling, I’ll handle this.”
She immediately leaned up, getting the attention of the lieutenant, and cleared her throat.
“Sir, if I may. I believe I speak for all of my companions gathered present. And in response to your inquiries, I offer politely the following…”
She paused for one second, as if for effect.
“We have absolutely nothing to say to you whatsoever.”
Twilight looked even more surprised at that. The lieutenant himself began to fluster. Rarity merely held her nose in the air and kept her mouth shut.
“Trying to be tough, missy? Well how tough do you think you’ll be after sleeping with the rats and cockroaches for a couple weeks? Or taking a dump in a hole in the floor and only when we say you can? Or wearing some bargain brand sackcloth instead of that nice little dress? ‘Cause that’s where you’re headed if you don’t play ball with me!”
A bit to the surprise of the others, Rarity didn’t balk at all. “I suggest you eat a bit more vegetables, sir,” she said as she wafted in front of her nose. “Or at least brush more vigorously. Your breath is atrocious when you become too loud.”
The lieutenant went even redder. “Are you trying to make me mad?!”
“Good heavens, no. You’re doing that yourself in response to my quaint observations.”
He began to get up. “Think you’re pretty funny, huh? Well, here’s what I think-”
Before he could say another word, the door to the room opened again. The man with a bowler hat, looking more earnest this time, quickly ran into the room bearing a slip of paper with a printed message. The lieutenant turned to him on entering, and nearly barked at him for interrupting when it was thrust in his face. Sneering, he seized it and looked it over. A few moments passed. His anger mostly faded, replaced by a mixture of puzzlement and surprise.
Twilight, still baffled, looked back to Rarity, but her expression hadn’t changed. A moment later, the lieutentant grit his teeth before crumpling the note into a ball. He gave one last angry glare at the six of them, but then swore and stormed out. His escort quickly went after him, followed shortly by the man in a bowler hat. They were alone with the soldiers.
Only then did Rarity smile. The others looked at her curiously.
“What in the sam hill was that?” Applejack asked.
“Oh, there’s a little saying in Manehattan, dear. It’s not what you know, it’s who you know. The moment we were sequestered at my home I told Ms. Pommel to send a wire to our major general liason that I was being arrested without a warrant.”
Dash raised an eyebrow. “You know a major general?”
“I might need my hand held in the country, Ms. Dash, but in the urban jungle I am an absolute predator.”
“But…but…” Fluttershy stammered, “how do we know he’ll treat us any better?”
“He’s bound to be more fair than the officer with the atrocious oral hygiene.”
Twilight sighed. “I hope you’re right…”
After only about ten minutes, the door opened again; once more by the man with the bowler hat. The person who came in this time was an even more highly-decorated officer than the lieutenant. He was also much older, with a broader mustache and circular eyeglasses. He seemed far more harried than the previous one, and as soon as he was in he looked over the group a moment before he focused on Rarity. He stared at her as his own escort walked in before sighing, then turned back around and nodded to the man in the bowler. He nodded back and pulled in, shutting the door behind him.
“Ms. Rarity,” he exhaled, “I hardly expected to see you in a place like this.”
“I wish it could be under better circumstances, Major General Kibitz,” Rarity ruefully answered. “Perhaps once your first order was complete.”
“Well, I regret to inform you that if you tried to wire me to get me to pull rank in a situation like this,” he said as he stepped forward, “you may have been expecting too much from me. I’m only half-here on a fancy, to say nothing of I don’t want the Chancellor coming back upon me saying I’m somehow at fault for ending up going with you over Suri Polomare. That being said…”
He reached the chair and far more tiredly and slowly pulled it out before sitting down and facing the group.
“I’ve been briefed on the situation and I read the papers. I don’t suppose you’d like to start with any reason I shouldn’t just leave you to the lieutenant?”
“How about because we haven’t done anything wrong?” Dash snapped back.
“Major General,” Rarity added, “Ms. Dash was perhaps…a bit brusque about how she explained it, but the principle is the truth. There’s no reason we should be here right now. How can the Manehattan government be treating us as if we’re criminals or fugitives?”
“Because, quite frankly, the government has no idea what to make of you or what’s going on in the world right now, including what the truth is. All we know is that there’s been one incident after another over Greater Everfree involving people suddenly getting these symbols on their hands. Most of the ones we find are either hiding or are going insane and attacking people like mad. One couldn’t even be chained down, and many of them are showing off abilities that are being accused of being anything from the work of demonic possession to secret weapons to nerve agents to extraterrestrial science fiction nonsense. Of the few we’ve managed to find, half of them have gone wild in custody already and almost all of them had to end up being killed. And that, of course, is not even beginning to get into all of the reports and rumors alike that came from Griffonstone.”
He sighed to catch his breath.
“One story after another keeps coming in as more keep showing up. It was bad enough when we thought the entire thing was just an attempt at Trottingham terrorism. Now we have talk of a way to make biological weapons out of people…a new effect of the Lunar Fall…conspiracy theories…and just today talk of cults actually starting to organize who are treating this entire thing as a sign of the end times or an answer to the prayers of the faithful Harmoniums. Greater Everfree is a powder keg on the brink of explosion as more time goes by.”
Applejack huffed at him. “Well, y’all did a bang-up job makin’ it worse! Lettin’ those papers write all them stories throwin’ ‘round all that hoopla after all we did to save Grifftham City!”
Kibitz raised an eyebrow.
“So…you admit that you six were the ones in Grifftham City during that surge?”
Applejack’s anger broke as she realized she had spilled the beans.
“But to answer your question,” Kibitz went on, “all I can offer is…what else could we have done? We’re all in the dark. We have no way of knowing what these symbols are or what you are. Every one we manage to apprehend says the same thing: they don’t know why they have the symbols. We do know, however, that the surrounding countries are starting their own programs. Some seem to be looking at imprisonment or worse, but others seem to be simply gathering them…and I can see why if the power to kill Light Eaters really is tied to them. However, as of late, we have found one difference.”
He squared them all in his gaze.
“So far, the only ones who seem to have recovered from episodes of psychosis…at least, so we think as they can’t remember exactly…are ones that we traced to being around Carousel Couture. Which means that we think the six of you had something to do with it. And, in light of you admitting that you were behind stopping the giant Light Eater that attacked Grifftham City, that seems to be more than likely. If you have anything to say to explain why some people with symbols on their hands appeared to save thousands and others attacked not only that kerosene plant but at least a half dozen other sites, I would be pleased to hear about it.”
Twilight winced. She looked at the others, and they looked back not seeming any more at ease. They were quiet for several seconds. Finally, she looked back to him.
“I…don’t suppose we could have maybe five minutes alone? Three?”
Kibitz didn’t change.
“I promise we won’t try to run, but it’s very important to discuss this before we say anything.” She groaned. “And…I know how bad that sounded…but I promise it’s important and that we’re not working for Trottingham or anyone else.”
“And who are you working for?”
“No one! This is all just us! All we were trying to do in Grifftham City was help, and that’s all we’re trying to do now!”
“Then how do you explain that attack on the kerosene plant? Along with all the others?”
“That weren’t us!” Applejack shouted. “That was the crazy fire witch from Trottingham!”
“So Trottingham is involved?”
“No!” Twilight shot back. “I mean…yes, sort of…but sort of not… Look, the point being is we stopped that attack on Grifftham City and we might be able to undo the shadow over Equestria, but only if you give us back that key you confiscated and let us go!”
“How? And what are those symbols on your hands anyway? Why do you have them and you’re trying to attack Nighttouched and Light Eaters while this noblewoman of Trottingham only wants to attack civilians and factories? What can you tell us about these weapons you possess and why only some people possess them?”
Twilight exhaled tiredly. She was again silent for a few moments, measuring her response carefully.
“Listen…do you at least accept that we’re the ones who stopped the surge in Grifftham City?”
Kibitz swished his mouth, shifting in his seat a little. “Truthfully, I find it impossible to believe. Not after everything I’ve seen Light Eaters do. Even now I doubt that the rumors and even the official reports could possibly be completely true. However, what I believe is of no consequence. The facts remain. At least two dozen credible witnesses and a hundred others agree that they saw six women fighting, and hurting, that giant Light Eater with some sort of strange power. Another hundred said similar women came to their aid during the attack. Something happened that involved them.”
“Alright…well, if you can accept that, then you have to accept what they said is true. Not only can we hurt them we’re the only ones that can be around them when they deteriorate without being corrupted ourselves. That means we’re the only ones who can possibly stop them. And to do that, we need to go into Equestria. Away from Manehattan, Fillydelphia, Appleloosa, Trottingham, or anywhere else. You can say we have some sort of special weapon if you want, but the bottom line is it’s the only weapon that you have right now. If you can believe that it’s possible that the six of us stopped that giant Light Eater and the attack on Griffonstone, then you know we’re the only chance of stopping them all together.”
The major general was quiet again. He leaned back further in his chair and looked them over. Everyone save Pinkie stared back, who was now fidgeting in her chair with greater intensity.
“And I suppose you are still unwilling to share the secret of this weapon or power you possess?”
“We can’t. It’s not a matter of desire…it’s a matter of ability.”
“And you want me to go on faith for that? Knowing it sounds exactly like what a covert operative or hostile agent would say? Griffonstone is closest to being allies with Trottingham, not us. All I’m supposed to go on is that you say you can stop the effects of the Lunar Fall and that’s it?”
“I’m sorry, I wish I could offer more than that, but that’s all.”
Kibitz said nothing more for half a minute, continuing to stare over the group and size them up in light of this. Finally, he put his hands out to push away from the table and rise. He straightened his own uniform as he looked down on them.
“I will report what you just told me directly to higher command. They will make the final decision.”
Twilight looked a bit downcast, even knowing that was the best they could have ever hoped for. Applejack and Rainbow Dash both frowned while Rarity sighed and Fluttershy continued to sit there quietly. Only Pinkie Pie ended up raising her hand and waving it furiously, like she was a child in class.
Even Kibitz seemed a bit surprised by it. “Yes?”
“If you’re going to be leaving again, can you show me to the bathroom first? I don’t think I can hold it any longer…”
Two hours later, Pinkie was sitting much more regularly, but neither the presence of the armed guards nor anything else had changed. Fluttershy kept shifting the position on her own wrist irons while Dash was doing her best to figure a way to sprawl out and sleep on her upright chair. Twilight herself kept looking at the high windows. By now, the day had turned from blue to yellow. It was getting late, and still there was nothing.
Dash sighed. “Can we at least get a free dinner out of this? I’m starving…”
“I almost wonder if telling them about Lt. Colonel Burnt Oak would do any good… He’d vouch for us,” Applejack muttered.
“I bet Gramps back from Griffonstone would too!” Pinkie suggested.
“Good luck getting ahold of that one…” Dash sighed.
“I have to admit, we only seemed to raise more questions than we answered,” Rarity sighed. “I’m not sure I’d let us out if I was in that man’s shoes myself. We’re asking him to go on a lot of faith.”
“That’s about all we can afford…” Twilight muttered, much more quietly so that only the girls around her could distinctly hear it. “Things are already getting worse. If we can defeat Nightmare Moon, I pray that really does fix everything. And not just the Lunar Fall.”
Fluttershy looked up a little. “What do you mean ‘not just’?”
“I’m not even going to whisper about anything more here,” Twilight spoke even more quietly. “But it wasn’t just what Starlight told us that made me want to go after Nightmare Moon…”
This got everyone’s curiosity, but Twilight clammed up and looked at the door again without another word.
She didn’t have to wait too much longer. About three minutes later it clicked and opened again. This time, the man in the bowler hat entered along with Major General Kibitz and a larger escort than before. As soon as he was in, the escort began to advance on the six of them while the man in the hat quickly began to organize the other guards to move.
Kibitz himself focused just on the women. “Alright, you’re coming with me. If you can convince one more member of the Manehattan government, then you six will be free to go at least for what you propose.”
Twilight looked puzzled as she began to rise. “And…who is it we need to convince?”
“Chancellor Fancy Pants.”
Pushing the wheelbarrow filled with coal was a bit hard for Shining Armor one-handed, but he kept clinging to the newspaper in his other hand and flipping through it as best as he could all the way back to the house. If need be, he would stop every once in a while to open it and turn another page. He frowned more with each new one, though. No news about Twilight, and no good news in general. Word of how bad the fear and paranoia about individuals with symbols on their hands had gotten was beginning to reach Hoofheim at last, and it wasn’t pleasant.
Finally, he reached the back page. He nearly threw it to the ground in frustration to be left for trash, but in the end shoved it back in his pocket. He looked to the sky. It was dark and cloudy, and the wind was getting stiffer and sharper. Knuckling down on the wheelbarrow, he pushed it more swiftly up the hill and all the way back to the house. He quickly wheeled it out to one side and under the awning, and grabbed the shovel to move it into the scuttle.
Once he finished and quickly rinsed his hands, he went back for the front door. He reached out to grasp the handle and open it up.
However, while his hand was still an inch away the handle turned of its own accord. He blinked in puzzlement as it swung open.
He found himself standing face to face with a smirking woman with fiery hair, dressed in clothes from Trottingham.
Shining Armor’s jaw slackened. She was casually leaning against the frame, with a steaming bowl and a spoon. She had just finished eating a bite from it by the looks of it.
“Do come in, Shining Armor. Your parents and I were just sitting down for a meal, and her potato soup?” She took another spoonful and ate it, giving out an exaggerated “mmm”. “It really is the best.”
Shining Armor didn’t move. His jaw closed and his fists started to tighten. “Who are you?”
She shrugged. “Just an unexpected houseguest. One of several, actually. Say hi to the others, won’t you?”
Her foot extended and pushed the door, swinging it more open wide and allowing Shining Armor to look into the main room.
His mother and father were both there and seated at the dinner table. However, they were surrounded by several Trottingham soldiers wearing some sort of bizarre steam equipment. Three of them were fully armored. One was near the fiery-haired woman, but the other two were right at the sides of her parents. Of the two, one had blades coming from his gauntlets that were glowing and humming faintly, and he was holding them near the neck of his mother.
“It’s suppertime. Come on in and let’s eat.”
He glanced back at the woman, who was still smirking. It made him stiffen and his muscles tense, but he knew he could do nothing. As she helped herself to another mouthful, she stepped inside and cleared the way to let him walk in. He reluctantly crossed the threshold, and as soon as he was in the armored man advanced and shut and barred the door behind him before taking position at his back. Shining Armor glanced behind him, but then up to the woman again.
“Who are you actually?”
She snickered. “What? Didn’t your little messed-up-mentally guest tell you? Or did she get that screwed up too?” She remarked as she set her bowl and her spoon down on an end table nearby, before casually leaning up against it.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
She made a cutting motion. “If your plan is ‘play innocent’, you can drop the act. Your parents already spilled their guts before I had to go to the trouble.”
The threat made his jaw tighten. “You bust in here with all these people and hold them at knifepoint and gunpoint, and they’d say anything just to get you to leave.”
“Oh, I wasn’t nearly as crude as all of that.” She gestured forward. “I see you have this evening’s paper. Then no doubt by now you read about the kerosene plant that I blew up. I did that with a purpose. I knew full well that this would get Manehattan to start watching its own borders looking for Twilight Sparkle and her friends. Then all we’d have to do is wiretap the military’s own supposedly-private lines and listen in. Sure enough, it didn’t take long for us to overhear them spotting someone matching her description in Vanhoover bound for Hoofheim. They would have moved in right then and there, but apparently she left some of her other friends behind so they decided to stage the sting in Manehattan instead. As for me? Well, I decided not to wait that long.”
She kicked herself back a bit. “I may have missed out on her, but lo and behold here you are. So I spent a little bit of time checking you out before I decided to intrude. Well, well, well…Mr. Shining Armor.” She shook her head. “Aw, what a sweet boy you are treating that poor, confused girl like she was your own little sister. Was that a way to keep her nice and close to you? Have her give you some hugs and kisses on the side? And people think I’m sick…”
Shining Armor began to turn red at this point, but somehow he restrained it.
“So, you try to insult my intelligence again, I’ll have my soldier over there shoot your father with a ‘fire bullet’.”
He gave her an icy glare. “…May I step inside?”
She gestured. “By all means. Have a seat. Take a load off. Try not to do anything stupid that would get you or your family killed.”
Staring at her the whole way, Shining Armor slowly walked in and past her. The guard at the door advanced a few steps, but stayed to her side rather than followed him all the way in. He went for a side chair near the wall and stopped at it. He looked again in the room, seeing everyone, and especially looking at his parents. Both of them looked rather frightened, but of the two his father seemed to be holding out better than his mother. That was only typical considering the fact she was the one with a blade to her neck.
Slowly, he looked away and sat down.
The woman leaned off of the furniture. “You all look like such nice people. Being so kind and generous and loving. Giving her the second family she wanted. You all seem to think of her as the little daughter or sister you never had. Well, let’s find out how much you really care about her.”
She turned to face Shining Armor.
“Let’s not beat around the bush. I want to know where she went and I want to know now.”
“What do you want with her?”
“What her teacher stole from me,” she answered, some of her more snide attitude giving way to a more angry tone.
“And are you planning on killing her to get it?”
“That depends on her…although, in all fairness, once I recover my property I don’t really have any need for the rest of her.”
“Why don’t you leave her be?” Shining Armor snapped. “Haven’t you read what she did in Grifftham City? She could save the world!”
She scoffed. “If that’s the only thing you’re worried about, I’ll take care of that part myself. After I get back what belongs to me. What I earned.”
He began to look confused. “What are you talking about?”
“I don’t really feel like explaining myself. The fact that I almost had it and keep getting delayed from another attempt is starting to wear on my good nature. Just tell me where she’s going.”
He frowned again. “I honestly don’t know, but even if I did I’d never tell you.”
“Oh, how chivalrous. You’re right out of a fairy tale, you know that? Your mom already told me you gave her something special. That had to be why she wasted the time coming to your Podunk, permafrost-bound little mud patch you call a town. What was it?”
“I said I’d never tell you.”
For a moment the woman frowned in true irritation. After a few seconds, she raised her hand and snapped her fingers. “Snips. Listen close to his next part.”
“You bet, Lady Sunset.”
She smirked again. “Ok, Shining Armor, I’m not cruel enough to kill your parents right in front of you, so how about this instead? I’ll ask you again, and from now on every time you keep your mouth shut I simply cut off one of your mom’s fingers?”
Part of his defiant glare wavered. His jaw finally unclenched.
“Snips, make sure you start with her thumb. I want it to be something she’ll really miss.”
A small chuckle came from underneath Snips’ helmet as he lowered his blade. One of his hands retracted its sword only to reach out and seize her hand roughly with the gauntlet, beginning to force it out onto the table. Shining Armor’s mother began to panic and stiffen, but another soldier grasped her by the shoulder and forced her down while another braced her against the chair. His father began to rise only for the clicks of two weapons to go out before the barrels were pressed against his chest and head respectively. He forced himself to stop but gazed fearfully at his wife, while she began to gasp and pant as her hand was straightened out. The humming blade was lowered over her thumb.
“I mean…you said she was like a little sister to you, right? Well, if that’s really the case I’m guessing your poor mother will have to lose a good, oh, two or three fingers before you break. Of course, you could always just sell her out right now and we can be on our merry way. Is your mom needing to hold everything with her left hand the rest of her life really worth that little amnesiac?”
Shining Armor began to quiver again. He started to sweat as he looked at his mother, and she looked desperately back. Her mouth opened and closed a few times, indicating she clearly wanted to tell him what to do, but was unable to get out the words.
Sunset seemed to notice. “Oh, shoot. Here was I hoping your mom would make it easy by screaming out to just do what I say. Guess it’ll have to all be on you.” She turned back to him as she raised her hand, extending two fingers in the air. “Once again, what did you give Twilight Sparkle?”
Shining Armor kept shaking. He glanced between Sunset and between his mother. His hands went down to the sides of his chair and he grasped the bottom, as if trying to keep himself still. He took in one long deep breath.
With no answer, Sunset began to open her mouth and lower her hand.
“Alright.”
She stopped before getting too far. Shining Armor bowed his head and let out a defeated sigh.
“Alright, I’ll tell you.”
Sunset said nothing, but put her own hand down. She stared at Shining Armor and waited. He raised his head again and removed one hand to wipe at his head, composing himself and catching his breath.
A second later, he suddenly shot out of the chair while pulling his other hand out with it, revealing a concealed hunting knife stashed underneath it. Brandishing it out straight he lunged for Sunset and aimed for her chest.
He didn’t get far. With a snap of light and an odor of ozone, the armored man was in front of him and swinging the end of his spear shaft down. He struck Shining Armor right on the wrist hard enough to sprain it, and he cried out as the knife clattered to the floor. Before he could make a move or even react, the shaft of the spear went up again and struck the side of his head with a sickening smack. His mother screamed and nearly drove her hand onto the blade as his head went flying to the tune of a trail of blood.
At once, the armored man lunged forward, seized him by the scalp with one free hand, and slammed his head down onto his armored knee. Another bloodstain was left behind before he twisted the senseless man around and drove his body so hard into the dinner table that it smashed half of it and sent the other half flipping. His mother cried out again and both his father and the guards watching him instinctively shot back as his unconscious and bleeding body was sent collapsing to the floor. Bits of soup and utensils rained down everywhere and slowly settled in the wake of the chaos.
The armored man kept his spear aimed at Shining Armor’s back with the tip practically resting on his shirt and coursing electricity. Sunset hadn’t shifted from her position the entire time, but frowned at the man. “I thought I was clear when he came in that I didn’t want him doing anything stupid. Snips?”
The one guarding Shining Armor’s mother was no less startled than the others by the display, but quickly looked up. “Uh…yes, Lady Sunset?”
“Cut off two fingers for when he wakes up. I want him to know I was serious about that warning.”
“Oh…oh!” he stammered, recovering from the shock. “You got it, Lady Sunset!” The woman in his grip began to gasp as he lowered his blade down to her hand, taking aim once again at the thumb.
“He gave her a key!”
He stopped on hearing Shining Armor’s father suddenly speak up. Both he and everyone else in the room, especially Sunset, looked at him. He was sweating considerably himself, and it looked as if he had forced himself to say that.
“Excuse me?” Sunset asked.
He swallowed. “The…the other day…when she was here…I came back from work for a lunch break and I saw him and two other women walking out to the old Drops place. When I stopped inside the house I saw her there and I knew it had to have something to do with her. So I followed them and…and I heard them say something about a key.”
“A key,” Sunset echoed back; her tone taking the more angry edge to it. “A key to what? What kind of key?”
“I don’t know! I swear I don’t know! I had to leave because my son was looking around too much to see if anyone followed him! All I caught was that they think it’s a way to get into Equestria!”
A distinct change came over Sunset when she heard that. Her eyes widened in genuine surprise. “She’s headed into Equestria and she needed a key. Are you absolutely sure?”
“Yes! Now please leave my wife and son alone!”
Shining Armor’s mother looked at him; her face a mixture of emotions and tears still running out of her eyes. She couldn’t say anything else. As for Sunset, it wasn’t long before she began to smile again. This time, it spread from ear to ear in a grin.
“Why thank you, Mr. Light. You’ve made my day.”
The one holding the spear turned to her. “The people of Manehattan are already trying to capture her.”
She kept smiling as she shook her head and made a waving motion at him. “Insignificant details. One way or another she’ll get out, and when she does I know exactly where she’ll go. Finally we’re done with this snipe hunt. Let’s go.”
She waved to the others. Finally, they released their respective prisoners. The mother slumped in her chair and gasped while the father wiped at his own forehead while trembling all over. Now that he had let the cat out of the bag, a mixture of fear and regret began to come over him, but he said nothing else.
One by one, the soldiers filed out of the back. Snips grabbed the pot of potato soup on the way out, obviously not asking before he helped himself. All that was left was the third armored man and Sunset after a time, and he made sure to fall in behind her while keeping an eye on the still-unconscious man and his family as they exited.
Sunset paused in the doorway, however, and glanced back at the father with a smirk.
“By the way, I’ll make sure to tell her when I see her just what the love of her ‘family’ is worth. Apparently not even one finger.”
Snickering, she turned and walked out with the armored man falling behind. As the door swung shut, the mother finally rose and ran to Shining Armor’s side, while the father stared at the floor unmoving.
The trip to the next building, while under an even heavier guard, was better than the last one. The Manehattan authorities allowed the women to clean up and change this time, although they didn’t give them back any of their effects including the key, and it had to be done one at a time in front of a screen as opposed to a spare room. After that, they were all shoved aboard a steam carriage and taken to the nicer part of the city.
For a moment they thought they might actually be taken all the way to the Republic Estate, but they never even reached the governmental quadrangle. Instead they were taken to the home/office of one of the higher-ranking generals in the military: a house that was previously refurbished from the days of when noblemen and noblewomen still were the word of law in the country. The room they were put in was large and spacious enough for twenty guests, although it was mostly empty of furniture save for a table and desk on one side and a row of six chairs on the other. A quick look showed that they were a good 15 meters apart. That seemed intentional when they sat down only for even more guards than before to come in and unsling their rifles.
By now, night had fallen and the wall sconces were lit. With the increased guard presence, the six ladies were quiet again. Aside from the occasional noise from downstairs, no one heard anything.
After about an hour, they heard the front door downstairs open. It was followed by a large number of footsteps. About ten minutes later, they came upstairs. Soon after the latch turned and a man in a suit held it wide.
An entourage, mostly of military personnel and officers including Kibitz, came in. With them walked a thinner, taller, and more upstanding-looking man with a thin mustache and a monocle. He looked at the six individuals for a moment, before his eyes went down to their hands. From his distance he couldn’t see much, but he glanced none the less before he turned and approached the table. Being flanked by his own men and women, he sat down and faced them.
“Well now, I hardly know where to begin,” he said after a moment. “I suppose introductions are pointless. I’ve heard all about the six of you from the Major General and my other council heads, and I’m sure you all already know who I am. Therefore,” he gestured toward them, “I’ll let the six of you begin.”
The six were a bit surprised. They expected far more of an interrogation. They turned and glanced at one another, but in the end all focused on Twilight and expected her to take the lead. With that in mind, she moistened her lips and took a deep breath before turning back.
“Well…Mr. Chancellor…” she began, hesitating a little as she tried to find the right words, “first and foremost, I want to start be reiterating who we are. We’re not terrorists, revolutionaries, or people trying to test new weapons. We’re just civilians. Six regular people. I was a student in Equestria before it fell.” She turned to the others and gestured to them one by one. “Applejack is a farmer. Rarity is a businesswoman. Pinkie Pie is a Gaitian refugee. Fluttershy is…is…well, someone who’s living off the land. And Rainbow Dash is a Huntsman. It was just circumstances that brought us all together. Each of us were out for one reason or another and by chance we all ended up not only with these powers but in Griffonstone. We all found out we could fight off and even kill Light Eaters, so we tried to help where we could. That’s why we fought the Tantabus and that’s why-”
“Excuse me,” he interrupted, holding up a hand, “I don’t mean to interrupt but…Tantabus? What is a Tantabus?”
“It’s…that’s not important right now. The thing is we stopped the attack in Griffonstone and we might be able to use that power to save all of Greater Everfree.”
“That’s what the major general informed me of. What he said you neglected to mention was how you were going to do that.”
Twilight winced. “I…well…I…”
Rarity, seeing her flustering, suddenly jumped in. “What Ms. Sparkle is trying to say is that she has a special ability that allows her to…well…how shall we say it… You already know the six of us have special abilities. Ms. Sparkle has a way of…oh…‘turning them off’, so to speak.”
“Yeah! That’s how she was able to make all those people who came by Carousel Couture un-crazy!” Pinkie chimed in.
Twilight moaned, but it was too late. “I’m not sure I understand. Assuming you do have this ability, how would that possibly help undo the darkness over so much of Greater Everfree?”
The mage said nothing. The rest of the girls went quiet, and Pinkie Pie clamped her own hands over her mouth on realizing she had said too much. Yet the chancellor hadn’t gotten into his position by not being shrewed. It took him only a moment of contemplation to realize the truth.
“You believe that everything that happened eight years ago…this darkness…the Light Eaters…the countless monstrosities that arose…are all due to someone who has this same strange power?”
The mage grimaced. “Well…yes, more or less. But that’s why we have to be the ones to stop this. We found out in Griffonstone we’re not only able to kill Light Eaters but we can survive them touching us without getting tainted. Without anything like Trottingham has for their own airships, that means we’re the ones who need to go into Equestria. All we want to do is put an end to all of this. If we succeed, we’ll have saved the whole continent. If we fail…” She paused; uncomfortable at the thought. “…then you’ll never hear from us again anyway.”
The chancellor mused over this silently for several seconds. After a time, he reached into his own suitcoat and emerged with a cigarette carrying case. As he got one out and lit it up, he used the opportunity to rise from his seat and turned away from the six momentarily. Both they and the surrounding soldiers watched him study one of the mirrors mounted on the back wall before he put a hand in his pocket and tapped his foot.
“The six of you caused quite a stir back in Grifftham City. Now I’m starting to see that you don’t understand just how much of one.”
The women looked puzzled. “I’m…not sure I follow…”
“Didn’t…we help everyone?” Fluttershy timidly ventured.
He looked back at them; raising an eyebrow.
“The world has its eyes on Grifftham City, where it found out that there were individuals in this world who had the ability to destroy a Light Eater the size of a battleship. All of Appleloosa and Manehattan is on alert due to the exploits of one Lady Sunset Shimmer, also known as ‘the Fire Witch’, who singlehandedly can do the damage of a fully-loaded attack airship by herself and can use Equestria to access anywhere in Greater Everfree. Now you tell me that the entire Lunar Fall, the work of which most of the planet assumes to be astral phenomena or even the end of time, is actually the result of an individual who has a symbol on their hand just like yours.”
He turned fully around as he took a drag.
“Tell me, ladies, if the Light Eaters and Nighttouched were gone tomorrow, how long do you think it would be before Greater Everfree found something new to fear?”
The six began to grow more uneasy and sat in silence. It was clear that none of them had ever thought of that before.
“Now, perish the thought that I stop you or anyone who is capable from dispelling that darkness or even keep it from growing further. But in the past eight years, almost every aspect of society has altered to accommodate it into their lives. The world changed forever with the Lunar Fall. If individuals like you are the new normal, if everyone everywhere has the chance to wake up with one of those strange symbols on their hands and the means of this sort of power, that’s nothing to be taken lightly. There might be other directions to take than this. Perhaps we can account for who these individuals are and how many are here in this nation. Maybe we can find some way to deal with the ones who lose their minds or at least predict when it will happen. Formulate a plan to deal with them now while the biggest threat to everyone is still the next surge, and maybe devise ways to counter individuals like Sunset Shimmer. If we could replicate your power artificially, there’d be no need for you six to even put your lives on the line. The military could handle this.”
Twilight was quiet a moment longer before she drew herself up in her chair. “I’m afraid we don’t have time for that, chancellor. Everyone’s so amazed about the fact that we did something about the surge in Grifftham City that they’re ignoring the fact there was a surge in Grifftham City in the first place. That attack wasn’t like the other movements the Light Eaters made in the past. They were purposely trying to move through the mountain corridor of Equestria to get there, and if they had reached the ocean they could have filled it with Nighttouched. Maybe even blocked the entire coast.”
His eyes raised. “What?”
“It gets worse than that. Everyone’s forgetting that all the signs pointed to them attacking at Appleloosa before then. Before all this started, they launched an attack on Fort Chestnut with special Nighttouched. Ones that normally don’t show up on the borders.”
He moved back to his seat. “You’re saying that all of this was actually planned. After eight years of nothing but what we can conclude was random, mindless behavior?”
“They’re not acting mindlessly anymore. This makes it far more likely something or someone is actually controlling them. If someone is, then there’s a chance all he or she has been doing for eight years is setting up things for now, and if that’s the case we can’t afford to wait any longer. There’s no telling what the next move will be if they’re given time to regroup.”
Fancy Pants sat quietly. He stared at the six a bit longer before taking another puff from his cigarette and looking at either side of him. Those in his entourage him gave him a mixture of looks. Some were hesitant, but some of the higher ups looked hesitant or untrusting.
Finally he exhaled and looked at the six again. “What can we do?”
“Give us back the key, and then get us to Falcon Point without running into any legal trouble.”
“Even for an ally, that’s a tall order. Mount Aris tends to be extremely xenophobic. More so now that we’d have to disclose we’re moving in six individuals with symbols on their hands. What’s so important about going to Falcon Point?”
“It’s how we’ll get into Equestria, and it’s the only way we can be sure we’ll reach our destination reasonably safely. That’s all I can say.”
Again, the chancellor was silent as he took another drag and looked at the three. He finally leaned over and tapped some of the ashes out, and then back to the members of his entourage. He gestured to them and to the door. Without a word, he stood up and they followed, and the entire group exited. The door swung shut behind them, and the six were again in silence aside from some indecipherable murmuring outside. That lasted several minutes, until Pinkie drowned it out by beginning to rock in her chair with a bored expression.
The door finally opened again, and the chancellor and those with him reentered and took their places. His cigarette was gone by now and he sat down in the chair and folded his hands in front of him.
“The Manehattan government will return to you your property and convey you to Falcon Point within Mount Aris, one way or another, but on one condition. Once…well, whatever it is you say you need to do is done and taken care of, you’ll return to Manehattan and pledge your support to our government.”
All six individuals were surprised. “Say what now?”
“Ex…excuse me?”
“Everyone who isn’t a Manehattan citizen will be granted legal residency, of course,” the chancellor went on. “We’ll also be happy to provide you all with spacious and comfortable accommodations in the capitol in return for your cooperation. And, of course, you won’t have to worry about being molested by any of the authorities, civil or national…”
“Yeah…” Dash sneered, “and in return for all that, we only have to take care of everyone in your country who goes psycho one by one and let you turn us into a bunch of lab rats so you can see what makes us tick.”
“Not to mention if that fire witch rears her head again, I’m guessin’ we’re the dogs yer gonna sic on her,” Applejack frowned.
“I didn’t say that,” the chancellor quickly answered, “but, at the moment, you’re not only our best experts on this strange phenomenon, but you’re our best line of defense. You’re the only individuals we’ve run into so far who seem to be able to control this power.”
Fluttershy was drawing in on herself again. “I-I-I really…really…really don’t want to have to run into Sunset Shimmer again…”
“Really now, chancellor!” Rarity huffed. “This is practically extortion! I have a business of my own to run and all of my companions here have their own lives to get back to! You sound like you’re practically impressing us into your service!”
The chancellor did not budge. “Nevertheless, my terms stand firm. I am sorry for this, but I have an entire nation’s livelihood to look after and not just yours. I can’t afford to let the only clue any of us have as to this mess slip by.”
None of them looked terribly comfortable with that, although some merely looked worried while others looked angry. Twilight looked around at the other five, gauging their own reactions, before turning back to the chancellor.
“We’d like a moment alone.”
He opened his mouth to respond, but before he could she held up her bound hands to stop him.
“If you’re expecting us to have the good faith to come back to Manehattan after this is over, then you should trust us in a room of your choosing alone for a couple minutes.”
Fancy Pants hesitated, but he seemed to understand the logic in that. After a time, he nodded back, before turning to the others in the room. “Everyone, we’ll give them five minutes.”
Several of the soldiers looked surprised, including the ones who were higher officers. However, the chancellor and several others, including Kibitz, immediately rose when the word was given and began to file out the door. As a result, the rest of the soldiers glanced at the six uncomfortably before turning and following suit. It took quite a bit of time for them all to file out, but in the end they all were gone and the door shut again.
Twilight sighed and turned to the others once they were out. “Well, I wish I could say I wasn’t afraid of all of that happening…”
“As soon as he gets back in here, I don’t care about what the rest of you pick, but I’m blowing him off,” Dash snorted. “I didn’t retire from the military to get drafted into another one!”
“I…I really just want to go back home…with Angel and the others…” Fluttershy meekly answered. “Helping against Nightmare Moon is one thing, but…but I’m really not suited for doing this all the time…”
“I gotta get back to my family in Appleloosa, Twilight!” Applejack protested. “I can’t be tied down here!”
“Maybe if they let me bring Ma, Pa, Limestone, Marble, and Maud to Manehattan I’d want to. Or they’d at least let me be the official party planner,” Pinkie shrugged.
Twilight sighed. “I really don’t want to be tied down in one place either, but I’m not sure what else we can do. We need that key and we need to get on that train.”
“Can’t we find any other way to get there, darling?” Rarity asked. “Now that I have some means available to me again…”
The mage cut her off with a head shake. “That’d be no good. We’re assuming they don’t just throw us in prison if we say no. Even if they don’t, they know who we are.”
“Then let’s bust outta here,” Dash retorted. “Not like they can stop us.”
“But…I can’t leave my animals…” Fluttershy spoke up meekly.
“And technically I’m already a fugitive from one country. I don’t really want to be one for another one…” Pinkie muttered.
Twilight sighed. “It doesn’t matter. They IDed us, so that means the only places we can run are to countries that they can put on the lookout for us or ones that are hostile to us that Sunset can go through at will. And you can bet no matter what we pick they’ll be keeping their eyes on us as best as they can. One way or another, they have us pegged down.”
“You ain’t actually sayin’ we should go to work for ‘em, are ya’?” Applejack asked.
“At the moment, we could do a lot worse, but no. I am saying, however, that we’re in a tight spot and if we want to get away from them then…well…Equestria is the best way to do it. So whatever gets us into Equestria…” She trailed off here, shrugging a bit.
A moment of silence passed. Applejack frowned and crossed her arms, looking to one side. “I don’t like that one bit. I never give my word ‘less I’m honest about it.”
Dash snickered. “A moment ago you said you didn’t want to be stuck working for them, but now you wanna hold yourself to it?”
“I don’t care for lyin’, that’s all! Ain’t nothin’ good ever come from it! ‘Sides, I care ‘bout bein’ a woman of her word!”
“Aw, don’t worry, Applejack!” Pinkie chimed in, leaning over to pat her shoulder…a bit difficult with her hands in manacles. “I felt the same way when I left home and I asked Maud about it. And you know what she would say if she were here?”
At once, she reached up with her manacled hands and quickly rearranged her poofy hair. Surprisingly enough, she somehow managed to flatten it in seconds as she glared forward with a dead-eyed stare. She spoke in a dull monotone soon afterward.
“Pinkie, the chancellor isn’t saying for you to come back to Manehattan right away. And you’re only agreeing to come back and help for now. You can always say no later if he wants you to do something dishonest or immoral.”
She shook her head afterward, making her hair poofy again.
“See?”
Applejack merely groaned.
Rarity sighed. “Well, we will likely be forced to make a deal with someone if we want to get into Equestria. And like Twilight said, we could do much worse. I doubt we’d get nearly so great of a deal with other countries. And this would allow us to at least know what the army is doing or planning, and they have better intelligence to keep tabs on Trottingham and others.”
“But…what about all that other stuff he talked about?” Fluttershy nervously suggested. “About…what comes afterward…?”
“I suppose we’ll have to cross that bridge when we get there… Twilight’s right. Being rid of that fiend or whatever is what comes first.” She sighed. “I’m on board.”
“Arlight, whatever…” Dash muttered in resignation.
“Me three!” Pinkie cheered.
Applejack rolled her eyes and slumped in her chair. “Fine…”
Fluttershy cringed a bit more in her seat before reluctantly letting out a half-whispered: “Ok…”
Twilight sighed and leaned back in her own seat. They waited a minute longer before the doors opened again, and all of the soldiers filed back in before the chancellor and his own group sat at the table once more. Once they were all finally situated, the mage drew herself up.
“Alright…we agree, but we need to get moving as soon as possible.”
Fancy Pants nodded. “I’ll start sending off emergency telegrams to the counsels in Fillydelphia and Mount Aris right away. In the meantime, I’ll have the six of you returned to Carousel Couture right away along with what we confiscated. As soon as we have a secure route prepared, I’ll send for you and speed you on your way.”
It took Twilight a moment, but she finally managed a nod and a thank you.
The six were returned to Carousel Couture within the next two hours, along with their key, and finally removed from the shackles. Nevertheless, they weren’t too much at ease as they soon found they were being “supervised”. The chancellor left the man in the bowler hat and three of his associates behind. As “liasons”, he insisted. To let them know when it would be safe to move and to act as an official go-between. As nothing more was going to happen that day, they went to bed.
The next two days were busy all over again. Not only did they finish preparing, but they needed to get to work on a strategy for what they were going to do when they got there. It took some work employing Ms. Saddles and Ms. Pommel to distract the Manehattan agents, but they managed to get back into the closed-off dining room.
“Alright, now comes the rough part,” Twilight exhaled. “We have to plan how we can defeat Nightmare Moon when we reach her. That means getting her to the point where I can cast the Binding Seal on her.”
“I hate to be the bearer of bad news, darling, but I’m not exactly sure how the six of us will be able to pull that off,” Rarity spoke up uneasily. “My own magic spells are minor at best. And after seeing what Starlight showed off in her photograph? I really don’t think I can get close enough for my rapier to be of any use…”
“And don’t forget how much trouble it was to wrangle that photographer at Fort Chestnut…” Applejack groaned. “Stoppin’ this one could be a lot worse. You figure she’s got as many of these rune symbol things as Sunset or more?”
“That’s just it, we don’t know. There’s going to be a lot of unknowns going into this,” Twilight sighed. “But, unfortunately, we have to go with them. That key is only going to be good for one use, so once we head in there anything we do for practice or recon will have to happen while we’re in Equestria.”
“So we’re going into the middle of the eternal night…and we don’t really know what to expect…?” Fluttershy nervously suggested.
“For the most part…yes. Not entirely though. I’m assuming that whatever Nightmare Moon is doing to create the Light Eaters is something similar to the Doppling Spell that Celestia once explained to me. It allows her to break off a portion of her own spirit to form a ‘shadow’ of herself. However, these spirits have limitations. Assuming she’s broken off a piece of herself for every Light Eater, then that would explain why there’s a limited number of them and why they’re only able to go out in these small surges. There’s a limit on how many she can make over a period of time. Plus, while normally a mage would be able to see what their shadow is doing, if there’s hundreds or thousands of Light Eaters then her focus is spread out far too thin. She’d never be able to trace them all. I’m hoping all of this means she’s not only not at her best but she has no way of seeing us coming or even how many of us there are.”
“Well, that certainly would help at least on the approach,” Rarity answered. “What about what happens when we get there?”
Twilight pushed out Starlight’s photograph showing the Lunar Fall at the Castle of the Two Sisters. She tapped her finger on the bottom. “You can see from this explosion that the top of the castle got taken off, but the lower floors are still standing. So long as we confront Nightmare Moon inside it, we have a chance. A castle has a lot of rooms to move through and a lot of columns and bits of rubble to hide around. No matter how strong a mage is or what spells they know, they still depend on their senses.”
“But…does anyone happen to know a super-duper attack we can hit her with to make her stay still long enough for Twilight to use her Binding Seal?” Pinkie suggested.
Twilight sighed. “Unfortunately, none of us probably have anything strong enough to deal with someone of that level of power. Definitely not to overpower her. Alone, none of us have a chance. If we all rely on our aptitudes, however, and use them along with each other, we might be able to do it.”
“Alright then,” Dash spoke up, “then how do we do that?”
“I’ve got some ideas, so we need to start practicing them…”
Three days into their "stayover" had not made Coco Pommel any more accustomed to the presence of the Manehattan agents. In fact, it still wracked on her nerves day after day to walk through the residential portion of the factory and see them standing near windows, seated in chairs, or pacing about and looking at the bookcases and the paintings. She still jumped in alarm on spotting them every once in a while as well.
It went without saying when she rushed in that evening looking for Ms. Rarity to offer feedback on a few final items before she was called away she nearly jumped on seeing the man in a bowler hat seated in the foyer.
After taking a moment to compose herself, she exhaled. "I'm still getting used to that... I don't suppose I can get you anything, can I? Tea? Coffee?"
"No thank you," he simply answered in a bland monotone.
She turned to walk on, only to pause and look back. "You know, I haven't seen you actually step out to eat since you got here. Everyone else with you changed over..."
"When I'm on duty, I can wait. I prefer to be on top of anything that happens."
She continued to look uneasy but was about to let it go when there was a rap at the door. She looked up, but so did the man in the bowler hat. She didn't notice as she walked over to the entryway and opened it up.
On looking outside, she found a trio of rather rough-looking men staring back at her. Two of them had stubble and one of them had a scar, and all three glared at her in an unfriendly manner.
She found herself swallowing. "May...I help you?"
"We're here to talk to Ms. Rarity."
Ms. Pommel glanced between the men for a moment. “Ms. Rarity is…occupied at the moment. I’d be happy to take a message for her.”
“It’s urgent,” the lead one answered in a flat tone. “And we know she’s home. We need to talk to her.”
“I’m afraid that’s not possible. She’s indisposed. Perhaps you can come back-”
“No, we’re not coming back.” His voice was growing cross. “We’re here to speak with Ms. Rarity. We have some business to discuss and we’ve waited too long already. Either you can show us in and go get her now, or we can invite ourselves in.”
Now she looked very uneasy. “I’m…I’m terribly sorry…” she muttered, as she began to push the door closed again. “Please try again lat-”
The door suddenly caught; the result of the one in the lead putting his foot in the frame. The others began to move forward. Ms. Pommel quivered, looking unsure if she should recoil or if she should keep pressing against the doorway…not knowing which would arouse more ire. “Maybe you didn’t hear me the first time, so listen good because this is the last time. We want in. And we want to see Ms. Rarity. Now.”
He began to lean against the door. The much smaller woman couldn’t possibly hold him back. The door began to slowly open wider…
Yet before it could grow too wide, the opening was framed not only by Ms. Pommel but the man in the bowler hat standing behind her. His hand immediately went out and seized the door and, combined with the young woman, held it firm.
“She said Ms. Rarity is indisposed. Good day.”
The men looked up at him in some surprise. The one in the lead narrowed his eyes. “And just who the hell are you?”
Still holding the door with one hand, he reached into his coat and came out with a badge, which he showed to them briefly. “I’m with the Manehattan authorities. May I ask who you are?”
The mention of the authorities made the men hesitate. Enough for the lead man to take his hand off the door though his foot remained in the crack. “Just associates of Ms. Rarity, come to discuss some business.”
“Business hours are over, and I am expecting someone. You can vacate the premises immediately. And the next time I see you try to force your way in here, I will place you under arrest. If that’s not enough to dissuade you, perhaps the .40 revolver I have in my coat pocket will. Good day.”
Without another word, his foot went out, placed itself on the boot of the man, shoved it out in one quick gesture, and the door was slammed in his face. As the man in the bowler had turned around to return to his seat, Ms. Pommel looked like a weight had been lifted off of her chest. She stared at him in some surprise, amazed at how he had handled that, but then turned back to the door and looked out the peephole. The men stewed on the front step a short while, but they seemed to take the threat seriously. After glowering for a time they finally turned and began to head back down the street.
She looked back at the man after that. “Um…th-thank you.”
“No thanks is necessary. I told them the truth.” He sat back down in his seat. “I need to expect word from HQ at any time, and I don’t care for loiterers. Although I don’t suppose you or Ms. Rarity would know anything about what sort of ‘business’ those men would have that they felt the need to break into the premises, would you?”
She shook her head. “I have no idea. I know that there was that story about what happened to Cotton over in Appleloosa, and how they’re suspecting Suri Polomare…”
“Yes, about that,” he remarked as he fished into his suitcoat, pulling out a pocketwatch and examining it idly. “It seems there was a bit of trouble for Ms. Rarity’s business not too long ago. A lot hinged on that deal being made.”
“Well, yes. It meant the future of the entire company and everyone’s job. Including mine.”
“Apparently she’s the only heir to the company? What about her younger sister?”
She looked surprised. “How did you…?”
“We did our research before coming here. Records indicate that although both of her parents are deceased, Ms. Rarity is not an only child.”
“Her younger sister vanished a few years ago on the way to school. She was reported, but the police never found any leads. It’s been a cold case for some time.”
“So the company is solely hers, then.”
“Well…yes, obviously.”
“I see. I also happened to notice that she contracted the services of a Ms. Rainbow Dash. A rather well-known, for one reason or another, Huntsman Guild member. She actually was the only member of the Cloudsdale military to receive a full pardon from Fillydelphia, although since then she hasn’t had the best of reputations among her clients and peers. Not exactly the most savory of types to contract with. Or of the least ill-repute.”
Ms. Pommel began to look at the man oddly. “I’m sorry…am I missing something?”
“I don’t know. Are you? I’m merely sitting here making observations.”
She stared back at him; a bit more uneasy now than she had been with the men at the door. As he kept looking over his watch, she finally turned and began to head out again.
She was nearly to the side entrance to the foyer when another knock rang out. This one was even stiffer and harder than the last. She turned, but before she could make a move the man in the bowler hat was already on his feet. She scarcely had time to begin to say a syllable before he had crossed to the door, placed his hand on it, and swung it open.
“Um…excuse-” she began to say.
The door was already open, and the man was looking outside at whoever was there. “Is the word given?” he asked quietly.
“Midnight tonight,” a voice on the other end answered. Ms. Pommel was just able to see whoever was at the door pass an envelope over to the man in the bowler hat.
He accepted it, tipped his hat, and closed the door again as she walked up to him. Before she could ask anything, he turned and extended the envelope toward her, making her halt.
“If you don’t mind, could you pass this along to the six of them?”
She hesitated, looking between him and the envelope momentarily, before she reached out and took it. The man in the bowler hat went to sit down again soon after. As for her, she looked at the envelope only to see it was sealed and unmarked, before she finally exhaled and turned to walk out again.
After crossing through Rarity’s residential portion and making her way to the factory proper, she headed for the same side rooms that the six of them were using for practice. It didn’t take long now that most of the workers had gone home for the day and she could cross the floor without impediment. After a couple minutes she reached the door, did a cursory glance around to make sure no one was staring and found only a token agent against the back wall idly looking at her, and then gave a knock.
It took a moment before there was a response and when it came it sounded tired and winded. “Who is it?”
“It’s Coco, Ms. Rarity. We just got a letter from someone for you and your friends. I think it’s with the government.”
There was a bit longer before the door finally opened up. It revealed Rarity along with Twilight and Rainbow Dash, all three of them looking rather tired and sweaty, while the sounds of the other three breathing hard were in the background. A wisp of smoke blew out from within the room, and a smell of ozone hung in the air.
Twilight reached out and took the envelope before Ms. Pommel could protest. “Thank you.” At once, she tore it open, pulled out the contents, and unfurled them in front of her. Rarity and Dash alike both came in over her shoulder as Applejack, Pinkie Pie, and Fluttershy walked up behind them.
“Ooo! Ooo! What’s it say?” Pinkie asked. “Is it a candygram?”
Fluttershy looked puzzled. “What’s a candygram?”
“It’s like a telegram, only someone sends you candy!”
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard of anyone who does that…”
“Eh, I can dream, can’t I?”
Twilight was less perky. Lowering the note, she turned to the girls. “It’s time. They have a plan laid out for us. We leave at midnight.”
The group was still, letting a second pass for the full impact to settle on them. After that, they began to shake themselves out of it, drawing up and emboldening themselves.
“Alright then,” Applejack exhaled. “Let’s get ready.”
“And clean ourselves up,” Rarity threw in. “Goodness knows when we’ll see a hot bath again…”
The sun was down, the officials and delegates of the capitol had turned in for the day, and as the gaslights on the streets of Manehattan began to turn on the lights within the Chancellor’s Residence, the official seat of Manehattan’s executive branch as well as the dwelling place of its elected chief executive, were dimming one by one.
Nevertheless, the chancellor lingered in his office a bit longer that night. His chair was turned toward the window and he looked over the city as he let the cigarette in one of his hands slowly burn down to nothing. He seemed to have forgotten it as the clock in the corner slowly ticked along.
“Mr. Chancellor.”
He looked up and swiveled his chair back. He hadn’t even noticed his door open, but he found his primary aide, already in her suitcoat and hat, standing there and facing him.
“It’s past 9 o’clock. Will you be needing me any longer?”
“Oh?” He glanced to the grandfather clock. On seeing the hour, he quickly straightened and leaned over to the desk’s ashtray; stamping out the cigarette. “Oh my… I’m dreadfully sorry. I had no idea how late it was getting. I need to turn in myself. By all means, head home Inkwell.”
She nodded as the chancellor straightened himself up and began to organize what was left on his desk, but she did not move. “Sir, may I ask why?”
“Why what, Inkwell?”
“Why did you let them go?”
He hesitated, then looked up. “First of all, I expect that you remember that the matter doesn’t leave this office, correct?”
“Yes, Mr. Chancellor. But why let them go? They’re the only ones who know anything about what’s going on.”
“And it’s for that reason that we need to gain their trust. Based on what the major general told me, they’re clearly hiding something, and I want this to be a good-faith gesture.”
“Once they’re out of this country, they could run off and never return.”
“At the bare minimum, one of their businesses is in this country and she traveled halfway across Greater Everfree in the middle of a surge to save it. She won’t abandon it now. And there is no country on the continent that will give them a fairer shake. And even if they don’t come back, if they succeed in what they’re saying then that’s good news for everyone.”
“Do you honestly believe they can somehow end the night?”
“No, but I’m hardly in a position to decide that. They’re the ones who destroyed the colossal Light Eater in Griffonstone. Our entire army has yet to kill one the size of a cat.”
“You just seem to be going out of your way a bit too much to accommodate them, sir.”
The chancellor paused before smiling. “Well, that’s the great thing about living in a republic, Inkwell. You can feel free to criticize the decisions of any elected official, even if you’re working in their employ.”
She blanched at that. “My apologies. I know I don’t know the whole story.” She nodded. “Good night, sir.” At that, she turned and walked back out of the office.
He smiled back, but remained seated in his chair for some time after. When he finally did get up, it was a bit slower and more mechanically than usual. He made his way out of the office, nodding to his secret servicemen, then walked alone down the halls toward the residential portion of the building. When he finally arrived, two more secret servicemen were there and waiting for him.
“Good evening, sir.”
“Good evening. Did Fleur get the message about dinner?”
“Yes sir.”
A pause. “Was she…upset at all?”
The serviceman looked uneasy and reluctant to answer before finally admitting the truth. “Just a little.”
Fancy’s own look turned grim, but he nodded. “I’ll make it up to her the next three days.”
“I’m sure you will, sir. I hope she feels better soon.”
“Thank you.”
Giving him a faint smile, he went to the door and opened it up. As soon as he passed into the master bedroom, he shut it again behind him and locked the door.
The curtains were pulled and only a single oil lamp at the bedside was burning; leaving much of the spacious bedroom and the four-poster that dominated the center shrouded in darkness and silence. Nevertheless, he could make out the form of a body lying down on the mattress much as it had been that morning. And just like that morning, when he crossed around he noticed that the lovely woman lying there in her nightgown had her eyes wide open and hadn’t touched her latest meal.
She did look at him as he entered, and she managed a rigid, if not weak and trembling, smile. He smiled back as he crossed over to her.
“Did you send those people off?” she asked.
He nodded.
She kept smiling, but it grew a bit weaker as she grew more uncomfortable. “They’ll…they’ll be back soon, right? Like…in just a day or two?”
His smile faded a little. “I don’t know how long this will take.”
“Oh…” Her voice tensed up a bit more. “But…but they will be back, right? And they’ll agree to your deal when they come back too, won’t they? I mean…I mean they have to.” She began to lean up, getting more tense with each word. Even fearful. “You’ve been so generous to them. Anyone would say yes to that. It’s not like any of the other countries are going to be that good to them. It’s not like-”
He reached the bedside and sat down, putting his hands on top of hers after only hesitating a fraction of a second. “It’ll be fine. It’ll be fine. Just relax.”
She only tensed more at that. “Re…relax? Relax? I’m not acting worse than usual, am I? I’m not acting any wilder? I’m-”
“No, no…it’s ok. You’re just scared.”
She swallowed, but feeling his touch gradually calmed her down. She slowly began to ease. “I’m…I’m sorry. I just…just I don’t know what to think every time I tense up. I don’t want to leave the room…”
“I’ve taken care of it. Everyone just thinks you’re sick.”
“I…I keep wondering what people will say if they know…about me…about you…”
“It’s alright, it’s alright…we’ll deal with it.”
She swallowed. “They have to come back, Fancy. They have to come back.”
“They will. It’ll be alright. And you have nothing to worry about. We’ll get through this. The country will get through this.”
She looked up at him again, and he forced an encouraging smile for her sake. He squeezed her hands, and she squeezed them back soon after. The touch was welcome, and so they held for a very long time.
When they finally parted, the chancellor pulled his palm off of her own to reveal the etching of a Promethian Sigil.
The other five girls jumped in their seats. That had been the first thing said aloud since they had loaded into the passenger car on the Manehattan government train two hours ago. Although it had been midnight when the steam carriage came to pick them up, none of them had felt like sleeping since they had arrived at the station and been escorted on board. For the most part, they had simply taken their private seats and sat there, saying nothing and looking out the darkened windows for signs of anything.
That changed now as Pinkie Pie sprang out of her own seat and went for the large hat-bag she had brought. Rarity herself had been rather perplexed when she asked for it while they were packing their things for the trip, as not even she was packing much in the way of luggage. Yet she stunned them all when she unfolded the dining table, set it on top, and opened it to reveal a three layer cake.
Twilight gaped. “You packed an entire cake?”
“Well, duh,” she answered with a bit of an eye roll. “We’re off to save all of Greater Equestria from the Light Eaters and end the eternal night! If that doesn’t call for a party, I don’t know what does!”
“I don’t know if now is really the time to be ‘partying’ or having treats. There’s no telling what all is waiting for us in Equestria or even exactly what we’re up against, but this is definitely going to be the most dangerous thing any of us have done in our lives.”
Dash stared at Twilight a moment before she calmly unbuckled herself from her seat. “Well…sounds like a good time for cake to me, then.”
Twilight looked surprised. “Huh?”
“When you put how bad it’s gonna be like that, I think I’d like some cake to chill out with for a while. Might just be the last one I ever eat.”
“Oh my,” Fluttershy half-muttered. She had been more uncomfortable than any of them since leaving, especially as she had no choice but to leave her animals behind and hope they held out until she got back. “When you say it like that, I should probably have some too.”
“Quite right, darling,” Rarity uneasily added as she rose. “Normally I watch my figure, but considering the circumstances I think I could afford to ‘splurge’ for one day.”
Soon all of them were getting up to get served by Pinkie who, typically, had somehow smuggled a serving trowel in her hair and plates with the rest of her things. When she looked like she was going to go ahead and serve Spike, who Twilight had insisted on bringing in spite of the disdain of the Manehattan government, she ended up getting her own piece.
They were seated again soon after. Unlike the normal rows of a car for large numbers of passengers or the compressed quarters of a sleeping area, this one was lounge like and allowed them to sit around the periphery facing one another, all of them now looking up and each with a plate and fork in hand.
“I’ll admit it’s kinda wild that Manehattan is letting us tag along with this envoy into Mt. Aris,” Dash said in between bites of her own piece. “Haven’t felt this special in a while…”
“Wish we weren’t crossin’ through Griffonstone along the way, much less by Grifftham City, though…” Applejack frowned, picking at her own slice.
“It’s the only way in, though,” Twilight answered. “That bottleneck near the coast means we needed to cross through to get there, and only this envoy is an express that won’t get checked en route. Just remember: we get off separately, and the government for Mt. Aris is only allowing us to head due north to the Equestrian border. Any way east and we violate the agreement.”
“How far north from the dropoff again?” Rarity threw in.
“According to the note? About ten miles.”
“Oh dear. I hope we don’t end up attracting too many stares.”
“Not to worry,” Dash threw in as she finished off her piece. “I’ve been by that station before. That close to the border of Equestria, the place has been deserted for years. By now it’s overgrown with plenty of Nighttouched. Or at least local criminals. Easiest place to squat is in abandoned towns on the border, after all.”
“And we should be arriving at night too,” Twilight threw in. “But don’t worry. Between the six of us, we should be able to handle anything short of a surge, and the ground up to where the station is hasn’t been overtaken by night yet so it shouldn’t be overrun. Getting to the station won’t be an issue.” She exhaled as she looked at her own untouched piece of cake.
“What comes after that is the rough part.”
The train car went silent again. Even Pinkie’s mood seemed to dim a little. Applejack continued to mess around with her piece and Rarity only managed to take a bite of her own. Fluttershy had drawn in on herself and set her cake to one side.
After a time Rarity finally spoke up again. “Well…I must say, I can hardly believe I’m even here right now. A few weeks ago I was just like everyone else. We all accepted that the Nighttouched were just an unfortunate part of life we had to live in fear of. Now look at us. Who would have ever thought we’d be here now? We could end this all. I stopped dreaming years ago that things would ever go back to the way they were. Now they will after this, won’t they?”
“You bet!” Pinkie cheered. “Once we stop the big bad meanie, me and my family will be able to go home! Everyone will get to go home again!”
In spite of how cheery she said this, it wasn’t met with too much enthusiasm. Applejack stopped picking at her cake but only to frown. Rarity started to shift uneasily. Fluttershy let her hair fall over her face. Dash stared at her own empty plate.
“Not everyone,” she half-muttered.
“You mean…if we stop the big bad meanie,” Fluttershy quietly corrected. “Sunset Shimmer was pretty strong when she used two Promethian Sigils and…I’m guessing if this is a person she has…more.”
“First time in my life I’ve ever felt scared ‘bout goin’ into a fight…” Applejack muttered. She almost picked up a bite of cake, but let it fall off the fork back onto the plate as she frowned. “What burns me up is my family still doesn’t even know if I’m alive. Couldn’t get so much as a letter out to ‘em. And if I…” She trailed here, looking up to the others and seeing their own spirits a bit low. “That is…on the off chance I don’t make it back, they’ll never know why or how.”
She picked at her plate one more time before she frowned and simply tossed the plate and cake into the seat nearby, not caring that it flipped over and squished.
“Just like what happened with Apple Bloom.”
This prompted the others to look to her, and they found her leaned up and looking right back at them.
“Listen y’all…I want ya’ to promise me somethin’ right here, right now. Ya’ promise me that if I don’t make it outta this, you’ll let my family know what happened to me.” She grit her teeth a bit. “I always hated askin’ other folks fer favors, but this time I’m tellin’ y’all I don’t think I’ll be able to fight too good ‘less ya’ make that promise.”
Even the thought caused more unease among the group. Twilight shook a little in place, but forced herself to nod. “Sure…sure. Of course.”
Fluttershy swallowed. “Oh dear… Um…Twilight? You seem to be pretty good with Spike, so…um…well…” She trembled. “If…if, um…you know…I don’t suppose you’d be able to take care of Angel and the others, would you? Or…or at least find a way to stop them from turning for good?”
“And I didn’t really want to say this back at Carousel Couture because I didn’t want Ms. Pommel and Ms. Saddles to worry, but…” Rarity paused, pulling out an embroidered hankerchief and dabbing at her forehead and neck. “If…it wouldn’t be too much trouble, I’d also appreciate it if…if…” She paled a bit and swallowed. “If someone could go back and at least let them know I won’t be returning. Good grief, now I wish I really had taken that notary public seriously about making out a will… I’d hate to see those two fighting over the company.”
Twilight was squirming a little uncomfortably by now in view of the darkened mood. She looked up and saw Pinkie, however, was getting herself another cake slice, while Dash was leaning back more at ease in her chair.
“Rainbow Dash? I…don’t suppose you’d like to pass anything along to us.”
She shook her head. “Nah, I’m good.”
“Really?” Applejack echoed back. “Sure you don’t got no one ya’ want us to pass along any messages to?”
“I’m not gonna bite the big one up here. Not when I said I still owe so many people money. But even if I do…” She shrugged. “I’ll call it a lucky break. I cheated the reaper back when Cloudsdale fell. Might as well pay up now.”
It wasn’t nearly as comforting as she liked to hear, so Twilight readily turned to the last. “Um, Pinkie Pie? Is…there anything you’d like us to do if worst comes to worst?”
She giggled and waved her hand at it. “Oh Twilight, the worst isn’t gonna happen.”
This answer puzzled a few of them. “Um, it won’t?” Fluttershy asked.
“Of course not! I’ve been thinking about this for a long time, and I realized…what are the odds the six of us would have run into each other at just the right time in just the right place with just the right power to stop the big Tantabus in Grifftham City? What are the odds we’d be able to escape from Sunset Shimmer, the Trottinghamites, and Griffonstone? What are the odds we’d have run into Starlight Glimmer to tell us all about Nightmare Moon? Don’t you get it?”
She grinned.
“We’re blessed by Gaia! We’re on a divine mission! We can’t lose!”
Applejack grimaced and leaned back. “Are all them Gaitians this damn thick…?”
Rarity herself sighed. “Twilight, dear, what about you? I hate to be so grim, but…just planning for the possible worst.”
She shook her head. “No, I’m fine.”
“Really? Surely there must be someone you’d want us to talk to. What about your family in Hoofheim?”
She slumped in her seat. “They don’t even remember me. If they never do, it will just be making them feel bad for no reason. And if they do remember one day, then…then it’ll just make things harder on them. Aside from them, the only one I have now is Spike.”
The others began to look up to her again. “Really? There really isn’t anyone you’d tell? Or…anything left that you’d want done?” Fluttershy asked.
She shook her head. “Nothing. Honestly, until a little while ago, when I started finding other people like me who could get sigils without going crazy and finding out there was a chance of stopping the eternal night, I didn’t really have any plans for the rest of my life. Just drifting from one town to another trying to see if there was anything I could do to make a difference…”
“But if this works out,” Dash reminded, “the whole world’s going to go back to the way it was. And there’s nothing you’d want to do then?”
She frowned. “My world won’t go back to the way it was. My family still won’t know me, the academy will still be gone, and everyone I knew in Canterlot Castle including Headmistress Celestia will still be dead.”
“Aw, don’t be like that!” Pinkie chirped. “When ma and pa were forced to pack up the family and move to the quarry, we lost a lot, but we also found so many new things to do! I’d have never have met you or taken up baking if that hadn’t happened! There’s gotta be something you want to do!”
Twilight didn’t answer. She stared at a spot on the floor, but it wasn’t an idle look. She was focused on it and it was clear something was running through her mind. Something that made her hesitate and made her look more uneasy than she had previously.
“There…is one thing…”
She said no more after that. Following a few seconds of silence, Dash shrugged. “Ok…spill it then.”
Twilight only looked more uncomfortable. She clutched the hem of her skirt and uncertainly ground her jaw. “I’m…really not sure I should. Really…really not sure.”
Applejack sighed. “Golldurnit…you ain’t goin’ on again thinkin’ ‘bout how if you spill yer guts that somethin’s gonna happen or go wrong, are you?”
The mage looked up. “This time I’m not worried about a breakout of more Promethian Sigils. I’m worried about something much, much worse.”
The gravity of this voice made it clear this was far more serious than last time, and it was enough to unnerve Applejack all over again.
She looked back down. “When I was a lot younger and just starting out at the academy, my curiosity kept getting the better of me. As soon as I found out that I could do magic, I wanted to learn more about it so I could do even more. So I could live up to what the headmistress wanted for me when she brought me there. Even though I wasn’t from Canterlot or Equestria, from the day I arrived she said I had free reign of the castle grounds. I could go to any building I wanted…except one. The Northern Keep. I figured it was holding a big secret or the more advanced lessons, and…”
She sighed.
“I still don’t know why exactly I did it. I must have wanted so badly to advance, but I snuck out of my room one night and followed her when she went into the Northern Keep. The place was old, abandoned, cluttered, and had one secret door and magical charm after another. I managed to break the charms and find all the hidden doors, and they kept leading deeper and deeper underground. Finally, I got to the bottom and found Celestia along with…”
Twilight’s pallor turned white for a moment.
“…something else.”
The trepidation and fear on her voice was enough to get Fluttershy to grow just as fearful, but the truth was she looked so scared to be saying that phrase that the others were beginning to feel uneasy too.
“Like…what, exactly?” Rarity finally asked.
Twilight closed her eyes, taking a moment to steel herself before shaking her head. “Thirty minutes later, the headmistress made me promise something to her. The first time she had ever asked me to promise her anything. She told me to forget the night ever happened and everything I had seen. Both for my good and for everyone else. She warned me that what happened would only ever be a bad dream so long as I forgot about it.”
By now, the five women all knew to take things that Twilight said in regards to her headmistress very seriously. Hence, all of them began to grow increasingly uncomfortable. After a time, she opened her eyes again.
“Ever since I heard that the Lunar Fall could have been the result of someone actually wanting it to happen, I kept thinking back to what I saw that night. And the more I think about it, the more it scares me. The very last place I want to go in the whole wide world is back into the lowest level of the Northern Keep of Canterlot Castle…but now I know that if we win and we end this night, that’s exactly where I have to go.
“Everyone, what I saw and heard that night scared me so much I have nightmares about it to this day. This is the one instruction of the headmistress that I’ve kept perfectly. Right now, though, I realize that if this night lifts people will be able to enter that castle and that I’m probably the only one still alive who knows there’s something down there that shouldn’t ever see the light of day.”
All of the girls were leaning up now. Pinkie had lost her smile and Fluttershy was trembling.
“If we win but I don’t make it, I want to ask something of the rest of you. Get to Canterlot Castle. Go to the Northern Keep, no matter how it looks or what shape it’s in. Find the way to the fourth sublevel. You’ll eventually come to a stone staircase leading straight down. Do not go down there, but listen for something. Anything. And if you hear anything, no matter what it is, I want you to do whatever means you have to in order to collapse that entire castle on top of it. Whatever’s down there can never get out.”
This new prospect left the group feeling rather anxious. The thought of Nightmare Moon alone was enough to agitate them, but now Twilight was speaking as if she was telling a ghost story that was real. It made the interior of the car far colder and had caused them to lose what was left of their appetites. Even Spike was lowering his ears and starting to whine.
Seeing the reaction, Twilight sighed and shook her head. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to give you all something else on top of everything...”
“You know what?” Dash suddenly spoke up, far more bright. “Pinkie’s right. We got this. We got nothing to worry about.”
“And besides,” Rarity added, “I always tell Ms. Saddles not to get so distraught over the winter line-up that she forgets the fall collection completely. Let’s concentrate on Nightmare Moon.”
“I’d much rather worry about just one scary monster than two…” Fluttershy quietly added.
Twilight hesitated before nodding more readily. “Right, of course. We should worry about her and forget this what-if stuff for now. Let’s just settle in and enjoy the ride. It’s the last rest we’ll get for a little while…”
The trip itself took two and a half days, even non-stop. The six had all of their meals prepared on the train and used their passenger car as a sleeper. All in all, it was a pretty comfortable ride. If they didn’t have the pressure of their destination coming upon them, they would have found the whole thing a nice diversion. Instead, they kept the windows drawn for most of the time as they crossed first into Fillydelphia and then beyond that into Griffonstone, eventually passing through Grifftham City itself.
They at least risked a peek outside when that happened. Much of the sky was still clear, but not from Twilight’s spell. Over half the industries in the town were still shut down and much of the city looked just as ruined as it had been when they left. Most unsettling of all was the jagged shadow that lingered over part of it, even if some of it was faded.
“Reckon that’ll go away with the rest once we take care o’ Nightmare Moon?” Applejack asked.
“If the rest of the shadow goes away, then it should, shouldn’t it?” Fluttershy added.
“Hopefully,” Twilight answered. “Here most of all. If another Tantabus comes, I don’t think we’d be able to stop it before it reached the ocean…”
Most of the last leg of the trip took them over unwanted familiar territory, and it didn’t help when they passed into the shadow of the Hyperborean Mountains. The setting sun ensured that they remained in them as they arched around the tip and began to head north again. Whenever any of them looked out, their eyes always went to the tops of the hills—waiting for signs of any shadow or Nighttouched eyes. Nevertheless, when they began to distance away from them again, they still had seen nothing.
The sun was still in the sky but low to the horizon when they finally reached their destination. Falcon Point was so poorly maintained that it looked as if it was nearly abandoned. The station was still functional but the platform was rotting and weather-beaten and the old station house was abandoned. The only reason there was any life there at all was because Twilight saw signs of a Mount Aris company setting out to meet the envoy before they proceeded into the country. At that time, the six finally dismounted. They didn’t go far initially; just enough to leave the engine behind. After that, they waited out of view until the whistle blew and the train pulled out again and they were once more alone.
The six women took a moment to look ahead. The small community that had been at Falcon Point had long since packed up and left; leaving it deserted like so many other towns near the border to Equestria. Every building around them was dark and most of them looted. The one paved road leading north, once picturesque and well-maintained, was desolate and empty as well as starting to overgrow. The hills ahead of them loomed tall and overgrown with trees; with the road eventually entering a forest route. It was likely lovely when the gardens and roads of the countryside were still maintained eight years ago. Now it blotted out the almost-set sun.
Both Fluttershy and Spike seemed to let out a small whimper. Twilight took a deep breath and looked herself over. Aside from her normal traveling clothes all she had was a solid stave to act as a wand. She looked behind her. Applejack’s clothes were mended and her hammer was slung at her hip. Rainbow Dash had a new outfit just as loose as they old one and her tightened fists. Fluttershy had changed into a somewhat more fitting dress with a higher hem to allow herself to move faster and a walking stick. Rarity had switched not only to more practical clothes but had brought a collapsed parasol to turn into a rapier as necessary. Finally, Pinkie was much better dressed and, at Twilight’s insistence, was brandishing a soup spoon as a focal point for a weapon of her own.
She exhaled as she reached into her pocket and produced the crystalline key.
“Alright, we made it. Just one ten mile walk, one last train ride, and we’re there. If anyone wants to turn back, speak up now.”
Fluttershy kept quivering, but said nothing. Pinkie looked eager to go. Applejack pulled out her hammer and hefted it. “Let’s get this over with.”
“Any Nighttouched in there now, they’re only gonna get worse the longer we wait for it to get dark,” Dash shrugged.
Twilight nodded back. “Alright. It’s pretty much a straight shot, even if I was in a coach last time most of the way. Follow me.”
The road was quiet and still, but that was hardly a source of comfort. At this time of year there should have been crickets, birds, and buzzing insects, but as soon as the train was gone the area was almost totally silent save for the occasional gust of wind. They managed to leave the former dwellings behind by the time it truly started to get dark, but that only left the forest to grow darker and thicker around them.
“Am I the only one who thinks it would have been a good idea to plan this trip out in broad daylight?” Dash moaned.
“With all this tree cover, I don’t think it would have mattered too much,” Twilight exhaled. “This way, the sun will be up again by the time we reach the Castle of the Two Sisters.”
“Won’t it not matter?” Fluttershy asked.
“Technically…but if the night ends, then it will. And maybe keeping it eternal night requires some effort on her part. If it does, we’ll have her at a disadvantage.”
As night kept falling, the road ahead seemed like a straight, neverending tunnel into progressively more blackness. After walking the sixth mile the road finally terminated. What was left was an old wagon path that was even more overgrown, but Twilight and Spike led them on along that. Two miles later, it was getting so overgrown that they had to push through some grasses and sedges. On the good side, since the place was void of life, they didn’t have to watch for snakes.
Rarity began to look around their sides uneasily. “Are you sure we can’t risk just a small amount of light? If it gets much darker, we won’t be able to even see where we’re going.”
“We keep the light out, and our voices down, for that matter,” Applejack answered. “Less we see, the better.”
She sighed. “One thing is for certain… When this is all over, I’m never going for a ‘nature hike’ again for the rest of my life.”
As they crossed the final mile, the canopy was growing so thick they had to start pushing branches out of the way. It caused a bit of misery when Pinkie pushed one away, still her normal happy and energetic self, and snapped it right back in Rainbow Dash’s face, but other than that the way still remained clear.
“Real quiet and spooky!” she remarked. “Maybe it’s not Nighttouched! What if it’s ghosts? Or ghouls? Or goblins?”
“I said keep quiet!” Applejack loudly whispered back. “We don’t wanna rile any Nighttouched up! I already told ya’ it’s better we don’t see any!”
“I’m…not so sure about that…” Fluttershy spoke up nervously. “Even where I lived, it never seemed to be this quiet…”
“Hey, quiet means no Nighttouched, right?” Dash shrugged.
“Not this quiet. Do you think something scared them away?”
“What?” Dash snickered. “Don’t be silly. What could scare away Nighttouched?”
“That’s what I’m afraid of finding out…” Flutterhy half-muttered.
Pinkie thought about that before letting out a deep gasp. “Whoa…what if there really are ghouls n’ ghosts n’ goblins out here?” She began to frantically pat herself down. “I need to get my spoon!”
“Just relax, everyone,” Twilight cut in. “Spike’s beginning to sniff the ground. We must nearly be there.”
Quieting down once more, the six only went about another hundred yards before the area flattened out again and widened. The ground was still dirt and the forest still grew thickly around them, but the area opened in a small clearing. At this point, it was so dim that it was nearly impossible to see anything other than a faint purple light poking through some tree branches, and none of them could see any signs of human development. Nevertheless, Spike lowered his head and continued to sniff more vigorously. Twilight stuck to him and slowed as they went closer.
A bit further along, the clearing terminated and gave way to thicker vegetation. However, Spike continued to venture forward and passed through the bushes and grass bunches. Twilight followed him to the edge, before halting. She turned and looked back.
“It should be just up ahead. Let me go unlock it first.”
Turning back around, she pressed into the vegetation after Spike; continuing on more slowly.
The other five were left standing in the clearing. Fluttershy continued to look nervous about the situation, and Pinkie continued to look happy and eager, but the other three simply tried to stay calm as they waited.
Applejack turned her head one way and another. “Y’know…it does seem a bit quieter out here than normal. Least compared to where I come from.”
“Well, I’m all for that,” Rarity instantly responded. “You weren’t forced to try and start a train engine surrounded by monsters in Grifftham City. I’m already dreading what manner of grease stains I’ll get from this one…”
“For cryin’… We’re ‘bout to go up ‘gainst some big nightmare queen or whatever and yer worried about stains?”
“I’ll have you know that every outfit I wear is a handmade work of art! There’s a reason it was such a chore to decide which ones to pack knowing they could be decimated!”
“How ‘bout packin’ somethin’ practical instead?”
“Pipe down.”
Rarity frowned. “Oh, practical… Like a wide-brimmed hat in a place that has no sunlight?”
“It’s what I’m accustomed too! I’d feel naked runnin’ in here without a hat! Least ya’ could’ve wore pants!”
“Would you two quiet down?”
“‘Pants’? Oh, please, darling. Only Griffonstone ladies wear pants. Government-issued ones, by the way.”
“Well they sure make more sense than those silly dresses. With all them gears and steam you got in Manehattan, it’s a wonder you don’t get ‘em caught in-”
Both were cut off as Dash stepped back and, as indiscretely as possible, put her hands up and put them over their mouths.
“Could you two cut your yapping?” she hissed in a loud whisper.
Applejack frowned and pulled her hand off while Rarity did so more quickly after a moment. “What’s the big idea?”
The Hunstman’s eyes looked out into the woods around them. “We’re not alone out here…”
Twilight kept pushing forward, even though the going was a lot worse now. Moving into the brush and undergrowth had served to block out the last bit of light from the closing night sky, so she was practically bumbling along even with her eyes adjusted. She was able to keep following after Spike, but she tripped on two separate roots, bonked her head against one low-hanging branch, and even earned a yelp from the dog by accidentally stepping on his tail once.
“Sorry!” she quickly apologized, before clasping her hand over her mouth. As Spike took a moment to recover, she glanced behind her. She was about fifty feet in by now, but she could still make out the brighter colors of the rest of the group; particularly Pinkie’s vivid hair. She looked back forward soon after and followed on, but it was only a few more steps before Spike stopped again.
“Oh, come on! I said I was sorry!” she called out to him as she kept approaching, putting her hands in front of her to fumble along. “I won’t do it agai-”
She cut herself off as her hand grasped a bit of hard material. It wasn’t rock, but rather had the abrasive consistency of concrete. Quickly, she felt along it and realized it was at a man-made angle and dimensions. She felt further and made out the edge of a set of steps.
She lit up on realizing she had found the base of the platform, and started to move forward as she tentatively put her feet onto the steps one after another. She managed to touch down and walk up six of them before feeling a flat surface that had to be the platform. She quickly put one hand in front of her afterward and waved it around as she kept moving forward. The other hand reached into her pocket and pulled out the key.
“It’s got to be around here… Just got to keep feeling…keep feeling…” she muttered aloud.
“Need some light?”
Twilight rooted herself to the spot. In a heartbeat, she forgot all about the platform. The voice didn’t wait for confirmation. She heard a single snap of fingers a moment later.
A small light like an oil lamp went off right in front of her, hovering over an outstretched hand. It illuminated the side of the abandoned train.
Leaning against it was Sunset Shimmer, smiling as her green eyes sparkled in the flames.
Spike instantly reared back and growled at her. Twilight herself was too shocked at finding her there. Before she could recover, the woman leaned off of the train and began to approach. The dog snarled and took off for her the moment she did.
Keeping her eyes on Twilight, Sunset held out her free hand and quickly performed a gesture to draw a green sigil and execute it just as he lunged at her. A ball of concentrated air flung out of her palm a moment later and struck the dog in mid-leap. He yelped as he was knocked clean out of the sky with enough force to fling him off of the platform all together.
Twilight recovered at that, but only enough to wheel around to him and gasp. “Spike!”
“Oh, don’t worry. I don’t kill small animals,” Sunset coolly answered. “Your friends, on the other hand…”
A loud humming suddenly bellowed over Twilight’s head. Hearing the noise, her face twisted in horror as she looked to the sky. Only now did lights begin to come to life throughout it; progressively highlighting portions of a Trottingham airship that had been in idle hover right over the platform the entire time.
In particular, she could see the cannons starting to light up…
“No!” The moment she screamed this, she tried to spin around to shout a warning.
Too late. Five of the cannons erupted at once, and after a brief sound of rocket-like whistling, the entire clearing where her companions stood lit up in waves of explosions and fire. The force ripped out the trees nearest the edge and almost blew Twilight backward off her feet even from her distance. She had turned around just in time to see it happen.
Her mouth hung open but she could say nothing. Her eyes shrank into pinpricks. She began to shake violently all over as her limbs turned to water. The horrendous memories came flowing back all at once to juxtapose over this new nightmare, and it was too much for her agonized mind to even comprehend.
She could offer no resistance as Sunset came up behind her, already drawing another sigil.
“And I’m guessing right now you’re in no shape to perform a counter to a sleeping charm, are you?”
Completing the sigil, she touched the back of her head and sent the energy flowing into it. Twilight’s face suddenly turned flaccid before her eyes glazed over. A moment later, with barely so much as an exhale, she went totally limp and collapsed to the platform.
Sunset smiled over her as she dismissed the flame in her one hand. There was no need for it now that the clearing was ablaze. More lights came on overhead as the full airship was outlined and the engines began to fire up again. As it turned on its floodlights, it illuminated the rest of the platform. Soon after, other figures in armor or steam gadgetry, including the royal guard, approached her from behind.
By now, her look had an almost greedy gleam to it as, without looking away from the unconscious Twilight, she leaned her hand up and snapped her fingers. “Get her on board. We’re headed to the rune point immediately on the shortest possible route.”
Her teeth flashed.
“Buckle in boys. You’re about to see some real magic.”
As high as the flames had burned from the initial explosions, they had largely subsided by the time the Rising Sun lifted off with its captain, crew, and new prisoner. The area around where they had fired was mostly smoldering with the surrounding vegetation burning enough to give off a fiery dim light, but other than upturned dirt, rocks, and wood there wasn’t much sign of any other form of life. Until, that was, a portion of the overturned, ash-covered ground began to shift and heave.
After a moment, it lifted up enough to reveal the sizeable burnt remains of a tree trunk that had been embedded in the ground. It revealed Applejack, gleaming with the power of her Anima Viri, grunting and straining to shove it aside. No sooner did she push it away enough to lean up than a loud gasp came from beneath her. Ripping herself out of the dust, dirt, and ash, Rarity sat upright with a frazzled and panicked look.
She gasped for several moments before she gained enough of her breath to screech. “They almost blew us up!”
“Ya’ think?” Applejack hissed through clenched teeth as she managed to shove the log enough to one side to roll off. As soon as she did, she hissed and leaned back, looking over her body. She had only called the Anima Viri after the blast, and as a result her body was covered with bruises and burns as well as soot and her side was bleeding from a rather deep gash. She put her hand on it, pulling back still-fresh blood, before she winced even more as she felt something on the edge of her wound. She grasped it and forcefully yanked it out, crying out when she did and revealing it to be a piece of metal shrapnel.
She tossed it aside and clenched the gash. “Yer lucky that tree got between us and the blast when I grabbed you and ran fer cover! Otherwise we’d have been chopped to pieces!”
Rarity continued to moan as she picked herself up, although she grimaced uncomfortably on seeing Applejack’s sorry state. A moment later, however, her look grew more worried. “You…don’t suppose the others managed to make it to the surrounding foliage before the blasts hit, do you?”
Applejack paused; her look quickly turning from pain to fear. She looked up and began to glance around along with Rarity, but nothing was readily apparent except smoke, flames, and the remains of the clearing.
“Rainbow Dash?”
“Fluttershy? Pinkie Pie?”
“Anyone? Someone say something!”
In spite of her state, Applejack forced herself to her feet as she kept looking around. Rarity began to move about the area, glancing in one shadow after another, before she gave out a gasp. Applejack turned to it and quickly did the same.
There was a soot-covered body on the ground a short distance away, but unlike the two of them it had not been shielded. It was covered with no less than eight different pieces of shrapnel embedded in it along with three long splinters of fractured wood. That much debris must have been fatal.
Nevertheless, it shifted after a moment. Rarity nearly ran forward and called out to tell whoever it was not to move, but instead, much to her surprise and Applejack’s, the body stiffly picked itself up and off the ground. As it did, the “clean” part was revealed, showing that it was pressed around Fluttershy like a human shield. She herself was practically petrified at what had happened to her but looked intact. The one on her slowly let her go and got her feet underneath her before slowly standing up.
In spite of the soot, at this point the two women could see the hair was poofy and curly if not a bit slumped, which meant it could be only one person. She remained hunched over with her hair over her face for a moment, not looking up or moving, before her hands went to the nearest piece of shrapnel in her back she could manage. It was hard, as she had to work over the other pieces embedded in her, but in the end she grasped it.
With a simple twist, she pulled it out and tossed it to the ground. Not a drop of blood was on it.
Applejack’s jaw began to slacken as she watched Pinkie slowly pull out one object after another embedded in her body. She and Rarity could barely make out a popping and squishing noise, but none of them left a mark or had any blood on them. Soon she was down to the wood and yanked them out too, pulling out several inches with each one. By the time she pulled out the last, Fluttershy had recovered enough to at least look up to her; only to go even more slack-jawed than the others.
As the last finally fell to the ground, Pinkie gave a sudden arch and stood to full height.
“Phew-weee!” she called. “Wow, I really got hit good by that, didn’t I? Normally I like having a blast, but I think I’ll skip that one next time.” Looking down, she extended her hand out. “Need help getting up, Fluttershy?”
She didn’t move. She only stared back at her with an uncertain expression. Rarity and Applejack were much the same.
“Ap…applejack…darling…” Rarity nearly exhaled. “There’s…no way she could have avoided all of those pieces of debris…”
“Avoid? It looked like she was pullin’ ‘em outta herself…”
Pinkie noticed Fluttershy’s pause, then looked up and around and saw Rarity and Applejack as well. However, she only looked confused in response.
“Is something wrong?”
“Uh…” Applejack began to stammer.
“Um…” Rarity muttered.
Fluttershy said nothing, just kept looking.
Pinkie was even more confused. “Are…we playing the quiet game or something? Shouldn’t we wait until we find Dash and Twilight before that?”
In response, a grunt came from a distance away. “Over…here…”
This was enough to finally break them out of it. Applejack and Rarity both looked up to the sound and moved toward it, while Pinkie looked back down at Fluttershy. After staring a moment longer, she finally reached out and tentatively took her hand. Pinkie quickly pulled her to her feet before bounding after the other two women, and after a moment Fluttershy followed.
Applejack and Rarity came across Rainbow Dash first, and it was another horrible sight. She was sprawled out on the ground, apparently propelled by an explosion. The top part of her was burned and sore enough, but what truly looked terrible were her legs. They both were bloodied and twisted. It was a wonder that she managed the weak grin on her face when they arrived.
“Merciful heavens… Are you alright, Dash?”
“Heh…what…this?” she weakly laughed back. “Please…this is nothing like…” A wince. “Cloudsdale was…”
Pinkie and Fluttershy ran up behind just as Applejack and Rarity reached her side. Fluttershy, on her part, immediately cupped her mouth on seeing her. “Oh my! Rainbow Dash, you look awful!”
She stiffened again, trying to pull herself up. “Eh…no problem… Except for the legs…”
“Well, don’t try an’ move!” Applejack scolded as she put her hand down on them. “Don’t want to throw them all outta joint if they ain’t already!”
“Rainbow Dash,” Rarity quickly interjected, “is there anything at all we can do to help?”
The Hunstman gave her a dull look before eye rolling. “Well, if it’s not too much trouble…you and Fluttershy could use some of those healing spells you learned from Twilight…”
Both women stared dumbfounded a moment before it clicked. “Oh…oh yes, of course.”
“Oh…sorry…how silly of me…”
Fluttershy quickly moved down to Rarity’s side. Having never done this in a real situation before, they both hesitated before they began to try the spells out. At first, they were unable to focus enough, but then both brought out their respective Anima Viris and tried. That served to give them enough control to start casting the spells. And as the greenish, vivid auras spread from their hands over Dash’s legs, she winced and stiffened as the lesions, burns, and even twisted bones slowly began to regenerate.
Applejack couldn’t help but be amazed. “I’ll be… Save some of that fer me, would ya’? And Twilight too, if we can find her…” She began to look around again. “Anyone see hide or tail of her? I didn’t see where she was when those cannons went off…”
In response, a dog barking began to sound. Both she and Pinkie looked back to the edge of the clearing where Twilight had run inside, just in time to see Spike, a little roughed up but no worse for wear, running out barking his head off frantically at them. On reaching the two women he kept barking; only pausing to give a whine.
“Well, there’s Spike… But what happened to Twilight?” The cowgirl turned to the dog. “You know where she is, boy?”
The dog, however, didn’t try to lead her anywhere or grab her to pull her along. He only continued to bark and whine.
“Maybe she’s on that light spot on the sky that’s moving further and further away?” Pinkie suggested as she pointed to the heavens.
Both Applejack as well as Rarity glanced up. Sure enough, while many of the stars were coming out, one was larger and flickering and moving away.
“That had to be Sunset Shimmer!”
Applejack spun to Rarity when she yelled. “What?”
“I mean, of course it had to be! Who else would have been shooting at us with an airship of all things, for goodness sakes!”
Spike barked more rapidly, as if trying to confirm her conclusion.
“She was wanting her back at Grifftham City…” Dash threw in as her legs finally got inact enough to start moving. “But how would she know we were going to be here?”
Pinkie Pie gasped. “Maybe she had secretly trained an army of flying squirrels that waited for us to leave Rarity’s factory in Manehattan and glided along until they could hitch a ride on the top of our train and waited until we got to Falcon Point and then they took off into the sky and formed a relay team to pass the message along to her so she could fly low and come in and wait to ambush us at the end of the road!” Another deep breath, followed by a shrug. “Or…you know…somehow she found out that Twilight got a key from Shining Armor and then just waited at the train station, ‘cause she’d know about it if they went to the same school.”
“Well then,” Dash grunted. Even as Fluttershy kept working, she nevertheless forced her legs under her. “We gotta get after her!”
“And…how exactly we gonna do that?” Applejack asked. “They’re in the sky! None of us can fly after ‘em!”
Fluttershy gulped, cutting off her own healing and nervously pointing around them. “I think we might have something else to worry about first…”
The group looked and saw the dark forest around them was beginning to fill with glowing eyes. The fires that the airship had caused had finally served to attract the Nighttouched just across the border, and now they were rapidly closing in.
Spotting them, Applejack quickly clamped one hand on her side and ran back to Dash. She wrapped her arm around her and pulled her to her feet. “Come on! We gotta get outta here before any more get our scent! We ain’t in no state to tangle with ‘em!”
“But what about Twilight?” Rarity protested.
“We ain’t gonna be no good to her fightin’ off every Nighttouched in the county! Come on!”
The group hesitated; realizing every second spent wasted was more of a chance to lose sight of Twilight. However, there was nothing for it. Some of the monsters were already getting close enough to the flames to make out, and were moments from lunging. Finally, Rarity and Pinkie both turned to head after Applejack as she began to drag Dash along. Fluttershy quickly patted her shins for Spike. It took him a moment, but he finally whined before running after her.
“Keep patching us up as we go!” Dash shouted as she struggled to hobble along with Applejack. “As soon as we’re clear, we all have to be able to move before we get any more behind!”
Twilight moaned lightly as her senses returned to her. Not really remembering what happened, she kept her eyes closed as she faintly became aware of a groggy feeling about her; to say nothing of being wrenched in a pained position.
“Aw, look who’s up? Enjoying your personal cabin?”
In spite of her addled state, Twilight recognized Sunset’s voice. Although she still felt sluggish, like she was hung over, she opened her eyes. What she saw quickly made her fully alert.
She was no longer in the clearing or anywhere on the ground. Rather she found the source of her discomfort: she was shackled by the neck, ankles, and wrists to a cold iron wall. If that wasn’t enough, she was in an unlit, dirty, partially-rusted metal room slumped on a bench. She tried to get up, but she didn’t get far before her neck pulled taut, and she turned to see herself bolted to the wall by the shackles with chains.
Looking forward again, she saw the only light in the room was coming from a barred window. A fiery-haired woman was looking in and grinning with a lit cigarette smoldering in one hand.
“I haven’t taken a prisoner in a long time, so I apologize for how dirty the place is,” she smirked before taking a puff. “You may be wondering why I was so lax on security. Sure, I’ve chained you to the wall, but I’m sure that’s no problem for a woman of your abilities. I’m guessing even you won’t risk casting a spell around your neck. And if you’re thinking of teleporting, I wouldn’t bother.” She cupped a hand to her ear. “Can you hear that lovely sound? That’s the engines of the Rising Sun. We’re already airborne. I know for a fact you can’t teleport unless you have a good sense of your current position. Besides…I’m all the security you need right here.”
Now fully alert again, Twilight frowned at her. She yanked at her chains but they held firm. They wouldn’t break without a spell or Anima Viri, and Sunset was staring right at her if she tried either. “Where are my friends?”
“Well, assuming any of them lived through my volley, I didn’t really have a need to bring any of them along. I only wanted you. Specifically that part of you embedded in your hand.”
“Why?”
“I already made that quite clear last time. I want what’s mine. What I earned. What was wrongfully held from me.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
Her smile faded. “I don’t suppose you would,” she snorted as she crossed her arms. “So long as we’re on the same ‘boat’, tell me something. Who was Headmistress Celestia to you?”
Twilight hesitated at the question but kept frowning. “She was my teacher and my friend.”
Sunset scoffed at the second term before taking another drag. “Really. And I’m guessing you were a pretty good student too, weren’t you? Then again, maybe not. I never heard of you.”
“Well, I didn’t hear about you either!” she retorted; her temper flaring a little at the blow to her own pride. “And yes, I was a good student! I was her star pupil!”
Sunset bristled but kept her straight face. “Star pupil, huh? And what kind of ‘special treatment’ did her precious star pupil get, hmm?”
Twilight hesitated again, clearly wondering why she was asking this, but pressed on. “I got private lessons with her, I got to access magic spells that the other students weren’t allowed to see, I got to learn about the Anima Viri and the Promethian Sigils, and…and…”
When she hesitated, Sunset interjected. “And you got to have special one-on-one meetings at tea time, didn’t you?”
Twilight froze.
“Let me guess…cucumber sandwiches, smoked salmon, and chicken salad? With big oversized scones? And you each had your own little jam container?”
The mage’s eyes widened. Her jaw began to hang. Sunset’s smirk reformed.
“Did she comfort you when you were younger and had nightmares? Would she sit awake with you when you were sick? Oh no, I know what she did…”
She took a step closer, causing Twilight to step back as she looked more shaken with every word.
“The day you met her, she told you this, didn’t she? ‘You’re special, Twilight. You have an amazing gift. One that could even save the world one day.’”
Twilight let out a hint of a gasp, cupping her hands to her chest. She stared at Sunset in a mixture of shock and disbelief.
“Oh, I know what kind of special, unique relationship you had with Celestia, Twilight. You know how I know? Because I had the exact same ‘special, unique relationship’. Only unlike some people who blundered along blissfully thinking they were somehow an exception from every other student who walked through those doors, I found out about it.”
Twilight couldn’t answer. She only stood there immobile at what she was hearing. Sunset seemed to enjoy it as she leaned against the door.
“I hope I didn’t look quite as pathetic as you when I learned about it. Probably not. I found out after I learned that everything she told me was a lie and she banished me from Canterlot Castle, so I was rather angry with her by then. You see, we had a bit of a falling out. I was getting stronger by the day and she couldn’t take it anymore, so she tried to cut me off. And when I did some independent study to find out the truth about why I was there, that was the straw that broke the camel’s back.”
She smiled wider.
“Here’s the really fun part, Twilight. The truth is I was the exception to the rule. I was the stand-out student. She just couldn’t handle it. And once I was gone, she needed some other kid to fill the role. I guess she decided to settle on the meekest nerd she could rope in. Congratulations.”
Twilight grit her teeth, shut her eyes, and shook her head. “No…you’re wrong!” She opened them again and glared at her. “That’s not how it was! I was her most faithful student! She trusted me with everything!”
“Everything except telling you about your predescesor, huh?”
Twilight stiffened. She couldn’t retort to that.
She snickered. “What’s that they say about suckers being born every minute? Feeling angry, Twilight? Hurt? Betrayed? Well good. Now we have even more in common than before.”
Twilight continued to look shaken for a bit longer, before a new realization came over her. One that filled her expression with dread.
“Were…were you the one who killed her?”
“Oh, I wanted to. Especially after she cheated me out of my final Anima Viri. Someone else deserves that honor, though. Although…” She looked at the ceiling before smirking. “I suppose I can take some credit.”
“What are you talking about?” She began to pull the chains tight again as she tried to get closer.
“Just that not long after I got banished from Canterlot, at least someone managed to figure out I had been in there. Obviously someone who had been watching it for a while. She seemed to know more about Celestia than the average citizen. She asked me if I had any way of knowing when she would be leaving the hidden castle next,” She casually shrugged. “And me, wanting a touch of payback, how could I not let her know that Celestia would be making her annual summer break tour? Of course, I had no idea where she would be and when, but it seems some people do their research better than me.”
Twilight pupils shrank. She stared for a moment before her own face flushed with anger. “You as good as killed her doing that!”
“You say that like I care,” Sunset snorted.
Her teeth grit. “You may have not done it yourself, but Celestia’s dead because of you!”
“I kill people I don’t know all the time. I’m supposed to care about one I hate?”
“You killed all of my classmates along with her and they never did anything to you! Nothing except get in your way! Even if you hated her, she was the only one who could have stopped all of this! The Light Eaters! The Nighttouched! That Tantabus! This endless night! Do you know how much this world has suffered because of your grudge?”
Sunset stared at Twilight through the bars for a moment before snorting again. “Well, Ms. ‘Star Pupil’, it looks as if Celestia really didn’t tell you everything. Go figure. I mean…”
She put her hands on her hips and grinned.
“You only think you were special. I know I was. I found the proof along with the rest of the facts that Celestia kept from me.”
Twilight was still bristling with anger, but she broke for a moment to sigh. “What are you talking about?”
“You seem so well-read so answer me this. Have you ever heard of an Angra Mainyu?”
The mage hesitated, easing up slightly. “I…just saw it in a book once in Celestia’s office. It was open to that page so I only read a little… It…”
Suddenly her anger broke. She began to tense up and lowered her arms.
“Go on.”
“No…no, I-I-I can’t… I shouldn’t…”
Sunset smirked. “Still scared of superstitions, huh? Well, I live to disobey everything Celestia ever told me to do, so I’ll spill it. It said it was a vessel or box designed to hold all of the evil of the world, didn’t it?”
At once, Twilight looked up; her face full of fear. “Don’t!”
Sunset hesitated, actually a bit surprised at her reaction, before she simply burst into a giggle. “You really do believe that superstitious stuff, don’t you? Looks like you’re pretty scared of it…”
“She warned me never to talk about it! Not to tell it to anyone! She said it would make it real!”
For a brief moment, Sunset’s own amused look vanished. There were a few brief seconds where she not only seemed to heed Twilight’s warning but just slightly, in her own eyes, there was a glimmer of the same fear that Twilight was now radiating out freely.
Yet it was crushed a moment later by her anger. “I’m not a little girl that I’m going to be scared by ghost stories, even ones that have a nugget of truth in them. I’m not afraid of anyone or anything anymore. And I won’t have to be pretty soon. I’m guessing by the panic in your voice and that frightened, puppy-dog look on your face, though, that for some reason she decided to let you in on the little secret she was keeping at the bottom of the Northern Keep, didn’t she?”
Twilight said nothing. However, she was sweating now, staring at Sunset in growing fear and wishing she’d be quiet.
Sunset smiled again. “Then you’ve put two and two together, haven’t you? Somehow you figured out that all of this eternal night is coming from a person. And you’re also suspecting the same thing I am. She’s the Angra Mainyu.”
Twilight nearly opened her mouth to tell her to be silent again, but paused. “W…wait… You mean…you mean you knew that all of this was being caused by that person in the Castle of the Two Sisters? By…by Nightmare Moon?”
“Not at first, but it became fairly obvious when one of the prototype airships I made for Trottingham got shot down on its maiden voyage. I only watched on deck of a different ship from afar, but while Trottingham might want to bury its head in the sand and pretend it was a malfunction, I knew it was a spell.”
Twilight began to grow incensed all over again. “If you knew about her, why didn’t you do anything to stop her? Send a fleet of these airships after her! Tell the world about it! Maybe if humanity was united knowing they had one enemy they wouldn’t have gotten as bad as they are now!”
“Why should I care? Doesn’t impact me,” Sunset shrugged. “If Trottingham becomes a Nighttouched playground, I’ve still got all the power I need to keep going on to the next country. But for what it’s worth, I fully intend to get rid of her. All I need is one little thing.”
Twilight grit her teeth. “You already have five Anima Viris! Why do you need more? And even if you do, why me?”
“Heh, seems Celestia never had the chance to explain how these work.” She held up her hand and twisted the butt of her cigarette around to tap against it. “For dead people, they can be very particular. An Anima Viri that works well with one person and one set of other Anima Viris doesn’t necessarily work well if the person or the constituents change. Celestia had those particular six, and those six for a very good reason. You see…”
She smiled again.
“You never knew it, but our old headmistress was, for all intensive purposes to mortal women like us, a god.”
Twilight recoiled. “Wh-what?”
“You heard me. Specifically, the god of this world.”
The mage stammered, blinking and staring incredulously. “But…but that’s not possible! Gods aren’t real! They’re just fairy tales!”
“Oh? And eternal night and nightmares coming to life are nothing but campfire yarns either, huh? She might not be the genuine article but, compared to little mites like us scrounging around for coal to make water boilers do everything, she was far beyond us. Come on, Twilight. You had to suspect something was up with her before, didn’t you? That she had a lot more power than she was letting on?”
She hesitated. Her eyes looked to the floor. “I thought…I thought something was off about her, yes. I knew she had to be more than just a normal person. But I always just assumed it was because she had six Anima Viris.”
“Well, you guessed right.” She grinned. “Because that’s exactly what made her a god. It’s almost impossible to get the right combination down. In fact, she told me trying to go with a wrong combination can lead to some pretty ugly side-effects. Even if I don’t believe a word she said nowadays I wasn’t willing to risk testing that one. However, getting just the right combination makes you a true god. That’s why Nightmare Moon is able to pull all of this off. She must have six symbols just like her.”
She smirked and took another drag. “But in the end, she’s nothing but a false goddess. That means the true god of this world can destroy her.”
“That doesn’t make sense! If the headmistress had that kind of power and was really as important as all that, why did she want to just live quietly running a school?”
“I have no idea why she would pick that, but it seems for whatever reason she had a time span on her power. I found out she was looking for someone to pass the Anima Viris along to.”
The gleam returned to her eyes as her smile faded. She jabbed her thumb at her own chest.
“That’s the real reason she brought me to that school. I was supposed to be the next in line. I was going to become god myself. Instead, she cheated me out of my inheiritance. What I had worked for and earned.” Her voice grew angry and resentful. “She sold me on that lie that one day I’d be the one to save this world, but when the time came she just threw it on the next bookworm to come along.”
She burned for a moment—her hands tightening into fists. Twilight noticed; seeing they clenched so tight she crushed what was left of her cigarette in her knuckles. She didn’t even care the hot ashes landed on her fingers.
Finally, she broke and smiled. “But all of that’s over now. I have the last Anima Viri I need. And once I’ve become god, I’ll destroy Nightmare Moon and take her place running the restored Greater Everfree the way I see fit.”
Twilight frowned. “And how would that be? Heartless? Uncaring?”
She flashed her teeth. “Might makes right, so whatever I say is right. If people have a problem with that, well…” She looked at her hand and whispered a few words. What was left of her cigarette was incinerated in a plume of fire. “Blasphemy is punishable by death.”
“You could never rule this world! You don’t care about anyone but yourself!”
Her smile disappeared again. “Oh yeah? And how exactly has caring about other people faired for you? You were living on the street from town to town, eating when you could, running and hiding from whoever whacked the rest of your classmates… Heh, right now you saved thousands of people and yet you’re in hiding like you’re a criminal. And as for me? The infamous and hated ‘Fire Witch’?”
She stood back and displayed her hands with a smile.
“I’ve got money, lands, prestige, authority, and power. What more, I got that all while I’m running a boatload of Trottinghamites who would love nothing more than to shove a knife between my ribs yet still have to do everything I tell them. Want to know why?”
She walked back up to the cell and raised her face into the window to meet Twilight’s.
“Because the only way in this world you can ever be sure you can trust someone is if they’re too scared to disobey you. Once Celestia started to fear me and I stopped fearing her, she began to distrust and hate me. You have the power to kill Light Eaters and save thousands of people, and you’re still crawling into holes everywhere you can. At least one of us knows how power is supposed to work, in spite of our teacher’s best efforts.”
Twilight squared her jaw. “I don’t care what you do to me. I am never giving you this Anima Viri. I’m not going to swap out one madwoman for another.”
Sunset flashed her teeth and chuckled. “Really now? You think I care? You didn’t honestly think that Celestia gave me the other five out of her own free will, did you?”
This stunned the mage. “What?”
“No matter how powerful a bearer of a Promethian Sigil is, they can be bound by adamantine chains. More importantly, Celestia seemed to have a rather lovely relic in her possession. A dagger made out of orichalcum.”
Twilight let out a mild gasp.
“Oh? Looks like Celestia had enough time to tell you that much. Then you also know that if you craft one just right, that all I need to do is grip it nice and tight in my own hand and drive it into your Promethian Sigil. A couple seconds later, I’ll be a god, and you can run off and do your little magic shows from now until eternity.” A chuckle. “It won’t be like you’ll be good for anything after that.”
She leaned in a bit closer.
“Just be happy that I didn’t trust any of these idiots under my command not to do something to misplace that relic. I left it right in the best spot where no one would ever find it: the same clearing where I used it to get the first five from Celestia, surrounded by Nighttouched and Light Eaters to act as cheap security and miles from anyone who could interrupt me or help you. Once we get there, my airships use their Morning Glories to drive off the local wildlife, and then we drop down for our quick transaction. Until then, though, you actually get to enjoy your power a little longer.”
Twilight didn’t answer. She started to sweat again on realizing everything Sunset was telling her. She slowly let her hands fall again.
Sunset began to reach for a new cigarette. “Chin up, Twilight. After all, you’re going to see the end of this eternal night. Just not the way you wanted.”
At long last, they reached the road. They couldn’t really see much anymore save for the emerging moonlight shining down through the clearing trees, but their feet touching down on hard pavement made it clear they had finally gotten off the dirt path. As soon as they stumbled onto it, the five slowed to a halt and caught their breath. Their Anima Viris had cut out about a half mile ago, so all six were just as dull and winded as each other when they paused and gasped.
As soon as she had her wind back, Dash wiped her brow and looked behind her. “I think…we lost ‘em… At least for now…”
Fluttershy nodded. “Yes…and we even managed to finish getting everyone fixed up along the way…”
“Too bad that don’t really help us anymore…” Applejack groaned, looking back up to the sky. “Twilight’s long gone now, along with Sunset.”
“Then we’ll just have to get after her,” Rarity responded. “Rainbow Dash, did you happen to see the direction they were going?”
She gave her a look. “Seriously? That was an airship. You think those things only go straight as the crow flies? It could have changed direction two dozen times by now.”
“It looked like it was going northeast…” Fluttershy murmured. “Or north by northeast… Into Equestria…”
Applejack let out a curse as she stood up. “Dagnabbit, you don’t s’pose she’s takin’ her back to Trottingham, do ya’?”
“Whether she is or she isn’t doesn’t really matter now,” Dash groaned. “They have a Trottingham airship, which means they can fly over Equestria. Even if we had the best ship that Manehattan could give us and we were already gone and chasing them it wouldn’t matter. As soon as you fly a ship over Equestria that’s not Trottingham, it gets torn up by every last bird that got turned into a Nighttouched over the past eight years. We should have gone after them back in the clearing!”
“And chasin’ ‘em on foot right into Equestria would’ve been so much safer?”
Dash paused. “Well, now that you mention it…”
“Ugh! This is horrible!” Rarity shouted. “Even if Twilight didn’t have the key on her, which she did, I know I don’t want to risk combating that horrendous woman without her!”
“M-M-Me neither…” Fluttershy quietly muttered.
“Ain’t this a fine mess. Almost don’t matter that Sunset didn’t blow us ta’ kingdom come…” Applejack groaned. “Twilight’s captured, we got no idea where they’re going, no way to get there if we did, and no way to get to that blasted Castle of the Two Sisters without her! Now what’da we do?”
“Well, we can’t just give up!” Dash retorted as she rose up to full height. “We got to find some way to find Sunset and get to her!”
“But…we don’t even know how to start,” Fluttershy meekly added. “Even if we did, by the time we find out where she went, what if she’s already gotten Twilight’s Anima Viri?”
“Dash is right! We can’t just sit here and do nothing!”
“Oh dear… If we go into the country we’ll just run afoul of whatever highwayman or monster is secluding themselves, assuming we don’t run straight into Equestria by mistake, and heaven knows when the train will come back again! Even if it does, we could be arrested on the spot by Mount Aris at any time!”
“Hey everyone?” Pinkie suddenly spoke up. “Was that wagon over there when we walked by the first time?”
Everyone looked up at this peculiar sentence, but as soon as they did their eyes spotted the same thing Pinkie saw.
There had been no question on the walk toward the clearing that the city along the way had been fully abandoned and the road left in disrepair. There hadn’t been the slightest sign of life. Now, however, there was a wagon parked near an old, half-collapsed well. A pair of lanterns had been hung up alongside it, casting a fairly powerful glow.
As a result, they could make out the wagon was fairly large and elaborate; one that could be converted into a mobile platform if necessary. However, it was shut up at the moment while its driver was watering the creatures pulling it. It was appropriate to say “creatures”, because it wasn’t a team of horses. Rather, what looked like a large goat, a buck, a boar, and an ox were all hitched together in the oddest team any of the girls had ever seen.
The driver himself was hard to see as he had his back to them, but he was very tall and lanky. He was in a full brown suit with long coattails, although it didn’t really matter with his height. A stove-top hat was perched on his head as he finished filling the bowl of the last mount, before calming returning the bucket to the well as he hummed to himself.
“Goodness me,” Fluttershy remarked. “I’ve never seen a buck and a goat like that before! They must be so strong…”
“Who in Greater Everfree is that?” Rarity asked quietly.
“Beats me. Sure weren’t here when we got here…” Applejack muttered.
“Were…those lanterns lit a moment ago?” Dash asked. “I don’t remember seeing them when we came out…”
“Oh, oh!” Pinkie chirped. “Maybe he saw which way the airship went?”
“We were closer,” Fluttershy answered, “and even if he did, do you think it would help?”
Spike, on his part, stared at the tall man. He didn’t move and his body language didn’t change for better or for worse. After a short while, however, a soft growl began to come from his throat.
“It seems little Spikey-Wikey here doesn’t care for him…” Rarity mused.
“But who else do we have to ask?” Pinkie shrugged. “Come on! It couldn’t hurt!” With that, she began to bound over to him.
“Pinkie…!” Applejack started to shout, raising her hand up, before catching herself.
Dash walked to her side and elbowed her in the ribs. “Come on…you aren’t scared of some random traveler, are you? It’s not like we can’t take him if he tries anything. Trust me, no highwayman looking for an ambush is going to be going down abandoned roads like this. He’s probably peddling scrounged goods.”
Applejack hesitated, but finally frowned before walking after Pinkie. Dash fell in alongside. “I dunno…just…just…”
“Just what?”
“Nevermind. I ain’t scared of no one, but…something didn’t seem right for a moment…”
Seeing them move along, Fluttershy gulped before quickly running up behind them, although she made sure the two were between her and him. Rarity, seeing herself left behind, looked down to the dog. “Come along, Spike. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
His only answer was to growl a bit more.
She began to walk forward. “I said come along now.”
Spike looked up, seeing the others moving. When that happened his growling stopped. Instead, his ears slicked back and his tail went a bit under his legs. A small whine went out before he followed after Rarity.
“There’s no need for a strong canine like you to be afraid of a regular old man,” Rarity reassured him. “Not after what I’ve seen you do to some Nighttouched. This would be nothing.”
Spike, naturally, didn’t answer. Only continued to follow along slowly and warily.
Pinkie reached the side of the cart first, but it wasn’t long before Applejack, Dash, and the others fell in behind. His back was still turned as he looked at the harnesses of his unusual troupe, but Pinkie smiled and waved at him. “Hi there!”
The man looked up at that and, for the first time, the girls got a good sense of just how tall he was. When he stretched up, even without the hat he seemed to rise a good seven feet into the air. Tall enough to look down on all of them as he turned around.
The way the lamps cast their light, and with his hat brim pulled down low over his head, it was almost impossible to make anything out on his features. Nothing save a long gray beard that protruded from his chin like a tuft of grass.
Nevertheless, they could make out his face spreading into a smile. “Why, hello there young ladies!” His voice had a rather charming quality to it. Smooth with a hint of a carnival barker in it. “Goodness me oh my, whatever are you doing this far off the main road?” He looked up and over the group. “And all by yourselves and without arms or transportation? Don’t you know how dangerous it is in this part of the country?”
“We can manage,” Applejack flatly answered. “’Sides, we might say the same ‘bout you and your freaky wagon team. Who goes ‘round this far off the road without horses?”
“What, this?” He gestured to the unusual team. “Oh, I did think about using horses, but horses are oh so…what’s a good word…boring. I prefer to mix things up to have a little fun. It’s my line of business, after all, being a dealer in the chance knick-knack and oddity.”
Dash raised an eyebrow. “It…doesn’t seem like there’s many people out here to sell to who aren’t thugs.”
“Oh, what nonsense,” the tall man answered. “I ran into the six of you and none of you are out to commit robberies, are you? And you never know what someone might need. I deal in all sorts. For example…”
He opened one end of his coat and reached inside.
“You never know when someone might need a hooded lantern.”
He pulled out an item soon after, only on looking at it the women got a surprise. Rather than a regular lantern, it was actually wearing a small cloth cape with a hood drawn over it. At any rate, he only showed it long enough to put it back in and rummage around.
“And washerwomen are always in need of more clothespins.”
He pulled out another handful, this time a bunch of cloves. The end of each one was sharpened and tapered into a metal pin.
“Or maybe some doorjams?”
He reached back in and pulled out once more, this time showing off a set of three different jars of preserves, but each one marked with a picture of a thick, heavy, oaken door.
By now, Pinkie was giggling at the whole thing, while Applejack and Rarity were both puzzled as to how he was able to keep these things in his coat and get them out so fast. Fluttershy herself was preoccupied with the team, actually walking up to them and giving them friendly smiles before petting them. Dash, on her part, crossed her arms. “Ok, so you’re some kind of traveling comedian or magician?”
“Magician? Oh, goodness no. Like I said, I’m a simple salesman. Even if I do have the occasional oddity in my wagon. Although, I will say, I do occasionally try to sell my customers some genuine delight…”
He reached in again and pulled out a small deskside lamp, this one perfectly crafted into the shape of a “D”.
“Especially when I wish to share my abundance.”
He somehow shoved the lamp back inside, only to pull out what looked like a street vendor’s hot cross bun. Only this time it caught everyone’s attention. That was because it had a set of tiny legs protruding from the bottom of it and, as it perched in the man’s hand, it seemed to actually be doing a little jig in the dim lamplight.
He put it away soon enough, but by this point everyone but Pinkie was staring at where it had been. She, on her part, was laughing almost to the point of snorting. “I get it! A…bun…dance! Ha-ha!”
“Oh,” the tall man went on, still smiling as he buttoned his coat, “I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation while I was watering Flicker and Teabiscuit over here. It sounded as if you’re looking for airships from Trottingham or something along those lines?”
“Oh!” Fluttershy spoke up. “Oh yes, we certainly are!”
He reached up and stroked his beard for a moment. “Hmm.” After a second or two, he started to move, walking back to the seat on his wagon. “You know, it’s ever so funny you should mention that. You see, just a little ways over there,”
He gestured to one side, particularly an alleyway that ran between two of the abandoned buildings. However, when the girls looked that way, they noticed that it didn’t terminate in the surrounding woods. Rather, a tunnel had been cut through them and the path kept going.
“Is a road that leads about six miles out to an abandoned Mount Aris outpost. I was coming from that way when, lo and behold, I happened to see a Trottingham airship sitting there. Now, of course, I was rather amazed at the entire thing, especially since the Mount Aris authorities, last I checked, aren’t exactly partial to having Trottinghamites squat on their land, but…”
Reaching the side of his wagon, he bopped it with one of his fists. In response, one of the collapsed panels opened up and revealed what was inside. Three racks worth of loaves of bread, only each one was smashed so tiny that they weren’t even as long as they were high.
“I couldn’t resist a chance to unload my surplus of shortbread.”
Pinkie giggled again as he reached down and collapsed the panel once more. The others, however, were now focusing intently on what he was saying as he began to climb up into the wagon.
“So there I went, trying to peddle my wares, and they promptly chased me off at gunpoint. Naturally, I ran for the hills with my wagon troupe, but as I was fleeing I heard one of the soldiers get a tongue lashing from their superior. Apparently, trying to shoot at me was a big no-no as they were only lying low to try and avoid detection by the Mount Aris aerial navy. I didn’t catch the whole argument as my concern was saving this two-hundred dollar hat from being damaged along with the rest of me, but apparently they were irate about something to do with missing the chance to take off after their superior officer due to some misstep, and now they were being forced to lie low to wait them out.”
The five women’s eyes widened at that news.
The tall man finished sitting down in the wagon as he took up the reins. “I suppose so long as they feel it’s unsafe to take off, which might be a few hours or might be five minutes from now as far as I know, if one was to hurry they might be able to catch that airship before it departs.” He looked down. “I don’t suppose that little tidbit was of any use to you?”
“Uh,” Applejack spoke up again, “which way did you say that road was again?”
“Oh, that one. Right over there. Straightest shot to the abandoned outpost you’ll find.”
“Right. In that case,” She tipped her hat to him. “Much obliged.” A second later, she took off in a run for it.
“Wait for me!” Dash shouted as she ran after her.
Rarity grit her teeth. “Just once I wish there was truth in advertising in these Manehattan hiking boots…” she grimaced before she ran after them, with Spike falling in behind.
“Thanks Mr. Magic Peddler person!” Pinkie half-yelled before bounding after the others.
Fluttershy nearly went after them too, but before she did she stopped all together and looked back to the tall man. She clasped her hands together and gave him a short curtsey. “I’ll never forget your kindness, sir. Or your adorable team. This is very, very important to us and to our friend. Thank you ever so much.”
“Oh, my dear,” he calmly responded, reaching up and removing his hat just long enough to nod to her. His voice slowed as his pitch dropped ever so slightly.
“Rest assured beyond all doubt—the pleasure is all mine.”
Fluttershy stared back at him a moment, her own smile ebbing. It lasted until he put the hat back on. At that point, she forced her smile, waved one last time, and then turned and ran after the others. As she did, she heard the reins crack behind her as the wagon began to move again.
She didn’t look behind as he left, even to see the strange sight of the team in action. She was thinking too much of what she had seen under that hat.
“Was…one of his teeth…longer and sharper than the other…?”
As odd as the stranger’s advice, and appearance, had been, it panned out. They had to run the whole way, but eventually the path terminated into a much larger clearing and the group left the road and moved into the trees. Just up ahead, they saw it.
A Trottingham airship was in a “hovering dock”. The lighting was minimal, which was pretty standard for a normal airship this close to the border anyway but apparently the crew wasn’t entirely confident in their defenses. Although the engines were idling, a rather continuous, low-frequency hum was rolling through the air. What lights they currently had on were aimed out to the surroundings, but with large shadows in between, and so dim that the group could see multiple people walking around on the upper deck even from a distance.
“Alright, we lucked out!” Dash grinned on spotting it. “Now we just got to get on before they take off…”
“Better hurry,” Applejack muttered. “Sounds like they’re fixin’ to take off right now…”
“Nah, that humming sound is one of those ‘Morning Glories’. It’s what’s keeping the Nighttouched and Light Eaters back.”
“Oh, that’s what that sound is?” Fluttershy spoke up. She looked skyward. “All of those nightjars and bats certainly don’t seem to like it…”
“D-D-Did you say bats?!” Rarity nearly shrieked. Her eyes darted to the heavens as she quickly shrank and covered her head.
“Forget the bats, we gotta get in there ‘fore they do take off!” Applejack interjected. “Let’s just use our sigils and bust in!”
Rarity took a moment to compose herself before frowning. “I don’t know if you’re willing to see if you can survive getting hit by a cannon shell, but after what happened back in that clearing I’m not willing to chance it.”
Dash looked over the area. “Well, they’d be more worried about what’s coming at them on the side that’s not facing the forest, so we might be able to sneak along the back… Only problem is if this is like the airships Cloudsdale used to have, there’s no way in back there except what goes right into the engines or ventilation ports. And we aren’t squeezing ourselves through tiny pipes.”
“What if we went on really strict diets?” Pinkie suggested.
“Even if we did get in, we’d still have to face the whole crew,” Rarity pointed out.
“So what?” Dash answered. “Bring ‘em on! We can take ‘em!”
“Darling, we’re going on a rescue mission after this, during which we’ll need to confront Sunset Shimmer, and these soldiers are armed with weapons that replicate spells. I don’t think we should be too eager for open combat.”
Applejack sighed. “Well, great. They could take off at any moment, so if you want a plan you better think up one mighty quick.”
Rarity paused. She looked around the area a few moments before wincing as a shadow flew down low near her head; obviously a bat. However, after doing so, her eyebrows raised.
“Fluttershy, dear, does your ability work on all animals?”
“It really works best with ones who have been tainted. The best I can do is give a general direction to normal animals.”
“Do you think you might do that for all of these bats?”
“I…suppose. Why?”
The Trottingham soldier stationed on the bow of the Legacy groaned impatiently, shifting her heavy weapon to one arm before rotating her shoulder. “These new guns are too heavy… I can’t keep it aimed out all night long!”
“Ugh, are you going to start complaining again?” her companion nearby groaned. “Keep it down!”
“Aren’t we ready to take off yet? It’s bad enough that Lady Sunset hates it whenever we’re late, but we’re in Mount Aris territory and this close to the border!”
“You’re not seriously scared that the Morning Glory is going to give out, are you?”
“Well if you’re not scared, how come you told me to keep it down?”
The soldier stammered at that hesitantly.
The first snorted. “I thought so. You’re thinking the same as the rest of us. Once Lady Sunset gets what she wants, she leaves the rest of us out to dry.”
The second immediately tensed up and jammed her finger in the first’s chest. “Well until she does cut us loose, that kind of talk is going to get you either shot or court-martialled, so keep it down!”
The first grit her teeth. “Why don’t you…hey look!”
Abruptly, she pointed to the edge of the grounds, nearest the tree line. The other soldier looked, as did numerous other soldiers stationed on the deck. In the dim lights that they were allowing they saw a single figure emerge from the forest and hop up and down: one with a large mass of poofy, pink hair.
“Alright there, Trottinghamians…” she paused, “Er…Trottinghameons…uh…Trottinghamites…? Whatever… This is the Mount Aris National…uh, National Watchman’s Bureau for the, uh…Guarding of Abandoned Landing Strips Corporation! We’ve got you all surrounded! The forest all around you is filled with guns! Really big ones that make really loud noises and cause really big explosions! Surrender right now!”
The two soldiers stared out somewhat incredulously. After a moment, the second began to go for her binoculars while the other gestured at the intruder. “Is she for real? Between her and that last guy, maybe the carnival is in town…”
The second soldier brought the lenses up and looked at her for a moment before lowering them again hurriedly. “I think that’s one of the six targets that was in Grifftham City! They said she’d have a lot of pink, curly hair!”
“Oh, is that so?” the first retorted, before moving over to the speaking hole. “Too bad for her we already got the one Lady Sunset wanted, which means we’ve got no reason not to blow her away with the cannons. I don’t think we have to worry now about noise if we’re going to be lifting off…”
She leaned down to give the call when the figure out in the field shouted again. “Don’t believe me, eh? Well, in that case…” She held up a hand to the sky. “Fire some warning shots across her nose, boys!”
A bit to the surprise not only of the two soldiers, but soon everyone else on deck, an eruption of fire came from the woods before a fireball streaked out of it toward the airship. A moment later, it zoomed right over the prow before sinking into the woods beyond. Not long after, a second one from a different spot also fired; shooting over it a bit closer. Finally, a third shot arced so low that the two soldiers recoiled at the feeling of the heat, right before it hit the ground to the side. On making contact, a fiery explosion went off and blasted a dirt crater into the ground.
The tremor was enough to send a ripple through the airship. That, in turn, quickly got the attention of the remaining watchmen. Soon every stationed soldier and watch post was angling itself to the front of the ship and the pink-haired woman standing out there making threats, now looking rather pleased with herself.
“What the hell…?!” the first soldier exclaimed. “They have real guns out there?”
“You don’t think they’re working with Mount Aris, do you?” the second added. “If they are and they really have been stationing guns out here…”
“Ha-ha-ha!” the pink haired woman laughed. “Arr, avast me hearties! Now we’re gonna pillage and sink ya’ to the bottom o’ the briny deep!”
The two soldiers, along with many of their compatriots, looked confused.
“…Oops! That’s pirate jargon. I meant to say it’s all over! Now come out with your hands up or we’ll open fire!”
Hardly had she finished the threat when a voice came in through the speaking hole. “Prow watch, what’s going on out there?”
The first soldier leaned in. “We’ve spotted someone! It’s too dark and near the forest to make out how many individuals, but they have at least three artillery units!”
“Do we have targets?”
“Negative! We can’t confirm how many!”
There was a pause on the other end; no doubt from the bridge quickly trying to decide what to do next. It lasted for several seconds before a voice came back. “Belay attacking. We’re taking off and heading to the rendezvous point. Prepare for standard cover fire-”
“Emergency!” a voice suddenly cut in, clearly tense and panicked. “We’ve got an emergency in the engine room! Nighttouched are pouring in!”
Every last soldier near a speaking hole went rigid. “What…what was that? Engine room?”
“Repeat, Nighttouched are pouring in! There’s hundreds of bats in here and more are flowing in through the ventilation slots! The Morning Glory isn’t working! Repeat, the Morning Glory isn’t working! We need to evac the engine room!” The echoes of bat screeches soon began to leak over his voice. “Repeat, we’re sealing off the engine room!”
Those on deck hesitated a moment, before one of the watches called out. “Look!”
It came from the starboard side toward the rear, but everyone who was near enough to look could just make out what was happening in the dim light. Hundreds of tiny black flying creatures were briefly illuminated as they passed through the beams of the airship’s lighting, and every last one of them was streaming toward the back of the ship. Everyone had moved to the front with the threat of attack, but there was no question they were pouring right into the ship through the tiny vents.
For a brief moment, there was a stillness and silence among the crew. Even working with the Morning Glories for so long, they, like all others in Greater Everfree, had learned to fear the Nighttouched. Especially the swarms. They moved like a relentless flood in which they could lose dozens or even hundreds of individuals and still overwhelm everything in their path. No normal swarm of bats would dare get anywhere near the heat of the engine, and even if they would they wouldn’t fly en masse. That only lead to one conclusion in their mind.
Feeling themselves suddenly stripped of their protection, powerless to escape, and sandwiched between hostile parties with artillery and attacking monsters, the bridge sounded the command. “Abandon ship! Evacuate and get to cover!”
At once, the crew fell into a full panic. Posts were abandoned both outside and inside as everyone scrambled for the port accesses and ladders. Those in engineering ran the hardest and fastest; none of them standing their ground in the face of a swarm of death pouring into the ship. They were soon logjammed by all of the other crew members, especially the younger ones (of which Sunset had mostly populated her crew) with less experience and resolve. The side hatches popped open soon after as the sounds of screeching began to fill the ship’s innards and small leathery-winged creatures began to flap over the heads of those farthest behind. The gangplanks barely had time to deploy before the crew members ran out.
While the class of airship that the Legacy was could normally staff a crew of a hundred easily, Sunset trusted herself to only those she personally could confirm and, as such, a mere fifty ended up pouring out of the sides before the airship was dry. They all moved in the same direction—south and away from both the artillery fire and the Nighttouched attack. They made a beeline straight for the ajar doors of an old abandoned hanger; the nearest structure they could take refuge in. As they loosened up and spread out in their mad dash, the first few crew members got within only a few meters of the doors.
Yet as soon as they did, a glowing woman in light armor brandishing a warhammer leapt out from within and drove the head of the weapon down against the ground as hard as she could.
The first few Trottingham crewmembers barely had time to register what had happened before the force of the impact was enough to sweep them off their feet. The next ten ran into them; the collision tangling them as well. The remaining thirty came to a halt behind them, but no sooner had they registered surprise when a second glowing woman, this time showing off her muscles, shot out with blinding speed. Moving like a streak of rainbow light, she zoomed across the perimeter and quickly hemmed them in; dropping one after another with punches and kicks so fast they couldn’t even see them coming. The one with the hammer quickly rushed in and joined the fray, pummeling the rest with blows.
Forty of them were dropped by the dual onslaught. The remaining ten, realizing their mistake, attempted to backpedal enough to bring their weapons to bear. Unfortunately, by the time that happened, the pink-haired woman had joined them and also ignited in light. She quickly moved on them, disarmed them, and left their legs tied up by their own shoelaces. They were easy prey for the other two and soon joined them on the ground.
When all was said and done, Rainbow Dash, Applejack, and Pinkie Pie took a moment to stand back and look over the pile of fifty unconscious bodies. Dash grinned. “Whew! That was pretty impressive even for me!”
“Yay!” Pinkie cheered. “Great job everyone!” She turned to the forest and cupped a hand to her mouth. “Including Fluttershy and Rarity!”
The foilage around the woods shifted for a moment, before both women in their own respective Anima Viris came out with Spike running up behind. Rarity herself removed her hat and dabbed her brow with her pocket handkerchief. “I’m simply glad that they mistook those spells Twilight taught me for cannon fire. I don’t think I could have managed anything larger…”
Fluttershy herself held out two fingers. Moments later, a bat glided out of the sky and alit on them, hanging upside down and facing her. “Thank you ever so much for your help! I know you normally don’t want to go into cramped, hot, smoky spaces like that, but we’re ever so grateful! And we’ll get this airship out of here in no time so that you can go back to your evening meal!”
The bat screeched once before taking off again.
Applejack hefted her hammer and faced the Legacy. “Awright… We took care of these folks, but it don’t really help us get Twilight back, does it?”
“Oh, maybe if we put together a bunch of fake dummies of all these crewmembers,” Pinkie suggested, “and we put them all up at their stations and used little strings to move their arms and heads and covered up our voices and said…” She covered her mouth and spoke in a high-pitched voice. “‘Oh, Sunset! It’s so lovely to see you! It’s your old friends: the crew of your other ship! Won’t you come and have some lemonade?’ And then when they get close, we jump out and yell ‘surprise!’ and then ambush them!”
“I admire your spirit, dear, but I think we can simplify that,” Rarity answered. “I say we commandeer this ship and go right to Sunset’s rendezvous! It’s the perfect disguise!”
“Oh, and if it has one of those Morning Glories,” Fluttershy pointed out, “we could take it straight to the Castle of the Two Sisters without a key. That would make things so much easier.”
Applejack crossed her arms. “Uh…only one problem with that idea. Anyone have any idea how to fly one of these contraptions with only five people and a dog?”
The five went silent. They looked to one another for a moment, before they all looked to Dash.
She shrugged. “What?”
“Didn’t you say you used to be in the Wonderbolts?”
She blanched, starting to look nervous. “Well…the Wonderbolts were the Steam Air Corps. We didn’t actually fly big airships like this one…” She shrugged. “But, now that you mention it, I think I did get a five day basic operations training when I first enlisted. I think I can jog my memory.”
Applejack went wide-eyed. “You serious? You’re gonna pack us all on board this oversized hot air balloon and fly us over Greater Everfree on tryin’ ta’ remember a week of trainin’ from how many years back?!”
“Not a week…five days. ‘Sides, with today’s modern technology, how hard could it be?”
The farmer began to quiver as intensely as Fluttershy at her worst.
“Sunset, you’ve been given a marvelous power. A unique one.”
“Unique…?”
“You know now that there are other people in the world who have the same power you do, but what you don’t know is that yours is something much greater than that. Unique even among the rest of us. You’re special, Sunset. You have an amazing gift.”
She leaned in closer to the child, still smiling at her kindly.
“One that could even save the world one day.”
“Say Twilight, think you can help me out with something?”
The mage looked up from the bench she was seated upon. Sunset again had her face to her barred window, smiling tauntingly.
“See, we’re almost to our destination, so that means we’re going to have to move you soon. Except you’re conscious now, so I’m guessing you’re going to make this a bit problematic. I’m trying to decide on how exactly I should keep you in line.”
Twilight frowned, but said nothing.
“You see, I thought of just bringing out my own Caster form. I’m really interested in seeing which of us is better, after all. Then again, I really don’t want anything to ruin this, so I thought of going with the Archer instead.”
She snickered.
“But I don’t get many opportunities to use my other forms either. In fact, I’ve never really used the rest of them before. I’d love to introduce you to the Gambler, the Enchanter, or…” She paused, smiling wider. “Well, that last one’s a se-cret, but if you really want to know I’d be happy to show you. What sounds more fun to you? Giving you a fighting chance or crushing you like a bug?”
Twilight simply looked away. However, she didn’t stay that way for very long. The sound of the bulkhead turning rang out and prompting her to look up again.
“Ah,” Sunset smirked, “it must be time right now. Hurry up and give me your preference, won’t you?” She turned away slightly from the cell, but still left herself somewhat angled at it to keep at least her peripheral vision on Twilight.
Soon after the metal door swung open, allowing the royal guard to step in, approach, and salute her. “Lady Sunset, we have arrived. We’re reducing speed for our approach as we speak.”
“Great to hear. Are we ready to begin?”
He hesitated. “Not quite.”
Sunset’s smile began to falter. She turned fully to him. “What do you mean ‘not quite’?”
“The Legacy still hasn’t arrived yet.”
Her face flushed with irritation. “Are you kidding me? They’ve been waiting for years for me to finally pay up my side of the bargain, and they’re late? This is ridiculous! If they can’t meet at a rendezvous at an appointed time, it’s their loss! Tell the bridge to begin the landing cycle!”
“They were right there in Mount Aris territory when we left, my lady. If they’re not here, it might mean something more serious. We should probably take this seriously.”
This only made her bristle even more. “I’ve been forced to sit around making one deal and arrangement after another for eight years hoping for tonight! And now that I have the final sigil in my grasp, do you have any idea how infuriating having to wait any longer is?”
“You did promise them, so long as they followed your command, and they have.”
She hissed as she ran her hand through her hair. “This is why I hate it when I have to rely on other people… You never know when they’re going to do something like this and tie everything-”
“My lady! Look!”
The sudden yell from the royal guard snapped Sunset to attention, and she spun around only to gasp at her mistake.
Twilight had noticed her getting worked up over the airship and, as a result, distracted. Now her hands were up and finishing tracing an advanced sigil as fast as she could while chanting the same incantation. It was more complicated than any basic cast and, to Sunset’s surprise, one she didn’t know she had full command over. She quickly raised her own hand and began to chant a spell of her own.
It was too late. Twilight slammed her palm against the sigil, and instantly her body erupted in a purple aura. Seconds later, it ignited in a brilliant flash that blinded both Sunset and the royal guard. Both of them recoiled, but as soon as it died down they unshielded themselves and looked back in the cell.
Twilight’s now-disembodied chains finished falling to the floor and the prison stood empty.
Sunset glared at it for a fraction of a second, before she gnashed her teeth and slammed her fist into the wall. “Damn her!”
The royal guard himself looked bewildered. Seeing the cell empty, he immediately started looking around. “How did she…? Where is she? Did she turn invisible or-”
Swinging around, Sunset angrily seized him by the shoulder and threw him rough enough to one side to make him strike the wall. “Of course she didn’t turn invisible, you idiot! She teleported!”
The royal guard was more caught off guard than hurt by the shove and rose quickly after her. “Teleported? There’s actually a spell that lets its caster-”
“Shut up and stop asking stupid questions!” she cut off as she stomped toward the door. “Just come with me now! She can’t have teleported off the ship! We need to hurry up and find her!”
As he fell in behind her, Sunset reached the door and quickly spun the bulkhead again before yanking the metal hatch open.
“Once I find that wretched woman, I’m going to cut out her tongue so that she never chants another spell again!” she raged as she tore out into the hall.
The royal guard followed closely behind and the hatch closed again soon after. Yet in the middle of her wrath and fury, Sunset had been so wrapped up in her anger that she failed to hear rather tired panting still coming from the inside of Twilight’s cell. The woman was currently leaning against the same wall the door was on, pressing herself against it both to hide as well as to try and regain her bearings from having performed the teleportation.
Her wits came back quickly, and she nervously looked at the window and listened in case someone should double back or Sunset should realize her ruse. All she heard was muffled yelling and footsteps; no doubt the crew springing to life and beginning to comb the ship for her. She seemed to have at least a few seconds of freedom.
Seizing on them, she forced herself up and off of the wall. Her head was still swimming, but she aimed her hand at the lock on the cell door and performed a new gesture. Fire formed within the lock and blazed hot enough to deform and melt the tumblers out. In moments, the barred door slid free of its frame and popped open. She quickly pushed it aside and exited.
By the time she reached the bulkhead leading out, much of the noise had died down but continued to echo deeper in the ship. Nearby seemed quiet enough, however. She swallowed, knowing the risk, but tentatively reached out to grasp the handle and gave it a turn. She winced at how loud the screeching was, pausing momentarily before pushing it open.
She waited for a second or two, but no one came and no one yelled. She risked pushing it forward a bit more, but still nothing. Finally, she leaned her head forward and looked around. The corridor was empty.
Sighing in relief, she began to step out of the cell only to jump when a loud alarm began to blare throughout the entire airship. She winced in panic for a moment, before she realized that alarm had to be the general one for all crew members. She hadn’t been caught, but she realized that everyone would be looking for her in seconds.
With that in mind, she quickly ran out of her own cell and began to look for the most hidden and direct route to the upper deck.
“Hey everyone! The ship is rolling back and forth again! Wheee!”
As the ship continued to pitch from side to side, Pinkie let herself be carried along with it, cheerfully doing cartwheels. “This is fun! Give it a try!”
The other four girls were less than enthused. More like terrified as they frantically tried to keep their footing while moving from one console to another. Rainbow Dash herself was gripping the helm nervously and shouting out. “Rarity, do something about that!”
“I’m trying to make out the atrocious labeling on these confounded controls, and your shouting isn’t helping me remember which is which!” she shrieked back, before desperately beginning to adjust them. Suddenly, the ship pitched even more violently one way. The turbines gave a sharp whine, and everyone went white as a sheet.
“Rarity!”
“Oops!” she cried back as she quickly reversed the control. The ship’s pitch went back just in time to prevent them from rolling over completely.
No sooner had they evened-out, however, than the entire ship gave a violent shudder. A massive scraping and groaning echoed from the bottom. Applejack, practically green and using her own station to support herself rather than do anything, looked up weakly to her side. “We hit another tree… Can’t you do nothin’ ‘bout that…?”
Dash rolled her eyes. “Fluttershy!”
“Oh,” she answered in her normal speaking voice. She was looking over her own station somewhat curiously, one hand on her chin. “I’m sorry. I’m still trying to figure this one out. Let’s see…” She turned to the helm. “Rainbow Dash, was it this one that you showed me that controls the altitude? I’m sorry, it was just such a fast explanation that-”
She was cut off as the sound of another tree scraping the hull resonated through the ship. Dash groaned. “Yes, yes! That’s the one! Hit it before we scuttle!”
“Alright.” She daintily shifted the control soon after. The scraping dimmed down a moment later as the ship began to rise.
“Aw… That was all tingly…” Pinkie moped as the ship evened out.
“This would probably be easier if we slowed down a little…” Rarity spoke up.
“If we want to catch up to them, then we’ve got to go full speed.” Dash retorted. “We don’t have the manpower or experience on board to slow down and speed up again just like that. We just got to kick it up and run the engines into the ground getting to them.”
Applejack retched a bit, but dully looked back at her. “And…what do we do when we get there…?”
“That’s easy!” Pinkie cheered, shifting to a pirate-like tone. “We let ‘em have it with the broadsides and send ‘em inta’ the briny deep!” She paused. “Wait, we’re in the sky, aren’t we? We send ‘em inta’ the…wild blue yonder then!”
“Uh, about that,” Dash answered uneasily. “We don’t have a crew to handle firing this thing, so we won’t be shooting back at them. And we don’t have a turbine control operator, so we won’t be flanking them. And we don’t have an engineering crew to regular the steam operations, so we won’t be maneuvering in close corners.”
“What exactly can we do?” Rarity asked.
“Considering it’s just five of us with no experience? Maybe get this ship to the same altitude and bring it into a hovering stop. And once they realize we can’t do anything more than that, they’ll keep their distance and blow us out of the sky.”
“Good grief…”
“Oh dear,” Fluttershy murmured. “If that’s all, how can we rescue Twilight?”
Applejack pried herself off the ground, still looking queasy. “If the cannons are already loaded, can’t we get a shot or two?”
“If someone’s down there manning them, then sure. We can’t do any kind of reckoning, though, so we’re going to have to be in close range to hope to hit ‘em.”
“Maybe that’s all we need… These ships have gotta have a weak point, right?”
Rarity frowned. “One cannon shell against two airships? I’m no sailor, Applejack, but I’m rather good at math.”
“And like I said, they’re not going to let us get that close anyway,” Dash griped.
“Hey, I got an idea!” Pinkie chirped. “If we can’t open fire with our broadsides, let’s all get on upper deck, go in real close, and then…avast, me hearties! We charge onto their boat and raid ‘em hand-to-hand!”
Applejack looked up. “Y’know, aside from the fact it means jumpin’ ship, that is a better idea. Who needs all these fancy cannons and such when we got our special powers, anyway? I bet I could take that ship apart myself.”
“It would be playing to our greatest advantage,” Rarity threw in.
Dash rolled her eyes. “Uh, hello? Anyone home? Did you not hear me keep pointing out that they won’t let us get that close? None of these ideas will work so long as we have to close in on them!”
“Oh, if only Twilight were here,” Fluttershy murmured. “She seemed to always know what to do.”
Applejack groaned. “Well, she ain’t. It’s just us. So we better start rackin’ our brains…”
“Hmm,” Pinkie thought, putting a finger to her chin as she kept running around the bridge, “looks like what we need to do is get close to the ships in order to do anything, so let’s find out how to get close to the ships!”
“Flying definitely isn’t going to work,” Dash answered. “Not with a limited crew and no experience.”
“If this was one of my Shadow Spade mysteries, I’m sure she would work the problem from the opposite angle,” Rarity suggested. “She’d find a way to make the other ships come to us.”
“Well, that’s just plain nuts,” Applejack griped. “How can we do that? They already got the one thing they want from us.”
Dash shrugged. “Maybe we’ll luck out and Twilight found a way to get away from them. Or at least a way to get them to land…”
“Not unless they want lots and lots of big scary Nighttouched instead of Twilight!” Pinkie answered.
Dash sighed. “They won’t have to worry about that. With those Morning Glories, they’re safe and sound. Let’s just be glad we have one too or we’d already be eaten alive…”
Rarity turned to her. “What was that?”
“Huh?”
“What did you just say?”
“What? If they didn’t have these Morning Glories protecting them, the Nighttouched would overrun ‘em by now.”
Fluttershy hesitated. She thought about that a moment.
“Um…Rarity? If Twilight didn’t know we were coming, how do you think she might try to escape?”
Applejack and Rarity looked back at her together. “What makes you ask that?”
“Maybe we can do something after all…”
It took Twilight some time to work her way back down to engineering. Not only had the search for her intensified as time went on and every misstep she made echoed, but that was the one area of the ship that still had crew members stationed at their posts. Even getting to it was hard enough. She had to spend most of her time hiding, waiting for the crew and Sunset to finish scouring one part of the ship before they realized she had to be in the previous one, and then make her way past them into a more recently-searched portion without being spotted in between. The game of cat and mouse had taken some time, but she had managed to stay one step ahead.
She was currently facing a floor hatch leading to her intended destination, having just managed to avoid the latest detection by shoving herself into an alcolve around rather hot steam pipes. However, from there she was thwarted. The hatch was open, but no doubt there were workers down there, and in the confines of the airship there was no way they wouldn’t hear the sound of her echo going down the metal rungs of the ladder. Worse yet, this area was being patrolled. She could only stay hidden for a short while before someone would be around again.
She looked around, trying to think of something, before she finally looked to the hot pipe nearby. She thought for a moment more before she held up her hand and performed a small gesture. Very basic and simple, just a mild water charm. Nothing more than a water balloon by most estimations. However, as soon as she had generated it out of thin air, she flung it onto the pipe.
A loud hiss came off as the heat began to instantly boil it into steam. She held for just a moment as a noise rang through the air, waiting to see if anyone would suspect anything or react to it. On hearing nothing, she quickly advanced to the metal rung ladder. As quickly as she could she descended it.
Sure enough, she hardly began to go down when she spotted a worker nearby in insulated clothing working on a trio of valves. However, the hissing noise from the pipe overhead masked her noise, and his attention was otherwise on his work. The moment Twilight touched down, she looked around quickly to see the way was clear before running around the bend. Once there, she sighed in relief a moment before moving on.
Now that she was in there, she kept her ears open. All the way down to main engineering she had heard a dull vibrating noise grow more audible, and now she began to worm her way through the inner workings of the ship to try and find it. She managed to turn down two more corridors, inching her way to the edge and slowly peering around the side each time to make sure the way was clear. Time was against her; the guards had likely searched main engineering once and would return to do it again shortly.
On the third turn, however, she snapped away as quickly as she could. She had barely looked around the edge before spotting a pair of engineers working on the wall of pipes nearby. She pressed herself back against the corridor, but fortunately for her both of their eyes and been focused on their work. Moments later she heard them speak.
“This gauge is still 20 psi low.”
“It’s always low.”
“Yeah, great thinking. If the captain comes down here, we’re supposed to just shrug and say ‘it’s always low’. Weren’t you changing the gaskets down here yesterday?”
“I told you it’s always low! It was like that before I swapped out the gaskets!”
“Yeah, yeah… I’m going to start oiling this joints, and I’ll bet I find a leaky gasket.”
Twilight swallowed. She looked back the way she came, making sure no one was coming that way, and then listened near the edge of the turn. Sure enough, the humming sound got louder. She had to go down that passage. She looked around a moment, trying to think, before her eyes rested on a valve nearby. She traced where it went, and saw that it ran around the corner into the hall. She looked back to the valve, moistened her lips, and then shifted her hands down so that her palms were in her sleeves. Moving gingerly, she reached over and grasped the valve and quickly turned it to shut it.
The effect was soon and desired. After a short whine, a small burst was heard followed by a rush of steam. In moments, vapor was billowing around the corner.
“Damnit! I knew you messed up the gaskets!”
“It wasn’t me! That was perfect last I checked it!”
“Does this look perfect you?! Damnit, help me lock it down! Where the hell is the cutoff valve? I can’t see anything!”
As they continued to shift and fumble around, steam continued to come forth until a cloud was running out from the edge. Twilight inched toward the edge before looking around. Just as she hoped, the corridor was rapidly filling with smoke, but the two engineers were backed up to a broken gasket spewing most of the vapor and entirely focused on it. Between the hissing and the curtain of mist it was providing, she knew that was her only chance. Quickly, she passed into the hall and rushed into the steam and right past them.
Feeling her way along from there was a bit more difficult, but soon the mist cleared again and the sound of the humming led her onward. It got louder as she inched around one more corner and then the next following that, the ship growing more “technical” and showing off its gears as well as its steam pipe inner workings, before she finally made her way to one final turn. Once more pressing herself against the wall, she inched forward and looked around.
A sealed metal bulkhead was just ahead of her. Unfortunately, in addition to that, two guards were posted. Both of them were bearing the more special weapons and armor that Sunset had provided, but the far worse thing was that both of their eyes had been aimed forward and waiting for the first sign of an intruder. Unfortunately, even Twilight’s small peek around the side failed to go unnoticed. She immediately saw the two guard tense and raise their weapons.
She couldn’t afford even a single shot to alert anyone else. Fortunately, she had expected this. She ducked back around the corner, removing herself as a target, before quickly performing a new sigil. As expected, the two guards broke their position and started to run toward her, but as they were still trying to reach the corner she popped back out. Completing her spell, she aimed her palm at both of them before a sharp bolt of electricity snaked out and branched to hit both in the chest.
The metal harnasses that normaly would act as armor soon became a handicap as the lightning made contact and conducted throughout their bodies. Both went rigid, only one of them able to give out a hint of a pained grunt, before both of them seized and fell to the ground. Twilight wasn’t sure if they were unconscious or merely incapacitated by the move, but she didn’t wait around to find out. Quickly, she rushed past both of them and up to the door. Giving the bulkhead a quick twist, she pulled it open and rushed inside.
Sure enough, as she hoped, the humming was at its loudest here. Right in the middle of the giant inner workings of the airship, where she could see the main axles and pipes chugging about that were working the propellers, there was a raised platform along a gated catwalk. Mounted in a large metal fitting was a lantern-shaped object about three feet tall and one foot in diameter. Whereas everything else in the dimly-lit main engineering of the airship was lit up by gaslights, a light emanated from the center of this one that gleamed like a hot iron with the sun-like gleam. The humming sound radiated strongly from it; transmitting into the rest of the ship from its connection point.
By the time she crossed the catwalk and reached the central platform, the noise was almost deafening from how hard it was reverberating, but she none the less toughed through it and reached the object. After a few seconds of staring, she finally reached around it and felt. Fortunately, it wasn’t mounted in with bolts but had release levers. They were tight, to be sure, and she had to struggle and grunt against three on the bottom and three at the top, but in the end she managed to pry them open. She put her arms around the object and, although it weighed a good forty pounds, she was able to pull it free.
It was the heaviest thing she had lifted in a while, but she slowly yanked it out of its fitting. The humming around her immediately diminished significantly from it no longer being mounted in the airship, although it continued to vibrate in her arms. Gritting her teeth, she turned around with it, ready to move…
And stopped.
Sunset, her own Caster Anima Viri out, her royal guard, and eight of her minions with their weapons aimed stood in her path.
She gasped before dropping the device. It landed in front of her with a clang, but despite its height her head and upper torso were still exposed. Over the noise of the humming, she hadn’t even heard them come in behind her.
“Nice try, Twilight,” Sunset smirked. “Once I calmed down a little, I figured the only move a smart little cookie like you would make would be to teleport into her own cell. Of course, you were long gone by then, but I realized there’s only so many moves you could make. You can’t teleport out of here, it’s too dark for you to see the ground to reach it, and if you try any sabotage you’ll go down with the ship too. So I figured, since I already told you that we’re headed into the interior of Equestria, you’d go for the Morning Glory to force us to fly back out again and buy some more time. Not bad.”
Twilight paused before moving her hands behind the Morning Glory. At once, the spear of the Royal Guard was aimed at her and snaking with electricity, while the rest of the weapons aimed as well. Sunset never stopped smiling.
“Looks like you may have gotten a little muddled along the way, though. Based on the traces the patrols picked up, it looks like you tried to head to the upper deck first before heading down here. Why was that? Didn’t believe me when I told you we still hadn’t landed?”
Twilight was quiet as she kept her arms as steady as possible. Behind the Morning Glory, her fingers quickly went to work while they were unseen.
“No…I just needed to get the upper deck as a reference point for another teleport.”
Sunset’s smile began to fade. “What?”
An instant later, Twilight executed the sigil and let out a stream of arcane language as she seized the Morning Glory with her other hand. She didn’t know if the group fired or not; only that her surroundings vanished in a blaze of purple lighting.
It lasted only a moment before dimming again, and once it did she felt cold, moist air blowing all around her with the roars of engines echoing in her ears. She was no longer in the engine room at all, but now on the upper deck of the Rising Sun. She barely had a moment to recognize it before her vision dimmed and she felt dizzy. She hunched over the Morning Glory a moment later, actually using it to keep herself from collapsing on the deck. She retched once or twice but, fortunately, she had something of an empty stomach and that kept her from vomiting. In spite of her need for speed, she couldn’t do anything but try to recover from doing two teleports in one day for almost half a minute.
As soon as she had enough strength, however, she held her hand in the air and summoned her own Anima Viri. In moments, she entered her own Caster form; feeling enough strength to move again. Quickly, she raised herself up, grasped the Morning Glory, and dragged it and herself over to the edge of the upper deck. Once there, blasted by the cool winds and struggling to focus, she looked out.
They looked like they had entered a cloud or fog bank, for neither moon nor stars were visible. Everything was surrounded with a cool mist. She couldn’t see anything from that side of the ship, even with the Rising Sun’s lights on. Letting out a bit of a sigh, she finally made her move. Tightening her muscles, she picked up the Morning Glory and threw it over the side. Moments later, she watched the device sink down through the clouds and vanish.
She rubbed her brow, sweating and not just from tension as she tried to decide if that move was madness or brilliance. A moment later, she turned and looked around the deck. Luckily, there seemed to one be one major hatch. She tried to find something to use for a wand, but on finding nothing she sighed and held her hands up at it. She performed a more advanced gesture and, while it wasn’t as focused as her normal spells, the end result caused the air around the hatch to chill rapidly before large icicles and crystals formed upon it and over it, even going so far as to enter the hydraulic joints. In moments, the entryway was sealed.
She sighed again as she let her arms fall. “That should buy me a few minutes at least…” she thought aloud.
“Won’t do you no good!”
The sound of the mocking voice alerted her, and she turned the rest of the way around. Once more, she hadn’t been paying attention, for some of the roaring wind as well as the noises she was hearing turned out to be the result of the second airship hovering in close to the Rising Sun the whole time. And now it was pulling amidships. Already, its own company of crew was armed and at the ready; including the two fully-armored soldiers she had seen earlier.
She tried to raise her arms for another spell but, without a wand, it took more time to focus. More than enough for the taller of the two to aim and shoot at her. Still concentrating on her spell, she didn’t have time to break it off and dodge before some of the gooey paste struck her right in her chest. She pulled away then, only to find her movements turned into a slug’s pace.
“Glue…with…a…speed…charm…?” she asked aloud to herself, barely able to speak articulately with how much her speech had slowed.
“Yup,” the soldier who shot her answered as he lowered his arms. “Lady Sunset made it ‘specially for me. I thought it was good since, you know, my name’s Snails and snails are slow.”
“Don’t interrupt me, Snails!” the other shouted back, before wheeling on Twilight again. “Like I said, it won’t do you no good! We’ve got our own Morning Glory and-”
“Oh, hey look, Snips,” Snails interrupted, pointing out to the horizon. “It looks like the Legacy finally caught up to us.”
Twilight looked as he pointed. Sure enough, the gloom was parting to allow fresh lights to come through, and they were rapidly growing brighter and clearer based on the speed of the airship. Not long after its entire outline began to emerge.
“Not now, Snails!” Snips shouted back, turning back to Twilight. “We got our own Morning Glory, so as long as we’re right next to the Rising Sun we can keep the Nighttouched off both-”
“They sure are coming in fast. They probably should hit the brakes or something.”
“I said not now! So as long as we’re right next to the Rising Sun, we can keep the Nighttouched off both them and us at the same time! So you’re-”
“Uh, Snips?”
The armored soldier let out a massive groan before snapping to him. “Snails, for the last time, I don’t want to-”
Snails cut him off by reaching out and grasping his arm, before pointing again. By now, Snips had failed to notice that most of the other soldiers posted were no longer focusing on Twilight but up in the sky, and with good reason. Twilight herself looked and cringed as she saw the airship continuing to approach them at nearly full speed with no sign of stopping. It was mere seconds from ramming them.
Some of the soldiers, including Snips and Snails, uncertainly began to back up. Others turned and ran for cover; not realizing how irrelevant it was in midair. Twilight merely gasped, too slowed by Snails’ attack to do anything more. However, right as the collision looked inevitable, the retros of the airship blazed to full life. It came up so rapidly that the entire airship whined and nearly stalled in midair, and the sounds of minor steam bursts from over-worked valves and emergency venting broke out all over it. The forward turbines cut out at the same time however, and the rudder suddenly swung one way so that the entire airship arched about into a nearly 90 degree turn. Yet even with the retros still chugging as fast as they could, the entire airship continued to slide forward straight for the opposite side of the Legacy.
Snips and Snails both gave a yell as the airship beneath them lurched; the result of the pilot of their ship trying to get it out of the way, but it was too late. Soon, everyone on all decks of both ships were jostled as the approaching vessel was finally halted by smacking it’s own frame into the side of the already adjoined ships. Twilight herself fell to her knees, but even then had to cluch for dear life as both vehicles shuddered violently.
She only got a moment to reclaim her bearings, however, before a pair of loud eruptions went out: cannon fire. The frame of the other airship gave a violent shudder, and bits of splinters from wood and twisted metal erupted from near the rear end. Cries and shouts resulted, and over the sounds of three airship steam engines running together chaos began to explode.
Twilight looked up again, still stunned, to see the soldiers on the other airship running about in panic. Cries began to come from within the Rising Sun. Through it all, however, she realized that the new arrival had just fired on its partner at point blank range.
She realized what that meant…
Sunset, freshly infuriated, had been halfway up through the ship when the call came over the speaking holes that the Legacy had been sighted and was heading on a collision course for the Prodigy. On hearing a follow up that the entrance to the upper hatch had been frozen shut, she reluctantly detoured to the bridge. Yet no sooner had she entered it, followed by the same company from the engineering room, when the sounds of cannon fire burst out and the Rising Sun gave a violent rattle.
Naturally, this threw the crew into a panic. They were scrambling everywhere; not the least because the new fill-in for first officer didn’t have nearly the experience or cool head that Wallflower had. It only served to anger Sunset more as she finished balancing herself before walking to the captain’s chair.
“What the hell is going on out there?!”
“We can’t see based on our position, but the Legacy was just trying to ram the Prodigy, then it snapped around and pulled alongside before firing its cannons on her!”
“Are you serious?” she yelled back. “What do those idiots over there think they’re do…”
She trailed off, realizing the truth before clenching her teeth.
“Them. It’s the rest of her little friends!”
The first officer and several of the closer officers wheeled to her. “Who?”
“It doesn’t matter…” she hissed, half to them and half to herself. “They couldn’t get off more than one shot with just five of them! They’d barely be able to even run that ship!” She turned fully to the first officer. “Get this ship pulled away from the Prodigy! We’ll blow the Legacy out of the sky!”
“No!” a voice came from one of the stations. “Belay that order!”
The first officer turned around to the officer who had called. Sunset did as well, and she was moments from raging at them for contradicting her. One of her hands actually began to raise and readied to perform a gesture…
Before she could, the officer pulled back and pointed to one of the more specialized gauges against her station. “Look at the Day Meter! It’s dropped off to only one quarter in the past few minutes! We’re barely getting any coverage!”
“Captain!” another officer yelled. “We’re getting a light signal from the Prodigy! That shot they took split the main resonance bar! Their own Morning Glory is only protecting them now!”
The first officer looked up, growing rather fearful. Not only her, but everyone else on the bridge. “She must have destroyed our own Morning Glory…”
“That means the Legacy is the only one that has a fully working Morning Glory!” the one at the sensor station shouted. “If we destroy their ship or split their own resonance bar we’ll get eaten alive! We’re at least 30 miles from the Equestrian border!”
“Worse than that…” the first officer quietly added. “If they figure out that all they have to do is disconnect it from the resonance structure…”
As furious as Sunset was getting, and more so all the time, she managed to keep something of a cool head in the face of all of this information. She boiled and seethed for a moment before turning about.
“Flash…”
“Already on it. I’ll have their Morning Glory in four minutes.”
“Do better than that.”
He didn’t waste time with a salute, but turned, pushed through the rest of the soldiers, and quickly made his way out. Sunset quickly glared at them.
“What are you doing standing around out there for? Get to the upper deck and get Twilight! I want that hatch cleared off five minutes ago!” She spun back around to the bridge. “The rest of you, get this ship peeled around and attached to the Legacy with the skyhooks! If we need its Morning Glory, then it’s not going anywhere!”
Most of the crew, in spite of their anxiety, turned to start executing Sunset’s commands. The soldiers turned and left at the same time. As for the new first officer, he meekly began to approach her. “Captain, we have no Morning Glory of our own and the Prodigy can only protect itself. We should make plans to evacuate onto her while we still can in case the worst-”
He was cut off as Sunset seized him by the lapel and yanked him into her face. A violence she had never shown before flooded her features.
“Do you have short-term memory loss or something that you forgot what happened to the last first officer of mine who didn’t know how to carry out an order? I’ve been waiting eight years for tonight, and I am not about to throw it all away because you’re all ‘scared of the dark’! I’m getting that last damn sigil if it’s the last thing I ever do!”
She nearly flung him away, causing him to stumble back before a railing stopped him. He quickly cringed, but Sunset was already done with him. Spinning around, she held up her hand with five sigils.
“Alright, Twilight, if that’s how you want to play…”
The hatch to the bridge opened and a cheerful-looking Pinkie bounced in. “Alright, I fired off the cannons! Did we hit them?”
Everyone else’s eyes were glued to the viewing windows. Although the ones off the prow didn’t show much other than cloudy night sky, the ones on their port-side were now looking over their target as a few smoldering bits of it rained down.
“Yup,” Dash, still at the wheel, answered back. “I’ll say we did.”
“Hooray! That means it worked, right?”
Rarity winced. “Well…assuming that we were right on guessing that Twilight would try to disable the Morning Glory on Sunset’s ship, assuming she actually succeeded, assuming that large metal bar that we found mounted into our own Morning Glory that was vibrating was what was protecting our ship, assuming that we managed to strike the same thing on their ship, and, finally, assuming that we fired on the other ship and not the one that Twilight was on…yes.”
Pinkie paused momentarily. “Hooray! It worked!”
“That had to be the most half-baked plan I’ve ever been in on…” Applejack grumbled.
“Hey, you know what they say about stuff that’s half-baked, right?” Dash smirked. “They taste extra moist when you bite into them.”
“…What in tarnation does that have ta’ do with our plan?”
“Um, everyone…” Fluttershy spoke up meekly. She pointed to the window. “The other ship is…moving away.”
Everyone was struck at that. They looked back out. While all three airships were in drift and slowly halting in midair, one of them brought their engines to life and began to pull away from the other two. As soon as it peeled itself off, it orientated itself around and aimed for the other side of the Legacy before firing up the engines again.
“Uh…I didn’t get everythin’ ‘bout them Wake Up Daisies or whatever you called ‘em…” Applejack spoke again, far more nervously, “but I thought ya’ said if we take ‘em out they’ll both need to stay close to us?”
“Er…yeah…they should…” Dash answered, her own voice beginning to sound uncomfortable.
The ship’s engines soon fired enough for the ship to start pulling back up alongside the opposite edge of the Legacy. It cut the engines as it slid into broadside range.
Rarity swallowed. “Rainbow Dash, dear…I think it would be nice if we turned the engines back on…”
“After that move just now, we’d blow them out if we didn’t give them a chance to cool. I warned you about that…” Dash uneasily answered, before forcing a smile. “But no biggie! I mean…they’d blow up their own comrades if they fired on us now, heh! And they’d never do that!”
A pause.
“…Right?”
The other airship hovered in darkness for a moment longer, before four eruptions were seen alongside it in tandem.
“Oh crap…” Dash moaned.
“Everyone hit the deck!” Applejack shouted.
She slammed herself to the ground along with Dash, Rarity, Fluttershy, and even Spike. Pinkie grinned, treating it as more of a game before she ducked as well. Moments later, the airship gave a violent tremor and rattle, before it rapidly subsided again.
“We’re hit! We’re hit!” Applejack screamed, still crouching against the ground, covering her head, and her eyes shut. “Bail out! Every woman fer herself! Get the life jackets ‘fore we take on water!”
“Applejack?” Fluttershy’s voice meekly spoke up. “It…really doesn’t seem all that bad.”
The farmer hesitated a moment more before opening one eye. She saw Fluttershy was already standing up again, looking more curious than scared. The others soon looked up as well and rose too. They looked up and around, but saw no signs of damage. Even in the windows outside the area was clear, with no signs of debris or explosions.
The group looked around in puzzlement. “Was that it?”
Moments later, the deck suddenly gave a lurch strong enough to knock Rarity and Fluttershy off their feet and send Spike scrambling. Even after it stopped, the deck was tilted at a slight angle. Alarmed, the women looked around for a moment before Dash glanced out the windows and pointed. “I see it in the light from their ships! Look!”
As Rarity and Fluttershy began to get up again, Applejack and Pinkie looked out. The farmer focused a moment before she began to make out links stretching across the night sky, barely illuminated, stretching between the two airships.
“Chains?”
“Skyhooks,” Dash explained. “Harpoons with chains. When airships run out of cannon ammo or can’t fire back, they hook each other and lash themselves together to let the musketeers finish the job.”
Applejack smirked as she hefted her hammer. “Heh, I’ll knock out them oversized fishhooks in no time.”
Another series of eruptions went out, and the ship suddenly gave another shudder. The women managed to stay balanced that time, but noticed that it came from the other side. They turned and looked, and saw the other ship had done the same.
“They’ve got us from both sides!” Rarity exclaimed.
“But they’re not shooting cannons… I think they both want to be close to us,” Fluttershy answered.
“Aw yeah! That means the plan worked!” Dash grinned. “They can’t let us get away now!”
“When you put it that way, that…actually sounds a bit bad…” Rarity muttered.
“Not to worry,” Applejack answered. “Just means twice as much work fer me!”
“Oh, but we can’t get away right away,” Fluttershy protested. “We still have to get Twilight.”
“And now that they’ve got us trapped between them and they’re closing in to board us, this is the perfect chance to get on board!” Pinkie cheered.
“Again, not the way I would have phrased things…” Rarity sighed. “But we still haven’t found which ship she’s even on.”
“Wait,” Fluttershy called, pointing out the window. “What’s that over there?”
The others turned and looked. On the farther ship that was either reeling them in or reeling itself closer, something was going off on the deck. A small shower of sparks, like a firework, was firing off. They assumed it was some sort of combustible at first, until they noticed something about it in particular.
“Is that…lavender?”
“Just like Twilight’s hair and aura!”
Dash grinned. “Alright, looks like we got our ship now!”
Applejack quickly brought her hand up and began to stand away from the others before she made the call to her Anima Viri. An explosion of her own aura later, and she was armored and hefting her warhammer. “I’ll take care of the hooks from the other ship! As soon as Twilight’s on board, we’ll blast outta here!”
Rarity drew herself up and then raised her own hand. A few phrases later, and her own aura quickly transformed her into the flamboyant red hat and ensemble. She hefted her parasol-turned-rapier soon after. Pinkie quickly stepped in next to her, grinning as she brought out her own and was soon in her rougish ensemble again before tucking her utensil-turned-knife in her teeth. “Pinkie, Spike, and I will see to Twilight. That leaves Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash to tend to the ship and make ready to leave as soon as we’re back.”
“Yay!” Pinkie cheered. “But one question. Who takes care of that thing?”
“Huh?”
The group once again looked outside to the ship. While it was still reeling in and sparks were still emerging from the upper deck, they saw flaming lights come out from under it. Soon after, the fires rapidly began to arch through the air, belching out smoke behind them, before the lights of the airship caught upon the gleam of rotating propellers. Soon after, they saw electricity snake around it, just barely making out what looked like an armored wheelless chariot mounted on turbines zooming through the air.
“What in tarnation is that blasted thing?” Applejack shouted.
Before anyone could answer, the device rapidly arched up and through the air, right over the top of their own deck. They looked out the window along the front of the prow as it passed by, before an armored figure crackling with electricity leapt off and landed on the deck in a crouch. He didn’t stay that way long, but quickly jumped to his feet and began to run.
“Good heavens…” Rarity uttered. “It’s that beastly man from the mines!”
Applejack frowned. She advanced a step. “I’ll deal with him…”
“No!”
The women turned to Dash, who was already stepping away from the wheel. Her eyes were narrowed, but she was grinning. She made a fist and pumped it into the other.
“This one’s all mine.”
She called out her own Anima Viri and was fully equipped soon after. She turned around and started to walk, but looked over her shoulder as she did. “Fluttershy, watch the wheel! I’ll be right back!”
“Wh-what?” she began to protest, only for Dash to immediately take off in a blaze of speed.
She tried looking back to the others for help, but Applejack was already wheeling around. “C’mon, y’all! We got work ta’ do and not much time to do it!”
She quickly ran off before Rarity, Pinkie, and Spike charged out as well. Fluttershy held out her hand to them to try and tell them to wait, but they were already charging for one of the exit hatches before she could make out a weak mutter. Soon, she was left standing alone on the bridge as the hatches slowly closed behind the others.
“Oh my.”
The royal guard knew the layout of the Legacy very well, and as such didn’t waste an instant. As soon as he landed he dashed for the exit hatch for the upper deck. Even without using his enhancements, he was there in a moment, reaching out, twisting the bulkhead around as fast as he could and opening it up.
He made it halfway across the threshold when the blow struck him solidly in the chest. It was loud enough for a clang to ring out from his armor as he went sliding backward a clean ten feet away from the hatch, and only due to his natural balance even when wearing the suit did he not fall over. Even so, though his face was covered, his body language clearly showed surprise when he looked back up.
While the entryway had been clear moments earlier, it now had Dash grinning from ear to ear as she lowered her foot.
“Remember me, tin can man? What do you say we finish this for good?”
The royal guard didn’t answer. He stood still a moment, before his armor began to spark. An instant later it ignited in a brilliant flash, and he reappeared facing the entryway again with his spear extended in a thrust.
This time, his surprise was so strong he actually verbalized. “Wh…what?”
Dash, still grinning, was to one side and letting the spear hit nothing but air.
“Looks like you just lost the best trick up your sleeve.”
She snapped her hand forward and drove the palm into his face soon after.
This time, the blow was strong enough to make him stagger back several feet, although the armor blocked it enough to where he was able to stabilize and brandish his spear in front of him again. Dash, however, was a different story. Her own hand had flown off of his helmet and she nearly snapped back along with it, yelling in pain. She quickly advanced outside of the threshold at roughly the same time; so that both were left facing off against one another.
“Right…” she muttered as she shook her half-numb hand. “Forgot about your other trick…”
The royal guard stared at her for a moment, electricity still peeling off of his suit every once in a while, before he snapped forward. He didn’t accelerate like last time, but instead swiped his spear out for her neck. She quickly swiveled back to avoid it, before pivoting to one side and the other as he followed up with thrusts for her middle. As soon as she evaded them, he advanced while crossing the spear in front of him, bringing up the shaft to try and catch her beneath the chin. This too forced her to back up, soon driving her into the threshold again. He kept advancing afterward, once more bringing the tip around in a cross slash before swinging the spear around and trying to thrust again.
By this point, she was so backed up into the corridor that the royal guard was nearly across the threshold. Getting frustrated, the next time he drove his spear tip forward she swung out her arm and deflected the flat side. The spear was repelled almost as much as her arm, to the tune of a loud electrical snap. She grit her teeth through it, but nevertheless forced the numbed appendage to go up along with her good arm and grasped the overhead pipes. She swung back once, then swung both legs forward again while the royal guard still tried to recover.
Once again, she caught him in the chest and very solidly this time. Enough to knock him back out the threshold and a good distance onto the deck before he fell on his back at last. He quickly got up, but Dash couldn’t seize on it. As soon as she landed she nearly collapsed herself, for both of her legs were in pain and her toes were numb. It was all she could do to stagger back out onto the deck, but she forced herself to and, as soon as she did, slammed the hatch shut behind her again.
“You aren’t…getting any farther than me!” she shouted, trying to continue to sound bold and confident through her pain and numbness.
The royal guard managed to rise again, leveling his spear. “You’re hitting through my shield, but not that hard. You caught me more off-balance than anything. This electrical discharge is going to tear you up faster than you can do the same to me.”
Dash really did force a smirk at this. “That’s assuming it holds up through too many more of those shocks. ‘Cause once it’s down, there’s nothing between me and you.”
The royal guard answered by thrusting forward, and this time Dash ran in to meet it.
It had taken Twilight considerable time, not the least bit due to the fact that in addition to her movements being slow the ride kept jostling her one way and the other, and, now that she saw the others had come, she prioritized on signaling them first. Yet finally she managed to raise her hand and move it enough to generate a small spell. In response, the mists surrounding the airship condensed and shot down a stream of water along her torso. It definitely hurt, but her goal was to try and clean the gunk as best as she could to get moving again.
When the water subsided, she tried to rise again, only to find that, while she had sped up, she was still moving at a walking pace as best. Nevertheless, she got to her feet. She had to move and try and find something to use as a wand.
No sooner had she gotten to her feet, however, when she heard a yell. “There she is! Get her!”
She turned to the shouting. By now, the Rising Sun and Prodigy had both attached themselves to the Legacy, and had reeled each other in with their skyhooks. While the Rising Sun was still pulling closer, the Legacy had already docked, and in response the soldiers were jumping over one after another. They had already spotted Twilight between her aura and her sparks she had shot off before, and were crossing the deck to get to her.
Twilight looked back to the hatch on the Rising Sun, making sure it was still frozen for the time being. Unfortunately she was moving too slow to run to jump the current deck for Legacy’s, and there was nowhere for her to run or hide except on the hostile airship. Without a wand of some sort, she couldn’t focus her spells properly either. She struggled to think for a moment of what to do as the soldiers kept running closer…
Her train of thought was cut off as Pinkie Pie, in her full Rogue role, slid out from the side and right in the path of Snails and the soldiers behind him.
“Har har! Trying to board me ship? We’ll keelhaul the lot of ya’ for this!”
Snails was stunned for several seconds, before he snapped out of it enough, along with the rest of the group with him, to take aim with their weapons. However, the moment they fired, Pinkie simply did a nimble cartwheel to one side and evaded the stream of goop as well as the magical weapon fire. She kept on rolling right until she was right in front of one of the other soldiers. Expecting an attack, the soldier quickly raised her weapon and pulled back. The others likewise held their fire, but Snails, not realizing the hazard, turned and shot. Pinkie grinned and ducked soon after, letting Snails’ comrade get pasted by the material instead. Immediately, she dropped into “slow motion” as she only slowly showed surprise.
As if popping through midair itself, Pinkie sprang back up in front of another soldier. Snails quickly turned to her to fire again, only for her to duck and let another one of the soldiers get hit. She popped up again, this time from behind a third one and waving her hand. This soldier tried to wave her own hands and yell at Snails to stop, but it was too late. She got hit as well as Pinkie continued to nimbly hop from one soldier to another.
Snips and his own group continued to rush forward unimpeded. They nearly made it to the edge of the ship to jump over to the Rising Sun, when Rarity in her Magician role ran out and planted herself in their path. Her appearance alone was enough to make them grind to a halt as she stared them down dangerously from beneath her hat brim; particularly at the armored soldier leading them.
“If you wish to take one step closer,” she spoke coolly, before brandishing her rapier, waving it in front of her a few times before aiming it directly at Snips. “You’ll have to go through me!”
Snips faced off against her for a moment, simply staring, then he hoisted his scissor-like blades. With one simple movement, he leaned forward and slapped them together around the edge of her sword.
Half of the rapier was instantly snapped off with enough force to send it sailing through the air.
Rarity’s bold look vanished. She gaped at the remains of her sword in shock. She glanced back down, only to see Snips rearing back and widening his scissor blade again. He snapped forward a moment later, but Rarity yelped and raised her hand. Whether in panic or instinct, she performed a small gesture with it before holding it in a stopping gesture, just as Snips advanced.
Yet while the blades passed her, when he tried to collapse them he found himself unable. He paused a moment, before grunting and trying again. Still no luck. “Hey! What gives?”
He looked at his weapons and, to his surprise, the main joint in the center had been encased in ice. It now acted as a wedge to keep the scissors open.
Gritting his teeth and groaning, he began to struggle with it, but Twilight was distracted on hearing a metal tinkling nearby. She looked and was just in time to see the remains of the end of the blade land only about ten feet away from her before rolling to a stop. Almost the moment it did, it lost its shine and reverted into the severed half of a parasol. She stared at it for a split second, just long enough for her mind to click, before she made a scramble for it.
Unfortunately, she also saw that the rest of the solders with Snips had not stopped moving. As he kept fighting with his own weapon, they had continued to the edge of the ship, and the one in the lead saw the move she was making. Quickly, she planted her feet and raised her weapon. Twilight was still slowed and several feet away from the object when she heard her weapon start to charge. She froze in midstep and looked up, paling on seeing the gun pointed at her, struggling to think if she should try and counter or still go for the parasol piece.
Fortunately she didn’t have to decide. With a snarl, Spike shot out from the side of the ship and clamped his jaw on her wrist while flinging his bulk at her. The combination of the moves caused her to swing her arm out wide and lose balance; falling over onto one side. Not only did her shot misfire, but he quickly dug into her and kept her pinned.
Twilight was shocked at Spike’s move, but only for a moment before she ran the rest of the way to take up the parasol. As she seized it the other soldiers reached the edge, but they were split between her and Spike now. Some looked at the dog and thought of firing in spite of the close range to their comrade, while others looked to Twilight. One of them finally chose her and raised to fire, but by that point her aura had spread to the parasol piece and morphed it into a new wand. Performing another gesture, she snapped her wand around.
A vortex of wind rapidly collected and lashed out at both that soldier and the next nearest behind him. The gust was so powerful it not only blew both of them over, but their weapons were sent flying out of their hands. One managed to land on the deck but the other was sent completely over the edge.
The others were surprised by her sudden action, and so she used the moment to quickly whip up a cloud of frost in front of her before sending it flying. The incoming soldiers cried out and shielded their eyes as stinging cold and ice crystals bombarded them. That was all the delay she wanted to sweep her wand about and generate a more focused water spell. Seconds later, she cried out in pain again as it blasted her body, but also cleaned off more of the goop.
Snips finally gave a yell as he forgot trying to get his scissors working again, and instead swung violently at Rarity with his jammed blades. Even locked in position they were still deadly, and she cried out in alarm as she dropped her sword hilt and snapped back. Wincing and nervous, she raised her hand and tried another gesture. Unfortunately she was too anxious and didn’t have an object to focus her power. All she managed was a flurry of sparks that seemed to do little more than annoy Snips before he drove the blades at her again. She cried out as they nearly took off a foot at the ankle before tearing into the upper deck.
They were caught for a fraction of a second as the wood pinched the blade, but the sound of Rarity’s call had alerted Pinkie just as she was spinning Snails around in so many rings that the rest of the soldiers with him had been forced to pull back to avoid any more of the goop he was firing. She quickly looked at the situation and reacted—shooting over to the nearest slowed soldier. She zoomed right past him, leaving him confused and wondering what she had done, before emerging on the other side with his combat knife in hand.
“Rarity! Catch!”
She turned and saw Pinkie fling the weapon to her. Snips, meanwhile, yanked his weapon free just as Rarity reached up and snatched the hilt of the knife out of the air. Crying out again, he swung his huge blades behind him and tried to arch them around for Rarity’s neck.
This time, however, a solid metal clang was the result. In spite of the size of the huge scissor blades, Snips was stunned to see Rarity, bearing a fresh sword of a more saber-like type, actually holding him and the weight of his weapons back against the flat of it.
Rarity exhaled in relief. “Thank you, darling!” she called, before focusing totally on him again. “Shall we try this again?”
Letting out another growl, he pulled his blades back and thrust them forward. This time, however, Rarity quickly backstepped, moving her feet and poise into the right form, and deflected the hit away with the flat of her blade. He advanced on her and stabbed several more times, but the situation had changed. Not only was he using a much more awkward weapon stuck in a jammed position, but Rarity quickly calmed into a more formal dueling style and used her above-normal strength to divert each thrust for her; mostly using the weight to deflect it back to the ground. This only made Snips angrier and more fierce and rapid with each thrust, but she continued to back up and parry each blow.
For a moment, Snips still looked to have the edge as he forced her back and toward the edge of the upper deck, with nowhere else to go. However, just as he was a few steps away from backing her against an railing, she deflected his latest blow to the ground enough to make the tip once again hit the deck and embed in it; only to snap forward with a thrust for her own for his chest. Letting out an alarmed and panicked noise, he quickly snapped up and yanked his weapon with him. Nevertheless, she kept advancing, walking her body around as she did to get clear and thrust two more times. Snips had no choice but to raise his weapon and gauntlets to block against each of the strikes. With a loud clang and a flurry of sparks, his metal gloves deflected both blows before he finally brandished his scissor blade again.
He nearly renewed the attack, when he spotted his hand armor. He gasped again on seeing two long gashes in the metal from either thrust. “Wh-what?! Those knives Lady Sunset gave us can’t cut my gauntlets!”
“I think I might have improved upon her style just a tad,” Rarity answered, actually giving a smug smile.
In spite of the now-clear anxiety he was feeling, Snips hesitated only a fraction of a second longer before steeling himself and renewing the attack.
By now, the two soldiers that were using their rifle butts to try and chip away at Twilight’s ice barrier were both red faced and sweating; for all the good it did them. They had managed to break away some pieces, but most of the barrier was smooth without edges to fracture. They were barely able to dent and chip it, let along get any major cracks.
Behind them, their CO as well as multiple other soldiers were left to stand helplessly. The corridor wasn’t even big enough for more of them to try and help out the first. She finally fumed in exasperation. “This is pointless! We’ll be here for half an hour tunneling through this!”
One of them hoisted his gun. “Let’s just blast through it. One good fire shot’ll-”
“Don’t you dare!” the CO immediately barked. “The bridge is already reporting we’re losing pressure from all this ice cooling off lines! We shoot it and end up rupturing any of them and we might not be able to get any power back while we’re stuck over Equestria!”
A clatter of boots on metal rang from up the hall. The CO and several of the soldiers looked down the corridor and a single soldier, huffing and puffing, finished dashed into earshot before he called out. “Side hatches alongside the Legacy are a bust! We’ll have to climb over the deck through the emergency hatches on the starboard side!”
The soldier let out a groan but then frantically motioned. “Then get moving, already! If we don’t get that Morning Glory off the Legacy we’re going to be flying through hell the whole way back! And if Lady Sunset gets here and sees we aren’t already on board their ship, none of us may be flying home at all!”
Dash made another move in, but snapped back just as quickly when the royal guard twirled his spear before snapping out at her head twice. She tried to dart in and deliver another hit as soon as she evaded the second spear tip, but he quickly changed positions and braced his spear against himself to keep her back. While she could have driven in a blow around the weapon, it wouldn’t have gone as hard or deep, and she pulled back rather than waste the move.
Soon after, he advanced forward and swung his spear around to cleave at her with the tip. She managed to sidestep it, and in another moment he would have brought in the shaft of the weapon to protect himself. However, she beat him to it. In another flash she was at his side, leg already bent, and hooked around to drive her knee into his side.
It was enough to crumple him around it a little and make him retreat in pain, but the prolonged contact was far worse on Dash. Her leg was so numb from the blow that she quickly shifted balance to one leg afterward; unable to stand on the other. Unfortunately, since he hadn’t taken nearly as much as she had hoped from that hit, he recovered first and drove his spear out in another thrust for his head.
Immobilized and unable to dodge, she had no choice but to lash out and wrap her arm around the end of the spear and hold it close to her body. Soon, electricity was discharging out of it audibly as her face and body contorted in pain, but she grit her teeth and forced herself through it to raise her good leg, cock it back, and smash it in his face.
The hit was strong enough to loosen something in the armor and he staggered back from the strike. However, when Dash released and touched the ground it was all she could do to stand on two numbed legs. And several seconds later, when the royal guard regained his bearings, she was still unable to take a step. Her body was an easy target as he drove the spear tip right for her chest.
Unable to do anything else, Dash snapped her arms up and slapped her palms around the spear tip. She caught it and deflected it, but at the price of getting another painful, stunning discharge that immobilized her arms as well. The royal guard expected that, and quickly twisted the shaft around to make a bar grip before slamming it against her body. Advancing, he drove his helmet deep into her forehead.
Alone, the blow wouldn’t have been enough to do much. Coupled with the fact that she kept taking damage from him, including constant electric shocks, and that it too packed that level of a punch, and it was enough to snap her head back. He kept pushing against the spear and managed to shove her off her feet. Raising the shaft, he braced it across her neck before he slammed her down into the deck hard enough to use her body to fracture it; right as the metal pole slammed against her windpipe.
In spite of her durability, Dash’s eyes bulged and she gagged. He would have kept pushing in on her and electrocuting her further, if the pain didn’t drive her into a wild yet powerful move. Snapping her body and legs up, in spite of their numbness, she used them as levers to push him up, engage a backward somersault, and throw him and his weapon clear off of her. By complete accident, his body was toppled over itself and the back of his head slammed against a protruding metal anchor bolt on deck with a resounding clang. It wasn’t enough to disable him, but it did leave him stunned.
Dash, unfortunately, couldn’t seize on it. By now she could smell burning coming from her body, and it was clear his electrical discharge was taking a greater toll on her than her blows on him. She had to grit her teeth and focus just to push herself up off the ground on her numb limbs. She forced her head up, but saw that the royal guard was already beginning to push off the deck. She nearly told herself to ignore the pain and push herself back to her feet.
However, she paused when she looked about her. The wooden deck was fractured and splintered from the force of her impact, and had knocked up some of the fractured planks. She looked back up to the royal guard. A moment later she began to smirk.
The armored man finished rising and got his spear at the ready, while Dash was still pushing herself up. In spite of his own state, he held for a moment, not hitting her while her head was down and her back was arched. However, the moment she did get her feet underneath her and began to push up, he advanced on her again while raising his spear.
Before he could get close enough to strike, however, she shot forward the rest of the way and buried one of her fists into his side. A loud crackling sound went out, but the guard himself aborted his attack. His body wrenched and he cried in pain before he retreated a step.
Looking down at his side, he saw half of the armor protecting it dented and the other half beginning to fall out. A bit surprised, he looked up to Dash.
Fragments of wood splinters were toppling off of her extended fist, but her opposing one still had her fingers driven into a block of wood—turning it into a crude, impromptu, “brass knuckle”. She flashed a grin, before shooting forward and driving that fist into his chest.
Another “oof” of pain went out as the breastplate was dented, and he went staggering back. Again, Dash shattered the wood punching him, but the moment he was away she quickly dove back to the deck. As he struggled to regain his balance, she drove her fingers into the wooden planks so sharply that she put her hands through them, and ripped upward a moment later with a fresh set of protection. By then, the guard was up again and sweeping his spear out to try and keep her away, but she quickly ducked under it. As soon as it went over her head, she tried to lunge at him again. He crossed his spear shaft in front of himself and intercepted one blow, but she followed up by using her other hand to hook him across the helmet. The thicker portion took most of it, but still dented as he was knocked into a waver.
This gave Dash the moment she needed to spring back. Before she could dive for more wood protection, the royal guard, while trying to regain his balance, aimed his spear tip and shot out a bolt of electricity at her. Quickly, she sprang back to evade it, as well as two more follow-up jolts from him. However, he could do no more than that without pausing to recharge, and quickly he barreled at her to try and follow up. Unfortunately, she still had enough time to drop to the deck, drive her hands in again, and rip up two longer planks of wood. She swung both at him as ramshackle weapons. He smacked one away with his spear while he used a gauntlet to break away the other, but that only split off the wood enough for her to have two fresh sets of hand protection. She used one to block a follow-up spear swipe while smashing her hand into his already-weakened side.
This time, the crack rang out that didn’t sound like it was armor alone. He faltered and, for a moment, looked like he was disabled. However, Dash couldn’t follow up that strike, and while she dove for more wood he recovered enough to jab his spear at her feet. Without any protection there she quickly had to backpedal to avoid it. Not losing his advantage, he continued to press after her, driving the spear repeatedly at her legs to try and at least force her into stumbling. Yet as she maintained her footing and balance, he realized it wouldn’t work and quickly cut off the attack to swing the spear shaft and tip up to try and cleave her chin.
No good for him. She chuckled as she swung her head back, then snapped forward with both fists at the ready. He tried to protect himself with his spear, but just as she did she punched the shaft with her strongest blow she could manage. As her latest set of wooden protection shattered into splinters, the weapon gave a groan before snapping all together, and to the shock of the royal guard he was left holding two halves of a sparking, arcing spear. He was so stunned he couldn’t react before Dash smashed him in the face with her other hand.
This time his faceplate shattered like a dish, revealing his tight, agonized face. The rest of his body sailed to the ground soon after. In spite of the power of the hit it didn’t render him unconscious, but soon after the armor began to spark violently around where she had damaged it. That included his face, and he winced in further pain from it. Still holding onto his sparking, broken weapon, his hand reached out and grasped something on his gauntlet. A moment later, the humming from his suit dimmed as the sparks around his face and side cut off.
“Looks like you just ran out of protection,” Dash smirked, not bothering with wood as she advanced on him again.
The royal guard turned himself about on his back, but other than that wasn’t getting up fast. The blow seemed to have taken much of the fight out of him. He barely was able to move by the time Dash got there. She seized him by the collar and yanked him to his feet.
Her other fist went back and tightened. “Now I get to tag you back for that bout on the-”
Dash was cut off as either split end of the spear, which she had ignored in spite of the fact both were still sparking and snaking, were driven forward against either one of her temples. On making contact the royal guard discharged their accumulated electricity into her brain.
The woman’s face twisted into an expression of agony and horror before the rest of her body seized, but the royal guard didn’t stop. Her purposely pumped all the energy he could into her, and the electrocution lasted five full seconds before the resistors in his weapon finally gave out and split. When it was done, Dash, now sporting a blackened burn mark on either side of her head, both of which were smoldering, fell to the ground. She lay there limp and lifeless, not even breathing.
As for him, he discarded both of the remains of his spear in an instant. Wheeling around, he faced the now-clear entryway into the ship, and a second later the last part of his body that could still get a charge, his feet, ignited and propelled him in a flash into the ship and down toward the engine room.
Approximately 30 seconds later, the hatch to the bridge slowly creaked open. Fluttershy, now in her own Anima Viri, nervously poked her head out and looked around. The fight was still raging around her but Dash was still lying on the deck smoldering and burned from the electrocution. She nearly went out, only to yelp and pull back when a stray icicle shot zoomed past her hard enough to scrape the paint off the hatch. Letting out a panicked whimper, she ducked more under her hood and quickly ran out; staying as low as she could.
Fortunately, she made it to Rainbow Dash’s side without much incident and held her staff over her. She closed her eyes and recited the spell that Twilight had taught her; causing her hands to light up with a soft green aura. The smoldering soon stopped and as she kept healing the burn marks slowly vanished. They were down to a pair of raw spots when Dash’s eyes suddenly shot open and she bolted upright so readily that Fluttershy exclaimed and fell back on her own rear end.
“That bastard and his cheap shots! I’ll hit him so hard he’ll be eating half his teeth!” she instantly cried, only to see where she was and that her opponent was gone. She turned and looked to the side, spotting the white-robed woman shrinking back.
“Fluttershy?! What are you doing out here? You’re supposed to be manning the controls!”
“Well, I saw you lying on the ground and, um…burning…and I thought you wouldn’t mind if I stepped away…just for a teeny, tiny bit…”
“Well you can’t let the rudder go wild! There’s no telling where the ship will drift to or…” She suddenly paused, forgetting about that and looking around. “Wait…wait! Where’d that tin can guy go?”
“Him? Oh…he, um…ran into the hatch into the ship. I waited until he had passed before I came out.”
She spun to her in horror. “Into the ship?! What do you mean you let him run into the ship?! Do you have any idea what he’s probably doing?!”
Fluttershy cringed a bit more with each yell. “No. What?”
Before Dash could answer, the loud humming coming from their own resonant crossbar spanning the ship suddenly cut off. The air around them, aside from the sounds of battle, quickly grew silent. Fluttershy looked up and around, while Dash slapped her palm across her face.
“That. He just swiped our own Morning Glory! If he gets off the ship with it, they can blow us out of the sky as soon as they pull away!”
“Oh my…” she remarked, cupping a hand to her mouth.
Dash groaned as she quickly jumped to her own feet. “I think I can still outrun him…just so long as I can pick which way back to the upper deck he’ll take…”
“Wait.”
The huntsman hesitated, looking back to Fluttershy as she used her own staff to rise.
“If he’s still using that flying machine, I have an idea where he’ll be.”
At long last, the first three soldiers climbed over the far side of the Rising Sun. Getting to the side emergency hatches and exiting through them to shinny up the side of their own airship hadn’t been easy, but at last the reinforcements crossed over and landed on the upper deck. They quickly moved away from the side to make room for the next three before switching on their harnesses and their guns, then looked about.
It took them only a few moments to spot Twilight Sparkle further down the deck. In spite of being in her Caster form, she was currently pinned down by gunfire as her friends struggled with the forces coming in from the Legacy. While she had recovered greatly from the previous slowdown inflicted on her, she was still moving somewhat sluggish. Now was the best time to strike.
With that in mind, the three quickly advanced forward to get a clear shot. They moved around the central hatch, still frozen shut, and emerged with a clean path to her. The nearest raised his weapon.
A loud whistle interrupted him. “Hey over there!”
The three turned and looked, alerted by the sound, before the nearest one gasped. Moments later, he was bowled over and knocked to the deck as a skyhook, its prongs blunted and collapsed by powerful hammer blows, smacked into him. The other two, stunned at the move, looked over at the source.
They saw a grinning armored woman with a warhammer slung over one shoulder and another bent skyhook easily dangling from her free hand by its massive chain. “Looks like you folks lost somethin’! You can have it back! I already banged it back into shape!”
With that, she hoised her arm up and flung the anchor around by the chain. To the shock of the other two soldiers, she smashed it back down so hard onto the deck of the Rising Sun it put a hole right through their upper deck and jammed itself back in their own ship.
By now, the next three soldiers had run up to the side of their companions, but Twilight had also been alerted by the commotion. Quickly she began to crawl for more cover, but by now the soldiers were focused on her companion and began to fire upon her. She answered by grinning and running away, not minding the shots that zoomed past her. Her target was already the next skyhook. She soon reached it and, while the soldiers kept trying to fire, she ripped it out of her own ship, swung it around once, and flung the anchor and length of chain back at the soldiers.
Two of them panicked and ducked, but two more found themselves ripped back by the chain, hurtled into their ship, and wrapped around their own hatch entrance before the chain swung about and anchored into their own deck—pinning them there.
As the farmer ran to the next hook, the remaining reinforcements continued to pursue her; forgetting about their quarry to do so.
By this point, Snails was surrounded by a “pancake” of the adhesive gunk all around him. The rest of his support was long gone and being picked off one at a time by Spike’s tackles and takedowns, and now he could only turn in a very narrow circle and step lightly. It seemed he couldn’t risk touching his own material once it left his gauntlet barrels, or he would suffer the same fate intended for his victims. Nevertheless, he kept pacing around and looking about him.
“Ok now!” he called out. “No more jumping around! I’ve got the whole area covered! You take one step toward me and I’ll see it or I’ll squirt you with my next shot!”
“Ooo!”
Snails gave a start, shocked to hear that voice from right below him, before Pinkie leapt up right in his face. He actually stepped back at that, before he winced and struggled to keep his balance. One more step would put him in the goo.
Pinkie didn’t seem to care as she looked at his gauntlets. “Wow! I’m impressed! After all of this stuff you still have more!”
Suddenly, she reached out and took either gauntlet. Before Snips realized what was happening, she plucked either one right off of his hands. He gaped, but even more so when the loss of the weight made him stagger back even more.
“D-D-Don’t touch those! Lady Sunset will kill me if I let anything happen to them!”
“You really fit them all into these little tubes?” Pinkie asked. “Oh, wait! I know!”
She ducked again only to pop up behind him, suddenly seizing the back portion of his armor and, without any effort at all, disconnected it and lifted it off of him.
“You have a whole bunch stored in here, don’t you?”
Snails couldn’t answer. He had been struggling to compensate for his lack of balance, but now it shifted the other way. As a result, he suddenly spilled forward, waved his arms about, and, before he could stop himself, stumbled forward and tripped. He ended up sprawling and falling face-first into a mass of his own adhesive—splattering over half of his body.
He lay there a moment before only very slowly pulling his head up and glancing at his situation.
“Awwwwwwwwwwwwww…”
Meanwhile, Pinkie helped herself to trying on the armor before slipping both of her hands into the gauntlets. She held them before her a moment before squeezing her fists. She leapt a little on seeing two streams of adhesive shoot out, before she grinned and gave an excited squee. “Coooool! I got to try this out! Thanks!”
She merrily hopped back over the gunk, doing a flip to land on her own poofy hair, which seemed immune to the material as it landed on it, before bouncing off again like a spring and landing on her feet well on the other side. She dashed off soon after.
“…maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan…” Snails slowly finished.
Snips continued to try and overpower Rarity, but now that she had her poise and a wider blade he was finding it much harder. In spite of his own skill, his weapon was too awkward and she could damage it. He wildly swung this way and that at her to try and get her to back off, still trying to knock his joints free, but the moment he paused she lunged in with a thrust. Before he could try another move, he was forced to raise and block again; only to lose more shavings of his weapon in the process.
Grunting, he surged forward and swung the blade in a vertical upward slash before bringing it down in a chop, but she sidestepped it and advanced on him with a battering blow. He got another slash through one of his pauldrons before he could bring his blades up to swing and smack her sword aside. However, she went ahead and let the weapon be struck away, only to bring it back around and jab forward into his opposing arm’s rerebrace. It didn’t go deep, but he still felt a sting of pain as the tip of the blade broke first the armor then his skin.
“Graaaah!”
Finally fed up, Snips yanked his arms apart, hoping to disconnect his blades again. Instead, however, a bit to his own surprise, the opposing move broke the ice at last. He gaped a moment on finding his scissor blades free, but then grinned. Quickly, he collapsed them and held up the unified blade. “Ha! Now you’re gonna get it!”
A second later, he took off for her again, this time using his weapon as more of a broadsword. While they were still oversized and unwieldy, he held onto them much better, and now Rarity’s own face tightened as she quickly backed up and parried one slash after another. This time she couldn’t get a hit in edgewise or get a way out. Soon he was closing the distance between them even as she kept trying to back up, and sweating a little as she struggled to focus.
At last he made a move. Sweeping his blades around, he suddenly snapped them open and caught her own sword in the crook between the two. He didn’t snap her sword this time, but instead swung it about and flung it away. To her shock, her blade was twisted out of her hands and flung tip-first into the deck—embedding there and holding.
She tried to reach for it, only for Snips to quickly open his scissors more and snap out for her arm. She quickly recoiled and he followed up by opening the scissors fully wide.
“Ha! Gotcha!”
Before he could drive forward for her neck, however, Rarity pushed back her panic and concentrated. Holding up her other hand she quickly performed a gesture, chanted a few syllables, and then pointed forward just as Snips lunged for her. In response, a bolt of electricity snaked off of her fingertips and struck him right in either eye.
Crying out in pain again, Snips aborted his attack and let the blades of the scissors fall to the ground as he felt for his eyes with one hand. Rarity didn’t hesitate but quickly aimed her hand down and performed a second spell. As Snips recovered and grasped the scissor blades with both hands again, a fireball impacted near his foot and ignited; lighting his boot aflame. He was just raising his blade to attack the designer when he froze in his spot, looked at his own smoldering appendage, and then began to yelp and holler as he struggled to stamp it out.
In the seconds it took him to do so, Rarity quickly reached down and pried her weapon loose. Snips looked back at her, only for her to lunge forward and quickly slice out for his chest. He let out a yipe and staggered back, but not before he heard the sound of metal-on-metal followed by sparking and a smell of burning from his chest. As he finished wobbling back, he heard the power source on his own suit quiet down. He raised his scissor blades only to hear their own hum die out and the light emanating from them dim.
“Oh no…” he weakly moaned.
Rarity, now getting a dangerous look of her own, advanced. She lashed out with her sword and struck and slashed again and again. Snips quickly backed up, struggling to protect himself with his swords, but without any magical power enhancing them Rarity cleaved off a bit with each strike. The tip of her saber moved in one after another, slicing off a piece of his armor each time. Bit by bit, he began to shed his components and leave himself wearing only his undersuit and bare skin beneath. One slice took off the mouthpiece to his helmet. Another cleaved off the crown of it, leaving what was left to slide down around his head like a strange collar…and unveiling a very panicked Trottingham soldier.
As he was pushed closer and closer to the edge, Rarity’s sword cut off pieces of the scissor blades like they were salami, until it was left only with the main joints and the handles. With one more move, she thrust forward with such force she split the joint in half. Snips gave a cry of alarm as he stumbled back, almost tripping over the remains of his own armor, before the edge of the Legacy stopped him. Rarity’s saber flashed out two more times, knocking the remains of the scissor blade out of his hands, and leaving him cringing and defenseless.
Rarity glared at him coldly as she pulled her blade back one more time for a final thrust.
“This is for Ms. Cheerilee, you horrid brute!”
She drove the blade forward. Snips, desperate to avoid it, gave one last panicked squeal before he threw himself backward. Unfortunately for him, there was nowhere for him to go and the weight of his upper body spilled over the edge. His face gave one last panicked look of surprise before he felt gravity yank him the rest of the way, and he cried out in a resounding echo as his body vanished over the side…
Only for the armor pieces dangling from one leg to get caught in the mounted rigging. A sharp snap later, and he was left flailing and swinging from side to side over oblivion by a single foot.
Rarity was left standing there, still in mid-thrust, and a look of disbelief for a moment at what she had done. However, she steeled herself soon after. Shaking her head and taking a deep breath, she raised herself up and a moment later, she advanced back to the deck to deal with the next soldier.
The hatch to the ventral loading bay gave a sharp turn before the door was practically smashed open from the opposite side. In staggered the royal guard. His armor was still sparking and failing more all the time; most recently in his leg area. Nevertheless, he continued to push forward, huffing and panting in exhaustion and pain, while hoisting along the weight of a functional Morning Glory along with him.
With his legs failed he could no longer make his instantaneous dashes, and even knowing the layout of the ship it had taken him far longer than he wanted to run to engineering and then down to the bowels of the ship. Nevertheless, he didn’t see anyone in the loading bay on his arrival, and after a quick glance around he ran all the way to the console with the emergency override lever. He paused just long enough to seize it and give it a turn.
Immediately, the heavy metal doors disengaged and popped open. A rush of cold, damp air began to billow into the chamber, blowing about anything that wasn’t nailed down, but he paid little heed to any of it. He ran all the way to the edge and looked down, seeing nothing below but thick clouds and the night sky. Echoes of the fighting on deck resounded, but nothing more.
He set the Morning Glory down just long enough to switch off his legs all together, redirecting any power he had left to his gauntlets. Following that, he attempted to manipulate a control on one of them. It took a few tries, for it too was losing power, but finally the signal took and his armor began to let out a loud hum. Quickly, he took up the Morning Glory again and primed himself to jump.
Several seconds slowly passed as he waited impatiently. After about twenty seconds, an echo of footsteps finally began to come down the passage he had entered from. Soon after, he heard the hatch creak open again as someone new entered the loading bay.
However, at that same moment, his “chariot”’s turbines became audible, moments before it slid out right beneath him. Without looking back to the entrance, he waited only until he could make out the vehicle’s lights and then leapt through the opening. After sailing through the sky for a moment, he impacted the floor of his ride. It shifted a little but maintained its position and speed.
In another moment, he would have seized the controls and flown back to the Rising Sun. Yet as he was reaching for them, a voice called from his left ear.
“Nice of you to drop in!”
Eyes widening, he wheeled around and barely had time to recognize the grinning face of Rainbow Dash standing right next to him in the seat region before she smashed her head into his. No longer having the armored protection, the blow was solid and he instantly slumped; nearly going unconscious.
He was powerless to resist as Dash tore the Morning Glory out from his hands and, far more easily, held it under one arm as she reached up. Moments later, the end of the Legacy’s loading winch came down and into her grip; courtesy of Fluttershy up above having just arrived and immediately lowered it.
As the royal guard got enough of his bearings to look up, Dash nimbly leapt onto the edge of the chariot right next to one of the turbines. She gave him a nod.
“See you next ‘fall’, buddy!”
With one sharp, forceful thrust of one leg, she kicked off of the chariot and into the air while simultaneously denting in the metal of the turbine enough to seize the interior rotors. A split second later, it gave a sharp whine before it exploded.
The eyes of the royal guard widened before, to the tune of a grating roar and spewing black smoke, the vehicle went into a violent corkscrew spin. The remaining turbine was soon overtaxed as the chariot dropped beneath Dash’s feet and went spiraling to the ground. In moments, it vanished into the lower cloud cover. The last seen of it or its rider was a trail of smoldering flame dancing through the night sky.
As for Dash, she continued to hang over oblivion, hoisting the Morning Glory in one arm and swaying one way and another, before looking skyward. “Uh, hello? Fluttershy?”
“Sorry! This crank is awful stiff…”
“Well I’d like to be back in the airship rather than trailing from it before the fight is over up there!”
Fluttershy’s only answer was a bit of light noise and a very slow ratcheting sound. Dash nearly groaned as she felt herself ascend at an almost imperceptible rate. She shifted her grip and, to pass the time, glanced back below.
It only took her a moment to notice something new. At first, she thought, impossible as it was, that the chariot had somehow leveled off and was rising again on seeing a small light. However, other lights were starting to join with it, scattered about below them. They were all in sets of pairs.
That told her all she needed to know.
“I think the Nighttouched have noticed we aren’t, uh, ‘projecting’ anymore…”
Moments later, the clouds swirled a bit beneath her. She looked straight down, saw nothing but sky for a moment, but then noticed a pair of eyespots. These ones weren’t from a Light Eater like they had been with the Tantabus, but she noticed they were indeed quite large, and attached to something moving rather fast.
“I…think we may need to get out of here soon…”
Applejack’s hammer rang out two more times, finishing banging the last of the Prodigy’s skyhooks into a harpoon. That done, she easily swiveled it around in one hand, hefted it, and threw it like a spear right back into their own deck. It proved to be an effective weapon as it punctured through it and all the way down to the lower deck beneath. Seconds later, the loosened Prodigy began to drift away from the side of the Legacy.
The farmer turned around and shouted. “That’s one! Just need one more!”
The fight that was still ongoing was quickly being resolved. Now bearing Snails’ weapon, Pinkie was laughing as she sent endless streams of the slow-down paste toward whoever managed to arise from the Rising Sun. At their slow rate of entering the battle, they had no chance of massing an attack before they were left too slow to even fire their magic-imbued weapons. Most of the others that had boarded from the Prodigy had been forced to withdraw in the wake of Snails’ attack, and those that hadn’t now felt themselves feeling the brunt of spells from both Twilight and Rarity as well as the occasional takedown from Spike. When the Prodigy was cut loose, many of them immediately turned and desperately tried to jump back on board before they could be left stranded with their superhuman opponents.
And in the wake of this, as well as Applejack’s shout, Twilight finally arose from her shelter on the Rising Sun. After doing a quick glance to make sure all of her surrounding attackers were either slowed or pinned, she took off for the edge herself. Two last soldiers that were still able to fire tried to take aim at her, but she countered with a thunderbolt of her own that struck their weapons right in whatever they were using for fuel or ammunition. They cried out as their weapons exploded in a ball of fire and ice, respectively.
Taking a deep breath, keeping her eyes forward and not looking down, Twilight reached the edge and vaulted across. Although she flailed and cried out in the process, she sailed across and landed in a tumble on the other side.
“Alright! Mission accomplished!” Pinkie cheered.
“Twilight’s on board, Applejack!” Rarity shouted. “Loosen their vessel and let’s be off!”
“You got it!” Applejack yelled back, quickly pivoting around. “Only one hook left! Fluttershy and Rainbow better be ready to punch it!”
She ran as fast as she could although there wasn’t much need at the moment. Snails was trying to drag himself over to his dangling partner, and the rest of the soldiers were either incapacitated or dragging themselves to cover. So long as the Rising Sun was still tethered to the Legacy, opening fire with any cannons was not an option. The way was all but clear.
Applejack reached the last remaining hook. Not bothering to be fancy, she simply bent over and seized it. It was embedded in the wood by two prongs, but it took her only a moment to start lifting them out.
Clang.
Applejack’s opposite arm gyrated so violently that she winced and snapped her head around. She gaped at what she saw. Her father’s hammer-turned-warhammer was flying out of her grip from the power of the blow that had just struck it. The clang was loud enough to get the attention of the others as well, but the farmer herself could only look on in horror as the weapon sailed beyond her reach, slipped down in between the space between the airships, and vanished into the night.
“No!” she cried. She nearly reached out for it, before her wits realized what had just happened. Sure enough, a second later she saw something topple to the ground nearby.
An arrow shaft.
“Applejack! Take cover!” Twilight screamed.
The farmer, her mind clicking, struggled to do just that, but it was too late. A sharp whistle went through the air, and she only managed to turn to the side before an arrow shaft that had been aimed for her heart embedded in the side of her shoulder instead.
Even with all of her strength, Applejack still cried out in pain as she was knocked off of her feet and sent to the deck of the ship. Her armor had done little to protect against the piercing shaft. She quickly used her good arm to drag herself behind the ship’s railing for cover.
The others quickly dove for shelter as well. Pinkie shot behind the relief valve assembly on the upper deck as a shaft nipped at her heels. Rarity cried out and ran behind the upper hatch access cabin as two more arrows ripped apart the deck in her wake. Twilight herself was only able to pry open one of the ammunition cache bays and crawl inside because the arrows weren’t aimed for her. Even so, she could barely her crouching body in and press her body against the open doors for shelter, especially when Spike quickly ran in at her side.
On the deck of the Rising Sun, Sunset Shimmer, fully in her Archer form and knocking a new arrow, slowly emerged from the remains of a hole she had burned in the side of her own upper hatch access cabin; not caring that it was still holt and smoldering in her wake.
“It’s like I’ve known for years… You want something done, you got to do it yourself,” she snorted as she walked to the edge of the ship. “Ok Twilight! You want to make this difficult? Let’s see how many of your friends I need to kill to get you to come quietly!”
The situation on the bridge of the Rising Sun had not improved. It had only gotten worse as they remained trapped behind the frozen inner hatch and whatever soldiers they had managed to get to the upper deck had immediately been incapacitated. Now that they were learning that some of the steam lines were frozen, engineering was working furious to keep the pressure from dropping off so much that it would cut the propellers all together.
Yet none of that stressed the crew so much as the fact the day gauge had been at zero for four full minutes now.
“Where in the world is Flash Sentry?” the first officer shouted. “He was supposed to be back by now! Have they spotted his chariot yet?”
“Negative, ma’am!”
“What about the engines? Have we got more power yet?”
“They’re saying moisture from the ice in the piping is leaking into the system! They still need ten minutes before they can flush the system!”
“We don’t have ten minutes! We need to clear that ice right-”
A loud smacking sound cut the first officer off.
She froze in place immediately, but she wasn’t alone. The rest of the bridge immediately dropped their own tasks and the chamber became silent enough to hear a pin drop. Everyone’s attention turned to the bridge windows the moment the noise had been heard. Now they stared at it in horror.
A grossly enlarged and malformed bat creature had struck the glass. Its eyes glowed with the signature gleam of a Nighttouched, and its hideously twisted nostrils and snout were smearing a mucus along the pane. It gazed inside angrily and hungrily; pressing its twisted, leathery body against it and showing off all the veins and tendons throughout its wings. After a moment, it slipped off and floated into the night sky, now filled with similar gleaming eyes like spectral fireflies.
Another bat creature smacked against a different part of the window a moment later. A third soon joined this one. As the second one slowly peeled itself off the clouds outside the airship parted. In their wake, a long, snake-like head and neck rose out from the world below and towered to the same height as the airship in spite of how many hundreds of feet it was in the air. The beaked, reptilian skull was the size of an adult bear, and as it slowly turned its head to the airship two identical heads to the first rose from the cloud as well.
Suddenly the bats began to slap against the bridge windows one after another. It lasted only a few seconds before a crinkling was heard. A crack appeared and spread across the surface, and soon after another crack appeared. This time a chip of glass fell into the bridge.
One of the crew members began to whimper. Another began to pray audibly.
The first officer was far more direct.
“Clear the bridge! Abandon ship! Get to the Prodigy as fast as you can!”
Sunset took one more step before leaping onto the edge of the railing of the Rising Sun. Not that Twilight could see it from her position. By now, she was breathing hard and struggling to think of what to do next. She glanced to her side but all she could see was Rarity huddling behind her own barrier, although she could hear Applejack hissing and writhing in pain. The designer was even more nervous than her. After holding for a moment, she made a move. She held up one of her hands, began to draw a symbol, and started to lean her head out.
She cried out and yanked back a moment later as a shaft shot by strong enough to chip the edge off of her barrier. She grasped for her face in the same instant.
“Rarity!” Twilight cried.
The woman recoiled; her face clearly panicked as she thought the hit had been worse. When she pulled back her hand she gasped again on seeing bloodstains, but the tip had only lightly sliced her cheek. Even so Twilight saw how fast it had happened.
“Nice thing about the Archer role!” Sunset’s voice shouted. “I got the sight of a hawk! Care to see which one of us is faster, Twilight? I only need you alive and your hand intact! I makes no difference to me to put one of these arrows in your eye!”
The mage answered by beginning to cast a new spell, but after preparing the sigil she only turned her head to the side; clearly not knowing how she could pop out and use it without giving herself away as a target. She made no other sound or move.
“Decide quick! All I need to do is take one more step onto your ship and then I’ll see your little hick friend! I won’t miss the heart this time!”
“Leave them alone!” Twilight shouted back. “They haven’t done anything to you!”
“Oh, I disagree! By my count, they’ve stolen one of my ships, fired on another one, broken my magical weapons, attacked my crew, and have tried to steal what I have rightfully taken…namely you! But if staying free isn’t worth their lives to you…”
Twilight didn’t see, but Sunset took the fateful step forward onto the railing of the Legacy. At once, she got a full view of Applejack, clutching her bleeding shoulder still pierced by the arrow, cringing against the side, and now looking at her in shock.
She took aim at her chest. “Then you won’t mind if I start taking them!” She released the bowstring.
The arrow went flying from the bow, but no sooner had she let loose then she saw a flash followed by a cracking sound. She recoiled a moment later in sudden surprise.
Rainbow Dash, hand still extended in a punch and glaring angrily at her, was standing between her and Applejack. The two severed halves of the arrow shaft that she had punched right out of the sky danced in midair a bit longer before falling to the deck.
Twilight hadn’t seen the whole move but she heard the punch and the crack and seized on it. Taking the risk, she quickly popped out from the enclave. She didn’t have time to assess the situation or what had just happened. She simply aimed the sigil for Sunset and executed it. Sunset herself snapped to her, hearing the arcane incantation she was using, but it was too late. As the sigil executed it seemed to burn away into a black, opaque mist. The mist shot through the sky and streamed straight into Sunset’s eyeballs.
She shouted in rage and clutched for her face, staggering back. As for Dash, she was surprised at what had happened but didn’t question it. Quickly, she turned around, grabbed Applejack under her good arm, and accelerated in a blaze of speed to pull her away.
Twilight grinned. “Looks like the Archer role doesn’t have nearly the magical resistance of the Caster! I don’t think those keen eyes of yours will do much good when you’ve been hit by a Blindness curse!”
“You little…!” she began to sputter, before she stopped clutching for her eyes. A moment later, she instead drew another arrow, took perfect aim for where Twilight had spoken, and sent out another shaft. Twilight’s smug smirk evaporated at Sunset’s near dead-aim and she dove back for the enclave. Even so, she felt several of her hairs cut off by the arrowhead.
As for Dash, she had to go slower to yank Applejack away, but both of them began to run for the hatch back to the ship interior. Fluttershy, by now, had popped out of it as well; both her and Dash having arrived only seconds earlier. Spotting the two running to her, she quickly turned and beckoned. “Oh! Bring her here! I’ll-”
Unfortunately, the moment Sunset heard another voice, she drew another arrow and shot at it. Fluttershy let out a panicked cry as she saw a shaft head her way but, fortunately, the aim was just a little off. Instead the arrow shaft sank right through her hood and ripped her back off her feet, dragging her all the way to the edge of the ship before it embedded in the opposite railing and leaving her pinned in place.
Not stopping there, Sunset quickly listened and heard Dash’s running abruptly halt in surprise. She aimed her next shaft there and fired again. This time, the arrow bolt made contact with one of her feet and sliced right through it. Dash gave a pained yell and stumbled, dropping both her and Applejack to the deck as blood streaked out across the paneling. However, she quickly slapped a hand over her mouth and rolled to one side as Sunset reloaded and fired another arrow where her head had been. It embedded in the wood hard enough to splint it, but still missed.
After that, all six girls went as silent as they could. That was a bit hard for Dash and Applejack, as both now had arrow wounds, and Fluttershy herself was struggling not to whimper as she was now stuck to the railing with no way to free herself without making more noise. Fortunately, the ambient sounds covered up most of this, but the wooden deck would turn anything they made into an echo.
Sunset, teeth gnashed now, reloaded another arrow as she began to blindly walk forward. “Where are you…” she hissed, snapping the bow up. “Where are you?”
Twilight had poked her head back out but didn’t dare make a sound. From here, she could look around to everyone but all of them were helpless at this point. Spells would take too long. Dash might have been able to outrun the shaft, but not with an arrow wound in her foot. Rarity saw her, lying about five meters from where she was hiding. Moistening her lips, she slowly began to inch her way out, not making a sound as Sunset continued to listen for anything. It seemed to work as she slowly emerged and made her way over to the injured girls.
On reaching them, she held out her hand and began to whisper a chant.
The whisper was too loud. She barely got three syllables before Sunset snapped around and sent an arrow at her. The only reason it didn’t go through her head was because Dash, toughing through her own pain, threw herself forward and snapped out her hand to snatch the shaft right before it could embed in her skull. Even so, Rarity couldn’t help but shriek at what nearly happened.
Sunset grinned. “So you taught the Magician with you some healing magic?” She knocked another arrow and took aim. “Too bad she’ll never get to use it!”
“Hey Sunset!”
The sound of Pinkie’s chipper, cheery voice immediately got not only Sunset’s attention but that of the others. Much to Twilight’s alarm, she was fully out and was now prancing and dancing around making as much noise as she could. “Booga-booga-booga! Betcha can’t hit me! N’yah n’yah!”
Immediately, Sunset snapped around and fired a shaft at her instead. Twilight expected Pinkie to use the Rogue’s agility to avoid it, which she did by arching herself to one way and letting the arrow shoot right by her, but rather than keep dodging she did something different.
“Ooooooooh! Ya’ got me!” Pinkie instantly yelled, falling to her knees. “Ack! Ugh! Urk! Right in the gizzard! Cough! Hack! Choke! It’s curtains for me!” She followed up with exaggerated coughing and writhing. “The pain! Agony! Agony-agony-agony! Everything’s getting dark! It feels cold…so cold!” She threw herself on the deck and thrashed and flailed about like a worm on a hook.
Twilight watched this exaggerated display for a moment as Sunset grew progressively more annoyed, before she realized the point of it. At once she wheeled around to the others and motioned to them. They stared back a moment before they too realized what was happening and responded. Rarity went to Dash’s foot and began to use her healing spell. Fluttershy pulled herself free of the arrow as fast as she could and began to move toward Applejack. As for Twilight, she fully rose up and began to quickly chant a new symbol.
“Ugh! Ugh… Guuuuugherg… If I had know it would end like this…I would have baked more cupcakes! Ugh! Tell Maud I love her! Tell Marble my secret cookie recipe! Tell Limestone I’m the one who broke the wheelbarrow…because I really, really never wanted to tell her that to her face…”
“Shut up, you idiot!” Sunset shouted. “I can’t hear-”
She trailed off, blinded-eyes widening.
“I can’t hear!”
She spun around, but it was too late as Twilight finished casting her own spell and executed it. Her voice spoke with a power that the girls had not heard before and a moment later her own aura blazed in lavender light before it condensed in front of her and her sigil. It erupted into a potent, concentrated mass of shimmering energy, transformed into a missile-like object, and sailed straight into Sunset.
Her cry was swallowed up by the sound of a magical explosion, and she vanished in a wave of concussive energy that blasted out the deck paneling around it. Moments later, her own body went flying from the blast and smashed into the ship’s railing. The impact was loud enough that the ladies could hear it resonating as her body sprawled onto the deck.
Rarity quickly finished her own spell, and while it didn’t heal her totally it was enough for Dash to snap back to her feet and get her fists ready. Fluttershy, distracted by the explosion, was still taking more time on Applejack. Gritting her teeth, the farmer yanked the arrow out of her wound, ignoring how much more it bled as Fluttershy quickly clotted it and glared out at the remains of the blast. “That was a big ‘un… How come you don’t do that more often, Twilight?”
The mage herself was now slumping partially over her enclave and bracing herself against the doors. “That’s a spell of raw force… It’s non-elemental but it takes a lot out of me…”
“Who cares?” Dash answered. “She’s not getting up from that kind of hit. That had to have broken half the bones in her body.”
The steam and smoke from the eruption slowly faded away, and Sunset’s sprawled body became clear. Part of her clothing was in tatters as a result of that blast and she lay still a moment.
Then, letting out an irritated mutter, she simply began to pick herself up again. She was slow and sore but no more than the rest of them.
“Wow…she’s really strong,” Pinkie gulped.
“What the-?!” Applejack sputtered.
“I told you!” Twilight moaned. “The more sigils you use, the stronger you are!”
When she finally got back to her feet, she did slump a little and had to spread out her legs to stay standing, but that was all. She only posed that way for a moment before her angry glower turned into a smile. She chuckled several times.
“Ok, ladies… I guess you want to have some real fun.”
She held her hand up in the air.
“Member of my house, I command you to come to me! Ray of Hope—Somnambula!”
Dash nearly took off for her, but ended up not only halting but shielding herself along with the others as power erupted from Sunset’s body. This was even greater than before. The image that streaked out of her and formed this time was a cheerful, smiling woman in ancient makeup and a headdress from the southern continent. It soon split and came over her. Sunset didn’t accept it as “gracefully” this time. Her body visibly tightened and stiffened, making her look like she was under true strain, but she bore with it as her clothing changed.
The dark colors gave way to a mixture of black and fiery reds, oranges, and yellows. The clothing grew closer to her yet; taking her from a hooded archer into a much longer, elegant slip that one would except from someone alluring at a high class party as opposed to a battlefield. Her hair was arranged and styled with an attractive, fire-shaped comb as more elaborate makeup spread over her face. Long gloves, boots, and large accessories spread over her arms and legs. In particular, thick bracelets went over one of her wrists, gleaming with gold and jewels like tumblers on a slot machine. As for her other hand, her glove still allowed her Promethian Sigil to show through clearly—now with three of the runes blazing.
The light dimmed down, and Sunset panted twice, as if catching her breath, before looking out with a wicked smile.
“I mentioned the Gambler role, didn’t I?”
The six stared a moment longer. Finally, Pinkie snapped off of the ground, dropping her death throes, and instead aimed the weapon she swiped from Snails at her. “Think fast!”
She shot out twin streams of the gunk at her. Sunset merely kept smiling and stood there. The streams nearly reached her, before the wind about her abruptly changed into a stiff gale. It was just enough to catch the gunk and blow it away to one side, causing it to impact right behind her.
Twilight herself, in spite of the strain and pain, raised her hand and began to paint another symbol in the air. Yet just as she was about to complete it, the propped-up doors of the enclave suddenly slipped on their latch. Not only did it fall just as Spike was getting out to try a lunge of his own, trapping him inside, but the door’s swinging back down landed right on her toe. Yelping, she cut off the spell and hopped up on it painfully.
Dash grit her own teeth and took off after her. However, rather than appear in front of her, she only made it a third of the distance before one of the floor planks broke from previous damage and the huntsman hooked her foot, spun around, and went face down on deck…catching her chin right in some of the excess paste from Snails.
Sunset grinned. “That’s the nice thing about the Gambler. It has the lovely side-effect of manipulating luck and fate. Speaking of which…”
She raised her arm with the rotating bracelets and stretched out her gloved hand to give all three a spin.
“Let’s see what my luck says.”
Dash pushed herself up as the others recovered, just as the bracelets finished rotating one after another like a slot machine. As they watched, they clicked to show images: diamond…diamond…diamond.
The moment they landed, a light burst from the bracelet before all three diamonds broke off; going from images into actual gemstones. All three separated and hovered in midair over Sunset for a moment, gleamed, and then began to shed prismatic rays of light from all three at once. Twilight watched as one of the rays struck the ground, and went wide-eyed on seeing it leaving a burning incision along them.
“Take cover!”
The six scattered, even though Fluttershy had only partially finished with her healing of Applejack. Dash was forced to roll for it and tried to get up to run further before she was struck in the back by one of the rays. Fortunately, the actual mark it left was only a burning scrape across it, but the beam also had force. She cried out as she was sent sprawling back to the ground. Pinkie managed to dive and slip past the rays aimed for her, but as Rarity went for cover one beam lashed across her leg and sent her falling to a knee. Before she could recover, another struck her in the side of the head and she fell to the ground. Applejack, ignoring her half-healed arm, grabbed Fluttershy around the waist, hoisted her over a shoulder, and ran for it. Twilight alone tried to stand her ground, in spite of how much strain it was giving her, to make a shield of ice. Unfortuantely, several beams struck it and shattered it, pelting her with crystals and the force knocking her to the deck.
The gemstones crumbled in midair soon after, but Sunset noticed that Fluttershy and Applejack were still standing. Smirking, she held up her hand and made a gesture, causing a five-card hand to appear out of her palm in it. She flung one like a dart at the two of them.
It missed striking either one, but it did sail past Applejack and land in her path. She froze, looking down at it, and just had enough time to realize it was the Ace of Clubs before it gleamed and burst. In its wake, a massive armored hand, wielding a three-knobbed club, emerged from inside and swept around. It struck both women together and sent them crashing back against the deck.
Sunset smirked at the sight, but caught something out of the corner of her eye. Dash, using the most her speed could offer, had gotten back to her feet and was running at her. In spite of the paste, her full speed offset it enough to act as a normal run. Unfortunately, as Sunset saw her coming, she collapsed the cards and put them away only to toss a pair of dice at Dash instead. The huntsman tried to run right past them but couldn’t manage it. Both dice landed on the deck in front of her, tumbled a bit, and landed on a “four” between the two of them.
An instant later, they blew up in a series of four concussive blasts. The shockwaves caught Dash and flung her violently away.
Twilight gaped at what happened just as she managed to get her feet underneath her. Sunset herself shook her hand again, gaining a new pair of dice in them and tossing them up and down in it lightly. “Looks like I got more tricks up my sleeve than you and your friends do in this role, Twilight.” She began to rear her arm back. “If that was only a ‘four’, I wonder how much a ‘ten’ will be…”
She began to look around, trying to see which of the girls to use the next dice roll on. Before she could decide, however, she was interrupted by an unexpected source.
Namely the hull of the Rising Sun rocking forward and slamming against the Legacy.
The force was enough to shake the whole ship, making her waver and nearly stumble. She was surprised for a moment, before she wheeled about and glared at the ship angrily. “What in the world are you-”
She cut herself off as she saw the far side of the ship suddenly break out from within, the result of something punching a hole right through it. Planks, gears, and pipes flew out into the night sky, and as they did Sunset, as well as Twilight, finally noticed that the air around the three airships was now swarming with hundreds of glowing yellow eyes. Nowhere were they more clustered, however, then about the Rising Sun. At least a dozen were now clutching the hull or airbag in different places. With the ship’s side opened, the sounds of screaming, panic, and even weapons firing were going off all around.
“What…what the…?”
“Lady Sunset!”
The voice of Snips crying out made her turn. During her fight with the six, Snails had finally managed to pull his companion back on deck. He gaped in fear and pointed at the destruction. “The Nighttouched are on us! They’re tearing up the Rising Sun!”
She stared at him then looked back at the Legacy’s crossbar, before she growled in her biggest sign of irritation yet. “Damnit, Flash! I told him to get that Morning Glory! Not only did he screw that up he left it disconnected!”
“Lady Sunset!” This shout came from one of the soldiers still on deck of the Rising Sun, although all of the ones that were still there at this point were panicking and going for whatever weapons they still had to defend themselves. Two of them began to fire at large, bat-like Nighttouched trying to sweep over them. Others were trying to climb out of the ports. Some were making it on deck; but from the sounds of screams on the opposite side some of them weren’t.
“They’re all over us! There’s a big one that just ripped a gouge out! We need to disconnect from the Legacy so we can get onto the Prodigy from the port!”
Sunset took a fraction of a second to realize what that meant. “No! Keep us connected! We’re retaking this ship!”
“We don’t have time! They’re tearing us apart! We can’t even evacuate to the upper deck! We’ve lost contact with engineering already!”
“Lady Sunset!” Snips shouted. By now, the rest of the soldiers stranded on the Legacy were beginning to rise, but their full attention was on getting out of there now that the Nighttouched were involved. “Let’s just get on the Prodigy and go!”
Sunset ignored him and glared at the ones still on the Rising Sun. “Either cross onto this ship and help me get rid of these six or go down with that one! I’m too close!”
Twilight stared on at her a moment; her look growing increasingly incredulous at her reaction. Finally, she turned and looked to Fluttershy and Applejack. The former of the two had been using the opportunity to try and heal them both of their fresh injuries.
“Fluttershy, you and Dash didn’t reconnect the Morning Glory?”
She looked up from her spell. “We didn’t have time. We already heard Sunset shouting through the speaking hole and ran up.”
“Go do it now!”
The woman hesitated. “But…but you need me up here…”
“We’ll be fine! Just do it!”
She continued to hesitate, before finally looking at Applejack. The farmer herself paused but finally clenched her jaw and nodded back. Swallowing, Fluttershy got up from them and ran back for the hatch. Applejack forced herself back to her feet as she brandished her own fists, and Twilight quickly rose as well and got her wand at the ready.
Sunset snorted when she saw Fluttershy run back into the ship. “I should’ve known you were a bleeding heart all along. Real smart…wanting to save people who tried to kill you and your friends. No wonder you ended up spending most of the past eight years sleeping in gutters.”
“Don’t you care even a little about the people you depend on?” Twilight shot back.
“The only thing I care about,” Sunset sneered as she raised her dice hand again, “is the fact it’s now just five of you and you lost your Healer!”
A moment later, she snapped her dice out at Rarity. The woman was just starting to recover, grasping a head wound she was now sporting, only to pale on seeing the dice headed for her. Immediately, she cringed and braced herself as they landed and tumbled forward.
Soon after they came to a stop…on a pair of ones. “Snake Eyes”.
Both dice erupted a moment later, but only into a dull amount of smoke.
The group was rather surprised, but not nearly as much as Sunset. “What? That’s it?” Gritting her teeth, she instead raised her arm and gave the bracelets a spin instead. She aimed it at the women expectantly, and once again it clicked into place: a 7…a 7…and a cherry.
Nothing happened.
Needless to say, she began to fume soon afterward. Noticing this, however, Twilight risked a taunt. “Looks like luck works both ways!”
Sunset’s eyes flashed angrily at that before she spun her bracelets again. This time the order was a toy race horse…a toy race horse…and a toy race horse. Once again, the images broke off of her bracelets, but this time they rapidly began to enlarge as they spread out around to either side of her. They continued to grow until they were the size of real horses, and then suddenly broke like they were nothing more than images on stained glass.
In their wake, a herd of full-sized toy racehorses, each one made of metal and galloping as hard and fast as the real thing, broke out into a stampede right for the women.
Fortunately, as bizarre and offputting as this attack was, they had time to get ready for it during Sunset’s failed attempts at attack. Dash managed to rapidly crawl over to Rarity, and Applejack and Pinkie Pie soon fell in behind Twilight as they ducked behind the access hatch to the rest of the ship along with them. Soon, all five were huddled as the troupe of mechanical animals trampled all around them. They only ran to the edge of the ship before vanishing in flashes of light, but more of them kept pouring out from where the images had been.
“Ok…this is gettin’ mighty weird…” Applejack remarked.
“She’s actually calling a stampede upon us!” Rarity nearly shrieked; her wits fully recovered. “How in the world are we supposed to fight back now?”
“Everyone!” Twilight quickly shouted, getting their attention. “I’ve got a plan! All of us need to keep the pressure up on her and keep dodging and attacking! Even if we don’t land hits, we have to frustrate her enough so that she brings out the rest of her Anima Viris!”
The four girls nearly gasped at the suggestion.
“That’s your ‘plan’?!” Dash nearly shouted as she rubbed away at the gunk on her chin. “We can’t even hit her now! What are we going to do if she pulls out any more?”
“Just trust me! If my assumption is right, this is the only way we can beat her this time! Just know for right now this isn’t nearly as hopeless as you may think!”
“But how we s’posed to hit her if she’s got the devil’s own luck…fer real?” Applejack retorted.
“There has to be something governing that…and it has to work against her just like her own attacks did. The role’s name is the ‘Gambler’, not…I don’t know…‘Lady Luck’. That implies that sometimes things work against her. The moment I spot something I’ll give the shout. When that happens, we all need to hit her enough to get her to bring out another Anima Viri.”
Rarity ran her glove across her face. “This is nothing short of pure insanity...”
“Hey, you know what they say about crazy plans, right?” Pinkie grinned as she ribbed Rarity a little. “Sometimes they’re just ‘crazy’ enough to work!”
“…I don’t think anyone says that, darling.”
The sound of the trampling hooves began to die down. Soon after, the last of the mechanical horses ran by. Sighing, Twilight tightened up. “It’s now or never. Come on!”
Taking the charge, Twilight began to draw a sigil before leaping out and pointing her wand at Sunset. In response, more of the wind blasts she had used earlier cut through the air to try and knock her back or at least off balance, but unfortunately at that very moment one of the Trottingham soldiers tried to cut across to run to the more secure part of the ship. She cried out as she was hit instead. Fortunately, her crossing allowed Rarity to run out from behind her and aim her sword at Sunset, sending out a smaller fireball instead. Once more, it didn’t work, for Sunset chose that moment to start running toward the group to meet them, and her foot lifted up right as a fireball was about to strike it and sailed harmlessly beneath.
She quickly flung a card at both of them. It struck near their feet soon after, and Twilight, before pitching around and pushing Rarity away, noticed that it was the Ace of Spades. An instant later, it evaporated and exploded in an almost porcupine-array of spears in all directions, and while the mage got the designer clear she still caught one of the prongs hitting her upper leg from behind. The tip didn’t go in too deep before she pulled away, but it still struck deep enough to not only make her cry in pain but leaveher with a limp in her step.
Dash, now free of the adhesive paste, tried to run in at the side, but was forced to halt when she realized Sunset was running right for the area of paste that Snails had left on the deck; using it as a natural barrier. Her hesitation caused Sunset to spot her and the woman responded by tossing more dice her way. Quickly, Dash pivoted and recoiled before a ‘six’ landed where she had been. The resulting explosion was not only a set of six blasts but much more violent ones than the four. Luckily she managed to run clear, and the time it took to throw the dice allowed Applejack and Pinkie Pie to come in from either side. Lacking her hammer, Applejack snatched up a broken half of a plank and threw it at her while Pinkie opened fire with her own streams of goo.
Once more, luck ended up being on her side. One of Pinkie’s streams missed her completely, while the other connected with the plank Applejack threw to both cancel it out and block the other stream. Quickly, Sunset spun her arm bracelets again, once more landing on the triple diamonds. Once again, they split off and began to bombard the area with the forceful prismatic beams.
Yet while Rarity and Dash both dove for cover, Pinkie moved forward, easily and nimbly dodging and darting through them all as she tried to get a better shot. Not only that, but Applejack grit her own teeth in determination before snatching up another broken plank; this time holding onto it to transmit her aura over it. The result morphed it into a large, imposing, and well-knobbed shileighleh. She crossed the crude weapon over herself as a shield as she kept running in. Finally, although her own back took a couple of the beam hits, Twilight toughed through it, ran toward for Sunset, dove for the ground, and cast a spell on that area in front of her. A wave of ice crystals flowed out and coated the area, in particular the paste-like gunk, and quickly solidified it to remove it as a barrier.
Sunset, seeing her obstruction removed and two coming from either side, finally snapped around and flung dice at Applejack while snapping a card out at Pinkie. The former quickly planted her feet and braced herself, meaning to tough through it, but unfortunately for her the dice roll she landed on was a ‘nine’. Dash had been quick on the uptake, however, and darted in, seized her by the shoulder, and yanked her back just in time. The entire Legacy gave a shudder from the force of the latest concussive blasts, and a hole was blown right through the upper deck and down through the deck below. Even Sunset stalled on seeing the pillar of flame erupt in her wake, nearly reaching up and puncturing the Legacy’s airbag. Twilight’s heart seized in fear at the sight, for it was clear to everyone a larger dice roll would have blown out the ship all together.
The card that she snapped out at Pinkie landed at her feet and ended up being the Ace of Diamonds. Yet rather than use some sort of diamond saw or prismatic beams, Pinkie got a surprise on seeing large gems materialize around her before flattening and connecting into some sort of shell or shield about her body. She looked at them a bit before smiling. “Ooo! Shiny!” She then proceeded to keep running forward before opening fire.
Sunset growled. “What is with this damn role?!” She nearly went for more dice, but on seeing the pillar of flame and smoke still dying down she opted against it. Unfortunately, even her move for it before deciding to pull back was enough to have her avoid Pinkie’s latest streams, before she gave her tumblers another role. Pinkie didn’t stop, but kept running to try and deal with her hand-to-hand as she waited for the tumblers to stop rotating. Unfortunately, just as she got in leaping range, Rarity gained enough of her own focus to snap up and cast another thunderbolt spell. Pinkie happened to get in her way at the same time and the bolt ended up striking her instead. Going rigid, Pinkie’s hair seemed to get extra “poofy” for a moment before she limply kept sailing at Sunset.
To evade her the woman had to quickly sidestep and pivot. Yet when Pinkie’s body sailed by, Twilight, still forcing herself back up, saw the back of her dress. A sun and moon emblem on a circle was in between her shoulder blades, but she noticed that it seemed to be loosely connected and rotating slightly. At the moment it was aimed with the sunny side up.
Getting an idea, she quickly raised her wand and began to generate a new spell. At the same time, the last tumbler finished locking: gold coins…gold coins…and gold coins. Again the images separated, this time shooting into the sky. Moments later they burst before they began to shower the area with a hailstorm of gold coins fired with the speed of arrowheads. Rarity, still shocked over what she had done to Pinkie, could only shriek and dive for cover again. Applejack broke off of Dash only to wrap her body around her as a shield; pushing her to cover as well.
Twilight alone stood her ground, executing her spell soon after. The strain was starting to wear on her, and it showed in her face and sweat, but she managed to generate a tempest once again and quickly rose it in front of her to act as a shield of her own. It blew so strong and intense that it caught the gold downpour, holding it steady and sweeping it into the vortex. Nevertheless, as the gold kept coming, she was forced to dig in and keep it churning to catch more of the coins. Even so she felt a few pass through and sting her against the face and body, leaving welts but doing little more. Her arms started to tremble and she began to buckle as time kept passing, but still she held on through it, determined to outlast it.
Finally the gold cut off, and as it died down Twilight’s tempest was still going. Straining and grunting, she flung it forward right for Sunset. She looked a bit alarmed, but only for a moment. The tempest quickly died down, and the gold that was trapped in it quickly evaporated. By the time it got to Sunset, the worst it managed to do, or so she thought, was sent a draft upward to nearly push her dress above her “naughty parts”. It faded completely soon afterward.
Sunset smiled at her. “That all you got, ‘star student’?”
Twilight didn’t answer. She faltered to one knee, breathing a little hard. Yet no sooner had she gone against the deck than she reached out and picked up a loose metal nut from some of the damage. Somewhat weakly, she raised her arm and flung it at the woman.
A moment later it hit her in the middle of the forehead, causing her a mixture of surprise and irritation at the unexpected gesture.
“Now!” Twilight shouted the moment she saw her attack work. “Her luck’s changed!”
Sunset’s eyes widened, realizing from that weak attack that she was telling the truth. Instantly, Rarity snapped out and wildly began to fling fireball spells at her. As crazy, errant, and feeble as they were, they all sailed for their mark, and Sunset quickly stepped back to try and shield herself with her large bracelets only for them to strike and sear her with deadly heat. As relatively strong as her body was, she still cried out in pain from the flames. As soon as they died down, her face was tight with anger as she lowered her arms, but now she saw Rarity charging at her with her saber at the ready.
She raised another card and snapped it out at her. It landed at her feet, revealing itself as the Ace of Hearts.
At once, a wave of vivid red light came over Rarity, and the gash on her chin, her head injury, and any other scrape or burn she had sustained not only healed itself but mended the clothing in its wake.
Sunset stared dumbfounded. “Are you kidding m-”
She got no further, for at that moment her jaw was knocked askew as Dash rushed in and belted her across the face. Even with her own enhanced strength she couldn’t shrug off a hit like that, especially since Dash didn’t let up. She immediately smashed her across the face the other way, and beat four more times in the span of a second before shooting up, kicking off of her chest, and then delivering a thrust kick to her stomach. Sunset’s eyes bulged as the air was knocked out of her, but more importantly she was knocked right into the path of Applejack running behind her. She kept her footing and stumbled around just in time to see her slam her across the side of the head with her sheleighleh. Even with enhanced durability, a wet smacking rang out from several drops of blood slapping against the deck.
Applejack didn’t let up. She let the weapon strike again and again in moves that would have crushed a normal person’s skull. The air shook with each strike and the club itself split as Sunset’s head was smacked one way and another. Finally, as she reared back for an especially strong one, Sunset leaned up and snapped back. Quickly she reached for her bracelets to spin them again, only for her hand to hit nothing. She gaped in alarm and looked over, just in time to see the recovered Pinkie grin and show off the bracelets she had pilfered right off of her body.
Glowering, she stepped back further, shooting away two steps from Applejack’s latest swing, and raised her hand to get out her dice next. Before she even had a chance to finish lifting her arm, Rarity ran in behind her at last and flashed out with her saber. Sunset let out her first real scream of pain as a bloody gash opened along the back of her hand and forearm, causing her hand to falter. Agonized and growing increasingly enraged, she snapped her hand out for whatever was still in her possession. Desperate, she clutched a card and flung it down in the midst of the women.
They all looked at it and saw it was the symbol of the Joker.
The card evaporated and an explosion went off…on Sunset’s own body. She was sent rocketing away from the group before being left tumbling across the deck of the Legacy smoldering and smoking.
As she slowly tumbled to a stop, the emblem on the back of her clothes showed the same rotating disk, only with the night side up.
The four took a moment to realize what had happened, standing their dumbly, before Pinkie lit up. “Oh! I guess that card means the joke’s on you, huh?”
“I don’t know about the rest of you,” Dash smirked, cracking her knuckles, “but that felt awesome.”
“Don’t ease up yet!” Twilight yelled. “She’s not done yet! She’s still-”
At that moment, Sunset finished rolling. Without missing a beat, she lifted her sigil-bearing hand to the sky as quickly as she could. “Member of my house, I command you to come to me! Miraculous Healer—Mage Meadowbrook!”
The five cut off their enthusiasm as they were forced to shield themselves and dig their feet in from the sheer power and force that radiated off of Sunset in the next several seconds. The aura that radiated off of her was beginning to become dazzling. Twilight herself was the only one who looked, barely able to make out the image of a woman from the old bayou regions of Greater Everfree wearing an old “plague doctor” mask made in the fashion of a tropical bird. It soon vanished, along with Sunset’s body. At this point, it was impossible to see if this one was an even more painful transformation than the last, as the light around the woman was blinding.
The eruption died down at last, but even when it did the raw energy that was unleashed now left a distinctive noise on the air of its own. The five unshielded themselves and looked back, seeing what had come out this time.
Sunset was back on her feet. Her clothing had changed again. Now it seemed to be more in line with, surprisingly enough, Rarity’s clothing. However, it was far more elaborate and accented. It was red like hers, but accented more with her fiery tones. Some of the fabric seemed to shimmer like a living blaze. Naturally, her hand was blazing with four runes lit up at once. Her own wide-brimmed hat was low to her head and she wore a scarf that obscured most of her chin. The end effect was her eyes seemed to radiate just as they had for the Caster form. In addition to a rapier in one hand, she had an estoc in the other.
However, that wasn’t all. Her body was quivering slightly, particularly around her hand with the runes. She was also panting a little as if she was winded. And although she was smiling, it had gotten much smaller.
A moment later, she held up her estoc and began to draw a symbol with it. The group braced themselves, but no offensive magic came. Rather, as she completed it, the light broke out over her own body and took the shade of a pale green light similar to Fluttershy’s own incantations. Moments later, some of her stiffness vanished and she stood up straight and unquivering again, although she continued to breathe heavy.
“Did…she just heal herself?” Rarity suggested.
“Oh you do have an eye for detail, don’t you?” Sunset retorted. “I guess I should thank you for making this whole thing ‘interesting’ enough to actually bring out my Enchanter role. In case you haven’t noticed, Twilight, this is the perfected form of the Magician. At this point I’m like a Caster and a Healer rolled into one.”
She held up her estoc like a wand.
“On that note…”
Immediately, she began to trace a symbol in the air. This one gleamed like electrum, and was far larger and more advanced than the others. Even as she drove it, Twilight began to feel the air charge about them and the clouds over their heads started to rumble. On recognizing the symbol she paled.
“Oh no… Everyone brace yourselves!”
The others turned to her, but only saw her quickly try to raise her arm and generate a spell of her own. She never had the chance. The sigil was completed and Sunset executed it.
It was impossible to see the night sky over their heads grow darker yet, but when it exploded into an array of lightning bolts that streaked out over the top of the ship in a dozen places it was impossible to ignore. Especially since one bolt of each struck one of the five women. In spite of the seizing electricity, the raw voltage was so strong that each one of them screamed out in pain from the feeling of the blasts before they were paralyzed. Each bolt was stronger than one of the Twilight’s normal ones, and had they been five normal women the one spell would have killed them.
As it was, each one fell to the deck of the ship like puppets with clipped strings. There was a burn mark on each one for where the lightning had passed into their bodies, and whoever wasn’t totally paralyzed or semi-conscious from the blast was soon writhing in agony from it.
Sunset’s hand nearly fell back to her side and she panted heavily. She had to take a moment to catch her breath before she managed to raise it again, before she glanced over the aftermath of her spell.
“Thought I would have made at least one of you a corpse with this kind of power…” she muttered as she held the estoc higher. “I’ll just have to hit you all ag-”
She was cut off as the ship gave a violent shudder, and, still looking winded, she stumbled so much that she nearly lost her balance. She spun around to see the reason why, only to notice how much had changed.
The Rising Sun was still a deathtrap for most of its crew. They had stopped trying to get out and most of the ones on deck were struggling to stay alive. The Nighttouched were literally ripping apart some of the ones who had been slowed and dragging others screaming to their fate. Some of the Prodigy’s crew was still able to fight back, but the ship continued to break up around them. Swarms of Nighttouched birds had joined the bats, including monstrous owls, who were tearing apart the wood of the upper deck to get inside with their huge talons. Most weapons had either been broken or were running out of ammunition. With no other move left, the Prodigy had pulled around to the stern of either ship and was struggling to fight back enough to get the crew members on board. In spite of the shaky docking, they were seizing on it. Snips was practically tossing Snails on board before wiggling himself over the banisters, while others were frantically trying to either claw their way on board or at least onto rigging or rails. The deck of the Legacy was almost clear of their former opponents by now, but the Rising Sun was a different story.
Sunset didn’t have a chance to shout at any of them, however, before something happened that did knock her off balance.
The Rising Sun gave out a massive groan and a loud whining as the entire airship violently rolled one way, and since it was still anchored to the Legacy that ship did much the same. Sunset had her feet yanked out from under her as she fell to the deck, but everyone else who was trying to escape was soon thrown off their feet as well. A pair of screams went out from two soldiers that had been trying to cross over but were suddenly yanked apart from the Prodigy and now fell in the space between the airships. Still others shouted desperately as the rest of the crew tried to seize them or hold on. Sunset focused on none of them; only on the source.
As the Rising Sun’s hull rolled, she could see the reason was a gigantic serpant’s head with an arrowhead beak was clamped onto one of the turbines. It was on such a long neck that it rose right out of the mists below with no body in sight. That wasn’t all, though. Three other heads just like it were hovering next to it. One was at a distance, while another was extending the coils of its neck around the airship and a fourth was rising up to seize it as well. A grinding and splintering noise echoed through the night from the massive damage being inflicted on the airship. The crew members still trapped on board were struggling to grab onto something, but some were already either falling to oblivion or being picked off by the swarm of Nighttouched.
As the Rising Sun kept getting dragged down, the Legacy began to be yanked down with it. Twilight went wide-eyed as she found herself suddenly beginning to slide along the deck toward the edge. She tried to move herself to grab onto something, but was still too stunned to get her limbs to reach out and grasp, and there was nothing about her anyway.
Suddenly, she felt a rough snap on her back before something dragged her to a halt. She looked up and behind her; spotting Spike had her collar in her teeth and was sprawling out his legs to try and keep her from going further. The one good mark of the roll of the ship is that it had finally snapped the door open to the ammunition hatch enough for him to wiggle his way out.
She quickly looked around to the others. Pinkie, fortunately, was already getting back to her feet, but the blast had knocked her senseless and now she was off balance and doing a crazy jig in an attempt to keep it. The others, on the other hand, weren’t moving. Rainbow Dash’s body slid up against the relief valves, but Applejack kept on sliding until the edge of her split armor caught on a broken plank. It was a tentative grip at best, and the airship deck continued to tilt more.
She heard a sliding beside her and looked. She saw Rarity’s body was sliding right past her. Gritting her teeth, she forced one of her arms up and lashed out to slap it down on her as she came. Her fingers could barely clutch, so she instead used her arm as a lever to try and pin her to the deck. She barely succeeded, but Spike gave out a small whimper as he now had to hold them both back with the deck still turning.
In spite of the tentative situation, Twilight called out. “Rarity! Rarity!”
She knew the role of the Magician was slightly more resilient than that of the Caster, and hoped it was enough for her to get her bearings. Fortunately, that seemed to be the case as her eyes slowly cracked open. Nevertheless, she looked dazzled and out of it, hardly recognizing what was happening to her. “Tw…Twilight…what…?”
“Focus on healing yourself! With Fluttershy gone, you’re our only hope now!”
She blinked and looked around a bit more, before her wits came back and she gasped. She looked at the airship, then back to her. “M-M-Merciful heavens… What is that ghastly-”
“Hurry! We don’t have long!”
“But…but you’re better at magic than me by far. I should heal-”
“No! You need to be up and healing the others! Hurry! Applejack is going to slip at any moment!”
The Magician looked and gaped again on seeing her situation. She quickly blinked and steadied herself. “Al…alright…”
Sunset, meanwhile, managed to regain her footing. Looking up, she glared at the monsters attacking the ship angrily. Her eyes blazed as her swords rose.
“You’ve ticked me off on the wrong day!”
Making a gesture with her estoc, she snapped it down and around, and in response a ribbon of fire drew itself across the sky before igniting into a fiery blaze that pierced the night. The bat creatures screeched and hissed as the flames and heat drove them back at last. Not wasting a minute, she quickly gestured again before driving her estoc forward. The sky rapidly churned about overhead, the air cooled, a rumble of thunder echoed, and finally a bolt of lightning streaked from the sky and struck the nearest serpentine head. It cracked its massive jaws wide and bellowed a deafening roar of agony before it faltered, sinking down and back into the darkness.
The other two heads immediately turned to Sunset. The nearest one hissed, and then opened it jaws wide and lashed out for the ship. She jumped to one side to evade it, and the effects of the Morning Glory caused it to abort some of its bite, but it still reached down and took a massive chunk out of the side of the Legacy. The ship rocked even more, and Twilight gasped as Applejack was knocked loose and slid further down along the ship. Her feet stopped her by propping along the edge of the railing, but now that was the only thing keeping her from oblivion.
“Hurry!”
“I’m trying!” Rarity cried back as her green aura began to spill over her. “This isn’t exactly the most constructive of circumstances!”
The next head swung around and tried to come at Sunset from the side, letting its momentum push it through the effect of the Morning Glory. In response, she snapped back again and let her longer rapier fly. Flesh was seared and blood splashed out on the deck, but as the monster reared its head back and bellowed in pain the screech was so loud that other people on the deck of the Rising Sun struggling to get to the edge faltered and clutched their ears in pain. The Prodigy, on its part, was still trying to readjust itself in parallel as another head swung for Sunset. She hissed and sliced off the end of its snout before making a more elaborate gesture with her estoc. A fling later, and a blade of air flew through the sky, made contact with its neck, and cut its head clean off.
The neck rapidly sank into the clouds, but the head flew through the air a moment before coming down; knocking itself against the edge of the Legacy. That was too much. Not only did everyone bend over more and Twilight and Spike began to lose their footing, but Applejack’s feet disengaged and slid over the edge. The rest of her body soon followed.
“No!” Rarity cried, breaking off her spell and quickly letting go of Twilight’s hand. The mage was shocked, but was too late to grasp her again as she slid down to the edge after Applejack. She managed to reach her as she was going over, and quickly reached out with one hand while she drew her sword with the other. It seemed she hoped to embed it as an anchor, but it was too late for that. Instead, she cried out as she grabbed Applejack’s hand only to go over the edge with her. Twilight nearly shrieked on seeing both of them go under the railing and out…
But, fortunately, Rarity had still extended her sword and caught it as a cross bar over the railing and one of its support rods. It held, just barely, and the two women were left dangling over the slanted rail.
The Prodigy had just managed to pull itself alongside the Rising Sun and began to try and unload the struggling people from it as two new heads rose from the abyss. One of them joined the other wrapped around the turbine for a better grip, while the second moved perpendicular to the one sporting a large gash and both began to snap away at Sunset from two sides at once. At her current power, Twilight thought it would have been nothing for her to deal with both of them together, yet she grit her teeth, sweat, and strained to swing her sword between the two of them and batter them back. The effect of the Morning Glory kept them from being able to attack her full force, but even with her constantly opening a slash on either one she was having a progressively harder time holding them back.
As one darted its head in, she scowled before snapping her sword around and thrusting it out; impaling its blade into its nose. It reared back in pain before she snapped around and advanced on the head incoming from the other side. Before it could snap at her, she ducked under its jaw and used her estoc to slice open the side of its neck. She must have struck a major vessel, for immediately blood erupted out from the wound and it spasmed back violently. She was about to aim a spell at it when she cringed in pain; the result of two more roars bellowing deafeningly nearby.
She turned and spotted two new heads rising from the clouds below them. They immediately focused on her and bared their teeth. Yet moments later, a wet ripping sound came from below them just audible enough for Twilight to hear. After that, two more heads, both glistening with some sort of fluid, raised into the sky as well.
Twilight, still slowly sliding down the deck, gasped. “A hydra…it’s like a hydra…”
Sunset glared at it a moment more before her fury seemed to redouble. Her aura began to flare. As the four serpentine heads began to advance, along with the ones that were already damaged, she finally held her estoc out and began to draw a far more vivid and elaborate symbol with it; one gleaming like electrum. The sky began to churn and rumble anew.
Realizing what she was doing, Twilight looked down to ship below, then back up to her. “No! Don’t!”
Too late. Crying out in anger and fury, she drove her estoc into the symbol and executed it. At once, the sky over the Rising Sun filled with light as a shower of no less than twelve different lightning bolts rent the heavens and stormed down on the monsters below. Each one of the heads was struck with such violence that Twilight saw the bolts pierce them like they were spears or lances. However, that wasn’t all.
Two of the bolts shot down and impaled survivors. Twilight doubted any of them could have survived this new, stronger lightning. These people had no chance. Most of the other bolts either struck the deck and smashed it in partially or hit nothing. One bolt, however, struck the ice blocking the upper hatch…
A blast thundered from out of the Rising Sun as all of the steam conduits that had been frozen shut by the move burst. The cooled steam inside them had suddenly superheated from the bolt, and the resulting pressure was too much for them. It looked almost like miniature geysers as the upper hatch blew in half to the tune of multiple jets of steam.
In response, the propellers on the ship slowed,and the Rising Sun began to sink.
Twilight cried out as the deck was yanked even more, causing both her and Spike to go into a slide. Rarity cried out as well as her sword shifted. Eyes filled with panic, she looked below her at Applejack, still unconscious, and the long nothingness under it. Gasping a few times, she grit her teeth and began to speak. Twilight could barely make out arcane words; realizing she was trying to heal Applejack now to get her support, but she couldn’t focus on that. She was coming closer to sliding off the edge herself. It would only take a few more seconds…
Just as she feared the worse, however, a new sound began to ring through the air: the humming of the crossbar.
All of the hydra’s heads had fallen back to the ground by now, save for those wrapped around the Rising Sun’s turbines. They now gave angry hisses before sliding off and sinking back into the darkness. The bats swarming the deck screeched one last time before they moved as a unified wave and flew away. All other Nighttouched swarming the ship flew off as well.
Once they left, the deck of the ship rose again and leveled enough to stop Twilight and Spike’s slide, but it didn’t right itself all together. They were still tethered to the Rising Sun, and with each passing moment its engines were beginning to whine louder. Steam was continuing to escape and the propellers were continuing to slow. Worse yet, the eruption from the shaft had to have ruptured the main air sac, and the ship was already too overrun for any engineers to try and help it. By now the crew was either madly struggling to get to the top deck, trapped inside by bottlenecks or the blast that destroyed the upper hatch, or already killed by Nighttouched.
The Prodigy had only managed to get five people on board before the new lurch, and its crew was struggling to lower itself again, but the Rising Sun was falling almost as fast as they were descending to meet it and the people who were still alive weren’t able-bodied enough to get to the other ship fast enough. Twilight struggled to get herself up in spite of her pain while she could, only to find soon after that the Legacy was giving a mighty groan and starting to lean again.
They were still tethered by the remaining skyhook, and by now it looked as if it would either rip out part of the ship or drag them down along with the Rising Sun.
Sunset was sweating now. She looked dizzy as she stepped back, nearly losing her footing again from the trailing ship. She panted with every move she made. Just as she began to stabilize herself and turn back to the others, a pop went out from the falling Rising Sun and the engines slowed further. She gave a cry as she was nearly knocked off of her feet again from the ship sloping once more.
When that happened, she grit her teeth in growing pain as well as frustration. She looked over the side, seeing the Rising Sun continuing to fall, and the Prodigy still chasing it, then back to the skyhook that was still attached. She glanced between the two for a moment.
Twilight saw her, even as she struggled to keep herself from sliding again. “Sunset?”
The woman let out a long sigh. She began to raise her estoc.
“What are you doing?”
She quickly performed a gesture and aimed the point at the skyhook chain. She thrust into the sigil soon after.
Twilight’s eyes widened. “You can’t!”
A moment later, a ball of fire materialized right on the chain and quickly condensed and burned so brightly it became blinding. Under such intense heat, the iron began to gleam and deform. She kept focusing for several seconds; long enough for the crew of the Prodigy to notice a light coming up from the Legacy even as they kept descending. They never had a chance to think of a message let alone send one.
The chain began to melt and, as soon as it did, the already-tremendous strain was enough to break it all together. In a snap, the deck of the Legacy suddenly twisted up and righted itself violently. Twilight gasped and tried looking to Rarity and Applejack, but soon had herself to worry about as they violently rocked back the way they had come before the deck rolled back and forth several times; threatening to throw people off in either direction each time before stabilizing. For several seconds all she could do was throw herself on the deck and struggle to wait it out.
When she was able to look again, she looked at Sunset. Remarkably enough, in spite of her strength, the woman had been thrown to one knee and was only now forcing herself up again and looking over the edge. Twilight, as in pain as she was, forced her own body up enough to start to rise.
She couldn’t see all of what Sunset could; namely that, without the anchor to the Legacy, the Rising Sun was now plummeting. The engines and airbag, already taxed to the point of failure, now began to blow out all together as it picked up speed. Even if the ship could level itself off now, it was leaving the range of the Morning Glory again and falling into the dark world below. Distant and muted, Twilight could hear the sounds of screams faintly for a moment before they vanished. Soon it was gone.
The Prodigy was left still hovering there—no longer trying to dive. They couldn’t help the other ship now and they knew it. It simply hovered; what crew members were left on board looking up and out at the deck of the Legacy. In the night, they still saw the gleaming end of the last skyhook and Sunset forcing herself up and gleaming with a bright aura.
With a groan, Twilight finally got to her feet. She could see enough over the edge to make our not only the Prodigy but Sunset’s underlings on deck, including Snips and Snails. They were staring at Sunset in shock, but only for a time. As the seconds slowly passed realization began to come over them as well. Sunset hardly noticed, still panting and wiping sweat from her forehead.
Finally the looks turned cold.
Even angry.
About fifteen seconds later, without a signal, the clacking of their rudder was heard. Not long after their engines began to rev. This finally got her to look up. “What…?”
As she looked out, the ship began to turn away from the Legacy.
“What…what are you doing?”
The engines increased in power, and soon the ship was moving forward and away.
“Where are you going? I didn’t give the order, you idiots!”
At this point, no one was facing her anymore and the airship was pulling away and picking up speed.
“Get back here! You’re the only ship left!” she screamed at them. “I’m still on deck over here!”
“I think they know that.”
Sunset snapped around, in spite of the fact it seemed to make her dizzier, and found Twilight weakly standing and staring at her.
“They just don’t care.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You just showed them you don’t care what happens to them so long as you get what you want,” Twilight coldly retorted. “You saw your own subordinates suffering and dying and all you cared about was that they could drag you down with them. You have all that power and all you did was stand there and let them die!”
Sunset sneered as she pointed her estoc at her. “So you’re actually stupid enough to feel pity for your enemies?” She began to draw a sigil. “Then get ready to feel a lot of pity for me!”
Twilight tensed up on seeing the sigil she was making, but Sunset only got halfway through it before she heard a snarl. She spun to the source, only to see Spike lunge at her and clamp his jaws down on her extended arm. Her eyes widened in shock and pain as he yanked it down, twisting and driving his teeth in. Even with her enhanced power it hurt her, and she couldn’t complete her spell with him clamped on her wrist.
She cried out and writhed a moment, struggling to twist around and shake him loose. “Get off me! Get off me, you damn dog!” Finally, too frustrated, she raised her rapier and smashed the metal knob of it down on the dog’s head. With a yelp, he released and fell to the ground.
“Spike!” Twilight cried, trying to step forward, but still feeling her body wracked with pain. She struggled to raise her own wand, but Sunset, sporting some bloody teeth marks on her wrist, was still the better as she turned to her. She started to raise her estoc again…
Suddenly, a metal pipe, looking like a broken railing, looped around her neck before being driven back so sharply that Sunset gagged. As she choked, she was yanked back off of her feet and held in the air. Twilight was stunned a moment, until she looked over her shoulder and saw the source.
Applejack, freshly healed from Rarity, was holding her back with everything she had.
“Hit her! Hit her now with everything ya’ got!”
Moments later, Sunset, getting over her initial shock, began to squirm wildly in Applejack’s grip. By keeping her feet off the ground and the pipe around her neck, Applejack kept her from being able to stab her or get the leverage of the ground to force herself loose, but it was clear the farmer was struggling to hold her steady as she went red-faced. Twilight glanced about. Rarity had pushed herself back on deck, but her healing of Applejack must have exhausted her mana as she was still trying to get up; using her saber as a crutch. Spike wasn’t even moving. That left her.
Applejack let out a groan. “I said…hit her! I…can’t…hold her!”
“I can’t!” Twilight shouted back as she kept her wand aimed. “My mana’s running out and I can’t hit her without hitting you!”
“I got it!”
Hearing the familiar voice, Twilight spun around. She only caught a glimpse of a blur shooting past her along with a wind that nearly threw off her hat before she saw Fluttershy, staff in hand and sweating from having run all the way, coming away from where Rainbow Dash had been and running over to Pinkie Pie. Realizing what that meant, she spun back around just as she sky let out another thunderclap from Dash driving a full speed punch deep into Sunset’s gut.
The woman’s eyes bulged as she gasped, what air she could get expelled from her lungs. She weakened a little from the hit, but not nearly enough to stop her all together. Nevertheless, she was too weak to use her swords right away, so Dash quickly beat away at her for all she was worth. She dug her fists into her again and again every place in her stomach there wasn’t bone. In spite of how powerful she had become, the strain and trauma coupled with the hits was too much for her. Her face showed visible pain with each blow that landed.
Using the moment, Twilight took a deep breath and tried her best to steel herself. She kept her grip on her wand and began to chant another spell, but held it off for the right time. As for Sunset, she kept taking the hits for a moment, before her face twisted into fresh fury. Crying out in a pained gag, she swung one leg up and caught Dash under the chin as she tried to move in again. In spite of the Hunstman’s power and durability, the blow was even louder than her own strikes and she was knocked back to the ground.
As Dash grunted and began to rise again, Sunset herself brought her arms forward, meaning to use her sword or estoc on her, only to see that her hands were empty. She would have spat a curse if she wasn’t being choked, while Pinkie, nearby, grinned and waved with one hand while holding her weapons with the other. Sunset didn’t have long to fume. At that moment, Rarity got up. Raising her saber and bracing it with both hands, she ran right at Sunset with the tip aimed for her heart.
For a brief moment, genuine fear came over Sunset’s face before she did the only thing she had left: she snapped her hands up and pressed them around the sword in a blade catch. It wasn’t quite fast enough. Although she managed to clasp her hands around it, the tip still pierced her clothes and the flesh underneath. She was left pinching the blade aimed right over her heart as red fluid slowly started to stain the white parts of her outfit. Her face, tight with tension as well as rage and pain, held as best as she could as Rarity leaned herself fully into the weapon to try and force it in the rest of the way.
She was thwarted for a moment more, before Dash got back up. She spat out a mouthful of blood and rubbed her cracked lips, then darted in and began to hook into Sunset’s already-hurt side. Now the woman’s face really did contort in pain. Applejack was gagging and restraining her, Rarity was struggling to impale her, Dash was pounding her without restraint, and the exhaustion and stamina loss was taking its toll. She kept sweating and gasping more and more in the midst of the assault.
Finally, she let out a cry and made her move. Still yelling, she forced Rarity’s blade out of her chest and flung it to one side before snapping her hand around and backhanding Dash so hard she spun around twice before being sent back to the deck. She reached out and seized Rarity by the scarf while she was stunned from the move and smashed her in the face, knocking her a quarter of the way across the deck, then forced her feet down at last to give her the leverage to swung back and smash her head into Applejack’s. It was hard enough for her to not only go reeling back but both of her nostrils to gush blood. Finally, she used her fingers to draw a quick symbol and executed it; letting out a biting, potent wind blast so strong it struck Pinkie like a cannonball before bowling her away farther than Rarity.
She finally spun to Twilight, but it was too late. She had been waiting for this and executed her sigil. In response, a storm of biting, freezing, razor-sharp ice crystals flew out of her wand and right into her eyes. Sunset cried out and closed them, but even crying out caused some of them to fly in her already tender throat and gag. It left her exposed, and Twilight followed that up by sending out a solid ball of ice straight for her forehead. With all of the pain and exhaustion she had already endured, the blow snapped her head back.
While it drove Twilight into pain to follow it up, she shifted her wand to the remaining skyhook. She grit her teeth and trembled as she extended her aura over it, before plucking it right out of the deck. She swung it back like a pendulum, and as Sunset looked up she gave a yell of her own before swinging it back and smashing it full force into her.
Unable to brace herself or deal with the inerta, Sunset was knocked back off of her feet and flung through the air before smashing into the side of the upper hatch on the Legacy; hard enough to be bashed partially through it before the anchor’s teeth pinned her inside.
The echo of the last bit of magic died down, and Twilight gasped and panted as she nearly lost her footing. The airship was silent for a few moments save for the engine sounds. Pinkie managed to spring back up to her feet soon and helped Rarity up, right before Fluttershy quickly ran over to them and started to heal both. As for Applejack, she snorted, wiped the blood off of her nose, and then picked up another piece of wood to form a fresh sheleighlah. Dash herself was wavering a bit, but she managed to get back to her feet and put her fists up.
Twilight could barely hold her wand straight, but she kept it aimed at the partially wrecked upper hatchway. As she expected, Sunset was both alive and conscious, but she was sweating all over, bruised and cut in a few spots, and gasping as she struggled to move the anchor.
“What…what’s…what’s going on…? I…I should be…be mopping…the floor with you six…”
“You have no one to blame for that but yourself,” Twilight flatly answered.
“What…?”
“You said it yourself: you never bothered using your other roles and your other Anima Viris. You never needed to. Well…I don’t know about you, but none of us just ‘mastered’ our Anima Viris in a day or two. We had to practice and get used to what we could do with them. That’s why you’re still only using spells Celestia taught you rather than anything new in that form. They’re stronger, but they’re nothing new.”
Sunset paused, still panting, but realized what she was saying.
“You have four powerful spirits running through you at once and your body’s not used to it. You’re already burning yourself out just from using it a little, aren’t you? You admired all the power you had and you thought it meant you didn’t need anyone, but you never earned it. You stole it from people who had. And now you’re alone with powers you can’t control.”
Sunset snorted. “You got a smartass answer for everything, don’t you? Maybe instead of lecturing me, you should have finished me off before I could do this.”
Eyes blazing to life, Sunset stretched her hand skyward.
“Member of my house, I command you to come to me! Strongest of Fighters—Rockhoof!”
This time the eruption of power was so great Twilight felt she had been struck with something when the resulting wind erupted from Sunset. She thought she heard the skyhook go flying but she couldn’t be sure; more concerned with her own fate. She felt herself fly away for several seconds before an arm seized her, and after that she shielded her face as her hat was blown away and her cloak nearly torn off. The noise that came from Sunset was deafening for several seconds before it diminished enough for her to open her eyes again.
The others had likewise nearly been blown back. Spike had at least managed to get up and hobble to Twilight’s side, though. Applejack was nearly thrown off the railing all over again, and Rarity was standing behind Dash (the one who had caught her) gasping as she had used her as a windbreak. Pinkie was clutching Fluttershy’s hand, who apparently was slowly lowering to the ground after having nearly been forced off the ship too.
She couldn’t concentrate on them long. Her eyes were on the upper hatchway, which, by now, had ignited into flame from the cast-off power of equipping five Anima Viris at once. Walking out from the midst of the ruin was a shadow with gleaming eyes. Neither Twilight nor the others could help but stare in growing fear as she emerged. Spike let out an audible whine and cringed closer to Twilight as she became visible.
Sunset was now clad in a suit of armor like a proper knight, only the pieces were black, cruel, sharp, and edged. They looked more like twisted metal shards pieced together to give her something deadly-looking to even wear. Somehow she had rearmed, for she was trailing behind her a monstrous greatsword as cruel looking as her suit. Even the clothing beneath the armor looked like it was intentionally tattered, giving the impression of something war-torn and, more importantly, used to slaying in battle.
Her twisted helmet had a pair of horns protruding with sharp tips from the back of it, and her visor, which was drawn back, gave the appearance of a crow or raven. Her face was still visible, panting harder than ever now. She was sweating freely and her body twitched every now and then, yet she still forced herself to walk forward. Her blade began to emit an aura of its own, only this one seemed to be raw darkness. Almost like the same darkness that came from Light Eaters.
Lastly, her hand was blazing with all five sigils, and so bright that even from a distance Twilight could make out the emblem on it. It was one she had never seen before, but she could translate what the symbol denoted.
Draconian.
“Ok…” Sunset seethed in between gasps, “now I’m pissed.”
“So…” Dash spoke up in a near whisper behind Twilight, “how many spells would you say you have left?”
“About three… Two if one of them is really big…”
“I’m…afraid I’m out, darlings,” Rarity spoke, still behind Dash and swallowing. “What do we do?”
“The only thing we can.”
A moment later, Twilight stepped forward, raised her wand, performed a sigil for another sphere of wind, and then sent it sailing into Sunset’s middle. As wavering as Sunset was and as exhausted as she looked, she hoped it would be enough to do something to her in spite of her new power.
No such luck. She answered by swinging her large sword right at it with the flat side of her blade. In spite of the fact it was no more than wind, on striking it the dark aura seemed to flare, and in the night sky Twilight almost thought she could see it snaking around in tendrils like black lightning. She grunted and shifted the blade all the way to one side; sending the sphere flying out into the night sky.
As shocking, and unsettling, as that was it didn’t stop the others. Instantly they all rushed in at her together.
Both Dash and Applejack came from either side, one swinging her fist and the other swinging her new club. She raised either arm to block them. To Dash’s shock, her gauntlet not only stopped her fist cold but she registered visible pain on driving her hand into the jagged metal. Applejack’s own attempt to smash her over the head was blocked by the cross of her fat blade. A moment later, she hissed through her teeth before swinging her arms back. Her sword easily caught Applejack’s weapon and flung it away; ripping it out of her hands to fast that the farmer yelled in pain. Her other hand attempted to cuff Dash again, but this time the Disciple didn’t stand for it. She darted underneath the blow and quickly shot inward, smashing her fists three times into Sunset’s stomach.
Unfortunately, each thunderous punch only drove Dash into greater pain, and when she was done the armor was intact but her knuckles were bloody. Looking up in a mix of astonishment as well as pain, she stared at Sunset a moment before snapping her fist back and driving it into her exposed face.
Yet as her hand slowly peeled off, the only thing she had done was stain it with some of her blood; leaving Sunset devilishly smirking at her.
Dash was frozen in shock for a moment, before she peeled her hand back and took another swing. This time, however, Sunset moved her gauntlet out and caught it with ease. Her hand tightened in a crushing grip, enough to where all four knuckles popped instantly. Dash’s face tightened in pain as she began to twist, and it rapidly began to escalae into agony…
Until Applejack sprung on her other side. Not only had she recovered, but she had discarded eschewed another broken plank for a section of railing; which had turned into an iron baton in her grip. She swung it with both hands with all of her might for Sunset’s exposed neck joint. The woman’s feet didn’t even shift, but her head did go down slightly and she grit her teeth in irritation. She drove her hand clutching Dash’s fist to smash her in the face with her own blow, knocking her sprawling again, and shrugged off Applejack’s second smack across her face as she put her hand on her sword and snapped her arms around. For the second time in moments, Applejack found herself disarmed—this time by the sword cleaving through her weapon and nearly through her chest. She peeled back in alarm, only for Sunset to aim the sword at her again and slice out once more; this time raking it across her thighs. Although she struggled to pull back, she shouted as two bloody gashes were ripped across them, before she fell back to the ground and sprawled out.
She nearly followed up for another hit, when a stream of goop nailed her right in the eyes—courtesy of Pinkie Pie bringing up her stolen weapon again. Cursing, she began to rub for them as best as she could, only showing the slightest slow-down in movement from the magical effects, but even as she did Rarity used the moment to dart in with her reclaimed saber. Taking aim at her side, she put both hands on the blade and thrust it inward…only to gasp as the durability of the armor plus her body caused it to bend only slightly from the force of the thrust before snapping the blade all together.
It was enough to at least make her wince, and as a result she swung her blade around and overhead to try and cleave Rarity in half. The woman gasped and scurried back as the sword came down and cleaved the deck in two where she had stood, before she threw her broken sword aside and ran away. Sunset clawed the last bit of goop out of her eyes she needed to see; only to watch both Twilight and Fluttershy rush at her together. They were both going for Dash, but Fluttershy was holding her hand and staff on Twilight as she ran to try and heal her at the same time. Quickly, she brandished her blade and rushed out to meet them, going past Dash to insert herself in front of the Hunstman and raising her blade behind her head.
Yet in her desperation, she didn’t see Twilight, through her own sweat and pain, finish preparing a spell with her own wand. She held it up a moment later and executed it. Nothing big or flashy this time. Nothing but a wad of green, bubbling fluid appearing on the tip of her wand before it was flung through the air and right against Sunset’s chest. Nevertheless, she went wide-eyed on seeing it hit her; splashing across her before it immediately soaked through her armor and onto the woman beneath.
Sunset’s face began to pale as her stamina loss seemed to double. Enough to where she actually couldn’t finish her swing and had to lower her weapon momentarily. Bullets of sweat now ran down her cheeks and chin. Twilight stood her ground in spite of her own exhausted state, quivering as she tried a follow-up spell. Fluttershy used the fact Sunset focused on her to quickly go for Dash.
“Magical fever…you little worm…” Sunset half-muttered, half-gasped. “Trying to make me lose through attrition…”
She heaved a moment longer before she suddenly took off for Twilight. Before the mage could even react, she gasped and cut off her incantation as she felt a gauntlet wrap around her throat in a crushing grip. Sunset’s powerful strength forced her down to her knees like she was nothing more than a rag doll.
“Too bad even me weakened is still enough to crush a bug…”
Twilight managed to feebly grasp one hand on the gauntlet clutching her throat, but she couldn’t focus on chanting a spell. Her eyes were fearfully on the hand holding the blade.
It didn’t fall. Before Sunset could make a move of any kind, a pink blur darted behind her. A moment later, her visor, disconnected, suddenly slammed down over her eyes.
“Wh…what?! Damnit!”
Practically snarling, she released Twilight’s throat and grasped for her visor. However, it didn’t end there. A moment later, Pinkie was popping up all around her, using her knife to dart in again and again. With each cut, another tiny scrap of her armor was removed. First one on her boot, then one on her side, then one on her shoulder, and so on.
Finally, she let out an angry shout as she swung her blade around in a wide arc. Twilight fell back just to try and avoid it, but the force of the slice was enough to catch Pinkie and force her back. Yanking her visor free all together, Sunset snapped to her and quickly readied her blade to thrust while she was still off balance.
She didn’t get the chance. Giving a yell of her own, Applejack used one arm to yank herself forward to her exposed boot. She hadn’t had the chance to rearm herself, but she still had half of the severed pipe in her other hand. She used the moment to drive it down into the space of the exposed armor with all of her might. Sunset’s angry look suddenly stretched out further, and she froze in her spot as she gave an audible cry of pain.
Twilight, stilling herself, began to raise her wand to try and generate another symbol while Applejack continued to drive her hand in as deeply as she could. As Pinkie regained her balance and Dash grunted and struggled to rise again, Sunset swung her blade out for her feet. The farmer was forced to break off and pull back, but still cried out again and cradled her hand to her chest a moment later. It was split across the middle and fountaining out blood. However, Sunset didn’t follow up for the next blow. Instead, just as Pinkie was readying the same goop as before, she dashed past the Warrior and seized the Rogue by the wrist. The woman froze in alarm, and Sunset gnashed her teeth as she tightened her grip and compressed the nozzle like it was no more than newspaper in her hands. Pinkie began to curl and wince in pain in her grip, and a moment later Sunset brought up her sword again to strike her down.
She was stopped when the thunder of gunpowder went off, snapping her head back like it was yanked on a string. A spurt of blood traced through the air as she staggered back. Twilight gasped, realizing she had actually been shot at. She spun her head around just long enough to see that Rarity hadn’t gone far; just enough to grab one of the discarded conventional sidearms from the former crew of the Legacy. She looked back at Sunset soon after, wondering, for a moment, if that had actually done the job.
She had not. The woman regained her footing, lowering her head to reveal a bloody gash alongside one of her eyes, but no more. She was strong enough to where the bullet had bounced off. More fury and rage was in her eyes as she stabilized herself…
The air was pierced by Dash’s cry as she nearly threw herself at her, swinging her legs up and catching her under the chin with both feet in a double kick. That shouldn’t have been enough to do much to her, but at her current weakness it was enough to send her staggering back again. Twilight saw her stumble all the way to the railing. For a moment, her shoulder actually passed over the edge. Seeing a sliver of a chance, she quickly resumed her incantation. In spite of the strain it almost immediately put her into, she struggled for the advanced spell again.
Unfortunately she didn’t have time. Sunset stopped herself when she was only halfway through the emblem, and when her eyes opened they were filled with the most violence yet.
“That’s…IT!”
For a brief moment, Twilight saw the darkness exuding from Sunset’s blade grow stronger yet, until it was pouring off of it like a dark mist, as she held the blade straight in the air. She had just enough time to realize something bad was about to happen before it exploded off of the blade and swept over all six ladies together.
Twilight’s spell broke again, as did her thoughts of the fight with Sunset, the other girls, or the ship. All she could focus on a moment later was feeling cold, stabbing, twisting pain permeate every square inch of her body. She wasn’t sure if she screamed. She certainly tried to, but her lungs were no less agonized than her arms, her legs, her head, her guts, and even her heartbeats. She assumed she had to have screamed because through the horrible agony she thought she heard the other five girls scream too. It was like the lifeblood in her veins was being wrung out of her everywhere at once. Her eyes burned so much that her vision blackened, and she barely sensed the feeling of her body collapsing to the deck through it all.
She wasn’t sure when it subsided. She still felt agonized, like every part of her had been run through a wringer. Yet her eyes finally cleared enough to see herself on the deck again. The wave of darkness was gone or at least back into Sunset’s sword. Everyone around her had collapsed, although she couldn’t move her head or even her eyes to see everything. What she clearly saw, however, was Applejack sprawled out and Pinkie Pie nearby.
Something else, more unexpected, was also there. Sunset was falling to one knee. She spread out her own blade to use as a crutch, but even then she nearly collapsed. She was hissing worse than every now…gasping even. Like she had nearly been drowned. She craned her head upward, raggedly breathing, and Twilight saw she was white as a sheet. For a moment, the veins and arteries running through her face darkened so much she could actually see them through her skin, and the light in her eyes dimmed when her pupils shrank into pinpricks. Whatever move she had just done it had hurt her too. And weakened as she was, it looked like it had nearly hurt her even more. She didn’t even look like she could stand.
A few minutes passed, but slowly Twilight began to feel again. Her fingers felt enough relief to start moving again and she was able to look around more. She could see Dash starting to squirm a little on the ground, and while she couldn’t see Rarity or Fluttershy, she could hear both of them behind her. However, Sunset’s breathing had evened out in spite of being deep and exhausted, and the light in her eyes was coming back. She was starting to push herself up again.
Twilight swallowed. Even the thought of a spell began to give her a splitting headache, but she slowly clenched her fingers and felt her wand was still in them. Biting down, crying out and almost tearing from the pain, she forced her hand to clench around it. She struggled to get her wrist to move afterward, but it was agony not only for the spell but to even move it. She barely began to lift her head off the ground and start performing the first gesture when Dash managed to roll over onto all fours. She heard sharper breathing behind her. Maybe Fluttershy was coming…
Yet in the midst of all that, Sunset rose to both feet at last. She saw her look around once, then scowl once again before her eyes looked at her feet. Pinkie Pie was there and still out of it. Straining and struggling all the way, looking like the move was hurting her and taxing her stamina, she reached out and seized her hair just as Dash started to push herself up. Yanking back sharply, she hoisted her head off the ground by the scalp and swung her blade to rest against her neck.
“Stop!”
By now, Applejack was able to look up as well, and Twilight assumed the others were the same. She had only performed the first three traces for her own sigil when she froze. The deck was silent save for the heavy breathing.
“This has gone on long enough! Weapons down! Stand down now or I take her head off!”
No one moved. Twilight could only see Dash and Applejack, but both of them looked nervous as Pinkie continued to hang limp from her poofy hair.
Sunset’s eyes narrowed. Her blade suddenly went in, and Twilight gasped as she saw Pinkie’s blood suddenly well up along the edge of her sword. Applejack recoiled to sudden life and Dash nearly made a move.
“You think I’m joking?! Now!”
Everyone halted. Applejack’s teeth clenched. Dash inhaled and exhaled a few times. Finally, she relaxed. Applejack tossed her now-bloody scrap of pipe away. Behind her, she heard Fluttershy’s staff and Rarity’s own weapon clatter to the ground. At that, Sunset’s eyes turned to the mage.
“You too, Twilight.”
She swallowed on realizing she noticed, while her hand was on the ground, her first three sigils were still in the air. It had taken her a lot of focus to make those, so she winced as she swung her wand to one side to sweep them away.
Sunset actually looked worn out just from yelling, and took a long blink. Dash didn’t have the chance to use it before her eyes opened again and she motioned to the ruined upper hatchway. “Get this ship on the ground. You got five minutes before I cut her throat.”
Twilight began to straighten up a bit more as the other girls looked back tensely. “You…you ruined the hatch…” she heard Rarity speak up. “It’ll take us some time to dig it out-”
“Then you better get started, shouldn’t you? Less than five minutes now.”
Dash gave her a deadly look before she reluctantly began to step backward. Sunset flashed her eyes to Applejack next. The farmer looked like she wanted to strangle her but began to drag her body back. She looked up and behind her afterward, motioning with her head. “I said now. Move it!”
Twilight looked behind her as she pushed herself up more to see Rarity, far more timidly and readily, back off and begin to move to the half-smashed hatchway. Dash did the same, never taking her eyes off of Sunset. She only got to watch them a moment, however, before she felt a metal edge drive itself on her own hand hard enough to break one of her carpals.
Twilight’s eyes bulged and she cried out in pain. She wheeled back around as she sprawled back on the deck, seeing that Sunset had dragged Pinkie over to her, still by the scalp, and had just smashed her hand with one of her iron boots.
As soon as she spun back on her, however, Sunset planted the same boot on her chest. She instantly began to smash down; hard enough to make each one of Twilight’s ribs feel like they were bending to the breaking point. She was soon writhing and clutching for it, but unable to pull it off.
“I hope you thought all of this was worth it…Twilight…” she seethed, her voice growing weak between gasps again. “You know…I was considering letting you live after all this… But seeing as you decided to make this so difficult…I think it’s clear you’ll be a pain in my neck even after I’m a god…”
Twilight didn’t answer. She only stared on at her, mind trying to think of a way out of this. Sunset continued to stare a little longer, before she once again looked up. Her look turned into a frown again.
“What are you looking at…?”
Twilight was confused, before she too turned her head. While the rest of the girls were falling back, Fluttershy, unarmed, cringing and nearly drawing beneath her hood and robe, was still standing there. The noise that Sunset had made, however, prompted the others to pause and look back.
After a moment, Fluttershy looked away. She cringed more and swallowed. Twilight almost swore she could see her knees knocking.
“Shouldn’t you be helping your little friends…? Or are you trying to say you want a piece of me…?”
Fluttershy didn’t answer. She kept cringing.
In spite of her weakness, Sunset let out a chuckle. “That’s a laugh… What’s a Healer going to do…? Make my wounds sting…? If you’re going to do something…hurry up and do it… I’m getting sick of looking at you…”
Fluttershy swallowed deeply. She said something but it was so soft that no one could hear it. From where Twilight lay, however, she could read her lips: “I have no choice”.
She trembled only a moment longer, before she snapped her head up, let her hood fly back, and stared directly into Sunset’s eyes.
Twilight had not seen Fluttershy’s eyes the night of the trip down the river. Even now, she wasn’t looking right at her, but she could see that something had changed about her. It was impossible to say what or how, but the look that she gave radiated a power that was not only unusual for Fluttershy but was something else all together. Something that made her own limbs seize and her own thoughts almost muddle.
Most importantly, something that even Sunset’s own power couldn’t overwhelm.
The sneer and exhaustion alike almost instantly vanished from her face. Confusion…and surprise…replaced it. “Wh…what…?”
“Let her go.”
Sunset’s face contorted a little at that, before it tightened in irritation. “What are you…?”
“Let her go.”
Again, her face contorted, making her even more upset that before. Twilight saw her eyelids sag, as if she was trying to shut them. However, she couldn’t do it. They popped open again a bit later. Straining, she tried to turn her head away. “How…how are you…?! This…this doesn’t make…!”
Fluttershy herself began to tremble again. It looked like she too was starting to strain. “Let her go.”
“You…you little…”
“Let her go…now.”
Involuntarily, Sunset’s hand relaxed. Pinkie fell to the deck. However, Sunset immediately shifted her now-free hand to the hilt of her sword. The darkness began to gather on it again.
“Stop!” Fluttershy shouted.
Sunset froze in her place, still holding onto her sword, but going no further. The darkness kept exuding off of it, however, and she was straining again. Her eyes continued to try and shut while her head kept trying to look away.
“Step back!”
Twilight felt the pressure on her chest lessen, but Sunset let out a strained grunt before she snapped back. “…No!”
“Step back!”
“No!” her grip began to tighten on the blade. The darkness on it rippled a moment.
Fluttershy began to let out a strained noise of her own. She was shaking more all the time. “Twi…Twilight…” she meekly called. “I…I can’t…hold…”
The pressure began to waver on her chest, stepping on and back. Sunset was struggling to exert control, and the more she struggled the more of the edge she got. She tried to close her eyes again and got halfway before she was stopped this time. Her body began to twist more and more, forcing itself to start looking away from Fluttershy.
There was no time. Although her own head was on fire and she was past her limit, Twilight reached back down and grasped her wand with her unbroken hand. Even moving was agony now, but she raised it again and pointed at Sunset. The woman struggled more than ever now. She knew what was coming, and now she was racing to get free. Twilight herself took a deep breath and began to chant her largest spell again.
This time, it was torture. Every stroke she made was a forced, concerted effort. It felt like a nail was being driven into her head with each mark. She grew dizzier with each gesture as she felt her body stretch and strain under the power. She tried to do it as fast as she could as Sunset kept squirming and freeing herself. Somehow, she managed to draw the first few lines. She proceeded past the others, each one becoming more agonizing than the last until she barely knew how she was keeping conscious…
But two lines before completion, it broke. Sunset finally shut her eyes. The moment she did, she bellowed in rage and swung her blade out in Fluttershy’s direction. None of the darkness came off of it, but it didn’t matter. Even the force of the swing was enough to send out a force strong enough to sweep her off of her feet and knock her to the deck. Immediately, Sunset raised her sword again as she had before. In spite of the fact she looked barely balanced, she let the darkness coalesce around it. Through her own semi-consciousness, Twilight’s look turned to hopeless defeat.
Before Sunset could release it, a purple and green blur moved in front of her. Spike, seeing his opportunity at last, dashed forward and leapt. He didn’t go for a biting lunge this time. Instead, he simply threw his body and pounced against her with his front paws extended.
This shouldn’t have been enough to even make Sunset flinch normally, but everything else had taken its toll. In spite of her best efforts the dog striking and bouncing off of her was enough to knock her off balance. She actually stumbled and let her sword falter.
That was all Twilight needed. Forcing out the last two strokes, she drove her wand into the center of it and spoke the arcane incantation.
Sunset regained her balance only to look back at Twilight and see her body once again igniting in lavender light. In moments, it peeled off of her and condensed into a missile—aimed right at her.
“No…”
A half a second later, the pulse of nonelemental magical energy erupted from Twilight’s arm like a cannon shell and slammed into Sunset. Her face barely had time to register the mixture of surprise and pain before her body crumpled around it. Unable to brace or stop herself, the force propelled her backward, clear to the railing, and then smashed her straight through it.
Twilight managed to look a bit longer as the lavender blast sent Sunset flying far from the deck of the Legacy and beyond the range of its Morning Glory. Only when it was that far did it finally ignite in a blaze of lavender energy. She vanished into the purple vapors and aether, only to fall out of the gleaming cloud moments later. Somehow, she was still able to flail around and desperately reach out for nothing as she sunk down into the blackness.
Twilight might have heard her give one final cry of rage, or perhaps it was just her imagination or the ringing in her head, but in either case Sunset vanished into the darkness.
She was gone.
Twilight let out a tired exhale as her hand fell. She didn’t even notice that both of her nostrils were freely bleeding now before her eyes rolled back in her head, and she remembered no more.
When Twilight’s consciousness finally came back to her, the first thing she was aware of was a dull humming in the background. She truly started to wake up when it was accompanied by periodic loud clanging, each of which made her head hurt a little more. The scents of engine oil, soot, and what seemed to be liquor finally made her stir all together.
Cracking her eyes open caused the headache to go from dull to stabbing the second light hit her eyes, dim as it was. She quickly held a hand to them until she adjusted enough to open them all together. She saw a metallic ceiling with a gaslight over it. Her brain, tired and hurt as it was, had to take a moment to realize she wasn’t in another cell.
A second later, the head of a green and purple dog moved over her own and filled her vision. Spike sniffed her for a few moments before beginning to pant happily. He started to lick her face all over, getting her the rest of the way alert before she raised a hand to push away.
“Oh, hey! You’re awake!”
Hearing Pinkie’s voice, Twilight leaned up a bit…instantly going back down as that made her headache stab again. Doing so, however, let her realize she was lying down. And on turning her head to see a rather simple and threadbare bunk across from her in a small room, she realized it had to be one of the smaller shared cabins for the former airship crew.
Pinkie herself had been seated on the lower bunk and instantly leapt up to her feet with a grin. “Yay!”
“P…Pinkie…? What’re…?”
“The others will be so excited! They’ve been worried for three days!”
Twilight blinked before leaning up again. The headache wasn’t as bad this time, but she ignored it anyway. “W-Wait….three days? You mean I’ve been out for three days?!”
“Oh, sssh!” Pinkie immediately hushed; putting a finger to her lips. Her own volume dropped. “I forgot! We should be quiet! Fluttershy’s still sleeping underneath you! She passed out around noon yesterday after all the healing she had to do on everyone!”
“He…healing…?”
“I’ll go let the others know you’re up! And I’ll bring you back a tasty treat too!”
She turned to leave through the open hatchway to the cabin, but froze in mid-step before turning back.
“Er…provided the tasty treat you have in mind is whiskey and hardtack. Trottingham soldiers must have terrible taste buds.” She leaned in with a smile. “Good thing I brought that cake along before we started, eh? Eh?”
Without another word, she turned and hopped out. Twilight was left a bit bewildered, but not very bothered by it. It gave her a chance to look around and let her memory fully reorganize itself. It also gave her a chance to calm Spike and let her headache subside a bit. It took some effort to sit up in the bed, which was rather hard with the low ceiling, but after sitting for a few minutes the pain subsided enough for her to straighten.
Around that time, Pinkie came bounding back in with Rarity close behind her. She cupped her hand to her mouth on spotting her. “Oh Twilight…thank heavens. You’re finally awake. I don’t wish to alarm you but some of us honestly thought you never would…”
“I must have overdone it with trying two of those spells…” Twilight answered as she rubbed her head with one hand and Spike with the other. “Pinkie says I was asleep for three days?”
Rarity winced uncomfortably. She looked to one side, trying to be evasive.
“What’s wrong?”
“Um, darling…I’m afraid it was a bit worse than that. By the time we were able to reach you on deck, you were…um…er…what’s the most delicate way to say this… You were, well…you were bleeding freely out of your nose and…eyelids.”
Twilight’s eyes bulged. “Wh…what?”
“We didn’t really know what to do. We were afraid to even try to move you. Eventually we tried to just hold your eyes and nose shut while Fluttershy healed as best as she could. She kept at work until she was exhausted, then we waited for her to recover, and then she resumed again until she was exhausted again. By that point it seemed the bleeding had stopped at least, but you were white as a sheet and looked like skin and bone.”
The mage sat there stunned for several seconds, fear painting over her face. She swallowed after a moment at looked at her lap.
“It’s true I never pushed myself that hard, but…but…I didn’t think…”
“Twilight, I think I speak for everyone when I say you can’t ever do anything like that again. We thought even if you had lived that you might be catatonic. Even now I’m worried about whatever long-term effects you might have had. Fluttershy worked herself to the absolute bone healing the rest of us, but she could barely even walk after trying to heal you. And, frankly, I dread to think of what would have happened if not for her…”
“Alright, alright,” Twilight cut off; running her hand through her hair. “You’ve made your point. I didn’t really have a choice when I did it, though. We had to stop Sunset and that was the only spell I had that could have even moved her in that form.” She paused before looking up. “What about Sunset?”
Rarity crossed her arms and exhaled. “By this point, as dreadful as the thought is, she’s probably in the belly of some horrendous beast assuming she survived the fall. We haven’t seen head nor tail of her or anyone else from Trottingham since the end of that battle. As ghastly as this place is and as nerve wracking as it is to be surrounded by darkness and Nighttouched, it seems to be safe.” She winced again on saying that. “At least, for the moment.”
“What do you mean?”
An especially loud clang, this one sounding like it broke something, resounded through the walls. It made Twilight sit bolt upright so fast she bonked her head against the ceiling, making her wince and lower her head again.
“That,” Pinkie spoke up. “Applejack and Rainbow Dash have been trying to fix the airship enough to get it to move again for a couple days, but every time we ask them for how they’re doing all they give back are a lot of words that would make ma and pa wash our mouths out with soap.”
Twilight rubbed her sore scalp. “We’re stuck?”
“I’m afraid so,” Rarity sighed. “Our airship didn’t take nearly as much damage as theirs, but between all of that power that Sunset was emitting and that horrible snake monstrosity, we haven’t been able to get the engines to move in days.” She looked at her hopefully. “I hate to ask something of you so soon, but I don’t suppose you have experience with engines, do you?”
Twilight looked uncertain for a moment before she let out an exhale. Slowly, she began to push herself off of the bunk.
“I guess it wouldn’t hurt for me to give it a look…”
“Alright, now shut switches 2 and 3, turn the valve to one-quarter, and then give me three manual pumps.”
Twilight spoke like a seasoned pro as she continued to work with the pipe wrench on the conduit she was lying under. Dash and Applejack, who by now were both covered with grease and dirt as well as the occasional steam burn, immediately started doing what she said. After getting over their initial enthusiasm to see Twilight up again, they were now overwhelmed by how quick she took to the engines. It was all they could do to keep up with her now.
As they started to work, Twilight was already moving on to another pipe. “That’s too high. Only a quarter turn.”
Dash quickly corrected it. “Uh, we aren’t going to get it moving with a quarter power…”
“It needs to build up some pressure first.” She sighed as she shook her head, tightening another valve. “It’s amazing this is still in the air. It looks like someone just plain opened every last valve hoping they’d get some power…”
Dash turned a shade red before she kept working.
“And this pipe? I don’t know how it got this damaged from that fight! It looks like someone just kept beating on it with a hammer hoping it’d start to work!”
Applejack let out a cough, lowered her hat over her eyes, and quietly kept working as well.
Rarity and Pinkie, not really able to help, instead stood at a distance and watched; both rather amazed. “Goodness me, Twilight. I had no idea you’d be so fluent at this. For the past three days it’s been like a troupe of chimpanzees playing with sticks and rocks…”
Both Applejack and Dash glared at her.
“Er…no offense.”
“How about you get yerself grease covered if you don’t like the job we’re doin’ next time?” Applejack snorted before pumping a bit more.
“Gee Twilight,” Pinkie threw in, “did you use to work with steam engines?”
“What, me? Oh no. I just got laid over in Manehattan two years ago for about six weeks and I hung out in the library. I had read everything else, so I tried the technical manuals.”
Dash, Rarity, and Applejack all exchanged rather baffled looks at that. Twilight, oblivious to that, finished her own set of work before exhaling, wiping her head, and then pushing herself out from under the conduit.
“I think that should do it. Give it about forty-five minutes to build up pressure and I think we’ll have engine power.”
“Sweet!” Dash cheered. “We can handle forty-five minutes easy!”
Twilight looked puzzled. “What do you mean?”
Both Applejack and Rarity looked at each other uneasily. After a moment of silence the farmer turned to her. “Er, Twilight? I don’t s’pose you read any books on, um, fixin’ air sacs on airships, did you?”
About twenty minutes later, after Twilight had forced everyone to pick up and organize the engine room, they were all gathered on the bridge. It was there that she got the bad news as Dash pointed out the altitude gauge. The mage herself grimaced to even see it.
“3,000 feet above the current ground level?”
“When she blew out the top hatch, that fire witch ripped a big ol’ gash right in the bottom of the air sac,” Applejack sighed. “Don’t even know how to lock it down. Leak’s been gettin’ bigger.”
“The first day we only lost a thousand feet,” Rarity chimed in. “Three thousand yesterday. It’s only been getting worse.”
“Wait,” Twilight retorted, looking up from the gauge, “did you say three thousand yesterday, and it’s getting worse? We only have three thousand left before we bottom out! That means we only have a few more hours at most!” She started to look around frantically. “Where’s the navigation station? Did anyone figure out where we were while I was out?”
As she started scrambling over the consoles, and Applejack and Rarity, both uncomfortable at the latest news, quickly moved in to direct her to the navigation station, Dash remained at the helm studying the other instruments, while Pinkie, a piece of hardtack in her hands, was gnawing on it rather like a dog with a bone. When she looked up and out the main window, however, she caught a glimpse of something else.
Fluttershy was out there, obviously awake and on deck; apparently looking around for the rest of them. Pinkie spotted her just as she walked out from the ruins of the hatch and began to meekly glance around.
“Oh look! Fluttershy’s up too!” She immediately began to bound off for the bridge exit, using the same hardtack she had been trying to eat as a doorjamb for the hatch before running out.
Eventually the Gaitian managed to carefully work her way around the weakened floorboards about the hatch area for the upper deck. On emerging, she saw Fluttershy was still there, but was no longer searching around. She was standing at the edge of the railing and looking over the side, only seeming more nervous now and shaking a little.
“Hey, Fluttershy!” she greeted happily. “Feeling all better?”
“Um…” she answered, even more quietly than usual and sounding distracted. “I…um…suppose so. Just a little groggy.”
“Great! I’ll make you my special Hardtack Caramel Whiskey Surprise!” She grinned slyly. “I’ll give you a hint…the surprise is one of those ingredients is missing!”
She kept looking over the side without turning. “Oh, um… I’m…not hungry.”
“Guess what? Twilight got the airship fixed! That means we’ll be able to leave pretty soon!”
“Ok…”
Pinkie paused, noticing her distraction. She stepped a bit closer. “What’s the matter? Airsick? Queasy? Scared of heights?”
“Um…a little of all of that, but…no. I’m just…” she swallowed. “Just a little nervous because…um…” She lowered her voice almost to a mumble. “They’re doing what they did that time I went into the woods right now…”
“Who?”
She shrank a bit more. “The Nighttouched.”
Pinkie stepped closer to the edge and looked over it.
The night hadn’t ended since they entered the skies over Equestria, but it had cleared up quite a bit. And in the starlight and moonlight, at an altitude of only 3,000 feet above the ground, it was quite easy to see, as far as they eye could in all directions, thousands of Nighttouched. Tens of thousands. Hundreds of thousands. Mixed in with at least a thousand Light Eaters of various sizes.
From this high, they moved like ant colonies. Huge masses of them in huge living rivers scurrying all over the landscape, pooling together into tracks and moving en masse. Big ones, small ones, swarming ones, flying ones, even ones larger and more monstrous than any of them had seen before. All of them flowing into the large tracts and making their way south and southeast. Their thousands of yellow eyes gleamed like candle bearers and one could almost hear the echo of their unified movements from the sky.
For once, Pinkie’s smile went away. Genuine concern replaced it.
“Uh…maybe we should get Twilight to look at this.”
About thirty minutes later, after everyone had a chance to see the sight that they were drawing ever nearer to with each passing minute, and after Dash had helped herself to an extra ration of the whiskey and Rarity had taken a moment to quit her initial hyperventilating, all six women were back on the bridge. Between Fluttershy’s healing and having three days of rest, all of them were looking in near tip-top shape externally at least, but all of them were progressively growing more distraught in one way or another.
Although Twilight had only been awake for a couple hours, everyone was already looking fully to her for guidance at this point. She herself looked so overwhelmed she didn’t even think to pet Spike when he crept up next to her and pushed his head against her leg. She exhaled and ran her hand through her hair.
“Alright…here’s where we stand. I can’t be terribly sure, but I estimate the airship has at least five hours left before it hits the ground. We still have the Morning Glory and we should be able to land somewhat softly, but…well…”
“But we’ll be in the thick of thousands of Nighttouched and Light Eaters?” Applejack dully asked.
“…Right.”
“If the engines are working, let’s just get out of here now while we can!” Rarity nearly shouted.
“I’m afraid it’s not that simple. With only five hours, we can only go so many places, and right now we don’t even know exactly where we are. But based on the log info of where the crew of the Legacy intended to take us and where their charts were, and assuming that we’re recognizing the correct topographical features to use as landmarks, we can get a rough idea. And right now, the only places that are within a five-hour flight that aren’t in Equestria seem to be Appleloosa and, well…Trottingham. I won’t really be sure which way we’re flying, but I think I can get us into the former of the two.”
That wasn’t the most comforting thing in the world for the six to hear, and it showed on their faces.
“All of that being said…there’s another concern. At this point, we’ve all seen what’s going on underneath us. If this is really like what Fluttershy saw before we met, then it’s clear what’s happening. They’re getting ready for another surge like the one we saw in Griffonstone. A bigger one, possibly. I don’t know what they’re going to do, but it stands to reason they’re going to try and push into the ocean again. And if they fan out around the Hyperborean Mountains again or hit the same spot…which they have no reason not to as the armies of the world still can’t hurt them…that means they could overrun the train station. In other words, they might not only reach their goal this time, they might eliminate the one route we have to get to Nightmare Moon.”
She hesitated; her eyes looking to the ceiling.
“That is…what used to be the one route. Right now, we have a second one.”
A moment or two of silence passed. Pinkie turned her head. “Really?” She began to look around herself and out the windows. “Huh… I didn’t see any other route. And you think I’d be able to on board this floating airship that has a special magical machine on it that keeps all of the Nighttouched and Light Eaters awa….ooooooooh!”
“The mountain chain around the Castle of the Two Sisters is visible from where we’re at,” Twilight went on. “We can follow it right there, and if the calculations are correct we should just be able to make it. We can still finish our original task.”
Another moment of silence. Pinkie looked a bit enthusiastic, but her feeling was not mutual. Dash took another uncertain swig of whiskey. Applejack crossed her arms a bit too tightly. Fluttershy began to cringe and whimper while Rarity looked to one side and grimaced.
Twilight frowned. “I kind of expected that.”
“It’s not that I don’t see your point, darling,” Rarity spoke up hesitantly. “And I can certainly appreciate making adjustments to a plan as I know all about needs to adapt. It’s just, well…the fact of the matter is not so long ago we fought someone who had only five Anima Viris and…well…I broke a blade trying to stab her.”
“And I busted four knuckles trying to punch her,” Dash threw in. “I can dent metal punching things…”
“And I ain’t quite felt the same ever since that flamin’ missy made me lose my pa’s hammer,” Applejack muttered. “Ain’t nothin’ felt right. And we ain’t got an airship deck this time ta’ knock her off of.”
“Sunset said having six Anima Viris would make you a god…” Fluttershy uneasily muttered. “If Nightmare Moon has six…she’ll be…m-m-much worse than she was, won’t she?”
Twilight looked from one person to the next. Her own head slumped and she sighed. “I’d be lying if I said I feel good about this either… I know we were kind of thrown into the last fight, but even if we stick to the plan we’ve been rehearsing I’m not sure if we can do this.”
She looked back up, her expression firming.
“I also know that we can’t defend this world from the next surge that’s coming, and it’s going to mean thousands of other deaths. And I also know, unfortunately, this isn’t going to get any easier, and that we may not get another shot like this. I’ll be honest…as Sunset kept flexing more of her power in that fight, I started to think we couldn’t win. I thought that we were simply outclassed in every way no matter how little experience she had.”
This prompted the others to look at her in some bewilderment. She shrank a little at having made the admission, but she pressed on.
“But we won, and we won because we stuck together and worked together. Celestia might have always tried to help me increase my own power and had such high hopes for me, but I think the real reason we went on that summer trip was because she was going to teach me to rely on others. Right now, I’m willing to go after Nightmare Moon alone, but I know there’s no way I’ll win.” She glanced around. “Not without the rest of you. Now that I have a better idea of what we’re up against, I can’t ask any of you to come this time. I honestly don’t know how many of us will come back alive. If you want to opt out, I understand.”
Everyone hesitated. Fluttershy moistened her lips but never was able to say anything. Rarity stiffly jerked her hand, nearly raising it, but in the end put it down.
Finally, Dash took another swig of whiskey, and then idly tossed the rest over her shoulder. “Well, I’ve come this far. And I knew it was suicide going in anyway, so count me in.”
“Me too!” Pinkie cheered. “I told you all we had nothing to worry about! Gaia got us through Sunset, the Trottingham soldiers, and all of those monsters in one piece, didn’t she? We’ve got this!”
“Aw hell,” Applejack shrugged, holding up her Anima Viri. “I may not have pa’s hammer, but he’s still here, so I’ll make do.”
“Good grief…I used to think the spring season was one disaster after another…” Rarity sighed. “Well, I’ve committed myself, and I honor my commitments. If I can make the difference between ending this ghastly night and another swarm of these monstrosities, then I simply need to gird my loins and press on. You can count on me.”
That left Flutteshy. The other five looked to her, seeing her still hesitant. She glanced to the side, letting her hair fall over half of her face again.
“Well…um…to be honest, I think I’m too scared to try and fight Nightmare Moon,” she finally spoke up. “But…I think what scares me even more is all five of you trying to fight her and me not being there to help you when I could have. So…that means I’ll come too.”
In spite of the seriousness of the situation, the rest of the ladies found themselves smiling a little at the sentiment. With that settled, everyone looked back to Twilight.
She drew herself up and exhaled. “Alright. Everyone, I’ll need your help to start setting a course. After that, let’s get ready as best we can.”
The ride, while peaceful, was far from settling.
It took another forty minutes to figure out the airship enough to give it the right heading before it took off. By then, more clouds had rolled in, but they parted often. Between them and the yellow eyes and “moonspots” on Light Eaters, they could see quite far.
For the next four hours, all they saw, sprawled along the countryside in every river, valley, and road, were the Nighttouched and Light Eaters. They only seemed to grow more unusual and grotesque as they went along. At one point, they spotted some reptilian-like creature with multiple heads and necks stretching out like fences along the landscape. They realized that had to be the monster, or at least one of its ilk, that attacked the other night. Yet there were far more monstrosities than that, and they only got better looks at them as they kept descending. Things that were amlagamations of snakes and tigers, giant worms with tentacles coming out of their mouths, hulking beasts that looked like bears and moles, and worse, until it was hard to imagine any had ever been something “normal”.
Each one of them flowed to the south. Eventually, far in the distance, they saw what looked like a starry mountainside slowly moving along the landscape.
“It’s another Tantabus…”
“They’re not all gatherin’ ‘round it though…” Applejack muttered.
“Do you suppose there’s more than one this time?” Rarity nervously asked.
“I’d rather not find out if we can…” Twilight sighed.
Eventually, the countryside gave way to rockier hills and mountains. Keeping the airship aloft was much harder then. The mountains were easier than the Hyperboreans, but they were still quite lofty. They managed to get over some of the smaller peaks at first, but eventually they had to start making their way through the valleys and around them as they kept lowering.
“This would be a lot easier if there weren’t all these forests everywhere…”
“But that doesn’t make any sense,” Twilight pointed out. “It’s been nothing but night here for eight years. How are all of these trees still alive?”
“Maybe whatever’s keeping the Nighttouched alive keeps them alive?” Pinkie suggested.
“Remind me never ta’ build a cabin outta the pine in Equestria…” Applejack muttered. “Last thing I need is lumber tryin’ ta’ shove me into a sawmill…”
As the landscape grew more uneven and started to climb, they began to fear that the airship would ground long before they reached their destination. Especially as some of the land and boulders got within a hundred or even fifty feet of the bottom of the airship.
However, just as they had to kick the engines up for vertical lift to make up for it, they noticed the landscape changed. The Nighttouched and Light Eaters thinned out before disappearing.
“At least all the creatures are gone…” Fluttershy murmured.
“Y’don’t think they all really went south, do you?” Applejack asked.
Twilight shook her head. “No. Look to the east. They’re still gathering and moving that way. They just stopped coming around here.”
“Those monsters actually try to look for easy routes around the landscape?”
“I don’t think it’s the landscape that’s driving them off…”
No one followed up any more on this—knowing full well what she meant.
As they forced the airship over the last stretch of mountains, the skies began to thin out again. The clouds peeled away and gave view to a clear night. It was amazing. The moon was so pale it almost seemed to have a blue tint, and none of them had ever seen it look so big or bright before. Yet in spite of that, every last star in the sky seemed to be visible. Like an ocean of lights stretching and shimmering above them. If it had been any other circumstance, the otherworldly sight would have been beautiful. Not even Applejack or Fluttershy had ever seen a more dazzling sky.
Then, at last, as they scraped over one more mountaintop, they saw it.
It was on a high plateau, accessible from east and west as well as their approach. There was even stands of woodland around it, but that wasn’t what caught their attention most of all. They could make out the remains of steam carriages, wagons, and even the occasional artillery unit. Eight years later, they were still lying in disrepair and rust. More unsettling, however, was that in the pale moonlight there were easily signs of bones. Many of them were distinctly human. Picked clean and left to rot ever since the Lunar Fall. Seeing the tattered remains of uniforms and firearms around them wasn’t very comforting.
Yet this, of course, was only the “greeting”. Twilight pointed further ahead.
“We’re here.”
At at slightly higher elevation, drawing nearer all the time, stood the ruins of the Castle of the Two Sisters. The fact that it looked so much like the photograph made every last one of them feel a tremor of cold fear.
“We’re actually here…”
“It’s…l-l-like…being in a real scary story…”
All that seemed to be missing was the eruption from the middle. The upper floors of the castle were gone, but the rest of it still stood. It was dark, hollowed, and empty, but that hardly seemed to matter. The moon appeared to grow so large behind it that they could make out every detail of the parapets and broken masonry. Not a soul was present. Not a light was visible. Not a sound could be heard save for the rotors of the airship and the hum of the Morning Glory.
A moment later Twilight exhaled. “This is close enough. Let’s cut the engine.”
It was perfect timing. Not long after killing the propellers to let it drift to a stop, a scraping was heard on the bottom of the airship as they made contact with the ground. They ended up putting the airship to rest in the middle of one of the roadways that led up to the castle itself. Grinding to a halt, just up ahead loomed a rotten carriage that had been hauling an artillery piece with the bones of two horses still tethered to it. Just across from it was a temporary station for the associated soldiers; the exact claw marks of whatever Light Eater had ripped them apart still visible along the wooden posts and flapping canvas.
Needless to say, the women didn’t stay on the bridge long staring at the sight.
Fifteen minutes later, all of them were at the ventral hatch area, but none of them were eager to leap outside. The Morning Glory kept running, but each of them expected something to attack or come out to “meet” them. Darkened as the castle was, and as low to the ground as the airship had been, there was little chance if anyone was in the castle that they had failed to see them approach.
When they finally decided to move, the six faced each other and began right off the bat with equipping their Anima Viris. Six eruptions of power later, and all were in their current forms and armed as best as they could be. Twilight had reclaimed a new wand with two more in her robe to grab if she lost the first. Applejack had grabbed a new hammer from the tools along with a combat knife. The transformed hammer didn’t look quite the same as her father’s had, but it still formed a warhammer none the less. Rarity had a fresh rapier with a pair of firearms tucked in her belt. She wasn’t able to transform them like her blades, but a couple of loaded guns wouldn’t hurt. Dash had strapped up her hands with scraps of metal from the repairs, giving herself “claws” with a bit more punch. Pinkie still had her knife, but they had arranged for a bit more with her. Dipping into the stores of gunpowder, she had about two dozen small pouches of the volatile material strapped around her. Only Fluttershy, still sporting her staff, didn’t have anything new.
As Twilight stood in front of the hatch, Spike came up to her side and nuzzled her hand. However, she looked at him and shook her head. “No, Spike. You can’t come this time.”
He began to whine; ears slicking back.
“It’s too dangerous. Stay here until we get back.”
He whined louder, beginning to paw at her feet.
“Stay here!”
Her voice nearly grew angry; causing him to recoil back. He whined, but drew back a little before sitting with his head bowed.
Twilight looked regretful at her own actions, but nevertheless turned back to the women. “Everyone…we’re well past the point of no return now. You saw all the Nighttouched and Light Eaters on the way here. Either we defeat Nightmare Moon and end this night and get rid of them…or we never leave Equestria alive.”
Fluttershy let out a whimper. The others didn’t look too terribly comfortable, except for Pinkie who leaned in with a grin. “But no pressure, anyone!”
Applejack shook her head and hefted her new hammer. “Let’s just get this over with. Ain’t gettin’ easier standin’ here.”
Twilight grimaced but nodded back. Looking back to the hatch, she hesitated only a moment longer before opening it. After seeing and hearing nothing but silence, the six stepped out.
Even walking along the trail was like taking steps into another world. The moon gleamed so large and bright that it no longer seemed to be natural light at all, and it was so quiet that it almost felt like they were in an echo chamber. Every bit of grit on the ground that they stepped in made a noise as they walked up the hill and onto what was left of the pavement around the castle. The bones stood out even more there, as did the claw marks of whatever had emerged from the ruins eight years prior. They looked around continuously, expecting to see something, but nothing came on the entire trek. The doors had long since been blown out, along with all the windows, so they ascended the stairs and stepped inside.
Between the brightness of the moon and the fact that so much of the inside of the castle had been gutted, there was light streaming in everywhere. Nevertheless, the place was empty, hollow, silent, and full of shadows everywhere. Most of it was damaged or crumbling in one way or another, although it appeared to have settled for now. In its prime it would have been an impressive enough sight, but even now, on entering the first hall, the towering, thick columns and spacious foyer was grand and majestic. It seemed like it was almost a forest of stone with how it stretched inward.
Seeing this made Twilight slow to a stop briefly. The others looked at her.
“Y’okay, Twilight?” Applejack almost regreted saying that instantly. Her voice echoed long and deep through the empty halls, and for a moment everyone stiffened.
Twilight, however, swallowed and resumed walking. “It’s nothing. Just…the architecture here reminds me of Canterlot Palace.”
The six continued to make their way along. They made out entryways into the wings and other halls, but nothing was in them. And despite all of the shadows and columns, nothing came out, and nothing seemed to be following them. The only thing they noticed was that the darkness in this place seemed to be much deeper than any outside, especially in the light of the moon. In places, it seemed to almost hang out like a cloud or vapor rather than simply represent a loss of light.
Eventually they reached the back, where a pair of staircases on either side led up to a higher foyer that overlooked the hall below along a stone bannister and railing. They stopped here briefly, looking around.
“No sign of her,” Dash pointed out.
“Well, we only had a theory to begin with that she was even here…or even existed,” Rarity suggested, almost hopefully.
“We haven’t checked everywhere yet,” Twilight answered. “Let’s head upstairs.”
The next floor up was much of the same, with the columns extending upward through the floor to provide the ground for another spacious hall. The third floor, however, was visible from this one, as the center of the floor was missing and opened up to show the higher ceiling of the main castle. Rather, it would have if that part had not been so damaged and broken by the eruption, to the point where there were only broken places left before giving way to moonlight. There was another set of stairs opposite this one, and they climbed those as well to the only remaining floor.
This one was heavily damaged, and now their steps began to creak the floorboards and occasionally loosened a stone. There was no wide and spacious hall here, but rather pathways that spread on either side in a “track” around the main hall below that led to the various side halls.
However, it didn’t take them look to spot one passage that stood out from all the others.
It was framed with more skeletons; these ones bearing the remains of uniforms from much more higher-ranking military officials. The wall that held the doors, which were blown out like all the others, was practically falling apart. The ceiling, they could tell, was fully gone here—leaving behind crumbling remains of the rest of the room.
Twilight again halted here. Her eyes widened a little and she studied it momentarily. Tentatively, she stepped forward and reached out to place her hand on the stone.
“What’s wrong, Twilight?” Fluttershy asked.
It took her a moment to answer. “It was here.”
“What was here?” Dash threw back.
“The summit. It happened in this room. This is the most secure one in the castle. That’s why all of these guards were here.”
She moved her hand along the wall more. The others looked, and they saw what looked like soot or scoring of some kind moving out from it. Likewise, the bones of the guards were arranged in almost a radial array about it.
Twilight pulled her hand back. “It started here. This was where she hit first.”
Without another word, she stepped inside. The others, a bit surprised at the move, exchanged glances a moment before rushing in through the door after her.
Twilight hadn’t gone very far inside before she froze in her tracks, staring around in wide-eyed shock. As the others pulled to a stop around her, they looked about, and their faces reflected similar horror.
There was practically nothing left of this room…if one could even still call it that. The wall with the doors was the only one that could really still be considered a wall. The rest of it was just the scantest foundation. Some of the them were totally missing along with the ceiling, so that all that was left was a flat space with the remains of a fireplace and then nothing but the moon floating it its starry ocean.
What was disturbing, however, were the skeletons in this room.
They weren’t like the others. These ones had been blasted with a force so hard that some of them were half-embedded in the remains of the architecture. Others were crushed into the floor. Another skeleton was scattered in pieces like a smear; invoking a chilling thought of what had happened with the original body.
After a moment, Twilight walked in a bit further. Just in front of her was one set of bones impressed into the floor like a bas relief. She leaned down next to it as the others took steps inside, nervously looking from one set of remains to another. She glanced over the body, eventually making out some of the metal pieces: all that was left of the “soft” materials. She made out a crown and chain.
“This was King Platinum…”
Dash grimaced at one halfway through the wall. “The insignias on the boots here were burned into his ankles. This one was Dragonlord Torch.”
“Good heavens…” Rarity nearly gasped at the body nearest her. “That pearl… Queen Novo wore that in her public appearances…”
“Think we all knew they were dead,” Applejack muttered as she tightened her grip on her hammer, “but…never thought they went out like this. Didn’t just kill ‘em…damn near ground ‘em down like a millstone…”
“Wh…why?” Fluttershy meekly peeped.
From every last bit of darkness in any shadow about them came the answer.
“Because this world has no more need of pitiful, pathetic little ‘rulers’ now that it has come under dominion of its god.”
At once, the six stood bolt upright and backed up to one another, forming an outward facing circle and brandishing their weapons. In spite of their attempts at boldness, even Applejack and Dash couldn’t fully hide their fear.
The darkness laughed around them. It was an unsettling, fearful noise. It sounded like it was both whispering in their ears and echoing around them all at the same time, freely moving from one to another.
“Well now, it seems after eight, long, lonely years someone finally survived long enough for me to have guests. I suppose I should do you the courtesy of greeting you.”
The darkness that lingered in the shadows suddenly split off from it, coalescing and sliding out into a true mist or miasma. It didn’t take long for the six to notice it, or to see that it was streaming toward the center of the chamber. They turned full attention to it as it gathered, beginning to shimmer like stars as the bodies of the Light Eaters did as it thickened.
It continued until it gathered into an ovoid shape right in the center of the room, perched on top of the scant few remains of the fireplace’s foundation. When the last of it collected, it became solid and turned black as night.
With a rush and a flap, the darkness parted, revealing itself to be a pair of ebony, feathered wings. In the light of the moon, the gleaming, beautiful armor that clad the figure beneath from head to toe had a silvery gleam to it. A mane of starry hair splayed out behind her. Atop her cruel-looking helmet was a spire horn mounted on the forehead. From beneath it, her serpentine pale green eyes gleamed at them.
“I bid you welcome,” she spoke, sharp, carnivorous teeth flashing white as the moon itself with each word. “Now then, do you wish to beg for your lives? Or may I go ahead and kill you now?”
Merely seeing the figure from the “children’s storybook” in the flesh would have been enough to render the six of them mute without the threat. Everyone was motionless, not knowing what would happen if they made a move.
Twilight swallowed at long last. Tightening her grip, she took a single step away from the others and toward her.
“Nightmare Moon.” She stopped afterward, swallowing again and steeling her resolve. “We’ve come here for one reason. We want you to end this night over Equestria right now. If you don’t…we’re here to stop you. By force, if necessary.”
The cruel serpentine pupils zeroed in on Twilight the moment she stepped forward and remained there.
Her face showed nothing for a few seconds, but then she swished her lips and shrugged.
“You have a funny way of begging.”
She raised a hand and extended its taloned, armored fingers.
“But it sounds like you’re done just the same.”
A wave of darkness erupted from her hand, and all six women were smashed with the raw power simultaneously. Their faces tightened and their eyes widened with shock from the sudden force and pain, but they had no time to dwell on strength of the blow before their bodies were blown away as if they were no more than leaves on a breeze. The power cast them easily out of the chamber, through the open doorway, past the walkway, and right to the lip of the foyer.
It was only when they were moments from going over the edge that the group came to life. Applejack swung out the “claw” of her hammer and anchored herself. Pinkie lashed out and grabbed the bannister as her body went over the side, while reaching out with her other hand and catching Rarity’s as she went screaming and flailing over the edge as well. Both of them were left dangling over the drop to the second floor. Fluttershy was knocked off all together too, but Rainbow Dash quickly leapt after her. She didn’t do a straight jump off, but instead sprung over the railing for the nearest column, kicked off of it, sailed a distance, kicked off another, and then moved into Fluttershy’s path to catch her before touching down on the floor below. Both tensely looked upward.
Twilight herself nearly joined them but managed to keep her feet planted and generated a wind spell of her own. It wasn’t enough to stop her body all together, but it lessened the power of the attack enough for her to grind to a halt moments before reaching the edge. Even then, it was enough to make her pant and she and the others looked fearfully back the way they had come. Applejack began to pull herself up and pry out her hammer as Pinkie grit and grunted, struggling to pull Rarity higher. Rainbow Dash set Fluttershy down and began to move for the stairs as the latter cowered.
While they went on, Nightmare Moon nimbly hopped off of the fireplace foundations. Her wings stretched out but didn’t need to bother flapping as her body levitated above the floor. In moments she was coming out of the entryway too; making the women freeze in their tracks.
She alit on the tile soon after and calmly walked forward; her heavy armored feet letting out a resounding echo with each step. She strolled by the remains of one of the bodies and reached out to pluck up his skull, easily manipulating it and gazing at it like a sort of curio.
“You creatures are all the same,” she mused dismissively, almost as if not even addressing them. “Such feeble bodies. Such weak spirits. Such tiny brains. So frail. So annoying. So stupid.”
She snapped her wrist down as she kept approaching, flinging the skull to the ground hard enough to shatter it.
“So you knew my name. You knew I created the eternal night over Equestria. You knew I made the Light Eaters. You knew I was the god of this world.”
The moonlight suddenly dimmed as the sky over Nightmare Moon began to darken. The moment Twilight heard a rumble on it she began to tense up.
“And you were still ignorant enough to think six of you could come here and intimidate me?”
Bolts of black lightning erupted from the heavens and cascaded down over the area. Applejack quickly sprung back to avoid one hitting her, then turned and bolted downstairs. Dash had to backpedal to avoid her own as Fluttershy cried out and went for cover. To avoid being struck, Pinkie had no choice but to let go. Yet as Rarity cried out again, somehow, she was agile enough to move beneath her and act as a cushion as both slammed down to the second floor. It wasn’t a high enough drop to be fatal in all circumstances but it should have still broken a couple bones. Nevertheless, as Rarity scrambled up Pinkie jumped up just as easily with no sign of pain.
Twilight was forced to recoil as two different bolts of black lightning nearly hit her, but no sooner had she dodged the second when the floor gave out beneath her, and she cried out as she went over the lip. Fortunately, Dash saw it and quickly darted in—catching her a moment later. No one felt much relief, however. They all looked back to the third floor foyer.
Nightmare Moon walked up to the edge and glowered down on them; her shadow only seeming darker and stronger in the moonlight that framed her.
“In one night, I took from this world its order, its sanity, and its stability. Gone, just like that.” She grinned wide enough to show her sharp pale teeth again. “Everything you ever knew or put faith in destroyed in an instant. Nature turned on its head. And in eight years, the six of you are the best your miserable little society could throw at me.” She let out a few haughty chuckles. “I’d be disappointed if this wasn’t so amusing.”
By now fully getting a grasp of her power, the group felt even more of their resolve begin to fade. All save Twilight. Frowning again, she forced herself up and out of Dash’s arms.
“Why are you doing this?” she shouted. “What has anyone or any country in this world ever done to deserve this? Before you got those Anima Viris, you were a person just like everyone you’ve murdered!”
Her smile turned into a scowl. “I take back what I said a moment ago. Apparently, you are still ignorant. You really don’t understand anything, do you? You don’t have the slightest idea who I am or what I am.” She scoffed. “And how could you? You creatures always needed some ‘mother’ to come along and spoon feed you everything…”
Twilight grew angrier. “I don’t know what you mean by that, but I don’t have to! All I have to know is what you’re doing out there is wrong! You’re killing everything! Not just the people but the plants and the animals too! Why? What does it give you?”
“You don’t even know who or what I am, and you have the audacity to think I owe you any sort of explanation?” Moon hissed back. A moment later she leapt off of the edge. The six quickly recoiled, including Twilight, but she didn’t sink like a stone. Her wings spread wider and she slowly lowered herself to the ground. She came a few inches from touching down and faced them as her hands went to her sides. Dark vapor began to gather within them. An instant later, she held them up and let both go at once.
This time, Twilight was ready. Planting her feet, she generated a fierce wind tempest in front of her as fast as she could cast it. The others quickly moved in behind her and braced themselves as the waves of darkness struck. Yet in spite of Twilight’s attempts to counter it and the reinforcement, the six of them still found themselves shoved away a good sixty feet. Nevertheless, they managed to keep their footing when the darkness waves died down this time. Twilight remained poised there with her wand aimed forward.
Moon smiled, looking amused as she began to hover toward them. “It looks like you’re the only one of you six that even has much of a mastery of one Anima Viri. That means I know exactly what you are.”
Her teeth flashed again.
“You belonged to Celestia, didn’t you?”
Twilight let her arm fall. “Wh…what? You knew Celestia?”
Moon let out a short chuckle. “You…might say that.”
Twilight stared at her wide-eyed as the rest of the ladies began to step back. She swallowed hesitantly after a moment.
“Were…were you the one who…who killed her?”
Moon stopped where she was and planted her feet on the ground, but only to crane her head back and let out a much louder and longer laugh. Biting and cruel. It made Twilight’s face twist and wince, not just from the reaction but hearing that response to what she had asked. Her jaw clenched and her grip on her wand tightened.
Moon finally looked at her again. “Celestia died as she lived: a fool.”
Twilight’s fear was swallowed by a surge of anger. “Don’t talk about her that way!”
The goddess snorted; her smile turning into a sneer. “So you did belong to her. One of the little chicks she took under her wings managed to survive, eh? Good. Feels good to know I can tell someone about what a failure she was who can appreciate it.”
This got her to point her wand at her again. “I said don’t talk about her that way!”
“Your precious princess could see into the hearts and minds of everyone in Greater Everfree. She knew what secrets they kept and the color of their souls. She knew people better than they knew themselves. With her power, she could take one look at civilization itself and see all the healthy pieces and all of the sick ones.”
Twilight was stunned again, her and the rest of the women with her. All of them were focusing on Moon’s words now. “…Really?”
“And what did she do with that power?” Moon snorted as she began to spread her wings wider to hover again. “Nothing. She saw the way the world was moving and recognized all the foulness and decay that was in society itself and possessed the might to change it. Instead she thought nurturing and coddling was somehow going to save this world. I, on the other hand?”
She rose higher until she was a full body length above the others. She grinned as she held up her hand, letting a fire of darkness ignite in it.
“I prefer to clean and scour what is diseased, and to let die what was meant to perish all along.”
Snapping her hand out, she flung the dark fire out of it. The six braced themselves but it wasn’t aimed for them. It landed on one of the sets of remains and ignited in a burst. It flared up in a tall pillar of black flame for a few seconds before ebbing again. When it faded, even the bones were burnt to ash. All that was left, gleaming bright and free of grime, were a set of copper buttons, coins, and a gold pocketwatch.
“Like a true queen, I don’t let the earth wither and fester in the name of touchy-feely ‘mercy’. I make it pure with justice—no matter how hot the fires must burn.”
The six remained silent but a moment before Twilight frowned. “‘Justice’? ‘Justice’?! You’ve killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people! You’ve ruined the environment! You’ve filled this world with corrupted monsters!”
“I should have known Celestia would have taught you nothing…” Moon snickered. “This is nature, little fool. Completely fair and completely unbiased. Serves as a refining oven. Even if most of this world ends up destroyed, the ones who survive will be exceptional. They will be strong. They’ll be the ones to create a true and lasting kingdom for the entire human race.”
“That’s a buncha bull spit!” Applejack snapped out.
“I must say it sounds awfully pretentious…” Rarity muttered.
One of Moon’s eyebrows raised. “Oh, you don’t believe me?” Her teeth flashed again. “Surely you don’t believe the six of you are here by accident, do you?”
Everyone paused again.
“What…” Twilight began, more uneasily, “what did you say?”
“Your Promethian Sigils and Anima Viris give you the power to withstand my will. To counter it. To kill it. Did you really think I didn’t notice it when you destroyed my Tantabus in Grifftham City?”
She spread her wings all the way out, spanning nearly the entire hall, and gestured to herself.
“I am your destiny! Not only of you, but all who were born with your power! The weak among you will succumb to misery and death like the rest of your society of simpletons! When the day finally comes in which there is no one left except the inheritors of the world, the strong will come to me as one! Then…only then…will I be struck down, and my end will mean the beginning of a glorious new age!”
Her eyes flashed with madness as she nearly laughed.
“I’ve brought this world order! I’ve brought this world perfection! I’ve brought this world…purpose! Tell me who but the one true god could accomplish this?!”
The very air seemed to charge with her words as she hovered over them, the moon making her shadow greater and darker than ever. The six were left standing mouths agape at her.
“She’s…she’s…” Fluttershy stammered.
“She thinks she’s god!” Pinkie yelped.
“She’s crazy is what she is!” Dash retorted. “She wants to kill everybody!”
Twilight stared on at her in silence for two more seconds but then stiffened herself. Keeping her wand at the ready she called behind her. “Everyone…you know what to do.”
The other five looked nervously at Nightmare Moon for a little longer before they nodded; even Fluttershy. They moved out and around Twilight and readied their own weapons, planting their feet and staring at her.
Her smile turned into a frown. “You’re joking, right? You don’t honestly think you six little nothings are going to destroy me, do you?”
“Everyone get ready!” Twilight shouted behind her. “You know what to do!”
Moon frowned more, enough to show her teeth off again. She snorted as she held her hands up, darkness gathering around them along with the rest of her.
“Alright. I could use the skulls of six more idiots to decorate that one bare spot on the wall.” Her grin returned. “Get ready to know the difference between some wretches sharing souls and a true goddess!”
The darkness continued to gather around her hands, but Twilight called out before she could make her first move.
“Pinkie! Now!”
At once, the Rogue reached for her belt, snapped off a pouch of gunpowder, and held it up.
Moon laughed. “You weak imbecile! You think some little bomb is going to hurt me?”
Pinkie’s only answer was to fling the pouch…right at the floor in front of the girls. It instantly erupted in a loud bang, blasting out a cloud of smoke and light in front of them.
Moon raised an eyebrow on seeing the gesture as the smoke expanded outward. A moment later she extended two fingers and swung them. In response, the wind picked up and swept the cloud away…revealing nothing behind it.
She grinned and laughed out loud again. “You come here threatening to kill me, and then you run away with your tails between your legs the first chance you get? Do you really think I’ll let any of you escape? No one can defy the will of the god of this world and expect to-”
A flash went off in the corner of Nightmare Moon’s vision. She turned to look, and was just in time to see a flash of rainbow hair before a fist swung out and punched a broken piece of masonry at her like a sling stone or bullet. It quickly darted away behind the nearest column afterward.
As for Moon, she frowned tiredly as the masonry sailed right for her head, only to go right through it as if it was nothing more than mist and vapor. As soon as the stone harmlessly sailed by and clattered to the third floor, the vapor reformed along with her head.
“Is that the best you can do?”
In response, a blur shot out again from a completely different column and smacked another rock toward her, with much the same result.
She grinned and laughed again. “Fools! I can’t be hurt by physical means any more than my aspects can! Is this it?”
In response, not one but two figures darted out, one on either side of the chamber. A rapier and a wand were pointed at Moon and a sigil was executed. The sky darkened, and as she looked up she was just in time to see two bolts of lightning, one large and one small, streak out of the sky and strike her in the chest simultaneously.
Her position in the air barely shifted, and her face registered the same amount of discomfort one might get from getting a very mild static shock. “I felt that…” she admitted with some irritation while holding up one of her hands, igniting it into black fire. “Too bad you’re not as motile as your friend.”
She snapped her hand down to cast the fire around the column, meaning to destroy what was on the other side…
“Surprise!”
Hearing the yell not only from behind her, but from the level above her, stunned Moon and caused her hand to fling the fire too early. The ball went out and struck the ground, instantly igniting not only into a dark blaze but spreading out to lash out for who was hiding behind the column, but it was too soon and Twilight immediately took off and ran for it. Moon herself snapped around, just in time to see the Rogue grin before flinging another bomb; this time at her.
Her teeth grit as she stood her ground, intending the bomb to sail right through her as the stones had. Instead, on making contact with her chest, it ignited in another flash of powder and smoke. Nightmare Moon gave the slightest noise as she vanished into the blast, before her wings swept once and blew the dust and flame away. She showed no damage; only surprise and irritation, but when she looked up Pinkie was already bounding for it. She raised her hand and the sky darkened in response, sending down black lightning after her. The first struck a few feet behind her. The second was nearly on her heels as she ran for the nearest column…
Before a third could fire, however, she gave two more noises as two more blows struck her along her backside. One was from Dash. The Disciple charged at the nearest column, scaled them as she had earlier to ascend to Nightmare Moon’s level, then gave her a kick to the small of her back. No sooner had she descended when Applejack stepped out from behind her own column; her ever-present lasso tied to the end of her hammer. Giving it a couple swings, she lashed out and smashed Moon in the same place where Dash had struck.
Neither attack did much more than shift her a bit in the air, but it was enough for her to whip her head around and glare at them angrily. The horn on her helmet suddenly lit up with a pale, silvery light, which ran along from forehead to the tip before it let out a piercing noise. A pair of thin beams emitted from the end for either woman; raking the ground in its wake and leaving burning incision marks. It was too late, however. Both were already running for cover behind columns and the lasers cut nothing but stone.
Looking more annoyed than before, Nightmare Moon quickly dove for the ground, hovering much faster now. She held both of her hands up and began to gather more power into them as she flew toward one of the columns; in particular the one she saw Applejack run behind. Yet as she dove for her, Rarity popped out behind a new column and quickly pointed her rapier at her again. This time, a stream of small fireballs fired for her helmet. Moon intended to simply push through them, but on reaching her headpiece they ignited in flashes of flaming light and her vision, much to her anger, was obscured once again.
Yet when one of her gauntlets reached for her eyes and she slowed, Twilight popped out from behind another column and quickly performed a more advanced spell. Moments later, Nightmare Moon’s eyes began to clear only to feel a sudden pull on her body. To her surprise, her lift on her wings gave out and she went sailing for the ground. She quickly put her arms and legs out to catch herself, but she barely had time to realize what happened when a pink blur went skipping by. She looked up to try and see what it was, only to hear something land at her feet. She glanced back down and spotted another explosive moments before it went off.
Gritting her teeth, she hissed as she was blasted again and staggered back. Dash and Applejack quickly leapt out from their own positions again and ran at her. Dash streaked by in a blur and gave her another blow across the side of the head, even though it barely phased her in spite of being off balance. Applejack, however, didn’t use her lasso. She dashed in and swung her hammer out to try and club her harder the other way.
The blow connected, but it barely made her move her head. Her serpentine eyes narrowed on the Warrior, growing irritated, and she casually swung the back of her hand out with talons outstretched.
Applejack shouted in pain as the flesh across the upper part of her right torso was easily cut, before the forced ripped her off of her feet and smashed her into the nearby wall. The impact was so loud it sent a resounding crack through the entire ruin, and she immediately went limp and slid down along it; leaving blood in her wake. Nightmare Moon herself stood up, flexing black flames to burn the Warrior’s blood off of one hand and unfurled her wings. She aimed her other hand to drive it through the woman…
Twilight darted out and quickly flung another spell at her. Quickly, Moon stopped in mid-motion and turned around to fling more black flames at her. Twilight had to quickly retreat to avoid them, and on touching the stone column she had been hiding behind they began to eat away at it like some sort of magical acid, but she had already gotten her own spell off. It cast up the wind at her feet; picking up a large amount of grit and dirt and flinging it at Moon. This time, she was forced to hiss and cover both her eyes as well as her nose and mouth, and collapse her wings around her to keep them from getting filled with the grit. In the time in between, Fluttershy quickly ran out of her own hiding space for Applejack. She reached her in moments and quickly went to work.
She was still working when Moon cleared her eyes and looked up again. The sky began to darken and thunder again, but as she held up her hand to complete her own spell the sound of a gunshot went out. Moments later a bullet passed through her neck; turning her into vapor once again. An interesting side effect was demonstrated as a result, as her spell broke in the moment she was intangible. Pupils thinning, as soon as she reformed she wheeled around to see Rarity holding a smoking gun, swallowing, and flinging it away soon after as she went for cover.
Before Moon could counter her, a rainbow blur shot in front of her. She looked down, only to see it shooting in front of her again. She glanced one way and another, seeing more of the blur, before it suddenly materialized. Dash was there, sticking her tongue out at her. She vanished in another blur and reappeared next to her, pulling her eyelids down and making another face.
Letting out a small growl, Nightmare Moon sent down a bolt of black lightning after her, but it was too slow. She vanished again and reappeared, this time flipping her off while blowing out her cheeks at her. She growled a bit louder as the lightning came down again. Dash vanished in another blur to avoid it, but this time Moon’s own hand shot out just as fast. Moments later, Dash materialized again, giving out a loud noise as her body slammed itself against her outstretched arm and fell to the ground. The armored woman raised her talons to rip into her…
Only to feel another lump rest itself in the crook of her neck armor.
“Tag!”
Nightmare Moon had just a moment to register the voice of Pinkie again before it went off; this time loud enough in her ear to not only make her stagger but to leave it ringing. She gnashed her teeth as she reached for the side of her head, stumbling to one side from the latest blast.
Yet when she got her footing again and looked up, she saw they were gone alredy. Even the Warrior and the Healer had departed; the latter having apparently finished her work.
“Well, I was going to go easy on the six of you,” Moon practically growled, “but since you’re making such nuisances of yourselves…”
She held out her hand behind her and extended her talons. At once, all of the metal remains in the two highest halls—buttons, gun parts, bullet casings, jewelry, clasps, cigarette cases, buckles—were wrapped in bits of darkness and raised up in the air. The darkness turned itself into black fire again, heating them up and beginning to deform them into slag in moments. As soon as that was done, each one was grasped by the shadow and reformed long and thin. The objects continued to hover and were soon gathered behind Nightmare Moon in a splendid array of deadly, gleaming, metal arrows.
Her serpentine eyes flashed out for the columns. She saw nothing, and a moment later ground her boot into the ground as she twisted about and began to advance. The arrows kept pace behind her, hovering over her head as she kept walking.
A moment later she saw a flash up ahead of purple: Twilight trying to step out. With the barest flick of a finger, one of the arrows shot out for her. She quickly gasped and went behind her column. The deadly missile struck so hard it pierced right through the structural support and sailed on through to the other side. Without looking away from the column, she flicked her finger three more times. Three more arrows were sent into and through the column, and she heard progressively louder gasping in fear from the other side. No cries of pain, however, but the cries of fright alone made her smile as she kept walking.
Another movement came from her other side. Without looking away from her current target, she flicked her finger again. Two more arrows were sent after that movement, and she heard a cry as whoever was trying to intervene was forced into shelter again. A moment later, she saw a hint of a rainbow blur, but she merely flexed her whole hand and sent out a stream of arrows after her so fast they seemed to imitate a hail of bullets; cutting through the air with whistles and tearing apart more of the ruins in their wake. She smiled even more as the blur was not only forced away but she heard a yell from it as she continued to focus on the column ahead.
By now, she could hear the gasping of the one behind it. She raised her hand and took aim at the column and was ready to pierce it with a mass of arrows at once; leaving no way for who was hiding behind it to escape or dodge…
“Here I come!”
Pinkie once again ran out from behind a column slightly behind Moon’s target and ran right at her. Without looking away, Moon made another gesture; sending a stream of five arrows at her. However, she was forced to look away from her target in surprise when she didn’t hear any cries or see the shape falter from the stream. The Rogue was undamaged and kept running forward with an energetic smile. Staring at her in puzzlement, she quickly brought up ten of the arrows and flung those at her in a stream next. To her astonishment, Pinkie neither slowed nor missed a beat; easily evading and jumping over each one no matter how fast. She could have sworn she saw at least two of the arrows hit her, but no marks were left. As she neared casting range, Pinkie brought out two of her bombs at once.
Not wanting to risk taking another hit, she grit her teeth and summoned her darkness again; before flinging out one wave after another at her. This one she couldn’t dodge. She let out an exaggerated cry as the first slammed into her and swept her off her feet. The second one sent her flying down the hall all the way to the opposite end before smashing her against the masonry with an even louder impact than she had struck the Warrior.
She didn’t rejoice in this, unfortunately, for she realized she had been distracted…
A moment later, one of her wings swept out to her left. It was just in time to catch Applejack’s hammer and wrench it and her arms to the ground; pinning her down. Her other wing swept out to the right, just in time to catch Dash (one of her legs bleeding) in mid-lunge and throw her body against a column; holding her there.
Seeing her success, Moon laughed darkly as more of her arrows orientated around and positioned themselves to pierce either woman. She took a moment to relish their fear on seeing themselves at her mercy…
Yet, at that moment, another form ran out behind a column and up to her. Rarity had her rapier naked and aimed it right for her chest. Moon looked at her and snorted dismissively. Her talons went out and easily caught the blade with the point a good foot from her face. In another moment she would have broken it apart in her grip.
The moment didn’t come, for Rarity used that instant to shout out an arcane word and complete a spell she had been preparing. Razor sharp daggers of ice erupted in Nightmare Moon’s face.
Her irritation growing all the time, to say nothing of being genuinely stung, she snarled angrily and stepped back to clutch for her eyes again. In the process she once again let her quarry escape. Applejack and Dash backed down, Rarity felt back, and Twilight left her hiding spot. Nightmare Moon continued to fume a moment more, but when her eyes cleared her face was now distinctly angry.
Her hands waved about her and all of the arrows she had already fired quickly ripped up out of wherever they had landed and were drawn to her. At the same time, she flapped her wings again and took to the air, hovering in the open space in the middle of the floor to easily look around. She didn’t bother flapping idly this time. She only searched a moment before she took off, going in a rapid dive and sweeping around the first column looking for one of the women—the arrows following behind her with points out.
She darted between two columns before she spotted Fluttershy. The Healer gasped before she turned and tried to run around the column, narrowly missing a stream of three arrows that shattered the floor tiles in her wake as Moon banked around and went after her. Soon she rounded the column, still hot on her heels, and sent out another stream. Applejack popped out from nearby and tried to interrupt the fire before it could tag her comrade, but another stream simply shot in her direction as well as the Healer’s. Her eyes widened before she planted her feet and crossed her hammer in front of her; intending to use the broad surface as a shield. To her credit, it held up against the first few shots, although she buckled more under every strike, before the fourth was too much and jarred her arms away—knocking the hammer clean out of her grasp. She quickly pivoted and ran before any more shafts could follow up and finish her.
Fluttershy, meanwhile, gasping and panicked, ran behind another column as Twilight stepped out and aimed another fireball spell at Nightmare Moon. Spreading her wings out in a V, she nimbly spiraled in a circle and let the fire shoot underneath her before firing away at Twilight with the deadly shafts. She tried to break off and run away, but two arrows pierced her cloak before another raked along her forearm, making her cry out as she spun back for cover. Nightmare Moon quickly flew after her; changing targets at last. As she did, Dash darted out and kicked away at two more pieces of broken masonry. Moon’s blazing serpentine eyes never wavered as she simply dematerialized into vapor for either stone, before sending the streams after Dash. She was forced to run for it and Moon quickly rounded the Caster’s column and flashed out her metal talons. She spotted Twilight for a moment, who was struggling to run for it only to gasp on seeing her right in front of her. Instead, she dropped to the ground as the silvery talons raked through the stone closest to where her head had been.
She didn’t immediately follow up with another strike; instead spinning around. Her serpentine eyes rested on Pinkie, who had been in mid-bound to try and run at her backside with both hands bearing bombs. She froze in mid-jump, gulping before grinning innocently and backing up. Moments later, she quickly flipped back, letting the bombs in her hands fall and explode uselessly, as streams of arrows went after her. While they pursued her, Moon’s horn lit up again as she spun back to Twilight. Moments later, two beams of light shot out from it. One traced in Dash’s direction again, cutting her off and slicing along her path to freeze her in her tracks before she could attack. The second moved vertically up in an attempt to vivisect Twilight from stem to sternum.
She quickly backpedaled along the ground to try and evade it, but she knew it would be too slow and quickly generated an ice spell to try and form a shield in her path. Yet on striking it, the force behind the “lunar laser” shattered the shield so violently and suddenly that the beam caused it to explode before shooting straight through and atomizing half of her wand. Ironically, the gesture ended up sparing the rest of Twilight as the blast smacked her with several jagged pieces and flung her away. She cried out in pain and alarm before colliding with the nearest wall. She slumped soon after, still conscious and able to writhe in pain, but now disarmed.
Moon immediately swung her hand out to gather the arrows back to her for a follow-up kill. Before she could fire, however, her eyes flickered to one side. Rarity was running up the stairs, trying to get the higher ground on her and aiming her rapier for a spell of her own. Quickly, she swung out her fingers and several of the arrows went in her direction instead.
The Magician gasped, breaking off her attack and trying to backpedal, but it wasn’t good enough. She evaded the first two arrows but the next two found their marks in her upper thighs. Blood erupted from both behind and in front and she cried out as she collapsed on the stairs.
Nightmare Moon glanced back down at Twilight, making sure she was still stunned and out of action for the moment, then bid her time for a few fateful seconds. Sure enough, Fluttershy soon ran out from behind a column a moment later for Rarity. Aiming her sights on her, she quickly swept her arrows back up and sent the full stream after her. The Healer looked behind her, and nearly screamed on seeing the deadly missiles headed her way like a swarm of angry birds…
But they never reached her. A rainbow blur shot in her path and practically shoved her forward and onto the stairs before darting around several times. Moments later, Dash, still bleeding from her side and sweating hard, nevertheless grinned as she grasped five of the arrows in either hand. The stream kept coming, but Pinkie soon did a cartwheel in their path and nimbly sprung to and fro in its wake. When it was over and done with, she simply sprouted up to one side with a smile. Her own hands…and feet…had seven arrows apiece and the rest were gathered in her poofy hair.
Nightmare Moon was honestly stunned at her failure for a fateful moment, until she heard a whistling sound behind her. She spun around and saw Applejack was up again, and she had tied the end of her lasso to an honest-to-goodness broadsword—the result of spreading her power to the combat knife. A moment later it flung up straight for her; the blade aimed like a deadly dart. Moon sneered slightly before simply veering to one side, letting the sword sail past and embed in the top of the column nearest her.
Before she could counter, however, the Warrior followed up by still holding the rope with one hand and reaching behind her and hoisting up her reclaimed hammer with the other. She snapped her arm back and swung it out like a spinning tomahawk for Nightmare Moon’s head. Her teeth grit a bit more at the additional irritation, and she simply swung her hand out and backhanded the attack away like it was no more than a dried twig.
Yet no sooner had Applejack gotten her hand free when she grabbed the rope with both hands, dug in, and yanked with all her might. A crackling sound was heard behind Moon, and she looked behind her just in time to see the upper part of the broken stone column snap loose, anchored by the sword, and come crashing down. She spun her body around and tried to turn into mist, but the effect of Applejack’s aura spread through the rope to the sword to the stone itself and she gave another light noise as the huge bulk fell on top of her and began to push her out of the sky to the floor.
She was halfway there when she let out an irritated growl, seized the huge stone column section with her taloned hands, and threw it away and to the floor with such an impact that it smashed part of the way into it. The floor shook and trembled as portions were knocked clear through to the first, but she paid it no mind as she wheeled on Applejack. She aimed her arrows at her as the Warrior dove for cover, only to hear arcane syllables along with a rush of wind. To her surprise, her attack didn’t come, and she looked around to see Twilight was sitting up again. A fresh wand was in her hand and she had used it to cast a strong tempest around her deadly missiles and tie them up in a whirlwind.
Moon wheeled on her and her horn began to light up again, but before she could fire another blast went off in front of Twilight; covering her behind a veil of light and smoke. Her eyes widened before narrowing again in anger, but when she looked for the source she only caught a glimpse of pink…from the upper floor. Scowling, she turned back to the mist and let the beam from her horn fly, slicing it apart and trying to dissect what was on the other side. Although it parted the mist in an instant, all it revealed on the other side was a fading purple glimmer: the remains of a teleportation spell.
She paused only a moment before she wheeled to the stairs, but other than bloodstains they were clear. She heard footsteps echo on the upper floor; no doubt Fluttershy and Rarity already going for cover again.
She scoffed. “Is this how you plan to defeat me? Making yourself such a nuisance that I get frustrated into giving up? You’re only postponing the inevitable, and I grow tired of playing hide and seek!”
Holding her hand up, she made a fist before making a pulling motion. In response, the arrows were seized and forcefully pulled out of the whirlwind. She let them continue to hover there before she darted her eyes around below. After a moment, she saw a bit of a rainbow blur shoot behind one.
Spinning about, she took off with a mighty flap of her wings—diving straight for it. No arrows. No aerial maneuvers. She simply went right for the column itself. Moments later she struck it…but the instant she did so she exploded into mist as if she had been nothing but a cloud of vapor in a humanoid form before then. Yet rather than move around it or condense, the mist kept going and seeped into every crack, crevasse, and fissure within the column.
A rumbling peeled through the chamber for a brief moment, rapidly growing in volume. Dust and pebbles began to rain down from the ceiling as the column vibrated and shook, developing a few more cracks…
Suddenly, with a thunderous noise, the column completely shattered on all three floors; sending the roar of collapsing stone throughout the entire ruin. As it broke apart into nothingness, it revealed a shocked and gaping Rainbow Dash behind it, staring in alarm and horror. She quickly ran to the next and behind it, but the mist moved just as fast—seeping out of the still-crumbling remains of the column and quickly sinking into the next. This time, it only took seconds to shatter it.
As Dash fled again the dark mist came out once more. It nearly sank into the next one when a pair of lightning bolts, one small and the other large, once again snaked out of the heavens for it. It struck the darkness and, for a moment, it began to solidify into a human form. But it was only long enough for it to wave its taloned hand behind it. In response, the arrows snapped around to the sources of the two lightning bolts, namely Twilight and Rarity on two different floors, and unleashed an even stronger hailstorm. This time, both were forced to flee as the strength of the firepower battered, smashed, and tore apart their protection into fragments and powder. The two women on the other side cried out as the arrows slashed at their backs and limbs, but Moon herself turned back into mist and increased her speed even more. Dash hardly had time to run behind another column before she was already sinking into it…
A mere second later it erupted again, and the Disciple was left wheeling around and gaping in shock at her speed. For a moment she saw the mist erupt from the shattering column, watching it condense before her eyes into the near-demonic-looking figure of Nightmare Moon glaring at her with violence and wrath, before her taloned hand went down.
Blood streaked against the floor as Dash’s body was turned into a rag doll, slapping it across the room and into another column hard enough to crack it. When she fell to the ground blood was still dripping in large, visible droplets from the major wound across her chest.
Nightmare Moon dropped to the ground, planting her feet and snapping her body around. She heard footsteps running, but didn’t search for Fluttershy this time. Her serpentine eyes flickered around instead.
Seconds later, she saw Applejack leap out from a side column with her sword at the ready. Not giving her a moment to do anything, Moon’s beam shot out of her horn. The Warrior quickly raised her sword, meaning to try and block it, but the laser sliced the massive blade in half and managed to cut a two-inch deep gouge into one of her shoulders at the same time. Crying out in agony, Applejack dropped the severed hilt and grasped for her wound, and Moon smirked before waving her fingers at her. A wave of darkness promptly smashed her in the stomach hard enough to knock her wind out before flinging her aside.
She snapped her head up a moment later—just in time to see Rarity having run to the edge of the bannister on the upper walkway. She had been readying her rapier, but on seeing Moon staring right at her she gasped and backed off. Too late. Moon’s beam lashed out again and cut upward through the walkway in a flash. It didn’t merely make a single incision this time, however. Instead, after two rapid sweeps, the hall gave an echo and a rumble before a large, twenty-foot wide section of the walkway broke free and collapsed to the floor. The Magician screamed as the ground fell out beneath her, and she desperately reached out and clutched for the edge before she could fall all together along with it. As for the section of floor, it sank all the way to the ground before smashing into and through it, pounding a hole through the second floor all the way to the first.
Moon ignored the struggling Magician and looked around again. Her serpentine eyes rested on a steepled hat coming out from another section of the banister, this time aiming a wand at her. Twilight reacted on being spotted but only paused in her chanting momentary. Moon countered by waving her hand at her as well. A tendril of darkness, like a snake, seeped out from her palm and shot straight into her open mouth. Seconds later, Twilight’s eyes bulged and she gagged; suddenly clutching for her neck. Blood began to ooze out of her lips. Nightmare Moon smirked before turning her hand around and twisting upward. In response, her entire body was yanked off of the ground by what was in her neck, before it was twisted around and roughly slammed back down against the ground again.
Following that, smiling now, she simply stared forward for a few moments. Abruptly, as if on instinct, she shot her hand up and over her head while grasping. On perfect cue, her talons clutched around the shirt and vest of Pinkie just as she had been trying to leap over her. The Rogue’s eyes widened, surprised at suddenly being caught, but got even more stunned a moment later when she was yanked down and around to stare in Nightmare Moon’s grinning, toothy face.
“Bounced back from my last attack, did you? Let’s see how well you bounce with a shattered spine.”
Aiming her hand at the nearest stone column, her hand gathered darkness while it was still clutching the woman. Pinkie gulped for a moment on seeing it gather, quickly muttering a prayer, before the mist in her hand went off. Pinkie was ejected from her as fast as one of her own arrows, before she was smashed right into the column as hard as Moon had smashed the members of the summit eight years ago. The marble let out a thunderous crack as her body was smashed so much into it it was horribly twisted and and left half-embedded in the rock.
“Pinkie!”
Moon smiled a bit wider as soon as she heard the Healer’s voice from nearby. In an instant, she dissolved into mist again and swept around, shooting over around one of the already broken columns and right into the face of a panicked-looking Fluttershy. In an instant, her body reformed; grinning widely at the woman. She gasped and staggered back, but Moon snapped out and seized her by the robe. She held her other hand up to her as black flames burst on it.
“No one here to save you now, which means you’re no longer available to save them.”
“Heh…as…if…”
Hearing the voice just from her side, Moon’s face became surprised again before turning in that direction—just as barbs from a pair of metal claws jammed themselves into her eyes.
This move actually stung, and she let out a cry of sudden pain and staggered back, clutching and rubbing for her eyes painfully. She wasn’t even able to see Dash, still bleeding out of her chest, looking pale, and barely able to stand nevertheless forcing a weak, trembling grin at her.
“Like…that little scratch…c-c-could…s-s-stop…me…”
Fluttershy, freed from Nightmare Moon’s grip, quickly ran up to her. She caught Dash just in time to keep her from collapsing; quickly holding her staff over her and beginning to concentrate. Moon shook her head two more times before her teeth grit and fully exposed themselves—her patience clearly gone. She looked up to both of them violently as her horn began to light up.
But instead of firing, she gave a start as the ground beneath her suddenly surged to one side, nearly tossing her in one direction. She stabilized herself soon enough but looked down and saw it had heaved. Looking up again, she saw Rarity, desperately clinging to the edge of the broken landing, had nevertheless freed one hand to aim and cast a small earth spell on her. Doubly angry at having been frustrated by such a minor move, she raised her hand to hit her with the black flame instead.
Yet moments later, her vision was blocked again and her body jarred by another bomb striking her alongside her head. She nearly staggered before a second hit her in the head again, and a third after it that finally did make her take two steps away. Eyes stinging with smoke, she nevertheless opened them and spun her head about.
“Impossible…!”
However, there she stood. Pinkie was not only not embedded in the stone column anymore, but grinning and waving at her without a scratch. Moon actually glanced back to the column, unable to believe what she was seeing wasn’t a trick, and then back at her.
“No human could have just shrugged that off! Anima Viri or no-”
Cut off again, this time by a solid piece of marble column being driven forward and into the back of her head hard enough to smash it. The individual in question was Applejack, running up behind her as soon as her back was turned. The hammer was in one arm, but she had hefted a good sized piece of rock and cracked it on the back of her head as hard as she could. It actually made her head bow a little, causing her to wheel around just in time for the Warrior to seize the handle of her hammer with both hands and smash it into her head one way and the other again. The slight gyrations of her skull were accompanied by her hissing in ever-growing fury…
She raised her hand to strike her down, but Applejack didn’t try to keep fighting. She quickly backpedaled instead. Pinkie quickly hopped away as well. She noticed this and gave a start, spinning to Fluttershy and Dash. The latter was still being healed, but she moved back as fast as she could too.
Finally, Rarity, swallowing a bit, swung her legs forward and let go. She dropped from the upper floor but managed to land on the second, although she nearly lost her balance for the hole nearby. Before she could fall, however, she waved her arms and gave a shout.
“Now, Twilight!”
Moon’s eyes enlarged even more. She snapped her head back up to the upper level, but only saw a flash of purple light. At the same time, another flash went off in front of her. She spun her head down to it.
Not ten feet away, panting, bruised, sore, and sweating, Twilight was crouched on the ground with her wand extended, a sigil being finished, and speaking out the last of the arcane words for her most powerful spell. She executed it a moment later, quickly setting her lavender aura ablaze, gathering it down to the tip of her wand, and sending off a magical missile right at Nightmare Moon.
Dissolving to mist wouldn’t help her. She could only bring her wings around herself as it connected and ignited.
A deafening boom resounded through the ruins of the castle; loud and strong enough to shatter another column to the point of crumbling. The piece that had embedded in the floor earlier groaned once before it sank through the rest of the way while more fragments rained down from the ceiling. Twilight herself cried out in pain, both from the casting as well as proximity, as she was shoved back along the floor by the boom. Rarity was thrown on the “good” side of the hole, and the others were blown back and away in the wake of the light.
When the echoing finally died down, the entire hall was still filled with smoke. The six, each one of them blown off their feet, coughed and hacked from where they were and began to rise up again. Knowing how Sunset had withstood a similar strike, they stiffly and rigidly got back to their feet as best as they could. Fluttershy quickly moved behind Dash as she raised her dented claws. Rarity furiously brushed the dirt off her white scarf and red coat before aiming her rapier. Pinkie bounced back up to her feet, looking a bit enthused at the whole experience. Applejack hefted her hammer and dug her foot in. Finally, Twilight forced herself up, in spite of trembling, and aimed her wand at the center of the smoke.
It continued to clear until a dark shape became distinct. It gained form until it suddenly split and parted, revealing itself to be Nightmare Moon’s collapsed black wings.
When they unfurled, they revealed her cold, stern, and slightly frowning visage. As they folded behind her, Twilight watched as three feathers, slightly bent and tattered, slowly fluttered to the ground. Her body had shifted four steps backward.
Aside from that, there wasn’t a mark on her body.
The color drained from the group’s faces. Even knowing Nightmare Moon’s power, they had assumed that would have at least left a mark. Their resolve began to waver.
As for Moon, she gave them all a cruel smile.
“Pitiful. That bit of light and smoke was your best, eh? Congratulations, then. I’m officially bored with this little tousle.”
She disintegrated into black smoke again. This time, however, in the span of an instant, she enlarged and fanned out about her, becoming a sprawling and ominous cloud. The group stiffened in genuine fear and looked about nervously at what this meant.
Moments later, the smoke condensed again into more distinct shadows before it drew away all together. The group nearly gave a gasp. An entire troupe of soldiers dressed in armor of Equestrian guards formed in the wake. Eighteen of them in all. However, only one look quickly confirmed they weren’t human. Their hair that they could see was a pale blue, like the glow surrounding a moon, while their skin itself was the same pale silvery look of moonlight itself. Their eyes from beneath their helmets gleamed yellow just like the Nighttouched.
With one movement, each one of them turned so that three were facing each woman. They grinned malevolently at them.
“Ok…what the hell are these?!” Dash yelled.
“She…she…” Twilight began to stammer, “she must have mastered shadow duplication so strongly she can actually split herself into-”
Twilight got no further. A moment later, every last one of these new shadow clones took off with a speed equivalent to Rainbow Dash, and each one of them, in rapid succession, smashed their fist into the stomachs of their respective targets one after another. The sound of the blows alone sent echoes rocketing through the chamber, and each one curled around the strike of their respective attacker—their faces morphed into looks of agony and shock.
They didn’t have a chance to collapse. In moments, two of figures went around and grasped the arms of their respective target harshly; yanking them up to their feet. The third went in behind and wrapped their arms around their necks in a choke hold, holding them up while grinning darkly. As each one was pulled up, only Dash and Applejack had the strength to begin to struggle against them. Yet when everyone heard the air above them begin to rumble and saw it start to darken, they all knew what was coming and somehow found the power to try and fight.
They couldn’t move in time. Seconds later, black lightning bolts shot from the sky and struck them all at once. Despite holding onto them, the “shadow men” were unaffected and only continued to grin maliciously as the power caused them to seize, writhe, and give painfully aborted cries of misery in echoing unison.
The lightning cut off after a moment but the sky continued to rumble and ready itself for a second strike. However, such seemed unnecessary. The six had all gone limp in the grasp of their respective captors. They weren’t even giving moans.
The grins of their captors vanished as they looked over them momentarily, seeing them simply lying there in their grip. At that, they all evaporated into black mist again; and at once the six slumped to the floor and collapsed. The mist itself quickly swept around and gathered in their midst. After reforming into a solid object, once again it broke as Nightmare Moon’s wings swept wide and she was left standing before them once again.
She glanced over them, one after another, checking for signs of life. And sure enough, after a moment, she did hear some stiff, strained noise. Her serpentine eyes flickered and she saw the Caster of the group weakly opening her eyes and feebly trying to raise her wand.
She didn’t even bother using any of her powers. She simply walked up to the woman, raised a foot, and brought it down. Easily, she put it over the wand and forced both it and Twilight’s arm back to the cracked floor before pushed inward. With a snap, the wand was broken in four pieces.
Twilight’s eyes cracked open wider as Moon reached down and grasped her by the neck. She was gentle for a moment, before she suddenly tightened her grip and dug all four talons in enough to draw blood. Twilight’s eyes widened, for the grip was almost choking.
Moments later, both Twilight and Moon erupted from the ground as she took off into the air again, back to the foyer of the third floor. For a moment, both of them sailed up into the moonlit sky, Twilight gagging and gaping fearfully, before her captor came back down and slammed her roughly against the ground again.
She serpentine eyes narrowed hungrily as her wicked smile returned.
“You miserable little fool. You actually thought you and your cohorts could defeat me? At no point during your meaningless, inconsequential little struggle did you even draw a single bead of my sweat, let alone a drop of my blood!”
With a yank, she effortlessly leaned back and hauled Twilight into the air, holding her over her own head and grinning maliciously at her. The Caster was powerless to do anything but clutch for her neck and look down.
“I am a god! I am death incarnate! And you? You are barely an infant! After seeing all that I had done to this world you had the audacity to think your little spells and incantations were going to put an end to that?”
Twilight couldn’t answer, barely able to gag or breathe. Nightmare Moon didn’t seem to expect one, however. Instead, as she kept grinning the base of her helmet’s horn began to light up again, quickly shifting upward and to the tip. She looked deeply into the woman’s eyes, ready to relish her final look of helplessness and fear.
The light nearly reached the tip when a noise shattered the air: a gunshot.
Nightmare Moon didn’t have time to fully register her surprise. Instead, her body instantly turned into mist as a bullet pierced it. However, in doing so, her intangible hand let Twilight slip right through it. She fell to the floor and her legs almost gave way underneath her, but she caught herself before they could. Immediately, she forced her hand up, stiffened, and began to draw symbols with two fingers…
Nightmare Moon reformed and nearly spotted this, when a blaze shot behind her head and struck it. It was not Dash or projectile, but rather Dash herself, on her feet again, hurling Applejack with her hammer in hand at the upper floor and the dark being as hard as she could. As soon as she reached her, she swung out with all her might and struck her helmet at the tip of the horn; managing to knock it down and askew. The lunar laser tipped down and cut through the floor instead, but more importantly the edge of the helmet was knocked over her own eyes. Applejack herself ricocheted from the blow, sailing back down to the lower floor.
As Twilight continued to gesture, Moon quickly snapped her hand out in rage, and the arrows flew up in her wake once again. She twisted her head around as she pushed her helmet up, and they responded by orientating themselves in all directions. She clearly intended to bombard the area until there was nothing left.
Yet as soon as she pushed her helmet up, a spark of light went out below her vision. She glanced down and spotted Rarity casting another spell that set off a series of bright fireballs. None of them were aimed at her, however. Rather, she soon learned they were meant to get her attention, and as soon as they did Rarity dropped so that Fluttershy could step forward into the path where they were, look right into Nightmare Moon’s eyes, and stare as hard as she could into them.
The being actually hesitated; her face twitching and stiffening. Around her, the arrows suddenly shook from their previously stiff positions, and then abruptly faltered and fell out of the sky. It lasted but a moment, however. Scowling, she tore her gaze away from the Healer and brandished her talons. She spun around meaning to simply slice through Twilight’s neck…
Yet on wheeling around and lashing out with her metal claws, all she got through was a mess of pink, poofy hair; several clumps of which fell to the ground. Moments later, its owner popped up in her view frowning.
“Hey! You know how long it takes to style it just right?”
Giving a cry of rage, she reached out and seized the Rogue by the skull in a crushing grip and swung her behind her and out of her way. She raised her other hand to drive it forward at the woman standing behind her.
Yet the moment she had brushed Pinkie aside and was face-to-face with Twilight once again, the Caster drove her two fingers forward and tagged her in the middle of her forehead.
A heartbeat of silence passed as Nightmare Moon’s vicious, cruel, and psychotic appearance drained like water poured out on the ground. Her cruel, sharp teeth twisted into a look of absolute horror.
“No…”
Twilight’s purple aura cascaded out of her hand like electricity and traced the emblem of the binding seal in midair around her forehead. Moon’s serpentine pupils shrank as the light began to fill her eyes, but that wasn’t all. The air around her began to charge. Black lightning started to shoot out again, but this time from her body. The ground at her feet started to quake and a whistling noise like a kettle starting to boil sounded around her.
Twilight slowly withdrew her hand, realizing this was going to be much bigger than before and starting to form a look of dread. A moment later, she turned and quickly ran by Moon and toward Pinkie, who had been released but was still crouched on the floor with a dazzled look. She pulled her to her feet and pulled her as she started to run for the stairs. The noise kept building behind her. Bolts of blackness lashed out and dug into the stone and masonry above her, and a dark shadow began to ooze forth from Moon’s body. As her eyes became consumed by the purple light, her face twisted into a look of anguish and misery. Her hand raised to the sky, showing off the six symbols on it. They were burning now. Smoldering and smoking, fountaining out of it like they were on fire.
Her voice began to cry out loud right before she erupted.
An explosion of blackness that rapidly gave way to one of silvery moonlight issued forth in a towering pillar from Moon’s body. It quickly doubled in size…tripled in size…quadrupeled…before swelling into a blazing, towering pillar that raised into the sky like a pale inferno. Not in eight years had anyone ever seen the like as the light washed over and consumed the Castle of the Two Sisters in its glow. For a hundred miles in all directions the light radiated, shooting up ever higher until it scraped the heavens. Gleaming like the moon itself had crashed into the world. The remains of the soldiers, their vehicles, and their weapons about the castle were swept away. The surrounding forests bent and nearly broke under the gale that rocketed upward with a monstrous roar.
And throughout the whole of Greater Everfree, no matter where and no matter the size, every last Light Eater suddenly seized and gave an unearthly squeal. Their moondrop faces, for a brief second, twisted into a facsimile of the same agony that Nightmare Moon’s own expression had been in. Craning their heads to the sky, they screeched one more time, and then evaporated.
Like they had never been anything more than a bad dream.
The Nighttouched, on the other hand, all froze where they stood. They remained that way for several fateful seconds, but they neither vanished nor changed. Those who were close enough to see the pillar, however, stood there a moment longer before they all turned their heads to it.
It was dying down by now, but was still by far the brightest light for miles. Still a beacon that they could all see as one.
Several seconds later, the first of hundreds of thousands of creatures began to move in that direction.
In spite of the raw power and dazzling, otherworldly sight that had been unleashed, the interior of the Castle of the Two Sisters was spared. A good thing for the six. The blinding moonlight and the roar and eruption had been so strong that they had seen nothing of what had happened. They were too busy shielding themselves in the wake of it.
However, it was gone now. Applejack was on the ground; hunched over her hammer. Dash was nearby, having dug her own feet into the ground. Rarity was clutching the remains of a column base along with Fluttershy. Pinkie and Twilight were in a disheveled pile at the bottom of one of the staircases; having been blasted the rest of the way.
Slowly, Twilight moaned and opened her eyes. She blinked a few times and gazed around, first taking stock of the others. Sore and dirty as they were, and still injured in some cases, they began to stir and look up and around as well. The first thing they noticed was that it was much dimmer in the castle. It looked like true ruins now, with long shadows and darkness cast over everything. Looking to the sky they saw why.
The moon was now a normal moon, and three quarters of one at that. The sea of stars was gone and many of the normal stars were blocked by the glow from it.
Twilight’s jaw loosened at the implication. The others quickly realized the same.
“The moon…” Fluttershy quietly spoke up.
“It’s…it’s normal now…” Applejack muttered.
“You…you don’t suppose…?” Rarity began to say.
A clinking from nearby snapped them all to attention, especially hearing it come from the upper parapet of the third floor. Sweating and tense, they all snapped to it and readied themselves.
Black tendrils of smoke were wisping into the air. In the dim light, they could see it wasn’t truly smoke but rather the remains of Nightmare Moon’s armor, falling off one piece at a time and disintegrating into thin air as it did.
Her hand was sprawled over the bannister and Twilight caught a glimpse of it. The black coloring was fading off of it like water on a burner, leaving a pale yet natural flesh tone behind. Twilight briefly caught a glimpse of the six symbols. They weren’t pronounced now. The specific runes had faded.
Nevertheless, she noticed they were still glowing; albeit much more softly. Flickering a bit, in fact—like flames or embers…
She pushed that aside as she looked to where the woman’s hair was splayed out. Her helmet was already breaking into pieces and falling away while her wings degenerated into black ash. It was a much darker blue now, but it covered her face.
Twilight swallowed, wincing a little from the sensation, and rubbed her neck before she called up to her.
“I knew all along, no matter how hard we trained, how long we practiced, or how much we put into our teamwork, that we’d never be able to beat you. Even a hundred of us couldn’t have stopped you. But fighting Sunset Shimmer taught me a good lesson: you couldn’t have all that power and not think it didn’t put you ‘above’ everyone else.”
She gestured behind her to the others.
“All we were trying to do was make it look like we were trying our best to defeat you. So long as you believed that, I knew you’d never just finish us. You’d insist on venting your power over us once we were struck down…over me. Then we needed to just keep you busy for as long as it took to put the Binding Seal on you.”
The form continued to lay there, the armor down to only a quarter of its previous self. The hand, still sizzling and pulsating slowly contorted and pushed down, planting itself on the stone and beginning to push up. A stiff, weak grunting came from the woman.
“It’s all over, ‘Nightmare Moon’. Your power is gone. Your night is over. You’re just as mortal as the rest of the human race now. You’re going to face the governments of Greater Everfree and you’re going to answer for everything you’ve done and all the people you’ve murdered.”
The woman on the balcony took in a few deep breaths to steady herself, then pushed up from the ground. Her unmarked hand shot out and grasped the edge of the bannister remains, and she slowly yanked herself to her feet. Her hair was still wild and splayed over her face, but as she stood up the six noticed her clothing looked purely civilian.
“You…” she began to mutter with strained breaths, “you…you fools… Do you have…any idea…what you’ve just done…?”
Twilight’s bold look turned to some puzzlement. The others looked likewise confused.
Dash snorted. “Uh, yeah. We just kicked the butt of a crazy woman.”
“Oh, oh!” Pinkie cheered, waving her hand. “We just saved all of Greater Everfree from the Light Eaters and Nighttouched and brought peace to the world…and now we’re gonna go to Las Pegasus?”
A hiss of irritation and frustration came from her as she tried to push up higher.
“You just doomed this entire world and every last living thing on it…”
The six only looked more puzzled. After a moment Rarity glanced at Applejack. “Did one of your ‘whacks’ hit soundly, dear? I think she seems a little muddled.”
Twilight, however, looked a bit more concerned. “What are you talking about?”
Her head began to lift up. “Now it’s too late… I was the only thing left to hold it back…” Her voice was growing weaker; more nervous…more frightened. “Was…was Starswirl right all along? Was it always inevitable…?”
“Starswirl?” Fluttershy echoed. “Twilight, isn’t that the name of your…Anima Viri?”
Moon went rigid on hearing that; a chill freezing her in place.
“Wh…what?” Her voice was suddenly a tense whisper. Her face looked up, but in the darkness they could only make out a hint of her jawline. Her teeth were normal again. Her lips were no longer in a scowl. Instead, her jaw hung loose.
“Who…who are you?”
Twilight began to grow more uncomfortable on hearing this. “What do you mean you were the only thing left to hold ‘it’ back? Hold what back?”
“What else? It’s coming now. It may take a week, or a month, or a year, but nothing can stop the Angra-”
Twilight was just starting to tense up, realizing what Moon was about to say, when in the silence of the ruins, a wet ripping sound cut her off.
Moon silenced herself in a gasp. Her back suddenly arched in a spasm. Her mouth fully exposed, but it was left open in an expression of surprise. It silently hung there, soft gagging coming out of her lips.
Then, to everyone’s horror, she spilled forward over the bannister to reveal a hand burying a bronze, 18-inch dagger in her back.
Fluttershy cringed and yelped. Pinkie gasped. Rarity cupped her hands to her mouth. The others stood shocked and horrified.
Yet not nearly as much as a moment later when the hand yanked the gleaming knife out and stepped forward over Moon’s body.
Her clothing was torn, bloody, and burnt in several places. Her hair was a wild mess of dirt and twigs as well as her own blood. Gashes and cuts were along her cheeks and forehead, and she looked barely able to limp forward. Yet her eyes still blazed with a fire of determination that was practically inhuman. Matched only by the pure hate and desperation she had twisted on her face.
Sunset Shimmer.
In an instant, she reached out and seized Moon’s bleeding back and hunched over her, positioning her upper body right over her outstretched hand. The six symbols continued to burn and blaze even without their rune emblems.
Twilight’s face went white.
“Don’t!”
Sunset hefted the dagger.
“I’m…going…to be…”
Gnashing her teeth, she drove it down into Moon’s hand.
“A GOD!”
The whistling sound broke out again, this time with a crackling and fizzling as white light erupted from the sigil. The symbols began to shudder so violently that they started to smoke and smolder on Moon’s hand once again. Yet the one nearest the tip, for all its quivering and vibrating, slowly was drawn into the embedded dagger like a pipette drawing fluid.
As it came, the crackling sound went louder. Suddenly, one of the symbols erupted off of Moon’s hand like it had been launched like a firework. A white, blazing, whistling beam of light shot into the sky and arched over the heavens. As the symbol drew closer to the knife, another one popped off and went in a different direction. Then the other three, one after another. The last of the five finally burst as the sixth symbol finally slid into the dagger. Instantly, it sank through the rest of the shaft, down the handle, and into Sunset’s hand.
A second later, it appeared like a blazing, burning, red-hot coal along with the other five, almost bursting into flame on her palm and belching out black smoke.
As the ground began to shake and crackle around Sunset, Twilight could only exhale two words.
“There’s documented witnesses both by the attending physician and two nurses that she was born with that deformity.”
“She can’t have been! Does that look like a birthmark to you? Someone sick and disturbed at that hospital etched it on her!”
“Again, I’m sorry to inform you that there’s no case. It was noted on the form at the time of birth. It had to have been preexisting.”
“You aren’t really suggesting that we somehow did that to her, are you? On purpose? To an unborn infant?!”
“I didn’t say that… I’m just saying that your child was born with this. I agree that it is highly unusual, but it is what it is.”
“You better remember you have an oath of confidentiality. The last thing I need right now is some doctor accusing me and my wife of mutilating our own child while still in the womb…”
“Mrs. Sunbeam, I’m sorry but my decision is final.”
“Please, could you at least give me an explanation? I think you owe me that after five years of employment. I want to be able and tell Blaze and Corona the reason that their favorite nanny just decided to walk out on-”
“Blaze and Corona and the rest of your children are fine, Mrs. Sunbeam. It’s…well, frankly it’s your youngest.”
“I understand that Sunset can be a handful but-”
“You don’t understand, Mrs. Sunbeam. Your child…well… Well, I guess since I’m not going to be working here anymore I’ll be blunt. There’s something wrong with your child.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“That babbling she does isn’t like any infant I’ve ever seen. Things keep moving around on their own when I’m about her. And then there’s that burning smell and those singe marks in her cradle. She’s…she’s not normal. And, if I am to be perfectly honest, I don’t even think she’s natural.”
“Five nannies in two years…and this is the second one that ran off screaming she was possessed. What is wrong with that child? I can’t keep leaving the bank in the middle of the day just to come home and fire another overpriced nanny! Do you know how this is making me look like to the partners?”
“From now on, no more candles at night, Sunset! Not if you can’t keep from burning your clothes and bedsheets with them! You stay in your bed, you stay quiet, and you do as you’re told! And don’t give me that! There was no one in your room but you!”
“You made Joy stop coming here! She was my favorite! You ruin everything! Why couldn’t you have left instead of her?! You’re the worst little sister in the world!”
“What in the world is the matter with you? Are you out of your mind? What were you thinking? Setting your own room on fire?! You could have burned down the whole house last night! Stop lying! Don’t you dare try and tell me it wasn’t you! I’ve had it with your behavior! I’m sick to death of it and you’re going to learn to behave if it’s the last thing I do! From now on, if I hear the slightest bit of trouble out of you, you’re spending the week in your room! That includes breakfast, lunch, and dinner! You sit still, you keep quiet, you keep out of trouble, and you don’t ever do anything like that again! Understand me?”
Scarcely had Twilight exhaled her horror when an eruption came out from Sunset’s body. It wasn’t like the other Anima Viris. This one wasn’t a radiation of her own aura. It was more like a pillar of light, similar to how Moon’s own body had changed. Hers, however, had been a pale moon glow. This one was an eruption of white light tinged with fiery colors.
An inferno.
For a brief moment, she almost swore she saw Sunset within the light hesitate. The nearly mad look on her face was painted over with sudden shock. Perhaps even fear. Then her body arched in on itself as she was consumed by the light from the burning rune. The last Twilight saw before she vanished into the light was her face stretched in agony.
A moment later, Twilight was forced to look away. Not only her but the others with her, for heat was pouring off of the burning pillar. The air around it began to ripple fiercely and the wind fanned even more so from the temperature about the pillar surging. It only grew hotter as time passed, and soon Twilight began to back up—stepping at first but soon moving faster as the temperature rose. She reached the others but they only got up and backed away too. Even from this distance, it already felt like they were in front of bonfire. An instant later, everything flammable on the entire third floor foyer lit aflame.
“What’s goin’ on now?” Applejack shouted over the rising heat and wind.
“She’s…she’s turning into another N-N-Nightmare Moon!” Fluttershy whimpered.
“No…” Twilight spoke, crossing her arms in front of her face. “This…this is worse…much worse!”
“What do you mean ‘worse’?” Dash yelled. “How can she possibly be worse?”
Before Twilight could say any more, the air was broken by the sound of a cry from within the inferno. One of agony and torment but also with an otherworldly power on it. It somehow reverberated far louder and more resounding. Enough to go through the entire castle and the lands around it. The six winced once more as the heat surged again. The light grew stronger as they saw the metal pieces of the structure and surroundings nearest to the blaze slowly start to gleam like irons in an oven.
Looking above it, within the flames, the shape of Sunset’s body began to take form again. Just dark enough to be seen in an outline. It took a moment of staring to be sure, but as the flames kept rising it was unmistakable—it was changing. The limbs were stiffly and spasmodically lengthening. Becoming longer. Thinner. After a time, it looked like her torso was doing the same. Only that stiffly lengthed a bit at a time like a ratchet was working it…or, more appropriately, like spinal columns were being added every few seconds.
She cried again and it resounded even louder.
Worse than that, it also sounded a little less human.
The air squealed, and suddenly a ray of black fire burst from the pillar of flame. It swung about in a deadly arc, cutting half of the staircase to the right of the foyer in two and making the entire set of stairs collapse. Another ray came out soon after, slicing through two of the columns at once. As they groaned, creaked, and finally collapsed (pulling a good part of the ceiling with them), the girls quickly retreated back even further. This time they didn’t stop moving until they were all the way to the staircase down.
By that point not only the metal but the stone around the pillar was starting to gleam and deform. The heat was so strong it was melting the stone into magma. The cry sounded again, even less human, and the six could see Sunset’s head beginning to deform now.
“W-W-When is she going to stop…?” Fluttershy stammered.
Applejack opened her mouth to answer, but stopped and pointed. “Aw no…look!”
Through the open ceiling and in the blazing light, the six ladies were able to see shapes starting to appear. Swarming over the area in a circle. As another ray lashed out from within the pillar and cut the back chamber apart, the fire gleamed enough to see, much to the shock of the six, black monstrous black shapes with yellow gleaming eyes.
“Nighttouched?”
“I thought we were supposed to get rid of them when we beat Nightmare Moon?!” Dash yelled.
Rarity looked at them uneasily before shrugging. “Maybe this will work to our advantage? I mean, at least they’re not interested in us. Only in what’s making the most light right now.”
Two seconds later, multiple rays of light shot out from the pillar again. This time they went into the sky surrounding it and made contact with several of the flying bat creatures.
Each one lit up with fiery flame on contact and the six were able to see them clearly stop and curl in on themselves in spasms. Yet they weren’t knocked from the sky or destroyed. On the contrary. Razor sharp claws came out of the edges of the wings. The wings themselves grew longer and serrated while their bodies gleamed like coals. Their faces twisted and enlarged to grow bigger teeth and dribble yellow-hot fire out of their jaws.
Moments later, the light cut off. Now the mutated creatures weren’t just monsters.
They looked like devils.
An instant later, they pitched out and began to attack their brethren, slicing and snapping at them and leaving them ripped apart or aflame in instants.
Fluttershy cupped her hands to her mouth in horror.
“She…she, um…just made the Nighttouched worse,” Dash half-muttered.
“Should we really call them Nighttouched anymore, though?” Pinkie shrugged. “I mean, look at them. They’re all flamey and more toothy. Maybe we can call them Firetouched? Or Lavatouched? Or-”
A groan from the entire structure cut Pinkie off and made everyone go wide-eyed again. They looked back to the inferno, and saw the constant rising heat was having an effect on the whole chamber. The middle of the floor was sinking a little as the metal and stone alike began to melt.
Furthermore, while the heat continued to blaze, the inferno itself was starting to die down at last. Whatever was inside was “done changing”.
And based on the latest cry from inside it, which it now bellowed, it wasn’t human at all anymore.
There was no need for prompting at the sound of that voice. They all turned and ran for the stairs. They heard the sound of more of those rays of fire coming out as they did, knowing it meant even more of the bat creatures were turned into far more monstrous forms, but they didn’t stop.
“What’s with that kid?”
“She never joins in. She just sits over there and doesn’t say anything to anyone.”
“Maybe she can’t talk.”
“Maybe she’s dumb. I bet she’s stupid but her dad paid for her to be in class with the rest of us.”
“Sunset, I’m busy. We’re down three percent this quarter and I have to find out why. I’ll find out how you’re doing in school when I talk to your teacher in a couple months. Just stay out of trouble, alright?”
“Not now, Sunset. Your sister’s violin recital starts in 30 minutes and then your brother’s game starts right afterward. Just keep behaving and everything will work out. Dinner’s on the table, so just eat up and do your homework. We’ll be back late so you’ll probably be in bed before we get home.”
“There’s that freak kid again.”
“She’s a freak?”
“Oh yeah. I heard it from my big brother. He’s in class with her sister, and she told him that she likes burning things. She tried to burn the whole house down with them in it.”
“Wow!”
“She’s crazy!”
“Hey Sunset? You want to come hang out with us? Yeah, really! You can help us with the float for this year’s school parade!”
“Mr. Luster, Mrs. Sunbeam…your child’s act of vandalism is completely unacceptable. Arson is not going to be tolerated no matter how young they are.”
“There you go again! All you ever do is act up and then lie about it! Why in the world would your classmates have set it on fire and then said it was you? Why? Did you do something to make them mad at you? I don’t want to hear it! If you can’t even admit that you did it then you can go to bed without supper tonight!”
“I don’t believe this, Silver! A new elementary now! Every time someone comes into the studio now someone whispers to them about her and then they give me these weird looks! I must have lost ten new clients already because of her acting up! Now how are they going to act when they find out she got expelled for setting a fire?”
“I hear she got kicked out of her last school because she tried to burn the place down.”
“She’s a retard, is what I hear. She can’t even talk.”
“Let’s watch her. I know this one retard around home who just grabs one ear and slaps a table with his hand for five minutes. Maybe she’ll do something like that!”
“Hey, nice hair bow! Why don’t you let me borrow it for a bit? Or do you want me to tell the teacher I saw you try and start a fire?”
“Ugh…you lost your hair bow? Well, you can do without for a few days. I can’t keep paying to replace things you lose, Sunset…”
“Give me your shoes, kid. You don’t want everyone thinking you’re going to burn down the school, right?”
“According to four witnesses, Sunset started the fight, Mrs. Sunbeam. She said she hit her and knocked her down when she just stopped by to ask her to play with them. I’m afraid your daughter is a bit out of control.”
“I can’t have one day without you causing trouble, can I? Not one!”
“Oh, you mustn’t blame yourself, dear. It’s not your fault. Some children are just born with particularly thick skulls. Happens all the time to everyone. Luckily, factory work is so easy these days that even a dullard can pick it up.”
“Silver, some people are just never meant to go anywhere in life. They’re just not suited to ever accomplish anything or earn anything. The sooner you realize that’s the sort of person Sunset is going to be, the more at ease you and your wife will be. Just don’t expect anything out of her from now on and that will make trying to suffer through her childhood more…bearable.”
On reaching the bottom floor, the heat from upstairs was causing the stone over their heads to gleam, and even begin to dribble like lava in a few spots. It gave enough light, however, for them to see their way as they kept running. They didn’t dare cross under it for the front, so they charged through the columns and passageways for the rear. They eventually left the main hall and into a side corridor that was reasonably intact. Another roar sounded when they did, this one shaking the castle itself, but it wasn’t any closer at least. After running a short distance, Twilight led them into one of the rooms.
As soon as she was in, she dropped into a crouch and panted fiercely; trying to catch her breath. The other five quickly ran in and crouched alongside her.
“Good grief…” Rarity spoke, breathless, wide-eyed, and struggling to keep her cool. “I’ve heard of the expression out of the frying pan and into the fire, but this…”
Twilight’s pupils were nearly pinpricks as she took off her hat and ran a hand through her hair. “I never thought things could get this much worse… This is bad. This is really, really bad.”
“W…w-w-w…w-worse…?!” Fluttershy nearly whined.
“How in the hell is it even worse?” Dash nearly snapped.
Twilight sighed and held up her hand, pointing to her rune. “This is the one she needed! I don’t know exactly how the compatibility works with Anima Viris, but Sunset said she needed mine specifically to go with the rest of Celestia’s! She couldn’t just grab any other Anima Viri! That’s why it’s burning on her hand! It’s not compatible with the others! Normally, I don’t even think she could have used it… That must be why the rest of the Anima Viris went flying off of Moon’s hand when she forced it into herself…”
“Just give us the short version…what does that mean?”
“That’s just it…I don’t know exactly, but it’s definitely not something good! At the bare minimum, I think upstairs is showing that it means she’s not going to be in control of her power like Nightmare Moon was, and that she’s not going to have the same powers she had either! These ones are worse!”
The entire room gave a violent shudder to the tune of something massive falling down upstairs. It sent bits of mortar raining from the ceiling as an echo resounded. Seconds later, chills ran down everyone’s spine as another inhuman yell bellowed.
As soon as it died down, Twilight continued. “If what’s happening upstairs is any indication, she’s not going to be happy with Light Eaters and a slowly moving shadow! She’s going to turn the Nighttouched into…into whatever those things are up there and they’re going to burn everything they can!”
The six had gone a little pale. Even bold ones like Dash and Applejack couldn’t hide their anxiety. The upper floor shook again and more bits of stone rained from the ceiling. Both Rarity and Fluttershy started to turn into themselves. Even Pinkie swallowed and began to whisper a prayer.
Rarity finally looked up slightly. “I…I think tonight was enough for one night. Let’s just focus on getting out of Equestria while we still can…”
Twilight shook her head. “That’s not good enough! Don’t you remember? Nightmare Moon said she was doing everything she did on purpose! She might have been crazy, but the reason she didn’t kill us all years ago is because she didn’t want to! Whatever that…that thing is upstairs is, it could just want everything to go up in flames! And daylight isn’t going to stop her or her monsters!”
The group was silent again. They looked to one another uneasily.
Applejack looked back at the mage. “We’re on our last legs, Twilight. Even if we weren’t, we’d be barbecue long ‘fore you could get close enough to do that bindin’ seal again. What can we do?”
The ceiling shook again. When the roar sounded it seemed a bit closer. An odor was beginning to waft from upstairs. It stank not only of ash but of something more foul, like brimstone. Twilight trembled a bit at the scent alone before staring at the floor. She did so for several seconds.
Her eyes closed and she took a deep breath.
“I want you all to get out of here as fast as you can.”
“Okie-dokie!” Pinkie chirped, nearly getting up, but then freezing. “Wait…what about you, Twilight?”
“Yeah,” Dash threw in, “what about you?”
She swallowed but didn’t look up.
“Twilight,” Rarity asked, “what are you planning on doing?”
She exhaled again. “There’s one chance left. That orichalcum dagger that she used to draw out Moon’s Anima Viri still has to be somewhere upstairs.” Stiffening, she began to push herself up to stand again. “If I can get it and stab her hand with it, maybe…maybe I can draw out that unstable Anima Viri.”
“Are you nuts?” Dash shot back. “You’ll burn up long before you get to it!”
“It could be lyin’ in a puddle o’ lava by now!” Applejack shouted. “And there ain’t no way you’ll get around whatever the hell she is now without her spottin’ you!”
“I have to try!” Twilight shot back, forcing herself a little. “I can’t let her get out of this castle! I can’t let her ruin Greater Everfree after so many people died already! After we all tried so hard to save it!”
“But,” Fluttershy timidly spoke, “if you use that dagger on her…won’t…won’t you get her Anima Viri? What if…um…it’s not compatible with you either?”
Twilight was quiet a moment. Her eyes fell toward the floor. Her voice became quiet.
“I think the five of you can kill an out-of-control Promethian Sigil bearer with only two Anima Viris much easier than someone who has six…”
The six were stunned. They realized what that meant.
“Twilight…you can’t be serious…”
She swallowed again. “Just get away from here. As fast as you can. I think if you can make it to forest you have a chance…”
“Nuts ta’ that!” Applejack retorted.
“Yeah! If you’re going, we’re all going!” Dash threw in.
She immediately looked up. “No…no, you’re not. Not this time. This is a one-way trip for me.”
Rarity swallowed, flustered a little, and then began to loosen up. “Then it’s a one-way trip for all of us, darling!”
“No!”
Twilight shouted so loudly and fiercely that the others stopped just as they were starting to rise. She stared back at them with an almost pleading look.
“I don’t want you to come with me! For eight years, aside from a visit once in a while to Shining Armor, it’s been no one but me and Spike! I thought I was alone in the world! This…this…” She stiffened, stammering a little. “This is the first time since all of this happened that I feel like I’m not by myself anymore!”
Her eyes began to water. She was quiet a moment, but when she forced herself to speak again her voice began to break.
“You’re the first friends I’ve ever had! I can’t let you die now! Not here! Not like this! I told you all to come here! If you all end up dead because of it, then…then…”
No one could say anything. They didn’t even react when the ceiling shook again. They stared at Twilight wide-eyed and speechless at her confession.
The moment was broken when the roar sounded again. Definitely closer this time.
Worse yet, the twisted demonic voice almost seemed to say something.
“Schhhhesstyaaaah…”
The six looked up fearfully. Twilight felt the same, but she also saw her moment.
“I’m sorry.”
She didn’t even wait for the others to look back at her. She turned and ran back out the door as fast as she could.
If they called to her, it was drowned out by an even larger tremor soon after. This one shook the very foundations of the castle. Twilight stumbled a bit but she didn’t fall. As soon as she regained her balance she kept running. She tried to ignore any more shaking within the castle, to say nothing of the fact that the fiery glow from upstairs was far brighter now. The stench of sulfur was stronger and smoke was beginning to run along the ceiling. Up ahead it looked like the lower floor was on fire. Nevertheless, she grit her teeth and boldly turned to run out into the hall.
Her timing couldn’t have been “better”. She only managed to catch a brief glimpse of the stone ceiling dropping molten bits down onto the first floor before it gave a massive crunch and crack, then fell in entirely. A wave of heat came over her as the melted remains sprawled out like thick mud; instantly igniting everything nearby that was flammable. It cast the whole floor in a hellish light.
A second afterward, a very large shape gleaming like flame dropped down behind one of the still-standing larger columns.
Twilight gasped. She stared in terror momentarily, too petrified to do anything, before she forced her hand to fumble for her last wand and hold it up. She began to inch toward the stairs, hoping she could get in there without notice…
She froze again and nearly screamed when she saw a monstrous set of red, crooked talons round the edge of the column and dig themselves in. Blazing like an iron in a furnace along the back of the clutching, twisted hand was the one rune of the Anima Viri Sunset had stolen, burning like a fire and still belching black smoke. The column began to crack and crumble as the figure behind it slowly pulled herself around.
Twilight tried to scream but the terror choked her voice out. The thing…the demon…she was looking at was hard to imagine having ever been human. For one thing, it was lanky, twisted, and over three and a half meters tall. The skin had turned dark red and heat issued form it. The remains of Sunset’s armor and clothes had turned into what looked like a garment of dripping, hissing magma. Like Nightmare Moon, it had wings, but these ones weren’t feathered. They were great and bat-like, with a black layer on the upper edge giving way to more gleaming, burning fires beneath. The bottom was serrated and, combined with a tail of flame stretching from her backside, the likeness of a demon was unmistakable from that alone.
Yet her head was the worst. The jaw had grown so enlarged it misshaped and deformed the face, which itself was full of nothing but jagged teeth in a cruel, sadistic grin. The ears had grown long and pointed and her hair now seemed like a true blaze fanning in the air behind her. The only sign that this monstrosity had ever been Sunset Shimmer at all were the colors of the retinas of its enlarged eyes. Even then, the rest of her eyes were nothing but blackness.
“Schhhhesstyaaaah…”
“Hey Sunset! I’m having a birthday party this weekend. You’re invited. We’re going to have lots of fun! We’re going to play all kinds of games and we’re having the best baker in town make our buttercream frosting cake!”
“Stop being so unsociable! Maybe if you would play with more children your age people would like you in school better, and you’d spend less time making a nuisance of yourself in this house! Go to the party! With an attitude like that, you’re lucky you even got invited! She sounds like a nice girl for wanting you to come!”
“What are you doing home so soon? And…and look what you just did! You ruined your shoes and tracked mud all over the house! Ugh! Can you keep from wrecking something for one day?!”
“Oh…heh…I’m so sorry! Did I say come in at the front door? I meant the back door. We…hehe…we couldn’t hear you’re knocking at the front over the music. Gee, you must have gotten all wet from all of that rain, didn’t you? Hope you didn’t get stuck in the mud walking home!”
“I just can’t believe she actually showed up! What a dummy!”
“She actually thought someone would invite her anywhere?”
“These are some new children your age, Sunset. You should get along with them just fine. Now…I’m warning you…I want you to be good around them. Understand? Be good. You cannot act up around these children. They’re the kids of my partners and they’re doing me a big favor bringing them here to play with you during the event. Just stay good and stay out of trouble.”
“So I hear you’re the freak kid of that bumpkin my dad keeps around the bank. Look at her. No wonder she’s an idiot. Her grandpa and grandma were redneck peanut farmers. She’s a hick just like her dad. Oh? What are you gonna do about it? You touch me and your dad’ll never work in this town again, and your mom can go make her paintings out of trash she finds in the gutter.”
“That’s where she belongs.”
“The trash or the gutter?”
“Heh, why not both?”
“Nah, she belongs in the looney bin. They need to stick her in the nuthouse and dunk her in the ice water a few thousand times. Maybe that’ll get her to stop burning things.”
“Hey, look at me when I’m talking to you, you little freak. I want a good look at you. All my dad ever talks about is how much your dad must be inbred for having a kid like you.”
“My dad says she came from a whore. He’s trying to keep it a secret. That’s why they didn’t dump her in an orphanage a long time ago.”
“They should shove her in that pencil shop downtown. Put her to work putting erasers on pencils all day. She might as well bring home a couple bucks.”
“Nah, they should use her as a doorstop.”
“What’s that? Wanna say something to me? Better watch your mouth if you know what’s good for you and your family.”
“I…have…had it with you! You…you…you damn little brat! I can’t stand it any longer! I’ll be lucky if I’m not out of a job tomorrow after what you did to that boy! Who do you think is going to have to pay to fix his two teeth and his broken nose? Do you think after everything of mine you’ve ruined I’m just made of money?! All you had to do was play nice! Why can’t you…why…”
“Silver…just…just let it-”
“Why can’t you just be normal?!”
“Everyone was so happy before you were born! You don’t do anything except make trouble for everyone! I wish you would just die or run away!”
“I wish we could send you to an orphanage, but that would never work! None of them would want you! No one wants you! You’re good for nothing! All you do is make everyone angry and sad!”
“She’s just going to be a problem child… We’ll have to take care of her forever… She’ll never be able to do anything for herself or make anything of herself…”
“I hate you!”
“I hate you!”
“I hate you!”
An instant later, with a casual move, the demon shoved the entire column out of the way like it was a stack of tin cans. Her infernal wings spread as her heat began to do the same to that floor as it did to the one above, and she flapped once to put herself in the sky.
Before she could move toward her, the mage snapped out of it enough to quickly cast a spell. She had little mana left as it was but she still had more than enough to send a spear-like crystal of ice flying at the monster. Not waiting to see what the result would be, she spun around and ran full tilt for the stairs.
The demon clearly didn’t have the intelligence of Moon. It simply hovered there and let the tip strike it in the shoulder. Instantly it shattered apart and quickly melted before starting to boil into steam, but not before splashing some of the cold water and ice on it.
Twilight cringed a moment later when it let out an ear-splitting noise of pain. She turned her head briefly and saw its toothy grin turned into a snarl. However, she didn’t try to exploit this newfound weakness any further; especially as no actual damage had been done. She reached the stairs and began to dash up them as fast as her robe would allow.
Still screeching the demon turned back to her. It stretched out its talons but didn’t fly after the Caster. Instead, it twisted its arm around and curled up before making a fist.
Twilight suddenly heard a crackling all around her, before crying in alarm as most of the staircase around her was telekinetically ripped right out and yanked into the air. She was brought along with it, and cried out even louder, this time in pain, as the fragments of stone broke smaller before being drawn together and crushing around her body.
A second later the demon snapped her hand down. Twilight yelled one last time as she was flung to the ground with the debris. One particularly large chunk of rock was slammed down on top of her as she collided with the ground, and an instant later her middle was pounded beneath a 100 kg slab.
Twilight’s cry was turned into an aborted gag as she felt something break and the agony left her crippled even without the fact of the huge piece of stone now pinning her down. She grasped it and tried to push herself free, but not only was it hopeless in her current agonized state but doing so only made her realize her hands were empty. Opening her eyes wide in terror, she looked around through her trauma only to see her wand was now lying four meters out of her grip.
The woman began to panic. She looked back and saw that the demon was already flying toward her with its grin returned. She put her hands on the slab again and tried to push but it was still futile and she only felt more pain in her chest from trying to move. Fearfully, she looked back at the closing monster, unable to do anything as its maddened eyes looked hungrily at her.
Yet when it had only closed half the distance, she heard arcane syllables being yelled before a much smaller stream of ice crystals shot out and pelted the demon in the face. This time, Twilight saw steam and heard a crackling like thermal stress before it growled angrily and reached for its vision, flying backward in retreat.
Twilight gaped and looked to one side. Rarity was moving out and onto a fallen column, keeping her blade aimed at the demon and quickly generating another ice spell. She pelted it with a pair of crystal knives soon after, making it hiss and sneer before flying further back.
“Rarity…!”
Before she could call anything else, she saw a pair of shadows fall over her. The slab that was on her body was forcefully seized and, with a grunt, Applejack hefted it and threw it aside. She nearly dove down to pick Twilight up, but the other one with her, Fluttershy, held out a hand and quickly bent down over her.
“Don’t move her yet! Give me a moment to patch up any internal injuries!”
“Make it fast! Rarity, Dash, and Pinkie ain’t gonna hold her long!”
Hearing that, Twilight looked back up. As Fluttershy began to chant over her, Rarity had managed to throw a third spell, but at that point she was panting and sweating before letting her blade fall. However, she had help.
Darting in like a flash, Dash ran around and seized up whatever cool piece of rubble she could find before punching it at the demon. The monster recovered from Rarity’s attack by the time she knocked her first at her, but, unlike Moon, the stone connected and shattered. It only seemed to irritate the demon more than anything and she quickly raised her claws to rip apart the ground where Dash was. Unfortunately for her, the Disciple was far too quick and was already lining up another shot by the time the demon was ripping up the ground where she had been.
After three of these, the demon was getting very angry, but before it could attack again an explosion went off on the side of its head. It hissed and looked at where it had come from. Pinkie, the last few bombs in her hands, was bouncing around again and throwing in her own attacks. At that point, Rarity was strong enough to start generating another ice spell while Dash kept making herself a moving target.
“Hurry up over there!” Dash shouted as she hefted another boulder. “We can’t get any closer to her! I feel like I’m in an oven just from here!”
Luckily, at that moment, Fluttershy removed her staff and nodded to Applejack. By now, she had rushed over and taken her wand back up. She practically threw it in the mage’s hands before she grabbed her under her arms and started to lift.
“I told you all to get out of here!” she protested as she was set back on her feet. “Why are you-”
“’Cause we don’t want you to throw your life away either, ya’ damn fool!” Applejack cut off. “Now stop talkin’ and start gettin’ upstairs!”
Putting a hand on her, the Warrior practically yanked her back to the half-broken staircase. After a moment Twilight stopped resisting and followed after her. Fortunately, although half of the stone stairs were gone, the remainder were solid and Applejack began to lead her and Fluttershy up.
They had just begun to pick their way around the damaged portion and approach the first bend in the stairwell when they heard a piercing, horrendous cry behind them. In spite of the urgency, Twilight looked back as Applejack kept pushing her on, but when she heard her gasp the Warrior looked back too.
The demon was “calling for backup”. No sooner had it finished its squeal than the flaming bat monsters began to swoop down from the opening, extend their talons and jaws, and fly to the nearest of the women to start attacking. Rarity let out a yelp as she quickly orientated her icicle to one about to seize her while Pinkie was forced off course to evade two sweeping out for her. Dash herself greeted the first one to come at her with a punch; causing it to shatter like a burning log into embers. Nevertheless, Fluttershy let out a gasp of her own on seeing Dash recoil in pain from the blow. Even touching them had to burn her.
Nevertheless, she aimed her claws for another one. “What are you doing? Keep going!”
Twilight kept lingering on, but Applejack soon yanked her onward and Fluttershy charged up with her.
The two crossed to the upper floor, only to see it looked like a volcano interior. Fires had spread everywhere now. Part of it was melting and the rest was red hot. Even with the open ceiling the smoke was getting thick enough to start coughing. Twilight had no choice but to pause long enough to generate a wind spell to blow some of it away when Applejack and Fluttershy both began to choke. Fortunately, doing so revealed their route. One side of the hall had been destroyed by the combination of Nightmare Moon and the demon. The other half, while broken and fragmented, to say nothing of aflame, was their only shot to the staircase up to where Sunset had stabbed Moon.
Unfortunately, they didn’t take off for it right away, for that wasn’t all that the wind revealed.
The demon had been busy. There were now dozens of those hellish bat monsters and a few bird monsters perched all over the broken roof or hovering in the air. Perhaps they had been spreading the effect on them to the others, but it hardly mattered. All that did matter was with the smoke cleared they immediately looked down with gleaming, burning eyes at the three of them. A second later, the sky filled with a chorus of hisses and screeches as they all took to the air, and then arched down and dove for them.
Twilight quickly raised her wand while Applejack hefted her hammer, but both of them knew there were too many of them already. The air began to grow hotter yet just from them approaching, and all it would take is more than one attacking at a time to leave them burned or dead…
Yet as they neared for their final dive, all of the ones in front gave aborted cries. Others spasmed, and some of them stopped flying so abruptly that they dropped right out of the air. Still others screeched and struggled in midair. Twilight was surprised for a moment, before she noticed something. All of their eyes were open wide and not blinking.
She spun around and saw Fluttershy, shaking like a leaf, but also pulling her hood back and staring as hard as she could at them.
“I…I can’t…hold them all…!”
Applejack, not waiting for any more prompting, quickly clapped her hand on Twilight’s shoulder again and shoved her onward. The Caster looked at Fluttershy one last time before turning forward and charging into their midst.
FSome of them managed to break loose and go after the two of them. Applejack quickly hefted her hammer and smashed apart each one; breaking it into molten fragments. Twilight winced each time one of the red-hot embers sailed past her. One, at length, tagged the hem of her robe and it instantly caught on fire. In spite of the protection it was offering from the searing heat, she quickly undid it and let it fall behind her as she focused on running.
They had closed half the distance to the opposite side when their path was aborted. A pair of monstrous, flaming birds, looking like they had been owls at one point, landed right in front of them and dug into the ground with their hooked talons. Applejack and Twilight skid to a halt as they cracked their beaks open wide, belching flames from their throats, and stretched their flaming wings out menacingly.
Applejack, however, hesitated only a second before she barreled right at them. In spite of the fact they were nearly her size and radiating searing heat, she leveled the head of her hammer in front of her and smashed it into one enough to rip it out of the pavement and send it colliding into its partner. She kept pushing, ignoring the fire, as she drove both of them into the masonry nearby.
“Keep runnin’, Twilight!”
Swallowing, Twilight sprang to life and kept going past her. Soon she and the swarm were left behind as she zeroed in on the intact staircase up ahead.
She only managed to close the distance another quarter before the voice echoed from beneath her.
“Schhhhesstyaaaah!”
At that moment the walkway in front of her erupted, forcing her to halt and shield herself. She only did so long enough to weather the initial eruption of stone and masonry before lowering her arms. She gasped again on seeing, to the tune of a plume of smoke and unfurling great wings, the demon rising up in her path. Moments later, the infernal creature raised both of her hands. Either one began to gleam even more brightly, like a red-hot coal, and the mage realized she was going to use the same beams that she had used while still in the pillar. She began to raise her wand to try and defend herself, but even then she realized she was stuck on the walkway. The monster had taken out the only way onward...
"Twilight!"
Before either one could attack, though, the mage turned to the sound of a voice to her right. She caught a few moments of Dash pulling off another one of her wild moves: leaping up along the remaining intact columns once again until she got high enough to land on the same path as Twilight. The Caster nearly gasped as she was seized and practically thrown over Dash's shoulder, right before she leapt back off for the nearest column.
By then, the demon fired off its beams of dark fire, cutting away where Twilight had been with one and shooting after Dash with the other. While it missed the woman herself, the ray sliced up the column she landed on--causing it to give way at her feet before she could jump off of it. She ended up making a much smaller bound while still carrying Twilight, this one onto one of the flaming bats that were rising up from the lower floor after her. She touched on it just long enough to jump off to one more, losing a bit of altitude with each one, before half-throwing Twilight away and onto the walkway on the opposite side. As soon as she left her grip, Twilight, through the vertigo of being cast away, caught another demonic creature rushing up and striking Dash in the back. She nearly cried out to her, but collided with the walkway a moment later—knocking the breath out of her as soon as she touched down.
Sore and in pain, and growing increasingly worried about the others, she nevertheless saw she was clear and the stairwell was just in front of her. Gritting her teeth, she got up to all fours and started to crawl after it as fast as she could while trying to pull herself up to run. At the same time she could hear the demon snarling behind her. It was right on her heels and she knew she couldn't get away now, but nevertheless she tried to hold out for as long as she could. She only hoped the next sound she heard wasn't it firing at her back.
"Whee!"
Instead, the sound she heard was from Pinkie. As she got to her feet, she looked behind to see that, somehow, she had gotten onto the same level as her. The demon had spun around and moved to fire on Twilight, only to see Pinkie now standing between the two of them. On pure instinct, it fired away at her instead. She quickly dodged to one side and primed herself to dart out of the way again.
Unlike Moon, however, the monster didn't go for it. As soon as she was out of the way between her and Twilight, her eyes flickered back up to the Caster. She snarled and extended her talons, nearly flying toward her again...
Yet, again, she was distracted by another explosive hitting the side of her head. Moments later, Pinkie moved back on her path with her hands in fists. It took the mage a moment to realize they were clutching her last two explosives. More than that, she quickly backpedaled as she readied them again. Even she couldn't stay close to the flaming monster long, but she had at least recaptured its attention.
Twilight spun fully back around and pushed herself the rest of the way to the stairs, hurrying up them as fast as she could. More of the flaming bat creatures flew up from the depths and screeched out as they dove toward her, but they gave out additional screams soon after and faltered. From the floor below, Rarity was still firing away with her rapier. As much as it was winding her, she kept the icicles going to pick off the monsters that got close to the mage, and her aim was steady enough to keep them off long enough for her to finally cross to the top of the foyer.
She stopped for just a moment to assess the area. It was almost totally ruined by now. Much of it was gleaming like a crust of rock over running lava and she didn't feel too terribly safe about moving on it. She raised her wand down and quickly began to cast a new spell. Moments later, she aimed it at the floor as it blew out a fierce wintry gale. She swept it over her path to cool it further before risking stepping out onto it, and kept spreading it as she began to search.
It was almost impossible to make anything out between the rubble, the fractures, and the smoke around her. She hoped the light from her wand would at least illuminate the dagger. Realizing there was a good chance it was still embedded in Moon's body, she orientated her wand toward the railing as fast as she could. She soon found a puddle of half-burned bloodstains...only to see there was no body among them.
For a brief moment, her mind was puzzled. Had Moon's body burned up in the inferno? Or...?
Her train of thought broke when she saw a glimmer of icy blue reflecting her wand's light. She quickly looked that way and spotted it. It was protruding halfway from the molten floor, but the handle was exposed of the orichalcum dagger. Not worrying about how it got there she quickly ran for it.
Sure enough, on reaching it the floor was hot again. Enough to where she felt it beginning to jiggle under her feet, and her bare skin felt like it was going into a furnace. Wincing and hearing the sounds of the others crying out behind her as well as one of Pinkie's remaining explosives, she quickly pulled away, aimed her wand again, and generated another icy chill. Once the ground had solidified, she quickly broke the spell off, stepped forward, and seized the handle.
Much to her dismay, cooling the floor had cooled it around the handle. Now it was stuck firm. She quickly seized it with her other hand and yanked harder but it held solid as a rock.
Another explosion went off, followed by a cry from Rarity. A pained one this time. Starting to sweat, Twilight released the knife, aimed her wand at the ground again, and quickly generated a fire spell—hoping it was enough to melt the rock without making the orichalcum expand. After letting the flames rush for a moment she cut them off. The handle was burning now, but she seized it anyway, grit her teeth, and pulled. Slowly, she felt it start to come out...
Just as she felt the air around her rise in temperature dramatically. She spun around, and screamed on seeing the demon not only flinging Pinkie behind her like a rag doll but flying right at her with jaws open wide and eyes filled with violence. In her panic, she spilled backward and landed on her rear end. With that, her hand snapped up and yanked the dagger the rest of the way out, only for her hand to slip in her panic and let it slide out from her fingers. The force flung it away from her, back to the stairs, and down them, but she could hardly focus on that. The demon was so close to her she felt like she was already burning and it reached a red hot hand for her.
A sharp whistle went through the air, and Twilight caught a flash of silver, before she watched as a rapier blade sailed right through the demon's wing. With a hole now in its body, it again arched back and cried out horribly, and the Caster realized Rarity had to have flung her weapon at it. It must have retained her aura just long enough to actually inflict a wound to stun it. It wasn’t working long, though. A moment later it was already snarling and looking back down...
Twilight forgot about the dagger and did the only thing she could. She raised her wand, drew a new symbol, and nervously took the two seconds longer to make it stronger this time. As the demon cracked its mouth open wide and brandished both sets of its claws, she drove her wand forward and executed the new symbol. A much larger icy gale, this one spreading out to generate icy shards the size of thumbtacks, erupted from the end of her wand and blasted over the thing.
It was, fortunately, far more effective than Twilight had hoped. It hissed in a mixture of anger and genuine pain. The cooling effect washing over it chilled the molten parts of its body, making them brittle and fracture. It pulled itself back, sweeping its wings up and over itself to try and shield its body. That, unfortunately, only made things worse, as it exposed more flaming portions of its body to the icy mist. It screeched even more loudly before it dropped down out of the sky all together, touching down on the foyer and crouching to shield itself as best as it could.
Twilight kept aiming the wand as she forced herself back up to her feet, continuing to blast the demon for all she was worth with the spell. At this point, her face was desperate and straining...not only to keep casting the spell but realizing she was only desperately buying time. The demon was only in pain—not dying or being seriously injured. And it was still in front of her, keeping her from moving any farther. The dagger was nowhere to be found and the others were tied down or incapacitated. She needed to keep blasting the monster with this spell just to keep her from being incinerated from being this close to it. And she was already feeling severe strain from the spell. She had worn herself out from fighting Nightmare Moon. She was getting more exhausted every minute trying to keep her pinned down. As sweat mounted on her brow and she began to breathe heavier, she knew she couldn't hold...
She stared to look around fearfully, but all of the flaming flying monsters were still attacking. It was a miracle none had come to her yet, but the others had to still be struggling to even stay alive. No one was able to help her...
"Yuuu..."
The sound of the demon's voice made her look back. While she was still crouched and still shielding herself, she could see her face. It was no longer enraged, but while it was still showing pain it seemed to be something more than just physical agony.
"Yuuu..."
The thing's eyes suddenly shut, and its face tightened further.
"Yuuu...lyeed tu meeee..."
Twilight began to feel her arm starting to seize from the exhaustion, but on hearing what the monster said, she couldn’t help but look at her in bafflement. "Wh...what?"
The little girl with fiery hair sat in the same spot she always sat nowadays—the one place no one ever gave her a dirty look or glared at her like she was an unwanted creature. That was the garden around the manor house her father had purchased three months before marrying her mother. There was a tall swing out there with two seats. She was seated in one, hands folded in her lap, head bowed, and slowly swaying to and fro.
She hadn’t looked up since the carriage arrived almost two hours ago. She knew full well why it was there when she had overheard her parents a week ago, and since then she had headed outside often to make sure she didn’t overhear anymore. Normally she was dismissive of whatever carriage or steam coach arrived at the house, but today how splendid this one looked caught her eye. It was even grander than the one Pound Note had. And with the beautiful horses drawing it, it looked almost like it belonged to a landed noble. Nevertheless, she retreated and ignored it by the time she heard its occupant dismount and start talking with her parents; especially when she heard that she was there about her “future”.
An occasional breeze came by and blew at the wildflowers of the garden. Her parents never hired a proper gardener or landscaper to beautify the property, and neither would have any time to appreciate it if they did. It wasn’t even fully cut anymore since the children spent so little time out in it. The Manehattan asters swayed in front of her with the breeze as lazy, fat bumblebees tried to land on them only for the wind to constantly blow them out of their path.
She wasn’t aware of when she heard the door open behind her, but at some point she knew someone was outside and staring at her. And she knew she stood there and stared for some time before she approached. She never looked up, not even when the footsteps became audible.
The sun was to the girl’s back, so when the person neared she caught her shadow in her peripheral vision easily. It was quiet. Even the house was quiet behind her in spite of being the afternoon.
“Hello, Sunset.”
The girl didn’t look up. She didn’t change her swinging, or give any indication she had even heard. The voice was definitely softer and gentler than what she was normally used to, but she had heard it before from others. And it never stayed that way long.
The voice was quiet a long while before speaking again.
“Would you like a little push?”
For a brief moment, Sunset’s swinging paused. While her face didn’t change, she was caught. She had been expecting all sorts of things for the woman to say next. An introduction…an explanation of who she was and why she was there…the standard “how are you” that people always said out of politeness when they couldn’t care less about how one was doing… What all the “nice” adults usually said at first. She hadn’t expected that.
As a result, in spite of her intent to give the woman the cold shoulder, she couldn’t stop herself from shaking her head before she started swinging again.
“Alright. Let me know if you change your mind.” A pause. “And speaking of that, you look like you have quite a lot on your mind right now, don’t you?”
Sunset was caught again, at least mentally, by that question.
“About what’s going on at school? At home? And with your parents?”
Sunset still wasn’t looking up, but she had unconsciously stopped swinging again. This time she stayed for a moment.
“Would you like to talk about it at all?”
Now Sunset’s face did change, just a little, in spite of her best efforts. It wasn’t intentional. It was the only reaction she could have.
She couldn’t recall when, if ever in her conscious life, anyone had asked her how she felt about something.
Nevertheless, she didn’t answer. Part of it was still the desire to shut this woman out. Another was a mixture of not knowing what to say and being afraid to say anything at all. She started to swing again soon after. And the woman nearby stayed quiet a good long while this time.
“Do you mind if I sit in that other swing?”
A pause yet again. Adults didn’t ask her permission for things; they just did what they wanted around her. It was such an odd question to her that just the slightest hint of confusion painted her young face. Her lips clasped a bit, and she looked down again and kept swinging.
Taking her silence as a negative, the woman walked around and sat in the swing nearby soon after. Her lips parted briefly but then shut again. The girl realized, in spite of saying nothing, she didn’t mind.
She sat quietly for a few moments. Sunset watched her in the corner of her eyes, but couldn’t see much. As the time turned into minutes, eventually the woman began to swing slowly next to her, much as she did. When that happened, the girl finally glanced over just to see what she was like.
Definitely a tall woman. She couldn’t swing freely like Sunset, but only push herself along with her legs. It almost looked like she was wearing some sort of uniform, but it was unlike one she had ever seen in her brother’s books or in the newspapers. And definitely not a color for the army. Her hands were folded in her lap as she slowly swung to and fro.
“I talked to your parents for a long time,” she finally said. “They told me a lot about you.”
Again, the girl said nothing.
“About how things had been going. About school and your classmates.”
She still said nothing. She resumed looking at her lap.
“I’m guessing that you probably know what they said too.”
Sunset kept swinging, but she felt herself draw a bit more into herself.
“However, I had my suspicions that they weren’t telling me the whole story. So I wanted to ask you about it.”
Again, Sunset stopped swinging and nearly looked up. Another first. This had been the first time she had ever encountered an adult that didn’t simply take her parents at their word. That actually was asking her for her side.
Nevertheless, she couldn’t bring herself to speak. She only drew in a bit more and clutched her legs. She didn’t swing again, however.
“They told me that, when you were younger, you would start fires with the candles in your room. Is that true? Or was it something else?”
Sunset still didn’t answer. She swallowed again. Her lips moved, but she couldn’t part them. Inside, she felt a struggle: part of her saying to keep quiet and that it would only bring more trouble, and the other wanting to risk taking the chance.
“They also said you don’t try to make friends at school. You don’t try? Or you’re unable?”
She clutched a bit harder. Her lips moved again.
“They said you picked fights with other children and then you tell lies and say that it was them. Are they wrong?”
The girl was nearly twisting in the swing now. Her lips parted, but she couldn’t force anything out to make sound.
“And…there was something about a classmate’s birthday party you went to. What happened there, Sunset? What went wrong?”
The girl’s throat was tight. She winced and cringed further. Her face wrinkled. At last, she closed her eyes, cracked open her lips, and spoke in an inaudible whisper.
“I’m sorry?”
She swallowed, paused, and then did it again.
She felt the woman lean in closer and saw her shadow come over her. “You can keep it quiet if you want. Just whisper it.”
Closing her eyes again, she spoke just the smallest bit louder—forcing it out again.
“They don’t want me.”
The woman sat quietly back. When she spoke again, she was whispering too. “Who? Your parents?”
She nodded.
“Why do you think that?”
The girl hesitated. Another first…someone listening to her and not immediately going off on a different conclusion or, more likely, telling her straight up she was wrong. She swallowed again, and whispered a bit louder.
“They never listen to me. They never smile at me. They just want me to stay quiet and out of the way. And all they care about is work and my other brothers and sisters. They think I’m stupid. My whole family does. They hate me.”
“Hate is a very strong word, Sunset. Why would they hate you?”
“They’re scared of me.”
“Why would they be scared of you?”
Sunset was quiet. She looked back at her lap.
“Sunset, why would they be scared of you?”
She looked there a bit longer, before her face and throat began to tighten. She sniffed once as her eyes closed again.
“Because of this.”
She turned her hand over, revealing the hexagonal marking on it.
“Because of your hand? That mark on your hand? Why would they be afraid of that?”
Sunset sat there a moment, but finally frowned a little. She covered up the symbol on her hand and turned her head slightly away. She meant to do it enough to present her shoulder to the woman, but, between her kindly voice and the way she spoke to her, she couldn’t bring herself to do it.
“It doesn’t matter. You don’t care. Not really.”
The woman leaned up a little. “I’m sorry…?”
“You’re nice, but you’re just like all my other teachers. That’s who you are, aren’t you? Mom and dad said they were going to send me to a special boarding school. My brother said it’s for retarded kids.”
“You shouldn’t use that word.”
“It’s for stupid kids then.”
“That’s…not much better.”
“All my teachers act nice when I meet them, but they never believe me either. They just act like they do. You won’t believe me either. And if I tell you, you’ll tell my parents, and then they’ll get mad.”
“I promise I won’t tell your parents anything if you don’t want me to, Sunset.”
“My last teacher said that and she lied. And once my parents found out they got mad and asked if I wanted to go live at the nuthouse, because saying things like that was how you get sent to the nuthouse.”
There was a period of silence from the woman. The longest period yet. Sunset didn’t start swinging again, however. She sat there and waited, never moving.
“Yes, Sunset, I am a teacher,” the woman finally answered. “A headmistress, to be exact. I also can promise you that I believe you and that I do care. I don’t think you were lying about the other children. I don’t think you started those fights. I don’t think you were treated kindly when you went to that birthday party. Most of all, I don’t think you set any fires in your room with any candles, matches, tinder, or anything else. I know you might not think that’s true and I don’t blame you. After talking to you and your parents, I can tell that you haven’t had many people in your life that you could trust.”
She shifted on the swing, leaning in closer. Sunset hadn’t turned fully away, so she saw as she turned her knees to Sunset enough to see her hands on top of them.
“Maybe this will change your mind.”
The girl was looking down just a little and saw when the woman raised a hand. Moments later, she extended two fingers and, working them independently, did something on the air. Like she was writing on them. She whispered something even more softly than Sunset had spoken a moment ago at the same time. When she was done, she pushed both fingers forward.
She turned her hand over afterward, and a small sphere of fire the size of an apple was hovering in her palm.
Sunset straightened up at last. Her eyes bulged and she let out an audible gasp. She was transfixed on the fire in the woman’s hand, but it didn’t move. It stayed right there and burned steady, but her flesh wasn’t singed or consumed. After a moment, she turned her hand over and gestured. The flame vanished.
She continued to gape and stammer momentarily. “H…how…?”
“You’re not as alone in this world as you think you are, Sunset.”
With that, the woman turned her other hand over—revealing the same pattern that the girl had on her own hand aside from six runic symbols on each point. It made the girl gasp even louder than she had for the fire. At last, Sunset broke enough to look up at the woman’s face.
She found a beautiful woman smiling back at her. Her eyes radiated warmth and kindness. Perhaps even more than that. Her hair had been tied back, but some of it still was free to move just a little in the wind. It seemed to flutter, and with the way the sun hit it she nearly gasped a third time. It was shimmering with iridescence. She looked both old and young at the same time—wiser and stronger than anyone she had ever known, and yet still so youthful and graceful.
The girl had never seen such a wonderful woman.
She took her hand back and folded it in her lap, but kept smiling at Sunset.
“My name is Celestia, Sunset. My school…well, it isn’t the kind of school that your parents think it is, or that anyone else thinks it is. It’s a special place for special individuals. People like you.”
The girl gave another start, but by now her attention was fully focused on the woman.
“Special…? Me?”
“Sunset, you’ve been given a marvelous power. A unique one.”
“Unique…?”
“You know now that there are other people in the world who have the same power you do, but what you don’t know is that yours is something much greater than that. Unique even among the rest of us. You’re special, Sunset. You have an amazing gift.”
She leaned in closer to the child, still smiling at her kindly.
“One that could even save the world one day.”
The girl was speechless. She looked barely able to comprehend what she was hearing. Not after having heard every day of every week of every month of every year for as long as she could remember about how unwanted she was. How much trouble she was. How valueless she was.
“I…” she half-stammered, “me…I’m the one who can save the world? With…with this power?”
“I’d like you to come to my school, Sunset. You can live there if you like, and however long you like. I want to help you learn about your power. Help you embrace it and help you appreciate it. I want to help you be everything that you can be. Far more than this little cantrip I showed you just now. In fact, I would like it very much if you would accept my offer to become my personal student.”
Sunset stared back speechless. Yet a light was growing in her eyes. One she never had before. A look of someone who, for the first time, wasn’t dreading the next day of their life.
“You’re capable of doing such great things, Sunset. Such amazing things. You have a great destiny ahead of you. I’d be honored if you’d let me help you reach it.”
The child’s jaw was hanging again. She was almost gasping at all of this news, trying to process it all. Yet she hung on the woman’s words. She stared on at her encouraging face. Warmer than any of her teachers had ever been. More accepting than any of her so-called ‘friends’. More compassionate than any of her siblings.
More encouraging…more trusting…more believing…than her parents had ever been.
Her eyes began to burn and feel hot. She would later wonder if something was wrong with her, or what she had been thinking. She didn’t know it was possible to cry out of happiness rather than sadness.
With a sniffle, she felt the corners of her mouth oddly twist on their own. The first time she had genuinely smiled in a very, very long time.
“Yuuu…lyeed tu meeee…”
The eyes of the thing opened again. Twilight was stunned on seeing them. They were filled with a new look. One of sadness. To Twilight's surprise, she saw steam rising from the eyelids and cheeks of the monster.
She was crying.
"Yuuu sayd...ah waz spechiahl..."
Twilight’s tense face eased ever so slightly as she watched the thing speak those few words. Between the tears, she almost sounded like she was actually sobbing them…
The sound of a dog barking rang in Twilight’s ears. In an instant, she snapped out of it and looked in the direction of the stairs.
A moment later, she heard a scampering along the stone, right before she saw a familiar purple and green dog come bounding up them. The orichalcum dagger was in his teeth.
“Spike!”
The mixture of shock and surprise on seeing her dog there, and carrying the blade, caused Twilight’s focus to finally break. She lowered her wand and the power cut off. She realized her mistake an instant later, gaping and wheeling back around to the demon. Too late. She felt the heat wash over her again as the monster’s face reverted into full wrath and violence. It unfurled its wings and let out another hideous cry. The horrendous fire that surged from within it was so intense Twilight actually cried out from the burning sensation. She could smell her own clothes start to smolder. She’d be burned to death in seconds…
Spike, heedless of the danger, ran at her as fast as she could with the dagger in tow. As the demon wheeled its head back down to her, it opened its jaw wide and aimed its claws at Twilight’s heart. The wings gave a mighty flap back just to give it some momentum as Spike reached Twilight.
She didn’t look away from the monster. Her hand reached down instinctively and grasped for the mouth. By some happy chance, it clasped the hilt of the blade a second later and seized it from Spike.
Screeching one last time, the demon dove at Twilight to rip her in two. With all the strength and fortitude she could muster, the Caster rolled up onto her feet and forced herself to rise right into the midst of the flames. Crying out as best as she could on the hot air, she drove the dagger upward almost blindly.
The hand of the demon came down at the same time, talons extended for her, only to bring her palm right down on the orichalcum blade and drive it all the way through.
Twilight felt the force of the demon instantly sprain her wrist and nearly dislocate her elbow, but it didn’t go all the way as the monster froze. Its face twisted into a grotesque parody of alarm as its huge eyes turned to its now pierced hand.
The symbols that were on it immediately began to gyrate fiercely. Far more fiercely than before. The one rune that had been burning and smoldering now ignited so brightly it was almost impossible to look at. Twilight herself could barely see it as it gleamed and smoldered bigger than ever. She began to hear the air around her crackle and hiss. The last thing she was able to see was the burning emblem suddenly snap into the blade, run along the hilt, and slide down underneath the demon’s outstretched palm toward her own hand…
As towering and awe-inspiring as the pillar of moonlight had been, it was nothing compared to the towering inferno that ignited a moment later. In an instant, it shot even higher and scraped the heavens, growing tall and blazing enough for some on the borders of Equestria itself to be able to see. At the same time waves of fire, heat, and light exploded from the castle.
In less than a quarter of a second, the remains of the Castle of the Two Sisters were annihilated into dust. In a half a second, the forests surrounding the castle were stripped bare and turned into ash. Moments later, the last of the remains of any of the soldiers or officials who had been present in the castle eight years ago were pulverized and cast to the nine winds. By the time a full second had passed, the entire mountaintop went with it. Nothing but clouds of fire and towering smoke followed in its wake.
The roaring thunder of the explosion rang for miles. Half of the resident population of the northern half of Greater Everfree craned their heads to the source and saw the even greater light than before. Yet it faded soon enough, giving rise to nothing but a cloud of black smoke. As time went on, the wind swept that away. The echo died, and all was calm.
One hour later, dawn broke for the first time over Equestria in eight years.
Fancy Pants took one last puff from his cigarette before he stamped out the butt, trying not to look stilted or nervous as he did. No sooner had he extinguished it than he went for another one, but once he had his case out and open he noticed that it was empty. Frowning a little, he collapsed it and slipped it back in his suitcoat pocket.
His office had quite the assembly that morning. Several of his higher-ranking officials were gathered, including the director of national security, the director of defense, the director of the interior, and the several of the top brass of Manehattan’s military including the army and navy. Many of them looked about as antsy and uncomfortable as he did.
As they stood silently in the chancellor’s office, a mob of officials and a select few reporters waited in the hall outside for the first word. Even more were gathered outside, in a much more unruly group. With them was a mob that had been doubling every day for a week demanding answers as to not only the situation with Equestria but with the mysterious “epidemic” of individuals growing symbols on their hands. Tensions were high among all of them, as was the case throughout the rest of the country and Greater Everfree.
They had riled up just a little while ago when both the director of state and the northeastern field 1st colonel had arrived, forcing the guard to step in. Now, for those within, it was just a matter of waiting for whoever would be escorted first through the crowd.
A few seconds later, they got their answer. The door opened and in walked the field colonel. Like with most military figures who patrolled the border, she was rather young. She sported a dressing across her nose and was still dirty from the field, appearing as if she barely had time to get a clean uniform before coming. The dressing in particular caused several of those in the room to stiffen.
She quickly removed her hat and went up to the director of defense. She gave her salute, which was returned, and then turned to face the chancellor and did the same. “General…Chancellor.”
He nodded back. “We’ve all been waiting for you, colonel. What were the results of the survey?”
The young woman took an uncomfortable moment before answering. “We managed to organize five separate companies and entered territory formerly covered with the…‘Night’ 48 hours after noting the change over Equestria. I won’t bother with the details of the exact geographic locations, but suffice to say the locations were roughly ten miles apart and closest to the Fillydelphian and Griffonstone borders. During the daylight hours, no resistance was encountered and we confirmed the shadow over the area had fully lifted. The 5th company managed to make it to the former gun emplacement we lost three years prior at Sterling Pass.”
She took a deep breath.
“When night fell, however, we confirmed, at the cost of the 2nd and 5th companies, that the Nighttouched still inhabit the areas and arise when its dark. The 1st, 3rd, and 4th companies had only made inroads across the border about two miles and were able to retreat with some casualties. However, no Light Eaters were sighted. Although the Nighttouched pursued the companies back across the border after nightfall they were suppressed and, on dawn breaking, retreated again.”
She rubbed for the top of her nose, just above her dressing.
“Following the first night, the remaining three companies changed tactics. Heavy guns were authorized for use and the companies were relocated to the main roads. Speed was lost as we had to bring in the engineering corps to work on making the roads suitable for heavier traffic before we could proceed. Nevertheless, after two days of work, during which we retreated each night, the 4th company was able to make it all the way to the Equestrian border and cross into the former country. We confirmed the situation is the same there. The night is gone. We authorized the first flyover yesterday. The airship only went in 40 miles before turning around, but no attacks in daylight.”
Fancy Pants bowed his head and thought for a moment. “And…the Castle of the Two Sisters?”
She shook her head. “We’re still too far away to even look at it via a scope. We’ll need to push more inland.”
“And how long,” the director of defense spoke up, “do you think that will take, colonel?”
“At our current rate of progress and state, difficult to assess. At the moment we can’t make any permanent inroads into Equestria, and the days are getting shorter at this time of year. We’ll need the ability to set up landed encampments that can withstand Nighttouched attacks or exterminate all Nighttouched in the area to be able to progress. We don’t have the weaponry or manpower for either maneuver, and the Fillydelphian military has been silent in regards to our requests. Right now…months.”
The director frowned while the chancellor sighed. “And I don’t suppose there’s been any sign of our…special strike team, has there been?”
She shook her head. “The most we’ve come across so far were human remains from past surges. All of them had been dead at least two years.”
The director opened her mouth to ask a question, but was cut off as another knock rang out from the door. It opened soon after, allowing the director of state to walk in next. The colonel quickly stepped to one side to allow him passage as he entered giving nods to each individual.
The chancellor nodded back. “Good to see you, doctor. What’s our situation?”
His face grew visibly uncomfortable. “Would you like the good news or the bad news first?”
“Bad news. Always better to be rid of that.”
“Very well,” he muttered as he folded his hands, “based on what we’ve found, we can now confirm beyond any doubt that whatever eliminated the unnatural ‘Night’ over Equestria was linked to something that caused a spike in the known individuals who possess a hexagonal emblem on their hand. Thus far, we have been totally unable to establish a pattern or way of predicting it. Nothing related to geography, surroundings, proximity to landmarks or to the border, personal traits…nothing. They happen seemingly purely at random. Some of our own officials now bear these marks.”
“Some officials?” one of the directors spoke up. “Which ones, exactly?”
The director of state looked to him, giving him a slightly raised eyebrow, as if he clearly picked up on the urgency and suspicion in his tone. “I don’t feel I’m at liberty to say, but at least three. Two within the civil department, and one…well…one…”
With that, he held up his own hand, letting his suitcoat sleeves slip and expose the back of it.
Over half the people in the room let out a mild gasp, for that was the first time they had seen one of the emblems in front of them. Several of them recoiled. The two guardsmen at the front actually reflexively went for their weapons before stopping themselves.
The doctor glanced around the room. “I figured as much would happen, so I thought why try and hide it and stall the inevitable.” He looked forward; his face growing a bit downcast as he sighed. “Chancellor…shall I continue? Or would you like to remove me from office and place my hands in manacles first?”
Fancy Pants stared at him quietly for five full seconds. The others in the room grew silent and looked to him—knowing whatever he would say would decide a great many things for how the nation would proceed from this day forth. The doctor patiently waited for whatever would come.
“That…won’t be necessary.”
About half of the room looked surprised in one way or another. Two individuals looked at the chancellor as if he was crazy. Everyone else, however, eased.
“I see no reason to remove you from office provided that you’re still able to carry out your duties as director of state, doctor.”
He lowered his hand and nodded it. “Thank you, chancellor…in more ways than one.” After giving a cursory glance around the room to quickly assess who was normal and who was still staring at him uncomfortably, he continued.
“I planned my revelation intending that this altercation would take place as a result to demonstrate a point. Namely, in that it’s hard to assess just how many individuals now bear these marks due to paranoia and fear. Following the incident with the kerosene plant, to say nothing of the gossip and rumors, most individuals who have these marks are going into hiding. Some of them have been reported to us as if we were expected to go on a modern-day witch hunt. Even data from other countries has proven to be an affair. Griffonstone gave no response to our query, but Fillydelphia is what distresses me as they outright refused to share the information.”
This caused no small share of uneasy looks around the room, but the doctor went on.
“So far, we’ve accounted for 47 individuals all together. That being said, we’ve done some estimates based on what statistical data we have available and guesses based on the newer individuals we’ve found. Based on the assessment, including and accounting for the individuals who arose as a result of what happened over Equestria, we estimate that there are anywhere from 200 to 300 residing in the Manehattan province alone. Extrapolating across Greater Everfree and accounting for reduced population density, there’s likely anywhere from 1,700 to 2,000 all together.”
He folded his hands.
“And now for the good news. Even accounting for people refusing to come out with their symbols, our current assessment based on discoveries of these individuals is that no new individuals have arisen since then. Perhaps the event didn’t so much cause the new individuals to arise as simply ‘got them out all at once’, so to speak. Even better is that we haven’t reported a single incident of any of these individuals having a psychotic episode.”
Fancy Pants nodded back. “That is good news.”
“Chancellor, I hope you’ve realized from all of what I’ve just told you that we can’t go on like this much longer. I’m afraid ignorance will no longer suffice as a reason for inaction.”
He took a deep breath and nodded. “Quite right.”
“I have to say I must push back a little on the doctor’s comments,” the director of national security spoke up. “Keeping paranoia down is important, especially now more than ever. Yet the fact remains that we still haven’t perfected the means to restrain an individual who has one of these strange episodes, and that until we do they will become homicidal and we will have no choice but to use lethal force. Letting them go free is not a terribly viable option.”
“Well, neither is scaring everyone so much that they both drive these individuals into hiding so that they claim as many lives as humanly possible before we’re able to restrain them,” the doctor drolly responded, “while simultaneously asking people to believe whatever they want to about these individuals until they decide to inact lynchings or vigilantism.”
Fancy Pants bowed his head again and pulled aside his monocle long enough to rub at his eyes before replacing it. “I will have to side with the director of state on this one. We can’t afford any more half-measures. I would like a summary of everything we conclusively know about these individuals so far and to release a press statement regarding them publicly.”
A few of the officials looked uneasy at this. Even a bit stunned. Some began to protest. “Chancellor…!”
“I put this off for far too long to begin with. At least we can prevent any further damage, I hope. We put our trust in six of these individuals to save our continent; I think we can let a bit more leeway for-”
He was cut off as the door to the office suddenly opened without a knock. Everyone looked up and saw the building’s telegraph operator burst in clutching a scrap of paper in his hands. He didn’t look to the two guards who immediately moved to accost him. “Chancellor! Chancellor!”
The two men grabbed him and nearly pushed him back out, but before they could Fancy Pants held up a hand. “Wait, wait! Let him go!”
The two soldiers paused, but then stepped back. As if hardly noticing them, the operator quickly stepped forward. “We got a breaking wire from the Appleloosan embassy! They just got the news from Trottingham!”
“Trottingham?” the chancellor echoed back in puzzlement. The operator tried to bring him the telegraph, but his aide quickly stepped in and took it from his hand before he could. She brought it back to the front and passed it off to Fancy Pants soon after. He quickly claimed it and began to read, as everyone watched him keenly and waited for the word.
It wasn’t long before he looked stunned. Even shocked. He kept reading a bit more before he passed it off to his aide. She quickly read over it as well as he let out a long exhale and turned to face the window outside. Sure enough, her own jaw began to hang soon afterward.
“Chancellor?” one of the officials finally asked.
The aide looked up to him. He kept facing the window, but he made a gesture to her with one hand. She swallowed as she lowered the telegram.
“The Dragonlands have signed a non-aggression treaty with Trottingham.”
Surprised looks passed around the room, although more bewildered than shocked. “How is that possible?” the director of defense spoke up. “They’ve been constantly at war almost for the past eight years and all our sources said that neither side was in a position to give any ground.”
The aide swallowed uncomfortably. “The message further states that this is in the wake of an aerial battle that took place two days ago. Trottingham claims…” She paused, steadying herself. “They’re claiming that in a battle that involved sixty aerial warships in all from both sides that…that the battle was over within fifteen minutes and all Dragonlands airships were destroyed.”
Now the surprise was more of the shocked kind. A period of silence hung over the room. Everyone with military experience couldn’t help but stare baffled.
“Impossible…” one of the lesser officers finally spoke up. “How could anyone have managed that? Was it that ‘Fire Witch’ from Trottingham that keeps-”
The director of defense shook his head. “No, it can’t have been her. One of the wires we intercepted almost a week ago said she was officially MIA with no change. This had to be the new commodore appointed by the admiral.”
“New commodore? Who?”
“Unknown. The informant who reported on her wasn’t able to catch her name and only glimpsed her briefly. The only distinguishing characteristic she was able to report was a prominent scar over her right eye.”
Another moment of silence throughout the chamber. All eyes gradually moved back to the chancellor. He stared out the window a moment longer before he finally turned back to the room.
“With Equestria now free of that shadow, I think it’s high time we scheduled a new summit,” he finally stated. “I’d like to meet with all of our current leaders as soon as possible. Have our embassies start wiring theirs as soon as this meeting is over.”
He took a deep breath.
“I myself will wire Trottingham and the Dragonlands directly.”
Yet another round of surprise in the room, as this had been the first act of diplomacy from Manehattan to those two nations in the better part of six years. It garnered even more suspicious looks, but the doctor nodded in approval and the colonel looked all too ready to execute it. Even the aide readily began to take the memorandum.
Taking out his pocket handkerchief to wipe at his brow, Fancy Pants looked back out. “Colonel, I’m afraid you were cut off. Is there anything else you wished to report?”
“Nothing as monumental as what we just heard, sir. We dispatched a steamboat to try and hit the northern limits of Greater Everfree. Since we’re still in the summer months, we reasoned above the Arctic Circle we can be in an area of 24 hours of sunlight and would have a shot of being able to round the upper limits of the continent at least. The ice should be thin enough that they can navigate through the islands.”
For a very brief moment, there was the cold, hard feeling of reality almost slapping her in the face or, more appropriately, coming crashing down on her entire body. Far different from waking up from most nightmares, where there was a gradual transition to reality, there were just a few moments of seeing fire, darkness, blood, and teeth…and then it was over. And for a moment afterward, all she saw was the dark little chamber she was half-crammed inside.
She didn’t have time to comprehend where she was before the pain followed. Her eyes, still wide with fear and panic, slowly enlarged and bulged, and she stiffened as if she was choking before she slowly leaned back, arched her body, and began to cry in misery. Agony radiated through every inch of her, from the crown of her head to the tips of her toes. Even her insides hurt. She swore she could feel each individual organ sore and twisted inside her.
She wasn’t sure how long she was left lying back and unable to move. Somehow through her moans and slow writhing she saw she was in somewhere ruined and wrecked. Her tortured mind barely recalled surroundings like this on board airships, only well-lit and not half-ruined and compressed. The only light came from cracks in it walls, allowing daylight to filter in a few thin streaks. She was lying back on something that felt like a mixture of rags, hay, and dead leaves to try and create bedding. Some sort of thick cloth being used as a blanket covered most of her.
Eventually, the initial pain subsided. She wasn’t sure if it was her body adjusting or genuinely feeling better, but she was able to relax. Even then, simply lying there hurt and she continued to moan softly. She felt dizzy and her mouth was dry. Most of all, however, was one of her arms. It felt burned…
Vague memories began to return.
In spite of her agony, her eyes opened a bit wider. Her vision would have been blurry even without the lack of lighting and trying to lean up only hurt more. She was able to lift her arm, however, and slowly held it in front of her face.
A bit to her surprise, other than being dressed in rags, a few abrasions and irritations, and covered in ash and filth, she was alright. She realized the reason she could still move in spite of her pain wasn’t that she was traumatically injured in any one part but minorly injured all over.
She never counted any of those blessings, however, for her eyes were right on the back of her hand where her Promethean Sigil was supposed to be.
Gone. Nothing but bare skin and a pale, splotchy, scar-like outline where it had been.
Her pupils shrank into pinpricks. Her moaning terminated with a hollow gasp. Her pain and dehydration no longer mattered. She stared at that hand silently with a look of ever-growing dread.
Finally she swallowed. With some effort, she moved her fingers to trace a symbol. Her dry throat croaked a few arcane syllables and she executed.
Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Even drawing the symbol had been nothing more than waving her fingers.
She tried again, a simpler spell this time. Nothing. She tried a cantrip. Still nothing. More of her pain subsided in the wake of the adrenaline from her growing fear. She suddenly held her hand into the air. It took even longer for her to get the air and to wet the inside of her mouth, but she managed.
“Member of my house, I command you to come to me! Wondrous Beauty—Mistmane!”
Nothing. No aura. No power. Absolutely nothing.
Her face paled. She began to breathe heavily. She stammered a little before she held her hand up again.
“Member of my house, I command you to come to me! Bravest of Champions—Flash Magnus!”
Still nothing.
“N…no… No…no…no-no-no-no…!”
She held her hand up again.
“Member of my house, I command you! Rockhoof! Somnambula! Mage Meadowbrook! Anyone!”
To her horror, absolutely nothing. She pulled her hand back down and looked at the other side. Totally blank. The splotches of a scar for where the Promethian Sigil used to be were clear enough, but there wasn’t even a trace of a rune of the five she once commanded.
She began to tremble. Her body slowly began to cringe in on itself. She gazed about almost like a cornered animal.
“You’re awake.”
She snapped around with such violence that one would have thought she heard a snake hissing or a bear growling, especially as she used whatever strength she had to try and shrink away from the voice. Even when she caught herself she still looked terrified.
An “entrance” of a sort, one that could only be crawled into and out of, was on one side of the chamber. A bit of old cloth had been pushed aside and a man crawled in and rose up to kneeling height near her.
Only half of his royal armor was still there. Part that was missing included the face guard for his helmet. She couldn’t recall the last time she had seen him without it. One arm, his chest, and one leg were all hastily dressed, but even then he had fairly recent injuries and a great deal of dirt covering him.
“F…” she slowly murmured, “F…Flash…”
He didn’t say anything but simply came closer and began to raise his arms toward her.
At once she recoiled, ignoring her pain to draw her arms closer to herself. It was impossible to misinterpret the look in her eyes: fear and suspicion.
He stared back, not changing his own look in the least, before he held up his arm. An old canteen was hanging from a sling in it.
“You have to be thirsty.”
She didn’t move, but her face showed some puzzlement. Definitely not something she had been expecting. He proceeded to lower it and unscrew the top, then reached out to her. She stiffened and nearly recoiled again, but she was too weak for that. Even then, she winced as if she was expecting pain, but relaxed, again looking puzzled, as he slipped the arm behind her neck and shoulders and lifted her up. He brought the canteen to her lips soon after.
She clasped them shut a moment, trembling even harder, as if afraid to drink. However, he kept holding it there, and eventually the feeling of thirst overrode her fear and she sipped. The little bit she had immediately made her gag and cough, but Flash held away long enough for her to get it up and then offered her more. He did so until she had quite a bit. It wasn’t the best tasting water in the world but she was so thirsty she took it anyway.
The whole exchange took several minutes of silence. Not once did Flash ever look at her with amusement or satisfaction. When she was finally done, she expected to be almost dumped, but he eased her back down where she lay before he lifted up her blanket. She was fearful again, but he simply looked underneath idly before reaching around and feeling on cloth beneath it.
“I didn’t feel any broken bones before. Can you feel any?”
She was struck by the question. “B…Broken…?”
“I thought you might have had some based on how I found you. Lots of first degree burns. A couple second that I bound up, though I think you’ll be lucky if they don’t get infected. Bumps and bruises. Your side was swollen and purple. Looks like some broken ribs there but I didn’t feel. You were already breathing funny. I didn’t want to make it worse by shoving a broken rib into a lung.” He replaced the cloth. “That arm, though… I think it has nerve damage. It kept twitching while you were out of it.”
She took this in silently, still lying there. She looked rather like a sick child awakening in the care of a strange adult and too timid to even move let alone say anything.
“No food, I’m afraid. Nothing you’d want to risk eating… Water’s been fine, though. I had to take a drink a week ago to keep from dying from dehydration and I haven’t gotten sick yet.”
Finally, she moistened her lips and, with reluctance, forced herself to speak.
“Where…are we?”
“Still in Equestria.”
She hesitated. She looked to the ceiling again. Sure enough, light was still streaming through the cracks. And from the looks of it, it was natural sunlight.
“Equestria…? But…but how…? How is the sun…”
She trailed off. Her eyes had a look of remembrance within them. A moment later, her fear increased as she remembered other things associated with it. A second later, she winced before falling back again. She instinctively raised her other hand for her head, but she only winced and cried out more from the pain.
“You should take it easy, Lady Sunset. You’re not in the best shape right now.”
She looked back to the royal guard. She opened her mouth purely on instinct, as this was normally the time she would say something biting or give a snide retort. Nothing came out. The moment passed like a ripple on a pond. Soon her mouth shut again. She even grasped the edge of the cover that acted as her blanket.
She hadn’t done that since she was a small child scared of the dark in Canterlot Castle.
“How…what…what happened?”
Flash looked at her a moment. He then took a deep, tired breath and leaned to one side, propping himself against the wall of the chamber and resting against it. He took a drink from the canteen himself before wiping his forehead.
“I don’t remember all of the night myself. I managed to crash land my chariot but I was knocked out by the impact. That probably would have been the end for me if the Rising Sun hadn’t sunk soon after.”
He exhaled and wiped his lips; his eyes turning grim.
“I think the Nighttouched and the Light Eaters preferred a ship half full of ‘fresh meat’ to one man. I tried to help but by the time I regained my senses and got my armor even partially working, that snake-like one had four heads coiled around it and the entire ship was on fire. I could only try and get myself out of there. I think something had to have been attracting their attention besides the ship because I heard a lot of them screaming in pain before I was able to get the chariot into a small hover, and that took me a couple hours easy.”
Sunset looked down at her chest but said nothing.
“Taking off was a bad idea, though. I only got maybe half a mile before they were on me. I still had some power so I tried to fight them off and fly through it. Might have gone two whole miles after that before I crashed again. I still remember trying to spear them while they were ripping my armor off bit by bit. They were just starting to get their claws into me when it happened. Some big pillar of moonlight up in the northwest ignited.” He shook his head in disbelief at the memory. “All the Light Eaters…they just up and faded away like they were rain clouds in the wind. All the Nighttouched wanted the light instead of me, so they went that way.”
He exhaled again as he leaned back.
“Not long after that, a light went out again. This one looked like fire. I don’t know what that meant, but the sun rose soon after. The sun…right here over Equestria. That long night is finally over. I don’t know how or why but it’s done.”
He paused here. He looked down at his body, and saw how casually he sat.
For once, he broke decorum to let out a small snort.
“I don’t know why that doesn’t make me more happy…”
He hesitated a moment before continuing.
“There was something else that came out of the pillar right before it faded. A flaming ball or streak. Like a meteor. It landed not far from here and I checked it out and I found you lying in the middle of a fire that got started from the landing.”
He turned to her.
“Were you the one who ended the night, Lady Sunset?”
She hesitated. Even being looked at by Flash made her nervous again. Yet after a moment, she grimaced. She looked again at her chest.
“No.”
It was obvious there was more to it than that, but Flash said nothing. He stared only a moment before looking away.
“You were in worse shape than you are now, but I picked you out and extinguished you. Unfortunately, this place is surrounded by forests. I found out the hard way the Nighttouched aren’t gone; just the Light Eaters. Where it gets shady enough, they’re running around during the day. I realized they’d come out again when night fell, so I knew we had to get to shelter somehow. All I could find was what was left of the Rising Sun. So long as the lights are out, we keep quiet, and we’re surrounded by the smell of ash and metal, it looks like the Nighttouched don’t look here.”
She swallowed. She tried to speak bolder; recalling how she used to sound when in command. Instead, a timid voice was all that came out. “How…how long have we been here?”
“About ten days. I had a couple emergency rations on board my chariot. Those have long since run out. I can’t get around as easily lately…” He grunted as he pushed himself up onto his knees again. “I’ve been trying to find something we can eat out here in between looking for ways to signal for help. The flares were destroyed in the crash so I’m trying to do something for a flagpole. For right now, though, if I can’t find food for us we’ll survive the Nighttouched only to starve to death.”
He began to turn around to go for the exit.
“W-wait.”
He paused, turning back at once.
Sunset stared at him for several moments. One of her hands was half-unclutching the blanket to reach for him. However, she wasn’t able to say anything. At last, she let it fall. Her head bowed again.
“Nothing.”
“I’ll return soon,” he stated simply, before turning and heading out. Soon the cloth was covering the entrance and she was alone again.
Sunset leaned back and stared at the ceiling. Even still being very much in pain, her attention was now fully on herself and her state. She looked down to her now-blank hand again and again, and each time trembled and cringed a bit more. She closed her eyes once or twice, trying her best to remember herself as bold, confident, and in control. The sort of person who shamelessly strutted into the regent’s study and propped her boots up on the table and lit up a cigarette. She couldn’t. No matter how much she tried, she couldn’t. On top of all that, it only made her crave a smoke on top of everything else.
So many thoughts were running through her head that she couldn’t focus on any single one. She was mentally paralyzed and physically immobile. The look on her face of pain, confusion, and even fear never left her.
She didn’t know how long she lay there but it couldn’t have been more than a half hour when she heard a whistle through the cracks in the chamber. Wind began to rush through them, and far faster than normal. Her thoughts broke enough to listen above her and hear as it got louder and blew through what had to be trees or plants around them. Soon after, she began to hear the hum of an airship’s engines.
With all she had heard, the sound should have surprised and excited her. Instead, her fear became so palpable she almost felt an icy chill about her heart.
The noise died down not long after. Several more minutes passed but she heard other noises outside. They too lasted a time before the flap turned. Flash came crawling in again. As soon as he was inside and kneeling, he called to her.
“You woke up just in time, my lady. A Trottingham search party just landed. They spotted the wreckage of the Rising Sun and touched down.”
Again she should have been comforted. Instead she gave a visible quiver.
“Can you stand?”
Sunset didn’t answer. She couldn’t, although her mouth opened and closed a few times. Somehow Flash must have interpreted that as a negative for he moved over to her. Soon he was reaching out to pull back the cover.
“I’ll help you up.”
“N-n-no!”
He froze. The sudden force that Sunset had used to make herself finally spit something out surprised her as well. Yet when she turned to Flash she couldn’t say any more as a result.
He waited for a few moments before responding. “They’re waiting for us outside. I told them I was just going to pick you up and-”
“I…I…I don’t want to go with them!”
Again, Flash hesitated. Sunset was screaming at herself mentally now to try and at least pretend to be the persona she was before this incident, but she was too emotionally crippled. She couldn’t even manage enough of a voice to squeeze out what she had discovered about herself, although, in all honesty, she wasn’t sure she wanted to admit that.
Finally, he spoke again. “Lady Sunset, you need a doctor. There’s one for field medicine on board until you get back to Trottingham and you can get proper treatment. We can’t stay here.”
She continued to shake for half a minute. Finally, she swallowed. It took all of her focus just to make a straight face, but she kept trembling as she finally managed a curt, silent nod. Drawing as much of her dignity as she could, she let the royal guard help her slowly get off her ramshackle mattress.
From there, even getting out of the shelter was agonizing. Trying to walk on her knees felt like she was shoving red hot nails into them and her entire body protested and ached with every move. Not to mention the effects of hunger began to be felt as she was dizzy and weak. She had to force herself two steps at a time pausing to compose herself between each set, but slowly she made her way out to the entrance. Flash moved in front of her and pulled back the cloth, then extended his hand.
She looked at it only a moment before taking it. With a sharp pull, he brought her both out and up to her feet. Almost too fast for her legs to get underneath her, but fortunately she still had strength yet to stand even if it was painful. She wobbled as soon as she was up, however. Before she could stop herself, the royal guard quickly stepped forward and stood straight and tall, such that she was able to stop herself against him.
She grimaced a little as she felt herself do that, but she didn’t focus on it. Instead, she turned her head to her rescuers…
Before she could even lay eyes on them, she heard the clicks of a chorus of rifles. By the time she fully turned her head, she saw twenty-five different Trottingham soldiers completely surrounding the bit of wreckage from the Rising Sun with their guns aimed at her looking steely enough to shoot at the slightest provocation.
Sunset went rigid. She was so shocked she didn’t even think to look to the royal guard, or she would have seen him looking just as surprised. The airship was landed nearby in the middle of an Equestrian day, but she hardly cared for any of that. Only the fact she was at gunpoint and defenseless.
The commanding officer of the group wasted little time. Her own personal firearm was out, but nearby two soldiers were poised at the ready for her command. She motioned them both forward.
“Lieutenant,” Flash began to say, “what is-”
“Lady Sunset Shimmer,” the officer cut off, “by order of Regent Cinch, you are hereby under arrest for seven counts of misconduct on the battlefield, including reckless endangerment and treason. The executive decision hereby stipulates that, upon your recovery and detainment, you are to be brought to the regent at once.”
The two soldiers approached and faced Sunset. She was still propped against Flash, unable to stand, but she looked down and saw what they had brought. Manacles, obviously, but unusual ones. Unlike the standard kind she saw that they were built like rigid, immobile iron gloves. Ones, she quickly realized, she couldn’t move her fingers in.
“We have further received the following order: if you speak in any way, shape, or form, even to utter a single syllable, you are to immediately be shot.”
Sunset tensed. She began to breathe more intensely as her fear became evident again. Nevertheless, she was helpless to do much as one of the soldiers roughly grabbed her shoulder and pulled her away from the royal guard. Soon her hands were roughly seized and being crammed into the tight iron gloves.
Flash looked up. “Lieutenant, I-”
“I’m sorry, sir,” she cut off, addressing him at last as the guards continued to roughly bind Sunset. “We thought that Lady Sunset might become violent or attempt an escape if we told you the full story. You do not stand accused of any wrongdoing. Please accompany us back to Trottingham for debriefing from the regent.”
As Sunset gave a cry from the iron clasps pinching her flesh as the gloves were snapped down and roughly locked, half of the soldiers stowed their guns and began to turn back. The others moved forward, never lowering the barrels for a moment, and flanked her. Soon she felt a sharp shove in the small of her back, forcing her toward the airship.
She had no idea how she kept her footing, but she did and now could only be forced forward painfully.
The flight back to Trottingham was, quite obviously, unpleasant. Sunset was kept far from the bridge as well as any hatches or windows. She was allowed to sit at least, but not in a cell. She was forced onto a chair where she could be surrounded both in front and in behind with soldiers ready to carry out Cinch’s order if necessary. When they got tired, they swapped out for other soldiers, but the whole ride back to Trottingham was at gunpoint.
Her pain continued to subside, but it only gave way to weakness, dizziness, lingering thirst, and, progressively stronger, hunger. At length, she was finally brought a cup of broth on top of her special manacles, but she wasn’t sure if that was an act of fair treatment of an injured prisoner or a cruel joke. With her hands clamped into the unusable position, she couldn’t even pick up the cup to sip it. In the chair, she couldn’t lean over to sip it either or ask someone to put it on the floor. She ended up trying to balance it to bring it to her lips, but she was shaking too much and she spilled it all over her manacles and legs before leaving the cup clattering to the floor, and all before getting a single drop. Much to her humiliation, she could only lick her own manacles for whatever had fallen on them.
She picked up when the airship finally slowed down; no doubt from entering Trottingham air space. It took considerably longer after that for them to finally manage a proper docking, but, again, she couldn’t see any of it or ask about it. Once landed they ordered her up and to move again. She had to have exited on the docking tower of the Trottingham Royal Estate at least fifty times. This was the first time she felt fear doing so.
She received a brief glimpse of the city on the way in crossing the skybridge. The view of the skyline was clearer than normal, indicating a factory holiday. There were the sounds of fireworks and ceremonial cannons being fired off along with a large number of cheers, and she saw some streamers and confetti on one of the lower streets with others being hung up. Definitely a celebration, although she didn’t know for what.
She was forced inside soon after and, while guarded by several soldiers, led by the commanding officer and her retinue through the various halls. She noticed they were done up for a gala, and that most of the ceremonial guards had been called to duty and gotten themselves cleaned for the occasion. She also noticed that Flash was still walking alongside her guards. He was cleaned up and doctored…unlike herself…but still dressed in the remains of his clothing and armor. The other soldiers seemed to regard him oddly a few times but let him continue. Sunset herself looked away shortly after realizing he was there and didn’t look back.
They were eventually led to the main audience chamber. The commanding officer went to the front and spoke with the footmen, who proceeded inside to relay the message of their arrival. It took a few minutes, but he returned and the double doors were opened wide. Sunset was immediately shoved forward again and soon stumbled inside.
What she saw made her tense up even more. The audience chamber was normally reserved for formal meetings of all of the various governors and landowners. The main table wasn’t there today, however. The lords and ladies were gathered and dressed for congress, but were standing around the sides of the room instead. As soon as she entered, all eyes went on her. Most of them were looks of scorn or satisfaction. It made Sunset feel even weaker in the knees.
The chamber was done up for a major celebration, even more so than the rest of the kingdom. The windows were drawn back to let ample sunlight filter in, and highlighting multiple other airships landing in the city. They weren’t just any airships, however, but the larger military aircraft. The ones previously focused on the borders of the Dragonlands. Sunset couldn’t help but marvel for a moment at what they were doing there until she looked forward and caught an even more stunning sight.
The old throne that had sat vacant for close to eight years now was being freshly cleaned and polished, obviously to reenter service. And standing on the small platform nearby, back to her, looking over no doubt another speech held by an attendant while two others performed measurements on her shoulders and height, stood Regent Cinch.
She shifted her poise just enough to look behind her in her peripheral vision. A smirk went across her lips.
“Ah. Lady Sunset Shimmer, at last. You look like you’ve had a rough time, haven’t you?”
Sunset was brought to a halt. She knew what that sort of smirk from Cinch meant and it was never anything good for who she was addressing. Again she tried to muster the strength to look defiant. This time, she was just barely able to hold her head level without trembling.
“You…you might say that…” Her voice did its best to sound like its old cool and confident self. It sounded more like an aborted attempt to be suave.
“Well, since you went to all of this trouble, and since you managed to sink three of my airships that I bestowed upon you, I take it that you must have obviously succeeded.” She turned around fully to her. “So, on that note, I take it you are ready to present me with the fruits of your labor? What we agreed upon when you first came to Trottingham? I believe you promised me…and I quote…‘all I could ask for and more’?”
Sunset swallowed a lump growing in her throat, letting out one slight tremble. She had to pause; do her best to maintain composure and pull up her old demeanor.
“There were…some setbacks,” she finally stiffly choked out. “Partially due to my subordinates. However…however…” She paused, trying to keep it together. “Nothing…nothing’s changed. The targets ended up being a bit more trouble than expected, is all. It’s…just a bump in the road. I…I…”
She moistened her lips.
“I…did deliver you a ‘down payment’, as you can see. The night over Equestria is gone. You no longer need to fear the Light Eaters. This is just a sample of the magic I’ll bring you. And I can provide you with more. If…I just have a little bit of time to perfect my newest tool for you.”
“Really. That’s not what I’ve been hearing.”
Sunset let out a third tremble before struggling to keep her face straight.
“What I’ve heard, from everything from your former first officer to the reports that constantly keep coming in to your own surviving crewmembers who managed to make it back alive to Trottingham, is that you’ve been stirring up all kinds of trouble, violating all sorts of treaties, forgoing being discrete about your methods when it comes to your assassinations, and essentially led those ships I granted you into a suicide mission over Equestria. Furthermore, what I heard from some of your former subordinates, as they had no reason to keep it a secret any longer since they didn’t expect you to deliver on your promise, is that you never planned to give me anything at all.”
Now Sunset really did flash a shade pale.
“On the contrary. You planned to string me along so that I’d give you whatever you needed in order to get this power for yourself, which you then promised to share with your own subordinates so long as they kept the matter quiet. And if you sold them out in the end, then I think it’s a good bet to assume that you planned to do the same to me.”
Cinch flexed her fingers. “I must say, I was rather disappointed with the lot of them from keeping so many secrets from me. Surprised as well. I knew full well you were only gathering individuals to yourself who you could expect to be loyal, but this was highly unexpected even for me. Now…”
She advanced another step. Sunset managed to plant her feet, but not before balking a little. Cinch’s voice slowed and lowered.
“Normally this sort of thing would make me rather upset. And, in fact, I was rather upset. I went through three different versions of a memorandum detailing what I wanted done with you; the first one being, naturally, that I wanted your head on a plate if you ever showed your face in Trottingham again. However, as luck would have it, I got some rather good news. And no, I’m not referring to that ‘down payment’ you’re talking about. It’s not nearly as valuable as you think it might be, by the way. It only took one expeditionary company for me to find out that the Nighttouched are still thick in there. No…”
She smiled a bit as she raised her forehead.
“Individuals far more loyal who deliver on their promises put something rather pleasing right in my lap shortly after the night broke. I received word several days ago that Admiral Torben and his brand new commodore have put an end to our five-year war with the Dragonlands, and using technology that, unlike yours, he is more than willing to share with our engineers if it will mean mass-deployment. In fact, the commodore and her detachment were landing just as you got here.” She adjusted her glasses. “Needless to say, the fact that he was able to break the morale of the Dragonlands into surrendering after a single battle means that this weaponry is a bit more valuable to Trottingham than your bag of ‘magic tricks’.”
Sunset blinked a few times at the mention of the victory, clearly as surprised as everyone else in Trottingham to hear the news, but soon the fear for her own neck kept her from saying more.
Cinch smiled a bit more. “With our greatest foe off our back and the night over Equestria gone, I see no reason why Trottingham shouldn’t celebrate its good fortune by reinstating the monarchy. To get things back to the way they used to be and all. And since the old monarchy and landed nobility is no more, obviously this country needs a new dynasty. And I, having served this country as steward and regent for so long and have these victories under my belt to show for it, see no reason why that shouldn’t be me. If only you were here two days later you’d be right in time for the official coronation, Sunset. So, in spite of your treachery, in spite of the disaster you’ve given the country in terms of relations with other nations, and in spite of the great deal of time and money wasted on you, I’m actually very grateful for all the good things happening both to myself and Trottingham now.”
She raised an eyebrow as she looked down on the woman.
“Yet you did betray not only your own soldiers but the country itself. That leaves the question of whatever we are to do with you…”
The woman let out a visible tremble. She swallowed a lump in her throat. Thoughts of being bold and confident were gone. In spite of her attempts at a poker face, she didn’t have any cards left to play and it was becoming obvious to everyone in the room the more time went on.
“Now…now just wait a moment…”
“I’ve been waiting for you to deliver for close to eight years, Sunset. What difference will another minute or two make?”
She began to hold up her restrained hands. “I…I…I have a lot of powers you don’t know about. I never told them everything-”
“Your former soldiers, after some encouragement, let me know that you never cast any spells without your voice and use of your hands.”
The color drained from Sunset’s face. It must have been obvious because Cinch smiled again.
“Didn’t you wonder about the security measures I put you under when you arrived? By all means, do try again Sunset. I must say,”
The smile widened.
“After seven years of having to deal with your insubordinate and smug attitude, I’m quite enjoying seeing this side of you. I don’t think I’ve ever been happier in fact.”
Sunset began to break down. She couldn’t speak, knowing she would stammer worse than before. She glanced to her sides, seeing the soldiers were moving in on them and pressing their gun barrels closer.
“Y-you…you still need me,” she finally managed to choke out, not liking how desperate she was starting to sound. “I’m still the only one who knows how to make the Morning Glories.”
“What need have I for those when there’s no Light Eaters?”
“W-W-What about the Nighttouched? What about the other weapons I built for you? Are you telling me you wouldn’t want those for your soldiers? And…and there’s more where that came from! And you still need me to help you deal with the other magic users out there! I’m the only one who knows about the sigils and how they work! And I’m the only one you got who knows about how the night broke!”
Silence in the chamber. Cinch kept looking down on Sunset; still relishing her practically squirming beneath her.
“You know, you’re right.”
Sunset looked surprised; apparently stunned that her parlay had worked.
“As powerful as this technology is, I’ve never settled for ‘good enough’. What little technology you gave me is quite impressive. And I’d like it as a backup if nothing else, especially since I think you have greater secrets to tell. Of course,” She held out her hand and opened it up. Immediately, one of the attendants left his post and walked over to her. He produced a white deed as he did so.
“There will have to be a few ‘changes’ to our arrangement. I took the liberty of taking care of most of the details.” Receiving the deed from the attendant, she unfolded it and held it in front of her while he retreated. “There’s a large amount of legal terms in here, so I’ll sum it up for you. I didn’t see you doing too much with the title of Lady of Queen’s Lynn, and it certainly wasn’t helping you help Trottingham any sooner. So I’ve corrected it. You may consider your status as a peer revoked from this moment forward.”
Sunset stiffened, lowering her hands again.
“That includes your monthly allowance from the Trottingham government, your estate in Queen’s Lynn proper, and your associated lands. All possessions you have accumulated over your tenure as Lady of Queen’s Lynn are deemed government property and have been reclaimed. You are left only with what you had prior to that time. And…” She practically chuckled. “Considering the fact you came to Trottingham with nothing but the clothes on your back, I’d say that condition has been satisfied. Not to fear, however…”
She folded the paper up and looked down on her again.
“I’ve picked a new estate for you. One right here in the older part of the castle. It has a lovely entrance in the ceiling you must be lowered down and raised up out of, and it doesn’t have any windows I’m afraid, but I assure you that you’ll find it quite spacious as you’ll be the sole resident. And it comes complete with local…shall we say…‘wildlife’. I’m sure you’ll be the best of friends.”
Sunset was shrinking in on herself again by now.
“And as for compensation, yes… I believe you deserve a good deal for the great service you’ll be rendering to your new queen. One that’s a bit more equitable than your former arrangement, though, as you gave so little in return for the payment you received. How does this sound?”
Her eyes narrowed.
“You will give me as many Morning Glories, magical rifles, magical harnesses, and any other technology I request from you as I want and you will both inform our own engineers of how to build them and assist in helping them produce facilities to mass produce the same…and, in return, I won’t withhold your food and water for the day.”
One could hardly believe Sunset was ever once the confident and cocky woman she once had been not long ago to look at her now. She was cowering in terror from a woman that had her at her mercy. She looked around helplessly, but found only soldiers on each side…some of them smiling at the chance to finally put her in her place. She didn’t even try to look behind her, knowing escape was impossible. The silence held again as Cinch relished every moment of finally having her despised ‘ally’ in this quandary.
The doorway clicked and the sound of the heavy hinges began to turn.
Cinch’s smile turned into a frown as not only she but most of the chamber, Sunset included, looked up and to the back of the room. The doors swung wide soon after, to the surprise of the guards nearby, and revealed a single figure walking in without hesitation.
Sunset caught a brief glimpse of her. She seemed to be wearing something at first that looked like the standard airship officer uniform of Trottingham, only black and gray in color. A few more steps, and she realized that wasn’t the case at all. This one had additional reinforcement in several areas, especially the shoulders, hips, and chest. Like a breastplate, almost.
The item that stood out the most was the helmet. It looked almost like the upper half of a skull of some creature with four backward facing horns, spreading out over the face as well as the head.
No sooner had the masked figure walked in, the doors still opening behind her, when she called out in a cold voice.
“Regent Abacus Cinch?”
The woman gave an indignant sneer. “You can’t just barge in here. Who the devil are-”
That was the last thing she ever said as the figure, still walking forward, pulled out a handgun, aimed it at Cinch’s forehead, and put a bullet through it.
The entire room, Sunset included, was frozen in momentary shock as the echo of the lone gunshot resounded. The nobility gaped and went silent. The soldiers guarding Sunset paused in confusion for a precious few seconds. Cinch herself had just enough awareness left in her for her face to turn to stunned surprise before her body collapsed to the floor, still smoking through the hole in her head.
Sunset, however, noticed that the doors were still opening wide, and as the lead woman kept walking in the entrance revealed two dozen figures dressed just like her only hulking in size and muscle, pale blue gleaming coming from the eye sockets of their own masks, and all holding much larger firearms of their own storming inside…each one taking aim at his or her target.
Over the next several seconds, Sunset could only crouch against the ground in panic and terror as deafening gun blasts went out not only through the room but through the entire castle. Everywhere the crew members of the arriving airships had managed to deploy. The look on her face was soon matched by everyone else. Some cried out. Others shielded themselves. Still others fell to the ground in a moment of fearful hysteria.
It was over in no more than ten seconds. The scent of gunpowder hung heavily on the air and the ceiling was filled with smoke from the barrels. Sunset slowly glanced around her from her cringed position. Every last guard in the room now lay in a bloody pile about her. Everyone who had a gun of their own. That included the officers that had escorted her in as well as the door guards. Only the royal guard, clad in nothing but broken armor and half a spear, was spared along with the unarmed.
The chamber, and the castle itself, was silent for a few moments. None of the survivors dared move or voice a word. The new arrivals glanced out soullessly through their skull-like masks, leaving their smoking guns out.
The one who had led them in glanced about a moment before putting her own handgun away. Once that was done, she stepped to one side in lock military pacing.
Another figure came in. This one was clad like the others, but bore no helmet. He was even shorter and more squash than Snips with a rather heavy underbite. His hair was exposed and was cut, styled, and painted white in the same style as the old Yetian warriors used to use. On seeing it, Sunset began to look at the uniforms on the new arrivals again. She realized now the style was only vaguely still Trottingham. It had been fused with the Yetian style, in particular with the emblem on it. It was no longer the standard of Trottingham but a pair of almost neon blue horns.
The figure stepped forward until he was where the woman had been, bearing a small box. He set it down and proceeded to use it as a small podium. As soon as he stood on it, he glanced about the terrified faces in the room with a look of smug satisfaction and a hint of pleasure. Sunset knew the look all too well.
“Announcing the arrival of his eminence, Master Commander of the Trottingham Aerial Navy, High Admiral of the Skies, the great…the magnificent…Admiral Torben Rex.”
With that, he stepped down, grabbed his box, and moved to one side to allow one final figure to enter the chamber.
Sunset had seen the Admiral face-to-face only once before. Even the brief glance was enough for her to recognize the same spark in his eye that she often saw in her own: ambition. She regarded him dismissively and without fear at the time, however—the same as she treated all non-magic users. Now that she had no magic of her own, she paid more attention.
He was still a giant of a man, towering at over seven feet tall and filled out to boot. He was getting on in years, however. His beard and hair were long, almost wild like a mane, and pure white, and whether it was due to a battlefield injury or his age he walked only with the aid of a conspicuous staff-like cane. His jaws and lips seemed to be curled into almost a simian smirk, and his eyes had lost none of the avarice she remembered. And just like last time, he seemed to have a bit of a swagger as he walked in.
“Well-heh-hell…” he muttered aloud as he saw the rather petrified faces of the nobles. “Look at you all! Almost forgot how young and short you all were. How long has it been? Four…even five years? Don’t you worry. You’ll be seeing a lot more of me around the royal palace from now on.”
He kept walking straight forward toward Cinch’s body and the elevated portion of the floor as he advanced. Sunset was right in his path, but he hardly seemed to notice. Instead, as reached her, the end of his staff went out and brushed her to one side like she was nothing more than a sheep. Not having the strength to be upset about the insult, she let herself be pushed as he strolled past.
“Heh, the old goat wasn’t kidding, was she? You really do have this place set up for a coronation and everything! A nice return to the Trottingham monarchy! Monarchy! I like that! Keeps things nice and simple! Someone puts a brass crown on their head, says its gold, and then calls the shots for everyone else! Sounds fantastic! Looking forward to it! Just had one tiny problem with the whole thing…”
Reaching the elevated portion, he looked down over Cinch’s remains. He reached out with his staff and poked at her a few times, like a kid poking a dead squirrel.
“Didn’t really care for the regent’s pick for who gets to wear the brass headdress. You see…”
He stepped up on the elevation and turned about to face the room.
“Me and my boys out on the battlefield got a little sick and tired of doing all the heavy lifting to keep Trottingham afloat from everyone from Abyssinia to the Dragonlands to Yakyakistan to Appleloosa, and that was before we had to deal with the Equestrian wildlife. So, I got myself a great idea.”
He gestured out widely as he kicked a foot behind her, connecting with Cinch and shoving her away.
“Surprise, surprise! You’re looking at the new king of Trottingham! Eh? Eh?”
No one said a word, even if they felt alarm from this. They were still too scared of the armed soldiers in the room.
“Of course, I need a new title…” he mused as he crossed his arms, almost looking thoughtful. “All the great ones get a cool nickname. King Torben Rex is nice and all, but I was never a big fan of all of those names that translate to something… Keep it short. Keep it simple. That’s what I say. I think I’d like the start of this new dynasty to begin with something that inspires a little awe and terror. How about…the ‘Storm King’?”
Silence from the room once again. The squat one looked one way and another, before he finally nodded enthusiastically. “Good, good! Excellent choice, um…your highness! Uh, majesty? Eminence?”
“Eminence…that’s good. Don’t want to overuse ‘majesty’…” he mused as he lowered his staff again. “But, you know what they say, business before pleasure. Some details to take care of first.”
Setting the staff down on the podium with a loud knock, he looked about the room. As his eyes fell on each one of the various lords and ladies, each one stiffened in turn. Especially when the rest of his burly soldiers turned to fully face them with their weapons still out. As for the squat one, he smirked as he went back to the box—this time opening it up and producing a stack of papers. Soon after he began to walk around the room and passed them around.
“I’d like this little transition to go as smoothly as possible. It’d be a bit of a drag for a new king to kick off his reign with infighting and massacres. Bullets are more expensive than you’d think and we’ve already spent quite a bit today. So, in a deal that will be good for exactly, let me think…”
He glanced outside, spying the nearest clock tower.
“Three…no, two minutes, I’m going to let each of you get on the ground floor. All it’s going to cost you right now is a pledge of loyalty, unrestrained use of your land, resources, and manpower as needed, and for you to do a little homework. Those papers that are being passed around right now are some talking points about how you whole-heartedly hated Regent Abacus Cinch’s guts and how you fully support the coup d’etat and how it’s going to make a great new chapter for Trottingham and how you herald this great bloodless…”
He trailed off, looking at his foot. A pool from Cinch’s body had reached it, and he quickly stepped forward to avoid it.
“Well, mostly bloodless revolution, blah-blah-blah, you know the drill. Just put it in your own words and you’ll get a nice spot in the new regime. Refuse, and, well…”
His smile turned into a frown as his voice lowered.
“I guess this revolution won’t be ‘mostly bloodless’ after all.”
“Th-th-that won’t be necessary!” the Lady of Mancanter quickly stated. “I’d…I’d be more than happy to sign on! I said for years that Regent Cinch was leading us into ruin!”
“I c-c-completely agree!” the Lady of Oxenford added.
The others quickly gave their own assents, mostly stumbling over the words and nervously eyeing the weapons of the brutish guards around them. In moments, there wasn’t one who hadn’t agreed.
“Good!” the newly-dubbed “Storm King” answered as his smile returned. “Always nice when everyone’s on board. Makes things move rather smoothly. Alright then.” Leaning on his staff, he looked around. “Old regent gone. Check. New monarchy established. Check. Backing of all the landed nobility. Check. Moved into the royal palace. Check. Just about wraps things up. Only one little detail left…”
The moment he finished saying this his eyes flickered downward. Completely onto Sunset.
She instinctively shrank back a little, but what happened next only stunned her further. Immediately, every last soldier shouldered his weapon. After that, they all stepped back in unison save for one, quickly arranging themselves around to form a ring of bodies around the room…a ring that had her right in the center. Everyone else could only look in surprise. The royal guard, close enough to be pushed back, looked into the area with growing concern.
She was so surprised she nearly jumped when the one soldier reached her. Before she could react, he seized her by her restraints and roughly yanked her back up to her feet. He held it in a tight grip, even stronger than her own strongest former guards, and she feared the worst as he brought his other hand up.
Instead, to her surprise, he produced a key and undid her restraints. In moments, her handcuffs fell to the ground and her exposed, somewhat numb, palms could feel the air again.
She blinked in surprise as the soldier turned to join the others. However, she had scarcely held her hands in front of herself and begun to rub one with the other when she froze again.
One other figure was in the ring and standing across from her. The first one who had walked in.
Now behind his own ring, the Storm King took a step back. “That’s right. You’re Regent Cinch’s golden girl, aren’t you? The one with the magic tricks? Well, heh…funny story. The reason I didn’t do this a good long time ago was because you had way too much potential to pass up. I kept thinking of the best way to bring you on board or take you out of the game, but that was a bit hard when you held irregular hours and looked like you had your sights on the boss’ job too.”
He chuckled a bit.
“Ah…but fortunately I invested in someone who had a much nicer return, and it’s maturation day. Time to collect. I believe you two know each other, so I’ll just leave her to settle things.”
The figure didn’t move at all the whole time. Yet in spite of the hall being well lit, things seemed to grow even darker the longer Sunset looked at her. Even not making a move for her gun, she clearly looked far more intimidating than the pale, sickly, trembling woman.
“Let me introduce Commodore Tempest Shadow.”
With that, the woman reached for her helmet. Slowly and methodically, she undid the dual clasps before reaching up, grasping it, and slowly removing it from her head all together.
Sunset didn’t recognize the name, but even with her tendency to not bother learning people’s titles when they didn’t interest her she had never heard it before. Yet once the head of the woman, her own red hair styled in the same Yetian mohawk, was revealed, it took her only a moment for her own eyes to look past the cold, hard, heartless stare of the woman underneath and go straight to the glistening, almost shimmering, deep scars she possessed—especially the one her right eye socket that narrowly missed the eye itself.
The woman’s eyes shrank into pinpricks. Her jaw hung loose a moment. She nearly mouthed the word.
The woman’s own pale green eyes looked cold and stern; holding her helmet a moment before casually tossing it to one side, where it was caught by her squat assistant.
“I see you remember me. How touching.” Her voice was without the slightest hint of warmth.
After a moment of stammering, Sunset began to form a word. “H…how…?”
“You sound almost disappointed that I’m still alive. How did I not die of thirst or starvation? Or my injuries, for that matter? How did I not get eaten by Nighttouched or Light Eaters? How did I get into this position? Or simply how am I not a Nighttouched myself?”
She began to raise one of her hands.
“I’m afraid none of that matters, Lady Sunset. Only one question should.”
She formed a fist. Her eyes blazed before a sharp crackle of curly, twisting electricity, more like plasma than electromagnetic force, coursed out of her fist and left a scorch mark on the ground.
Sunset gasped and paled.
“How are you going to get out of this alive?”
A moment after she drove her fist forward at Sunset.
The air thundered as a much larger crackle of plasma erupted and pounded into the woman’s chest. The air went rushing out of her lungs as the bolt knocked her clean off of her feet and flung her across the ring the soldiers had made before dumping her against the ground. She toppled over herself a few times before sprawling out, but as soon as she did she arched her body in pain and misery. Her rags of clothing on her chest were burned and smoldering and her whole body was wracked with pain all over again.
Tempest slowly drew her hand back. “Well,” she said casually, beginning to walk toward her, “now you know how I destroyed that Dragonlands armada.”
Sunset forced herself to roll onto her belly somehow, in spite of still being agonized, but looked at Tempest in shock and horror. Now it was at the power she just manifested.
Tempest readied her fist again as she neared. “I did consider letting you have the first shot. Only fair I give you the same courtesy, after all. Then I remembered what you really taught me the last time we met.”
Her fist began to snake plasma.
“Never show mercy.”
The woman quickly forced what little strength she had to get up. She got onto all fours, then pushed herself up and onto her feet. She didn’t realize until a moment later that Tempest could have hit her the whole time. She purposely waited until she was standing again before she let her plasma fly.
This blow struck even harder, forcing a cry of pain from her already gasping lungs before she was snapped across the ring again. She slammed into one of the burly guards this time, who grunted before roughly shoving her off of him and face first onto the ground. She sprawled again, moaning in even more agony from the fresh burn. Still gasping and wincing, she struggled to push herself up.
Tempest left her fist out as she approached her. “Not fighting back? Too prideful to use any of your power against someone you mopped the floor with before?” A cruel half-smirk appeared on her lips. “Or did breaking the night somehow make you lose your power? What a pity. I would have preferred to have done this when you were at full strength.”
Sunset, gasping and wincing, struggled onto all fours again, but not facing Tempest as she summoned more plasma.
“I would have loved to have wiped that smirk off your face.” Her fist began to extend. “But seeing you panicked, cringing, writhing in pain, and stricken with terror? I think I could learn to enjoy that.”
Sunset went into a scramble; desperate to get out of the way. Tempest let her get a few steps on all fours before striking her at the side. She was knocked again across the ring and into a guard. This one roughly buried his boot in her side to kick her back into the center. The Storm King let out a laugh of delight as Sunset went limp. She was burned in three places now and in too much pain to do more than writhe. She could only stare at Tempest helplessly as she neared her again.
“And trust me…” Her fist began to spark again. “I will learn to enjoy it.”
Her fingers extended this time. Plasma arced between all five digits for a moment before she snapped her hand forward again. This time, the plasma shot out and arced around to pierce her from multiple sides. To her, it felt like she was being stabbed in five different ways, but before she could even cry out the force shoved into her, and she was being yanked off of the ground and into the air as she kept piercing her.
Tempest let her scream and twist for a few moments before she subsided the energy just enough for her to quiet down, but she didn’t stop. She yanked the woman into her face. Sunset’s expression eased only to see the woman grinning at her.
“Don’t think I’m going to just let you off with something so easy as a fatal shot, Lady Sunset. I’m going easy on you on purpose. I want you to live for a very…very…long time. Do you think I just saved you from the regent? Oh no.”
She jerked her closer, so that they were practically touching.
“The regent would have saved you from me.”
The pain began to intensify again. Sunset could only begin to cry out again. Helpless to move…helpless to do anything but be at her mercy…
“Ungh!”
Tempest’s smile broke, and both she and several other individuals turned their heads to the sound of the aborted cry from one of the guards. Sunset herself managed to catch it just out of the corner of her vision. One of them gave their final breath before spilling forward flat and lifeless.
The end of the royal guard’s broken spear was embedded in his back, and it was giving a loud whine from its barely-repaired generator rapidly starting to overload.
An instant later, the weapon exploded. The blast alone was would have been as strong as a fragmentary grenade, but the fact that it was imbedded in something meant that the result was a rather loud blast of smoke and matter as well. And in the confined area of the hall, the noise and concussive force was more than enough for Tempest to wince and cut off her plasma. Sunset felt herself collapse to the ground as the rest of those in the area recoiled in alarm.
She barely had a chance to lie there before she heard someone run up to her side and seize her by the arm. Once again she was yanked to her feet as she heard a loud humming about her, and moments later her body was twisted and flung around onto someone’s back. As the burly soldiers around her began to recover, a sharp crackle rang through the air…
Suddenly, the audience chamber and everything in it slowed to a speed so impossibly reduced it was like they were practically motionless. Moments after she suddenly felt herself yanked to the side and taken around the soldiers and straight for the entrance. Her wits finally came to life long enough to realize she was being carried. She looked down and got a surprise.
“F…Flash…?”
“I only had enough for one last burst. Gotta make it count…”
Sure enough, as Sunset continued to stare, his body crossed the threshold only for both of his metal boots to give a loud whine. He had enough time to reach down and scoop up a pair of discarded rifles with bayonets from the former guards of the chamber before both boots gave a loud pop and a fizzle…and the world was moving normally again.
The sounds of surprised grunts went off behind Sunset, but they didn’t last nearly as long as she liked.
“Get her,” Tempest’s cold voice echoed down the hall. “Bring her to me alive.”
Flash never hesitated. He was already running down the hall as best as he could. Sunset, with what little strength was in her agonized body, could only wrap her arms around his neck and cling as he had to carry both guns with either hand. It wasn’t long before he came to the next arched threshold. There were already two soldiers right there, standing over the bodies of their own targets. They turned to him and began to advance.
Using the fact they didn’t fire right away, he seized his advantage by hefting one of the bayoneted rifles like a javelin and flung it into the skull of the one on the left. It embedded, instantly felling him, and leaving the other one surprised long enough for Flash to raise his other weapon and fire a shot into his breastbone. The cry he gave sounded almost more like a gorilla than a man as he collapsed. The entrance was now clear, but the royal guard didn’t go that way. He quickly snapped to one side and ran into the nearest side chamber.
Since Sunset was on his back, he had no choice but to kick the door with one foot and charge in. The sound of more soldiers mobilizing in the hall that had been in front of him as well as those charging out of the room he had been in grew louder as he dashed inside. A few of the palace staff were cringing in terror within, and on seeing him storm inside they only shrieked and shielded themselves, but he paid them no mind. He only stopped long enough to go for one of the lances mounted on the wall behind a coat of arms. He yanked it off and then headed straight for the window.
Sunset nearly gasped, knowing how many stories it was up, but he didn’t hesitate as he ran to it, undid the latch, and ran outside onto the scarcely 50 centimeter ledge running around that level of the palace. In moments, she was outside again and looking down over a precarious, straight drop of two hundred feet before hitting a secondary roof. Even lower than that before hitting the pavement.
The royal guard barely gave it any mind as he began to work his way along the walkway to the right, back toward the docking tower. As hard as it was to stay balanced with her on him, he moved as fast as he could.
She was still bewildered by what had just happened. It left her speechless along with the fear of the heights as he walked.
“You really can’t use your magic anymore.”
She looked up again. “Wha…? How-”
“I knew something was wrong the moment I saw your symbol on your hand was gone. I never saw you acting that scared be-”
He was cut off by the sound of breaking glass. Quickly planting his feet and brandishing his spear, he guarded as the windows in front of him burst. Two of the burly soldiers leapt out and faced him. One, however, was too close to right himself. Flash quickly went in and drove the tip of his lance into his foot the second he landed. He yelped in pain, rising up on it, and immediately losing his balance and tipping over the side. His yelp turned into a cry as he began to fall. His partner raised his gun, but Flash quickly advanced, held his spear up, and performed two short swipes: one to knock his gun aside and the other to advance and open a bloody gash across his neck. The soldier’s voice cut off in a gag, and as he clutched for his throat he stumbled back inside the window he had just come from. Keeping the spear ready, Flash advanced past the windows as fast as he could.
Not a moment too soon. Two more soldiers leapt out not long after, with more coming from the windows behind. They hoisted their weapons and nearly fired, but saw that the target was on the royal guard’s backside and ruining their aim. Instead, they began to charge after him. A few did risk taking a shot or two for his legs, but by the time they decided on it he reached a corner. Pressing himself against the wall as best as he could, he went around it while swaying Sunset dangerously over oblivion. Nevertheless, he got out of range and a moment later, when the first soldier was struggling to make the same gesture with his ungainly size, he ran around another.
Flash picked up the speed. “Not much time… They’ll cut us off soon… Even if you can’t do magic, try to get the strength to walk.”
He ran on a bit further, shifting the lance back to one hand. However, he slowed down soon after and Sunset could see why. Up much farther ahead, but still before the aerial walkway leading to the docking tower, six of the windows broke one after another. More of the soldiers broke through to the other side. Just ahead of them, one of the wall access points opened. Four more soldiers poured out from there. These ones had melee weapons.
The royal guard hesitated, seeing his way ahead cut off. He looked behind him and saw more of the soldiers were beginning to round the corner. He looked around a bit more before his eyes spotted something. As the palace was still being decorated for the upcoming coronation, one of the scaffold lifts with a “cherry picker” was extended to hang a banner. He quickly looked at it and the other side, did a judgment in his head, and then finally called behind him.
“Hold on to me as tight as you can.”
Sunset could do nothing but obey, quickly tightening her grip on him. Moments later, she found herself nearly pried off as he ran forward into a small enclave of windows. He only did so to get more running space. As the soldiers rushed in from both in front and behind, he charged back out of it and ran straight for the edge. Sunset panicked but held tight as he leapt off the side as best as his own weakened strength and weighted-down body could manage.
The two sailed through the air a moment as he reached out with his one hand and his spear, then collided with the side of the scaffold lift; along the cherry picker. He quickly grasped it with his one good hand, as the momentum of their bodies snapped it loose from its bracings and sent them swinging across on top of it. Sunset was too panicked and pained to even cry out as her stomach did a loop, but the two of them managed to sail all the way across and to the thin ledge on the other side. The cherry picker smashed against it, but the royal guard cried out, partially in pain, and threw himself and her off and against the wall. It was a hard collision for him, but somehow he held. Now he was on the docking tower.
The soldiers left behind were stunned at the move, left behind without any recourse, and finally started running the long way around. As for him, he grit his teeth, forced himself up, and began to run around the side again.
He had to round the corner a bit more slowly this time. He was panting and heaving by now, and Sunset winced as she felt his sweat begin to sting her own burns and wounds. Yet on getting around the tower, the edge of Trottingham’s main city stretched in front of them. And just up ahead, the docking tower split apart into its separate levels, with the main airship hub right in front of them. The same ship that had brought them there was still there. There were some soldiers manning the dock, but none of them were the new ones in the service of the Storm King. Flash pushed himself to move faster to round the building to get to them. He was nearly in range to start shouting things over the din of the engines, but even before then one of the soldiers posted turned and spotted him along the side.
He opened his mouth to call to him, but when he did Sunset heard only a gunshot. She saw the soldier go limp and collapse. Several other gunshots thundered out, these ones making Flash halt yet again. As the two watched, every last soldier posted at that dock fell to the ground dead. Soon after a troop of the black soldiers poured out from within the dock and rushed onto the sky bridge. It took only moments for one of them to turn and locate the two.
As more soldiers poured out and were pointed in his direction, Flash hesitated. He looked around, but he definitely couldn’t go back, and the only way still ahead was the skybridge leading to the airship docks. There weren’t even windows here. As he kept looking he glanced down to the side. They were no longer at a precipitous drop, but the roof to the left of them angled downward until it reached the maintenance dock below, which received only smaller vessels equipped with tools and supplies for servicing the main dock. And the main dock overhead served as a roof so that it was mostly enclosed once one was at that level…
Either the soldiers hadn’t heard Tempest’s order or didn’t care, for as soon as enough of them were out they all ran to the side and raised their weapons. Sunset’s stomach dropped again a moment later as the royal guard made his move. Bending down, he quickly squatted to the edge of the walkway and put his legs over the side. It was still a small drop to the sloping roof, but he lowered himself and Sunset as best as he could.
One of the soldiers gave the order to fire and Flash quickly released. Both of them dropped the rest of the way and landed with a rather painful jar before they both slumped onto their sides; with Flash facing the soldiers and Sunset still on his back. They began to slide down the rooftop as the guns thundered. Tile and masonry were cracked and blasted around them, but the two quickly picked up speed and slid faster as the soldiers kept firing. Unable to do anything else, Sunset shut her eyes and hoped she wouldn’t feel bullets tearing her apart…
Yet the shots stopped pounding around them as they picked up speed, and a moment later her eyes jarred open again as they both fell off the roof, free fell about ten more feet, and then landed roughly once again on flat ground. As her body and burns throbbed, Sunset looked up and saw she had finally disconnected with Flash on impact and fallen to one side of him. He too lay there in pain only a moment before he let out a strained grunt of his own. He quickly shifted his spear around and began to push up again. He managed to get into a squat, still straining and breathing hard, before he reached out and curled his free arm around her middle.
“Up… Up… Almost there…”
Somehow, he still had the strength to pull her up, and while it took her a moment herself she too somehow had the strength to let herself be put onto her feet. Her legs felt like jelly but he used his staff as a lever to anchor himself to support her while lifting himself. She winced and cried out from the burns; her eyes drifting over to him as he firmed his grip around her middle.
Her eyes enlarged on spotting his side.
A large red mark was in it. Fresh, wet, and rapidly growing.
“You…your…”
“Nothing. Ignore it,” he hissed through clenched teeth as he reached his feet. “Come on…”
Sunset had seen enough death to know when a wound was serious, but she was in no position to argue as he somehow managed to pull her along. He was limping a bit himself now; using the lance as a crutch of sorts. It wasn’t long before the two hobbled into the covered maintenance dock. In spite of all of the work of decorating, there wasn’t much there. It was empty and unmanned. However, there were a pair of uncovered airship “tugs” for small loads of tools or supplies that were docked there. Both were aired up and simply tethered. Small, simple, and easy for two to man.
Flash hobbled with her over to the nearest one, although even that short distance was almost enough to make her collapse. Once they arrived, he practically had to dump her into the open doorway, and she herself barely kept from falling by grabbing the braces around the controls. He moved over to the tethers and, not wasting time with undoing them, swung out with the lance tip and began to sever them one after another. Off went the first tie. Off went the second as Sunset grit her teeth and pulled herself to the controls.
A loud clamor sounded behind them. Both turned and looked back, past where they had landed and to the skybridge to the maintenance dock. Both doors had been flung open to the main tower. Two dozen of the burly soldiers were running out.
Flash stared at it for a brief moment as Sunset began to breathe harder. Then he turned around and quickly cut the third line.
“Lady Sunset…I’m afraid I’ll be abandoning my post.”
Sunset looked back to him. “Wh…what? What are you-”
“This is where we part ways and my service ends. Just punch the tug to full and drift into the city. Don’t look back.”
At that moment, she realized what he was doing on seeing he wasn’t making a move to enter the airship. He cut the fourth line and limped the short distance to the fifth. He readied his lance for it even as he started to sweat from growing pain.
“Wait!”
He paused.
“Why…why are you doing this? You heard what she said in there. You saw how I treated everyone on the Rising Sun. You know I would have done the same to you. Why did you care for me? Why did you help me? Why are you helping me now?”
Flash blinked once, extremely slowly. Then he simply smiled. As he brought the lance down to cut the last tie, he looked back up and met her eyes one more time.
“I’m thanking you.”
She looked back in confusion, but he was already pulling away. With one last gesture, he reached up for his helmet and unfastened it. Before she could say anything, he yanked it off and tossed it into her chest.
“Keep your head down, my lady.”
The tug continued to drift away from the dock as he turned back around, putting his back to her.
He stopped again on doing so. The soldiers were already out and most of them had guns naked. They were picking up speed, rushing to intercept both him and Sunset.
Worst of all, there was a single figure standing behind them and closing as well with a cold look: Tempest herself. Her eyes never left Sunset. It was as if she had been focused on her ever since the moment she left the room.
He stared at them several seconds. His breathing was getting more labored. His vision was starting to blur. Droplets of red ran off of his side and plopped on the ground. Sweat rolled off the tip of his nose.
Just like eight years prior.
The sole survivor looked as pale and lifeless as one of the dead.
He sat in the remains of the western hall. More appropriately, he knelt there and only partially out of exhaustion. After what he had just been through, he should have been gasping for air or passing out. He wasn’t, though. And not just due to the stench of the corpses mounded around him and under him; forming a pyramid of the bodies. He paid no mind to them as their blood seeped into the remains of his clothes and armor, soaking him with their remains and fouling him even more than before.
The ancient fortification he was in, the castle his great-great-great-grandfather had seen built and defended, was nothing but a shell of its former self. It had survived attacks from the Yaks and the Dragons through close to a hundred and fifty years of war only to be reduced to a hill of ruins and stones in a single night. Catapults, ballistas, and trebuchets were nothing compared to the might of a herd of Nighttouched bears. The twelve or so that attacked ignored bullet, shot, and spear alike and bashed away at the walls of the castle like they were nothing more than stacks of empty cans. The fortifications fell as easily as the rest of the city below, which by now was nothing but ruin and death. Only one out of ten citizens who lived there had managed to make it to the castle alive. Yet they fared no better than those who failed.
Much of Greater Everfree had yet to know exactly what a true surge was like. Reports had come in that Cloudsdale had been struck by a sudden wave of Nighttouched and Light Eaters that poured out of Equestria by the thousands, but none had believed the rumors as to what followed. It was too horrific. Too nightmarish to fathom. Flash Sentry discovered that night it was far worse.
His lord…the man he saw as his real father…died in the initial strike. Broken to bits by a single swipe of the bear’s paws. Flash wanted to strike it dead there himself and avenge him. He never even got the chance, for as strong as the bears were they were nothing but the beginning. Swarms of ravens and crows tearing apart those left on the battlements. Legions of rodents swarming the first floor eating the people there alive. Frogs, newts, centipedes, and all other manner of filth flooding the basement levels.
Somehow, half of them stayed alive long enough to get to the inner halls. There, where he swore he would defend his lady, her family, and the citizens until his last breath. Then the Light Eaters came. They showed just how much his bravery and nobility meant to them as they simply walked into the midst of their wall of soldiers and slaughtered everything in their path. Again and again he seized spears from the fallen in an attempt to skewer the monster to keep it from reaching his lady. He never even got it to slow down before it dismembered her in front of him. Soon after, the screams of the civilians pierced his ears like daggers.
Panic led the survivors to try fire, but it only attracted their foes and made them strike with greater ferocity. Death on every side. One-sided slaughter. Through the madness and misery, through the horrific bloody sights of his lord and lady gone, he could think only of their children. Only one hope left. Get to them. Get them out. Ensure the name lived on. Somehow he fought to the western hall. Somehow he reached the stairs. Somehow, in the chaos, he saw the corrupted fox creatures running down with the unmistakable remains of the three children of his lord and lady still stuck in their teeth. Then, it was only the guard.
Was it only a single minute? Was it half the night? Flash remembered nothing. Nothing but pain and misery as blood and death surrounded him. Again and again they struck the fell beasts around them, but there were a hundred for each one that fell. A thousand. He saw his captain lose two of his limbs before he could no longer fight and was drug down. He saw his comrade beg him for help as he was already half-devoured in a bear’s jaw and rapidly vanishing down his gullet. Sights and sounds the most horrible war could never produce, and again and again his spear went out and spread blood. He no longer knew why. No longer for survival. No longer for revenge. Only because it was all he knew.
He remembered his strength fading. He remembered the rats piercing his armor and sinking their teeth into his legs down to the bone. He remembered starting to fall and prepared himself.
Most of all, he remembered the dawn breaking.
Where fire had only drawn them in, the light of the sun sent them fleeing in pain and panic. They retreated, first to whatever shadows they could find, and then back out of the ruins, down the valley, and into the darkness from which they came. It extended all the way over the city now. Only the castle remained exposed. Only he remained on his knees in the remains of the creatures.
And as the dawn broke to reveal nothing but silence, he knew the truth. Through fate or fortune, he was the only one left. And all else he had ever known, ever loved, or ever had was gone.
He felt like he knelt there forever, although the sun’s position argued otherwise. It had scarcely cleared the horizon, still leaving the day tinted red and yellow with shadows everywhere, when he looked down. Amid the blood and carnage and the remains of his armor and clothes, he still held his broken, chipped spear tip on a tiny remnant of his shaft, like a dagger. He knew it would still cut.
He stared at it a long time.
Slowly, his other hand raised and placed itself on the handle. He turned it so that the tip was aiming downward, and angled it around to face him. He slowly turned the blade up until the tip rested against his torso. In his mind’s eye, he knew a good force from there would drive it underneath his ribs and into his chest cavity where the lungs and heart lay…
A growl distracted him.
He looked up again. In one of the larger shadows still remaining, he could see a Nighttouched still stood. Perhaps it thought he was dead before now, but the slight movement he made had gotten it to rise. This one was only a fox, but that was a relative term. He had seen several of them engorged to the size of dire wolves rip out the throats of his comrades that night in one lunge. This one was sizing him up, but it got no closer. The sun was shining around him and protecting him.
However, he looked to the sky and saw it wouldn’t last. It was going to be a cloudy day, and while the sun was exposed thick clouds were already rolling across the sky. In a few minutes, they would obscure it again.
It didn’t matter to him. Looking back down, he saw the fox, knew what it was going to do, and responded by simply loosening his hands and letting his spear tip fall out of them. He honestly hadn’t the strength to fight anymore, but even if he did he no longer had the desire. He stared right back into its pale shining eyes and did nothing. Nothing but wait for the clouds and then the inevitable.
The light around him finally dimmed. The moment it did, the monster stepped out from the shadow and into the space between. It reared back, bared its teeth, and readied to leap.
From the silence of the area, Flash heard a snap.
A moment later, even he was forced to react in shock as the monster was engulfed in fire. Its rage turned into agony as it curled around itself and bellowed from the midst of consuming flames. It reared up and pitched around, but not only had the fires suddenly arisen, but they burned hotter than any common fire. Its very flesh was already being devoured. In moments, it was unable to move at all as it collapsed in a burning pile and soon after the blaze killed it—leaving only its remains slowly burning.
Flash’s jaw hung, but he made no other move until he heard a sound from nearby.
“Well, well…there’s actually a survivor.”
He turned and looked. Standing casually on a bit of rubble from a ruined wall, arms crossed, and a confident smirk on her face was a girl scarcely younger than he was. Her hair was like fire and her eyes a vivid light green. She was dressed in a shabby, worn, full length coat that seemed used or, more appropriately, fished out of rubbish and mended. Yet what truly caught his eye was her hand. He was just in time to see an emblem with six sides and five symbols dim on it. She was looking right at him.
“From the looks what’s left of your clothes, I’m guessing you were one of Trottingham’s Royal Guard, weren’t you? Oath of fealty to your local lord, and all that?”
He didn’t answer. He stared back at her with his mouth still hanging.
“I guess that title wasn’t just ceremonial, huh? You actually lived through a flood of these things.” She hopped off of the rubble and, without care, landed right on the piles of carrion. She began to pick her way over them toward him. “Pretty impressive. I didn’t think anyone could pull that off who didn’t have a Promethian Sigil at least. And with a spear too. But now you don’t have a lord or a lady to serve anymore.”
She was almost to him when she stopped. She looked him over a moment, noticing the spear tip that had clattered out of his hands. She gestured.
“I guess that’s what that was about, huh? More of that chivalry stuff. Death with honor, blah, blah…”
His jaw slowly closed. He was over his initial shock now. His head slowly turned away from the woman and lowered to look at the spear tip. It was still there, in easy reach, and still an option.
The girl said nothing for a moment, then spoke up again.
“Well, Mr. Royal Guard, if you’re in need of someone you’re sworn to protect, why not me?”
His dour demeanor broke in sheer surprise. A second time he looked up to the woman in alarm, who grinned back at him.
“I can take care of myself and pretty much anyone or anything that comes along, but you never know. It’d be nice to have someone watching my back for knives. I’d be able to sleep with both eyes closed from now on, especially where I’m going and with what I have planned. And I did just save your life now. Isn’t that worth a new ‘oath of fealty’ or whatever?”
He only knelt there open mouthed. She snickered, seeming to enjoy his hesitation. She bent over closer to him and held out her symbol-less hand.
“Come on. What do you say?”
He was quiet and still for a long time afterward. He looked between her and her outstretched hand several times. He looked out to the ruins of his castle and the remains of his friends, loved ones, and province. He looked again to the spear tip. He stared at it a long time. Nevertheless, he no longer looked as grim or as ‘dead’ as before. Not in the wake of what he had seen just now, and not in the wake of what he had just heard. Glimmers of light were back in his eyes. Traces of hope.
Hope for honor. Hope for redemption.
Hope to live up to his vow to give his life to save another.
At last, his mouth closed. He took in a deep breath. While he could no longer stand, he forced his arms down and stiffly shoved himself around to face the woman. Once there, summoning all the energy he could, he propped himself up to one knee so that he could bow his head to her on his bent leg: pledging himself.
The girl smiled in satisfaction, but what she never knew was it was nothing compared to the smile Flash felt on the inside.
With a weak grin, he charged.
It drove him into intense pain and sucked away not only stamina but what little vitality he had left, but he had never run so hard under his own power right into the closing creatures. The nearest one dead ahead immediately leveled his gun at him but was far too slow. He was only drawing the hammer back when Flash was on him and driving his spear tip into his chest, through his heart, and out through the other side. He gave a panicked, shocked choke as his arms faltered, but the royal guard went one step further. Not wavering or backing down, he heaved the heavier opponent onto him and kept charging forward…straight for Tempest.
The rest of the soldiers immediately halted where they were, leveled their weapons, and opened fire. The air thundered with gunshots and Flash’s vision filled with red mist as one bullet after another tore into his “meat shield”. The body was practically ripped into pieces by the repeated firing. His bulk and armor took most of it, but it wasn’t a full second before Flash felt another pain shoot into his lower breast. Another embedded in his upper leg. Two more pierced his stomach…making every move agony. His eyes grew fierce and wild. Passion and valor behind his failing body forced him to go on. The shots continued to strike, and he finally began to lose speed, but he did not stop.
Finally, the bullets abated. The royal guard’s assessment that they only held four at the most proved true as the soldiers were forced to break to reload. Crying out, he shoved forward and released his spear—letting the body of the soldier fall with it. When it landed, it revealed him still madly charging forward and now bearing the soldier’s weapon. By now, he was in the midst of the soldiers, with three still reloading in front of him and Tempest coldly marching onward beyond.
He snapped the gun up as he kept limping forward. A shot later and one of the soldiers still reloading spasmed and fell. He cocked and fired again. The second one finished slamming the cartridges into his chamber only to collapse from a shot to the lung. The third finished chambering his own shot, raised, and fired. Moments later, a blast followed by a hot stinging pain rocked Flash as one of his ears was shot half off. The soldier had been so panicked he hadn’t aimed right. As for Flash, he now had a ringing as well as fading vision, and was slower yet, but somehow he cocked again and fired from point blank range. His shot did not miss its mark.
As the third one fell, there was now nothing between him and Tempest. He could barely keep his feet moving. His arms were shaking and leaking blood over the weapon as he chambered the final round. Gasping, sweating, and the last light in his eyes fading, he took aim and, in his final moment of clarity, moved the small tip on the rifle right in between her eyes.
With one last breath, he began to squeeze the trigger.
Not breaking her gaze from Sunset, Tempest suddenly lunged forward and at an angle. Flash never even managed to finish depressing the trigger before she was already out of view and on him. While still looking at her target, she shot out a hand and seized him by the skull; effortlessly yanking his entire body into the air.
Her hand gave a single sizzle before she discharged a bolt of plasma into his skull.
A second later, the gun and a few pieces of his head fell to the ground. The rest of him went limp in her grasp.
She didn’t even lose speed as she casually tossed what was in her hand to one side, letting it fly off the edge of the skybridge and fall to the ground below like it was discarded garbage. Her hand, still dripping blood, began to sizzle again as she focused on the tug up ahead. Its own small engines came to life and it had already drifted a good fifty feet away. Soon it was pulling away much faster under actual power.
Tempest reacted by breaking into a jog. The airship tug was far from speedy, and even as it increased speed and distance it was still at a slow rate by the time she reached the edge of the dock. No more than two hundred feet away and only going 10 kilometers per hour.
She simply aimed her hand out, coursed plasma between her fingertips for a moment, and then snapped out another bolt across the sky.
In a split second, a gash was ripped across the tug from its own weak air sac all the way down and across its engine. A boom went out as the bag decompressed, followed by flames and smoke erupting from the gouge she had made. Gears crunching and grinding came next along with the sound of the boiler blowing, and the airship tug pitched forward and rapidly began to fall out of the sky. Yet before she trace its new path, it had already lowered enough to mix in with the urban landscape before sinking below the skyline. It continued to drift a bit farther, shooting several blocks out, before it finally vanished beneath the plumes of industrial smokestacks. Distantly, over the sounds of the rest of the city, a collision was faintly heard.
Tempest lowered her hand and stared below. Slowly, the rest of the soldiers filed in around her, looking either to her or at the city as well.
Her eyes didn’t move when she finally spoke.
“Now that I think about it, I don’t recall seeing her symbol on her hand anymore.”
The soldiers looked to her but said nothing. Not long after, she turned away and began to walk back, and those around her rapidly fell in behind.
“Change of plans. Just find her and kill her. We have a lot of work to do and it’d be simpler to write that one off as a corpse.”
“It is my esteemed honor and great pleasure to welcome you to the first Continental Summit in eight years. I assure you that, as host of this great re-inaugural event, the nation of Manehattan will do everything in its power to accommodate you. I’m looking forward to an eventful and productive conference.”
The moment he finished, Fancy Pants looked back to his secretary. Inkwell was finishing checking a small index card for compliance before looking up and nodding. “Perfect that time, sir.”
He nodded back before reaching up to straighten his lapel. “How’s my hair?”
“Excellent, as always.”
“My tie?”
“Perfect.”
He nodded, looking down the steps of the congressional building. Like him, it was in immaculate condition, having been cleared out, cleaned, and prepared for the Everfree Continental Summit. The broad pavilion before it that had historically been reserved for gatherings of crowds or even military displays stretched open now. While soldiers still framed it, including ones who were not from Manehattan, it mostly provided a long runway of sorts for all of the delegates from the other nations of Greater Everfree to arrive.
At that moment, as the sun reached it zenith, the first of a series of steam carriages had turned into the gated grounds and was now making its way toward the building itself.
Fancy Pants took a deep breath. He nearly started off down the steps, but before doing so he turned back to Inkwell one last time. “Fleur made it to the lodge, didn’t she?”
“Telegram came in an hour ago confirming it, sir.”
“And the rest of the heads of state?”
“They made it as well.”
Nodding back one more time, he steeled himself and turned to the stairs. He left the rest of his retinue save for a pair of secret service members as he descended to ground level. The crowd of newspaper writers, as well as at least three photographers, that was gathered at the periphery of the area along with the national guardsmen primed themselves to immediately start taking notes and snapping pictures. The chancellor ignored them and focused fully on the first steam carriage.
It wasn’t long before it came around and pulled in front of the estate. At that point, Fancy Pants gave it a rather puzzled look. The vehicle was the official one put at the disposal of the Fillydelphian ambassador, which was evidenced by its colors, but it was all by itself as opposed to being in a team of native Fillydephian vehicles.
As soon as it stopped and the door opened, the chancellor prepared himself none the less to give the greeting, only to falter again on seeing only a single individual emerge: a Manehattan escort. Being of the higher-ranking military, he stood straight and tall and official as he walked out, expressing nothing, and faced the chancellor. Immediately he gave a salute.
Fancy Pants somewhat absent-mindedly returned it. “Pardon me lieutenant, but where is the Fillydelphian delegation?”
“I’m sorry, sir. All their airship sent was an envoy. Given the current civil unrest in Fillydephia, they have elected not to attend this summit.”
Fancy Pants looked rather uncomfortable at that, as did anyone else’s who was in earshot. All save the reporters, who immediately began to frantically write that down as one of the papers snapped a picture. After a moment, he nodded to the man. He saluted again, then turned to go back to the steam carriage.
Soon after, the next grouping arrived—decked in the colors of Appleloosa. Unlike the others, the carriages in this group, aside from the Manehattan-provided one, were still horse-drawn. Fancy Pants felt more at ease at seeing an expected motorcade and drew himself up again with renewed decorum. The door to the side of the carriage opened and soon after the ambassador stepped out himself.
As the official’s assembly fell in around him and began to advance, Fancy Pants nodded. “Mr. President, it is my esteemed honor and great pleasure to welcome you to the first Continental Summit in eight years. I assure you that, as host of this great re-inaugural event, the nation of Manehattan will do everything in its power to accommodate you. I’m looking forward to an eventful and productive conference.”
He punctuated by holding out his hand.
The official looked at him as he gave this address, but never smiled. He looked too tired and sore to be enthusiastic. He did (after a moment) reach out and take Fancy Pants’ hand, but the handshake was flimsy and quickly parted as soon as another picture snapped. “Yes, yes, chancellor… I trust this is in the founder’s hall?”
His own smile faded a little on seeing the Appleloosan’s reaction. “Why…yes. Yes it is. Just-”
“I’ll see you inside.”
Without another word, the official moved on and took his retinue with him; most of them looking just as tired and sore as he was. Fancy Pants was so caught off guard he looked after him as he left, but the ambassador didn’t stop and soon his own team of carriages had moved on.
By the time the chancellor looked forward again, the Mount Aris delegation was pulling up. He quickly righted himself as they dismounted, doing so far more traditionally. After coming to a halt, several of the Hippogriff members, each one dressed immaculately in pressed uniforms and conducting themselves with strict and rigid mannerisms, moved in lock step to flank the entrance to the steam carriage. One opened the door and the ambassador stepped out. He looked even more rigid than the rest; holding his head high and gazing down his nose not only at his subordinates but the world in general.
Once his own entourage filled in behind him he began to walk forward. Fancy Pants began again, in spite of the fact this person wasn’t exactly who he had expected. “Ambassador, it is my esteemed honor and great pleasure to welcome you to the first Continental Summit in eight-”
The man, now standing in front of Fancy Pants, cut him off with a curt nod but gave no more than that. “I am Ambassador Sea Spray. I have been authorized on behalf of Princess Skystar to take her place at this summit in her stead.”
Without another word or look, he stepped around the chancellor and began to head in with his own company. Fancy Pants was left standing a little dumbfounded. The Hippogriff hadn’t even waited for him to finish his own greeting and his hand had gone ignored.
He spent so long recovering that he barely even noticed when the Trottingham assembly came forth. Immediately, however, he smoothed himself out and redoubled his efforts to look composed; knowing this was the first that his country would see of this nation’s new leaders following the coup d’etat.
At least, that was what he thought until the carriage opened. A short-haired young woman stepped out, both younger and far less scarred than the reports of the Trottingham Aerial Navy’s new admiral. He looked at her somewhat curiously as she approached with her own company, which themselves were oddities in their own right. They were masked and they almost seemed to be gorillas rather than men considering the size of their muscles and frames.
On reaching him, she called out. “I’m Ambassador Sunny Flare. I’ll be representing Trottingham and the king at this summit.”
That was enough for him to nod. “Well… Ambassador, it is my esteemed honor…”
He trailed off, for the Trottingham ambassador never even stopped before him. She walked right past and into the building.
By now, the chancellor was not only getting used to these brusque responses but was beginning to expect them, yet that in turn began to paint his features over with a look of dread. The final two ambassadors were the worst of the bunch. The Griffonstone delegation not only left half the people on the pavement coughing and choking from their filthy, oversized machines, but they only met gazes with the chancellor before walking in. Not long after, the Dragonlands delegation finally arrived. Although Dragonlord Ember herself had come to act as chief diplomat, she and those with her acted as if both the chancellor and his own assembly wasn’t even there as she walked in without greeting or acknowledgment. The reporters almost ravenously snapped pictures of each snubbing.
By the time she went in, much of the chancellor’s earlier enthusiasm and hope for the summit was gone. His smile had almost entirely faded and it was all he could do to continue to look official, especially knowing the local papers would plaster all of this over the front headlines that evening. Trying his best to remain optimistic about the situation, he turned about, held his own head high, and proceeded after the final ambassador into the congressional building.
The mood hadn’t improved much when the congregation assembled in the founder’s hall and the doors were shut. The room seemed even quieter than when it was emptied out for the new furnishings. As was the normal tradition for the summit, the room had been cleared of furniture save for a large central table and a chair for each delegate. Within the natural sunlight streaming in through the ceiling skylights, the delegates stared at each other silently with unfriendly looks while their representative escorts stood around the room looking even more hostile and cold.
Fancy Pants himself was acutely away of the empty chair at his right hand, but to his left the Appleloosan President was barely suppressing a scowl to the Trottingham ambassador. He wasn’t alone. The Dragonlord sat with her arms crossed kept a perpetual sneer in the direction of the ambassador; refusing to even look at her. The Griffonstone ambassador was almost rolling his eyes and seemingly waiting for everything to be over. The Mount Aris ambassador, now confirmed by Fancy Pants’ secretary to be a high-ranking military member, kept his head high and looked down his hawk-like nose at everyone.
With no one making the first move after five full minutes, he cleared his throat.
“I’d like to thank everyone again for being in attendance. I regret to inform you that I received a message from Fillydelphia saying they will be unable to attend this summit, but nevertheless I’m glad that we are all here again seated at one table. I’m hoping that this Continental Summit can indicate a return of semblance of sanity and civility following the past eight years, and that we can all move past the dreadful events of the Lunar Fall toward a more prosperous future for all of us.”
Scarcely had he finished speaking when the Griffonstone ambassador let out a sharp scoff.
“Spare me your pleasantries and noble speeches, chancellor. I consider this summit something of an insult right at the onset by holding it here in Manehattan—well within your territory. It would have been far more equitable for everyone to hold it in Griffonstone. We’re the most central country geographically, after all.”
Another scoff came from the Mount Aris ambassador. “As much as I don’t care to turn this summit into a geography lesson, it’s long been known that Mount Aris splits Greater Everfree in two at the southern border. Besides that, if there was going to be an equitable summit, it should have been held in our territory regardless. Mount Aris is the only one here who hasn’t entered an alliance against other parties present in the past eight years, after all.”
“Um…are you forgetting about the existence of the Dragonlands in that little jibe?” the Dragonlord immediately spoke up.
“My apologies. The only one here who hasn’t entered an alliance against other parties and isn’t a country made up of warmongers.”
The Dragonlord’s eyes flashed violence as she began to rise in her seat, but Fancy Pants quickly held out his hand first. “Now, now! Need I remind everyone here that this is a civil, diplomatic discourse? There will be no name calling or insults of any kind here. We’re all meeting on a common ground of mutual respect for one another.”
The Dragonlord only reluctantly lowered again and the Griffonstone ambassador snorted, but no one said anything else.
After a moment, Fancy Pants inhaled again as he too settled. “Starting things off, I would like to begin by saying that Manehattan is committed to keeping the peace as much as possible. There is a great deal of confusion and suspicion among everyone even with the good news of the end of the Lunar Fall, but, at the same time, none of us are aware of what exactly caused it in the first place. I think what we could all stand for, at the moment, is a return to stability. All of us have been suffering from either subpar or stagnant economic growth for some time, and the results have been horrendous on our societies. Organized crime, widespread poverty, smugglers and bounty hunters everywhere, and widespread social injustice and unrest. So, for starters, I have prepared a twelve-point plan that I would suggest we all commit to following to stimulate economic growth and recovery for everyone.” He reached for a paper in front of him as he adjusted his monocle. “Item one, for the next six months, we all agree to impose a freeze on changing tariffs-”
“This is all well and good, chancellor,” the Griffonstone ambassador cut in again, sounding even more bored and annoyed than before, “but I’d prefer if we didn’t beat around the bush any longer. Griffonstone came to this summit for one reason and one reason only.” He looked around the table. “I propose that Equestria be partitioned immediately among all participant nations.”
The other delegates either sneered or tossed out a biting comment at the situation, save for the Trottingham one. “Ambassador,” Fancy Pants answered, “I think it might be too soon to make the drastic step of-”
“On the contrary, I think it’s already getting to be too late. You say this meeting is supposed to be from a point of mutual respect. By all means, let’s all stop trying to play each other for fools. We all know full well that something in that country created the Light Eaters and the Nighttouched, and that something else in that country both created and destroyed that eternal night. Now we have people popping up left and right with special powers, and some of them are already finding places in militaries. And all of us have the same thing in mind—it came from Equestria. Not to mention, as always, whoever owns that country gets the only all access route to everyone else in a time of war. And Equestria itself had no shortage of resources and land either before all of those monsters got rid of the local residents. That’s why we’re all scrambling to make as many inroads as we can into it while we can, isn’t that right?”
No one at the table refuted that, although some looked a bit more anxious about it than others.
“Then let’s head off the next war right here and right now and draw some boundary lines. I want to know which piece Griffonstone will get to itself and that if anyone tries to take so much as an inch of it there’ll be hell to pay.”
The Mount Aris ambassador let out a sigh. “Our government has little interest in dividing up the carcass of Equestria as if it were some abandoned half-eaten cake, nor do we take much stock in treasure hunting for fairy tales and hokum. We’re far more interested in reality, such as the seizure of our native land perpetuated both by Appleloosa and Griffonstone alike.”
The Griffonstone ambassador frowned, while Appleloosa looked stunned. “What are you talking about, ambassador?”
“You know full well what I’m speaking of, Mr. President. The Talon Strip, the Whistling Highlands, Osprey’s Peak…”
“Those weren’t seized! They were signed over to Appleloosa by treaty!”
The Hippogriff’s eyes narrowed. “Yes…a treaty that ended a war the Appleloosa initiated. A treaty with explicit verbiage claiming that Appleloosa was claiming the land due to a need for a bulwark against the encroach of night from Equestria. Equestria may have some issues with…” He held out his hand and waved it around. “…‘pest control’, but with no further Light Eaters the problem will be resolved at some point, and so I see no reason why the land shouldn’t be relinquished to us.”
His jaw tightened.
“In fact, we demand it.”
The Appleloosan grit his teeth. “Pest control? Pest control?! Is that what you think fighting swarms of corrupted insects or rodents that eat men, women, and children alive in seconds is? Mount Aris hasn’t suffered half as much as Appleloosa, and you haven’t had to deal with Trottingham breathing down your neck every other year either! That land is ours by treaty, and it’s going to stay ours unless you take it back yourselves!”
“Perhaps we should,” the Hippogriff retorted dangerously.
“Can we have order, please?” Fancy Pants quickly interjected, just as the Appleloosan gave the Hippogriff a look that could kill. By now he was sweating a little. “I know that we all have concerns regarding the border restructuring and Equestria itself, but for the time being can we focus on points of common ground? There’s still a great many issues facing the world that concerns us all. Now, the ambassador from Griffonstone makes a good point in regards to the individuals who have been appearing all over Greater Everfree that appear to have special abilities…”
“I do say,” the Hippogriff interjected again, “can we think of a more concise way to describe them?”
The Appleloosan ambassador snorted. “Like what? Witches? Warlocks?”
“Freaks…” the Dragonlord muttered.
“…Our own state department has been trying out the name ‘eidolons’. The point being that with the threat of the shadow over Equestria greatly diminished, it’s only a matter of time before this issue takes the forefront and a coordinated plan across several nations might be in order.”
“I have your ‘plan’,” the Dragonlord retorted, “Round them up and send them to a colony where they can go crazy and kill each other in peace.”
The Griffonstone ambassador chuckled. “The Dragonlord over here is just sore that she jumped the gun and started doing that to her own batch. Now that they’re turning out to be the power of an aerial battleship packed into one, she’s ruing the day and wants everyone to trash their own advantage to even the playing field.”
She sneered, but said nothing.
“Well, I, for one, fully agree with the Chancellor,” the Appleloosan spoke up, a hint of snideness in his voice. “That’s why I feel it’s only proper that our respective departments all be obligated to share any and all information they have managed to gather on these folks. For the common good, as we’re all similarly afflicted.”
The Hippogriff snorted. “Why certainly. Why stop there? How about all of the weak points in our naval warships and airships as well? Or the holes in our border defenses?”
“Don’t give me that garbage. Your country didn’t have to deal with ground zero of all this.” He whirled to the Trottingham ambassador. “Speaking of which, we still demand restitution for the actions of your captain who went AWOL, and don’t think executing her was nearly enough. Especially since we still haven’t seen proof of it.” He turned to Fancy Pants next. “And you, chancellor…don’t think word hasn’t gotten around that you actually sided with six of these ‘eidolons’ or whatever. These Trottinghamites obviously wanted to have the market cornered on these people when they hit us both.” Finally, he turned to the Dragonlord. “And you! Wanting us to round ‘em all up, huh? How do I know this isn’t a little bit of counterintelligence to get us to kill ‘em for you, huh? What do you know about them?”
The Dragonlord bristled again, looking like she truly wanted to vent her anger at that, but, barely containing herself, she leaned back in her seat and crossed her arms. “One of the conditions of the treaty we…” she nearly hissed, “…signed…was that we maintain our neutrality. I’ll abide by that. That means no sharing of intelligence, either.”
The table was quiet for a fraction of a second. Everyone save the Trottingham ambassador gave the Dragonlord an uneasy look at that admission. The Griffonstone ambassador scoffed and said what everyone was thinking. “Damnit, girl…what the devil did they do to you that cowed you so badly?”
If possible, she grew even more infuriated at that, but she didn’t get a chance to act on it. At that point, the Appleloosan crossed his arms and leaned back.
“Well, if none of you are willing to help us out, then perhaps we aren’t willing to help you out. The council already decided. Effective from here on out, whoever here isn’t willing to cooperate in intelligence with Appleloosa can look forward to a 20 percent increase in tariffs on exported food.”
For the second time, the table erupted into a clamor of outrage. This time, even Fancy Pants found himself joining in with calls to “be reasonable”. The Griffonstone ambassador wasn’t nearly as composed or polite, and the Dragonlord shouted something explicit.
“-can’t think of anything more obscene!” the Hippogriff finally managed to get through. “Are you trying to break our economy with that ridiculous price?”
“Protecting our interests is more like it! You think now that you have the Light Eaters off of your backs but Equestria unclaimed that you’re going to turn our country into your next free-for-all?” He glanced around the table. “And if we can’t count on any of you to back us up, then we’re going to make sure you aren’t in any spot to trouble us! You may think you can just wander in and start blasting, but we’ve still got the most arable land and don’t you forget it!”
“Ambassador,” Fancy Pants quickly interjected, “I must ask that you request your government to reconsider. That sort of increase is going to cause a massive amount of unrest all over Greater Everfree. This couldn’t just kick start a depression. It could lead to outbreaks of violence.”
“O-ho! Is that a threat, chancellor? And here I thought a Manehattan capitalist like yourself would be all about private owners being able to do as they wished with their own products.” Again he wheeled to the table. “Is that what it comes down to? Either we sell to you at the prices you like or you’ll just walk up and take it? If we wouldn’t keep our prices low when you all left us to fend for ourselves, there’s no way we’re lowering them under a threat! You know our conditions, and that’s final.”
There were no shortage of angry glares now, and Fancy Pants rubbed his forehead and sighed at the latest downturn. He looked back up, and saw that the only one who didn’t still seem to be at anyone’s throat was the ambassador from Trottingham; still sitting there calmly with arms crossed.
“Ambassador, is there anything that Trottingham wishes to declare before members of the summit?”
She sat a second longer before she uncrossed her arms, then reached over the table. Fancy Pants had taken the liberty of having the most up-to-date map of Greater Everfree that the Manehattan cartographers could produce on such short notice made and distributed copies to each attendee. She took hers and brought it in front of her. Taking the pen also provided to her, she began to draw on it.
The other attendants, somewhat puzzled, watched as she did this behavior for about a full minute. Once it was done, she put the pen back and turned the map around for everyone to see.
“This is all that the Storm King told me to tell you.”
Fancy Pants had to lean in a bit closer but he could make out what she had done. She had drawn a much bolder outline around a good portion of Greater Everfree. Almost half to be exact, including former Equestria, part of the Dragonlands, and all of Mount Aris and Appleloosa.
She tapped on it.
“These are now the borders of Trottingham. Either accept them now, or take it up with the armada when they arrive.”
As everyone sat there stunned, the ambassador simply rose out of her chair, turned, and began to walk out. The Trottingham guards she had brought rapidly accompanied her, and moments later the doors to the chamber closed again…leaving the remaining ambassadors still staring at the map.
Inkwell had the Manehattan executive steam carriage ready to go an entire hour before the day’s session was set to end, complete with the military escort ready to receive the chancellor. As a result, she had to check the time twice to make sure she wasn’t off on the hour when she had arrived just in time to receive word that the session had adjourned and the chancellor was on his way out. Leaving her notes and memos she had been getting ready for both press as well as official release, she quickly exited the carriage and took her position to receive the chancellor just as he finished descending the stairs of the congressional building.
She gave him the traditional greeting, but other than a quick nod and a hand wave he gave no reply. Tensing up a little, she waited for him to enter the carriage and then quickly slipped in after him.
She had hardly taken her seat when Fancy Pants looked forward. “Back to office. As quick as you can. Send a message to the presider that I need to meet with her as soon as possible.”
The driver nodded as the rest of his security detail quickly loaded and shut up the car. Before Inkwell had a chance to ask about anything the engine revved and the carriage began to move.
As they made their way off the pavilion, she finally spoke up. “The…session ended a bit earlier today than I thought it would, sir. Does this mean things are going well? Or at least that you’re getting an early start tomorrow?”
Fancy Pants inhaled and exhaled uneasily. “I’m afraid not. The summit is adjourned.”
Not only Inkwell but several others in the carriage looked perturbed. “Adjourned? Already?”
“Well, between one no-show, one walk-out, and everyone else at each other’s throats, there wasn’t much reason to extend it the full three days.”
She looked even more uncomfortable. “It went…badly?”
Fancy Pants let out a quiet chuckle. “Well, I can safely say it didn’t go as badly as the last summit did, but that’s not saying much. Whenever the delegates weren’t all looking for the best way to gain advantages for themselves at the expense of everyone else, we had to deal with Trottingham making no less than an ultimatum to either accede to their demands from now on or prepare for war. To think, I actually thought things might have improved now that Regent Cinch was gone. This new ‘Storm King’ makes me long for a conflict with the Dragonlands…”
Fancy Pants’ own weak smile faded.
“I’m sad to say that only two things came out of this summit. One is that for the time being it’s effectively every country for themselves. The other is that all the other nations of Greater Everfree have reached the same conclusion about the source of the Light Eaters and the eidolons residing in Equestria. Now it’s just a matter of who can get through the Nighttouched first and claim it.”
She clenched her fingers nervously. “What can we do?”
“For starters, I’m going to sign the Manehattan Doctrine into law tonight.”
“Are you sure? I thought you said the language in there was too loose.”
“It can’t be helped anymore. The rest of Greater Everfree is already moving. We’ve been sitting quietly for too long, and now we can no longer count on Fillydelphia to be our shield.”
She took in a deep breath. “Alright, sir. Anything else?”
“Yes. I’m afraid we can’t wait for the other five of those eidolons who we spoke with two months ago to return. We’ll have to make do with what we have. Send a letter to the one requesting a meeting first thing tomorrow morning.”
“So, as you can see, our situation is rather dire and we need to enact a plan moving forward. We already know that Trottingham found a way to weaponize your strange abilities as well as ways to give these same abilities to those who don’t innately have them. You and your five friends definitely have the most knowledge concerning these powers as well as the phenomenon that took place in Equestria. And while I am very grateful that you honored your pledge to us to return to Manehattan and contribute to our cause, I am afraid we cannot wait any longer to see if the rest of your friends will do the same. We must act now, and therefore I am turning to you for support in this desperate hour.”
In her lone seat across from the chancellor, his guardsmen, and a few other executives, Fluttershy wrung her hands together and swallowed a large lump.
“Oh my…”
The grand chancellor himself, sitting in a much higher backed chair, looked puzzled. “Pardon me, I didn’t quite catch that?”
Fluttershy let out a nervous mutter as she looked around. If anything, she was even more nervous than the last time she had been in that room meeting the chancellor for the first time. The fact that the sun was out and most of the soldiers from before were gone didn’t seem to help.
“I…um…that is…” she stammered, “Mr. Chancellor, while I’m flattered for all of that, I’m…I’m not so sure I can help you that much.”
“I can understand your trepidation, Ms. Fluttershy. I, um…well…” He grimaced. “I don’t mean to be rude or insulting, but we were hoping that Ms. Twilight Sparkle would have come back by now as she seems to have the greatest knowledge of these…these…um…”
“…Promethian Sigils?” She nearly whispered.
“Yes, those…Promethian Sigils. Nevertheless, as I said, action must be taken at once. The world is moving and it’s not waiting for us or for the rest of your companions. Therefore, effective 9 o’clock this morning, the Manehattan Doctrine is now in full effect.”
“The…Manehattan Doctrine?”
“Yes. Surely you read of it in this morning’s paper?”
“Oh.” She looked more nervous than before. “I…don’t tend to read the newspaper. It gets me too agitated. I just used it for…for…um, well…the animals who aren’t quite as tidy as the others about leaving their little presents.”
Fancy Pants looked a bit put off for a moment. “I…see. Well, I don’t want to get into the long and short of it and take up any more of your time, but the essence of the legislation is that I have established Manehattan as a sanctuary state for all eidolons, regardless of nationality. We are even offering to put them on a form of ‘fast track’ to citizenship as part of the law.”
“Ei…eidolons…?”
He grimaced. “That’s essentially the title we are using to refer to individuals with these Promethian Sigils. Now, we are expecting some push back from this, but ultimately we think it’s best for the world at large. And if we establish a sanctuary state, then we are hoping that other countries will quickly follow suit as opposed to implementing any sort of programs that penalize or otherwise treat eidolons as second-class citizens. Once everyone is no longer regarding these individuals as lepers, so to speak, we can work on identifying the source of their new abilities and the reason certain individuals are affected and not others. Then perhaps we can find a way to control their outbursts or at least predict who will be affected next.”
He folded his hands and leaned forward. “Now, of course, we can expect that many individuals will be reluctant to believe these claims. They might see this as a trick to allow some form of registration, so that they can be readily identified later for something far more nefarious. And since we are turning Manehattan into a sanctuary state for all of Greater Everfree, that means that both individuals who are allies to Manehattan as well as individuals who are from hostile nations will be allowed to reside here. This has already caused an amount of pushback from the interior, and, no doubt, has only made things worse for those we wish to welcome to Manehattan. That is where you come in, Ms. Fluttershy.”
“Wh…me?” she squeaked.
“Well, as an eidolon in the service of Manehattan, it makes perfect sense that someone like you should head this effort.”
She let out a nervous tremble and gulped. “Um… M-M-Mr. Chancellor…sir… I’m not sure I’m the best person for this… I rushed back to Manehattan as fast as I could in order to take care of Angel Bunny and the rest of the animals, and they still have spots on them from where the Light Eaters touched them that I need to keep under control. That keeps me pretty busy…” She shifted. “Besides, I’m not that good at, um…going to events with large crowds. Or speaking to large crowds. Or standing near large crowds. Or being on the same street as large crowds. Or…well…pretty much anything that has to do with a large crowd…”
“Nevertheless, I truly think this would be the best way you could help Manehattan as well as other eidolons right now. The dominant thought among society is that eidolons are just these mad engines of destruction. Seeing one such as yourself, who I understand has healing abilities, would be a welcome counter-example. Especially if you could help some people along the way with some of those abilities.”
Fluttershy only looked more nervous at the suggestion.
“And,” Fancy Pants quickly interjected, “we would, of course, make accommodations for any of your animals that you wished to take along with you. It would be the least we could do if it would make you feel more at ease about this arrangement. And this would provide an excellent opportunity, for all of us, to try and see if we can locate the rest of your friends. Or, at the bare minimum, look for some evidence about what happened to them. Wouldn’t you agree?”
This part made Fluttershy ease a little, but not much. She put a finger to her chin and thought momentarily. “I…well…I guess so…”
Seeing the apprehension on her face, the chancellor hesitated a moment before leaning back. “Well, how about I give you a day to sleep on the idea? As urgent as our situation is, we have the luxury of not rushing into any decisions just yet.”
Fluttershy, by now, was looking to one side and avoiding his gaze, but let out a near mutter. “Ok…”
“So I’ll have one of the servicemembers come by tomorrow at, say, 9 o’clock and you’ll have you answer for them by then?”
“Ok…”
“Splendid,” he smiled. “Thank you for your consideration, Ms. Fluttershy. The servicemembers outside will see you safely back to Carousel Couture.”
Fluttershy gave a meek nod and muttered something that only vaguely sounded like a thank you, then rose from her chair. The door to the room opened, and the same agents that had been keeping a watch on the factory/residence for weeks, including the one with the thick mustache, silently stood there and waited for her as she timidly walked out. She nearly shrank from both of them as she scooted by, but once they were out the door shut again.
Fancy Pants, looking less at ease now, exhaled as he reached for one of his cigarettes. He had barely managed to get it out when there was a knock on the door. Soon after, it opened and let another executive aid in.
“Sir, we just got the telegraph back from Winsome Falls. The escort reports that everything is going well and that Fleur-de-Lis is in excellent health and spirits.”
He nodded back. “Good to hear. Tell them to go ahead and extend the trip for three more days. I’d like her far from the capitol as long as possible. In the meantime, let’s get those contractors lined up. We need to make as much inroads into Equestria as we can.”
Fluttershy had hardly opened the door to the residential complex connected to Carousel Couture when she heard a rapid, yet familiar, scampering, followed by the cries of the maid. She stiffened in surprise right there in the foyer, and didn’t move an inch until she saw the latter of the two stomp over from the kitchen in a huff. She laid eyes on Fluttershy and immediately bellowed.
“Ma’am! Your rat was in the kitchen again! Raiding it!”
Fluttershy shrank in alarm at the verbal outburst, but quickly calmed when she realized what she was talking about. “Oh, do you mean Angel? He’s a rabbit, actually. Not even a rodent-”
“Whatever he is, he needs to stay out of the kitchen! He’s pilfering whatever raw vegetables I can get, and those are getting pricier by the day with the embargos from Fillydelphia! And I don’t need him leaving any presents around the meals either!”
Fluttershy stared back silently a moment before looking up a little and glancing to one side. Sure enough, Angel hadn’t gone far. He was in his favorite hiding spot in the little space between one of the heavier armoires and the wall. He almost seemed to have a smile on his face as he smugly munched on a carrot.
“Oh…well, Angel is too…I mean, I’ve trained him well enough to make sure he won’t do his business anywhere in the kitchen. And I’ll give him a talking to about the vegetables again. I’m sure once I’ve explained the situation with prices being the way they are, he’ll more than understand.”
“Exp…explain?” the maid nearly stammered back. She rolled her eyes and groaned. “How in the world are you going to explain something to a rabbit?”
“Well, you see…we kind of have something of an understanding-”
“So long as you’re talking to that rabbit,” she half-scoffed, “why don’t you let him know if I ever catch him in the kitchen again I’ll make a stew out of him!”
At once, Fluttershy saw Angel stop eating. His incisors bared and a squeak of a growl came out from his throat as he began to step out from the armoire. Fluttershy gulped and quickly shook her head ‘no’ at him, but fortunately the maid was already turning around and heading back.
“I have no idea how he got into the cupboard anyway… I had it locked! It’s not like rabbits can use keys!”
As she began to head back, Angel finally leapt out, prompting Fluttershy to quickly snap forward, rush over, and snatch him up before he could do anything they would both regret. She had scarcely managed to grab him and stand again, with him struggling all the way, when she nearly jumped again. Coco Pommel had just finished walking out in the wake of the maid and now stood right in front of her.
“Ah!”
“Oh, I’m sorry, Ms. Fluttershy. I didn’t mean to startle you.”
The woman took a moment to compose herself, which wasn’t too easy as Angel tried to seize the moment to escape again, but in the end relaxed while still holding onto him. “Oh…that’s quite alright. I was just…um…tending to Angel Bunny. He gets a bit energetic after having fresh carrots.”
“I just heard you come in and I came out to see you. You’re back from the government quadrangle sooner than I thought. What was it about? Um…that is, unless it was classified or something.”
“Oh no, nothing like that,” Fluttershy went on as she finally got Angel to relent for the moment, much to his unhappiness. “They just…well…they asked if I wanted to do a job for them, more or less.”
“Oh, I see.” A pause, during which her face turned more anxious. “So…they didn’t mention anything about having found Ms. Rarity or hearing from her yet, did they?”
Fluttershy shook her head sadly. “I’m afraid not.”
Coco nodded back, but her own head slumped as she turned away. “I didn’t think they would, but…I kind of hoped they would,” she half-muttered as she walked up the foyer to the windows. “We’ve been able to keep things running without her. Especially Sassy. There’s only so much we can do without her, though.”
She reached the window and glanced out of it, looking a bit more uncomfortable.
“Those men came by again today. As much as I hated having those government agents around all the time, at least they stayed away when they did. I’m not sure what to do when they knock on the door. I’m afraid they’ll try and force themselves in like that one time if I open it, but I’m scared they’ll break it down one of these days if I don’t. I keep thinking back to that story in the papers…”
A thought came to her when she said that, and turned to the woman.
“Fluttershy, I don’t suppose… I mean, well… That is… I know you have a way with animals when they misbehave. And you can make people hold still for when Ms. Sparkle needed to-”
“Oh, oh no-no…” Fluttershy immediately cut off, tensing up a bit herself. “An emergency where I have to keep someone from hurting themselves is one thing, but I don’t use my power on people. I don’t even really like using it on animals. I’m sorry, but that’s out of the question.”
Coco looked a bit unhappy at the answer, but nodded just the same. “I understand.” She sighed and turned from the window. “I just really wish Ms. Rarity was here. She always seemed to know what to-”
“Sequins and stitches…”
She cut herself off, and both she and Fluttershy looked back up to the hall leading to the foyer. Sassy Saddles, a bit stressed and frazzled herself, was standing in the entryway.
“Ms. Pommel, we really need you on the floor. We’ve had three more no-shows to work today and we’re already behind on the collar hems on half the uniforms.”
The younger woman’s eyes widened. “Oh no! Three?”
Sassy sighed. “Apparently someone’s still going around harassing our employees. We know who to blame. The bottom line is we’ll need all hands on deck. Maybe we’ll only need to plead for an hour of overtime if we start now…”
“I’ll be right there.”
Immediately, she took off for the hallway. She passed Sassy soon after, and the older lady nearly turned to follow her when she paused, seeming to notice Fluttershy for the first time, and turned back to her.
“Oh, welcome back, Ms. Fluttershy. I’m sorry I don’t have time to ask about how the visit went. We’re backed up far too much.” She nearly turned away again when she paused and looked back. “You…didn’t happen to hear anything about Ms. Rarity, did you?”
She shook her head. “I’m afraid not.”
“Oh, buttons and bobbins… Thank you anyway.” She soon followed after Coco. In moments, Fluttershy was left alone in the foyer with Angel.
She stood there silently for a time before sighing. Looking down to Angel, she patted him slightly before turning away to head to the rooms where Rarity had let her keep her animals. She only got a few steps before she paused and looked back to the front door. She could see out the windows from here. There was no sign of the rough-looking men, but she knew they still came around. Even more so now that the government wasn’t watching them so closely.
She turned away and kept walking.
“Maybe I can do more than just wait around here…”
The government official, a rather rough-looking man with a hard jaw and no nonsense about him (probably part of the military corps of engineers), gave the sheet of paper before him one last dismissive glance before lowering it and squaring the woman seated across from him in his gaze. She did her best to maintain her plastered smile even as she struggled not to sweat. He was silent for several seconds.
“New company, huh?”
“Um…yes, yes we are! Saw an opportunity…I mean, need that needed to be filled and we rose to it!”
“Uh-huh… Don’t think that just because we need this job done as fast as possible that we’ve lowered our standards. If you expect this contract to hold up, you’re going to provide a daily quota. Two miles worth of road made wagon-worthy per day.”
“Understood.”
“And we don’t have enough soldiers to provide an escort on all parts of the route either. That means you provide your own security. You don’t head out until an hour after dawn and you’re back an hour before dusk. Understand?”
“Yes sir. Clear as crystal!”
The official glowered at her a bit longer, before he muttered while giving the paper his stamp of approval. He followed it up with a signature before nearly throwing it across the desk back to her. “Well, if you’re crazy enough to want this job at all, I won’t stop you. Consider yourself and your company under government contract, Ms….?”
She immediately took the paper as soon as she had it, quickly folding it and slipping it in her vest pocket as she began to rise. The question, however, made her hesitate. “Oh…Glimmer! Starlight Glimmer!” She rapidly held out her hand. “Pleasure-to-do-business-with-you!”
The man, after a time, reached out to take her hand, but he was too slow. Eager to get moving, she ended up grasping the air and making a shaking motion before turning on her heel and walking out of the temporary office as fast as she could.
She emerged through the door and down a small staircase to a military encampment right on the edge of the Everfree Forest. In addition to being surrounded with cannon and gun emplacements and swarming with soldiers, it had a number of civilian contractors lined up in a sizeable stretch all waiting to go into the small shack that had been erected there to act as an office. The next one in line bolted for the door before the nearby MP had the chance to call “next”, but Starlight ignored all of them. She made straight for one of the groups of civilians surrounding the area, in particular one with Party Favor, Double Diamond, and Sugar Belle all waiting eagerly for her.
As soon as she got close enough, all three of them arose. She quickly held open her vest and showed off the contract.
“We got it?” Double Diamond asked as she neared.
“Yes, and now we have to put it to good use. How are we on manpower?”
“You kidding?” Party Favor snickered. “With the way the world has been going, we’ve tripled our numbers!”
“Then let’s get our sleeves rolled up and our hands dirty. Twilight’s got to be somewhere in that forest. And even if she isn’t, we need a clear path to that site in that journal before anyone from Manehattan gets to it.”
Pinkie Pie let out a loud, long yawn before raising her hands and giving a stretch.
“Mmm-mmm! What a great nap! I feel like I’ve been sleeping forever!”
Keeping her eyes closed, she stretched a bit in bed as she reached up and scratched at her messy hair with one hand and her side with another. After a moment, however, her face became a bit perplexed.
“Hmm…that’s funny. I don’t remember Rarity’s bed being so scratchy.”
She shrugged and finished stretching, before leaning up and out of bed. She put her feet on the floor only to pause again; looking slightly perplexed once more.
“Hmm…that’s funny. I don’t remember Rarity’s floor being rock and so damp.”
Again she shrugged as she opened her eyes. However, still looking half-asleep, she only seemed to lazily look around as she shook her head. In response, her hair fully sprung back up to its former “poofiness” before she stood up. She glanced about her a little, noticing that the room she was in was rather bare, unpainted, cracked, half-rotted, had a leak in a corner, and was generally unwholesome. A rather greasy-looking rat was nibbling away at an untouched tin plate with a slice of bread on it.
“Hmm…that’s funny. I don’t remember Rarity having a pet rat.”
Shrugging yet again, she began to walk forward. She only got so far however, when she hit something and was forced to stop. She opened her eyes a bit wider.
“Hmm…now I definitely don’t think there were iron bars on one side of Rarity’s room…”
“Hey…hey! Look! She’s up!”
Fully opening her eyes at last, Pinkie looked past the iron bar grating in front of her and ahead, at last recognizing that she wasn’t in her room at Rarity’s factory or anywhere close. Instead, she was in what looked like a stone hewn and mortared prison cell facing a block of other cells. They were empty, but a compliment of ten soldiers, each one attired in the armor and coloration of the infamous “Hippogriff Legion” of Mount Aris was now rushing to the cell.
In moments, all of them were facing her and each one of them had their respective long-barreled rifle up and aimed through the slots.
She looked them over mutely for a moment.
“I’m starting to think that I’m not at Carousel Couture.”
What happened next was rather rapid even for Pinkie. The very first thing they did was unlock the cell she found herself in, but she realized in short order it wasn’t to let her out. Instead, they decided to play some sort of game with her that required her to be blindfolded, except they didn’t have a blindfold and they shoved a black bag over her head instead. Once that was done, she figured she also wasn’t supposed to use her hands to reach out and feel for anything because they yanked those behind her back and tied them. After that, they led her around somewhere, making sure to hold onto her in order to guide her along the way but being a bit too rough in spite of her attempts to say they could grasp her more gently. After that, she found herself put in a hard chair made of iron, and so they tied her down into it at her ankles and wrists to make sure she couldn’t slide out by mistake.
After that, they removed the head covering only to expose several of the bigger, stronger, and uglier-looking Hippogriff Legionnaires in her face. One of them handled something that looked like a strap. Another handled a cane. A third was tending to some irons over a bin of hot coals. A fourth was right in front of her, so close she could smell his breath.
She responded by smiling. “Hi there! What’s your name?”
“I’ll be asking the questions around here,” he snarled back, nearly spitting the words in her face. “And as for you, you’ll be spilling your guts.”
In response, Pinkie wrinkled her nose and shrank back a bit. “Er, speaking of guts, I think you must have a lot of onion casserole in yours, because your breath? It could really use a couple sprigs of mint…”
He glowered but also leaned back. “Trying to be funny? That’s only going to make it worse on you, you know. We can make this very easy or very difficult. You won’t like it when it gets difficult. You see my accomplices?” He gestured behind himself. “This is just the appetizer.”
“Can we cut right to the main dish?” Pinkie answered. “I haven’t eaten anything since that cake I made for Twilight and I think that was at least a couple days ago by now…”
The man slammed his hand down on the same armrest Pinkie was strapped to. “Who do you work for?!”
“Oh, nobody, silly! The Cakes had to let me go! By the way, do you need a baker around here?”
“Still playing dumb, huh,” he sneered as he leaned back up. “Well, there’s more than one way to get you to talk.”
With that, he reached to one side. Pinkie only then realized some sort of lever was mounted into the stone floor. He grasped it and gave it a yank, letting something heavy knock loose. Moments later, she saw the world around her begin to spin, much to her surprise, as the chair itself that she was seated on swiveled about from an unseen wall mounting.
“Whoa! Hee-hee…wheeeee!” she cheered. “I didn’t know this was a ride!”
Moments later, it clicked and came to a stop, leaving her now completely upside down.
“Aw…that was over too quick! And shouldn’t it put me back head over heels again?”
“Alright, let’s start with her toenails. She’ll start talking after that.”
“Ooo! I’ve never had a pedicure!” Pinkie grinned as the man advanced on her. Soon he had seized her boots and was in the middle of beginning to too-roughly rip them off. She nearly opened her mouth to tell him to bother untying them first, but at the moment she was too confused/delighted at seeing the world around her upside down as everyone moved in on her. She giggled and nearly told them all that they reminded her of bats as one of her shoes finally came off.
Yet right at that moment, she heard the loud echo of rapidly running footsteps. There were several other yells accompanying them, and as they got closer they sounded like someone calling for someone else to please wait but in the most polite way possible. Soon after she saw a set of legs turn around and enter the room on the far side. Unlike the other legs, however, that were wearing work boots and pants, this one had much nicer, more elegant footwear and a long gown. It also seemed much smaller than the others.
“Oh, by all of Seaquestria…” a young, bubbly voice spoke up.
“Oh, hi there!” Pinkie shouted, even though she was too disorientated to really see who was talking. “If you want on, you’ll have to wait your turn! I think this is broken anyway…”
“What in the world are you doing?” the voice shouted.
At once, the other feet in front of Pinkie stepped back. Soon after, still more feet came up behind the new arrival and stopped.
“Princess…” a voice said between gasps, “there’s a delicate interrogation going on here…”
“Interrogation?!” the first voice shot back in alarm. “I told you all not to interrogate her! I didn’t even want you putting her in that cell to begin with!”
“But princess,” the one who had been speaking to Pinkie Pie spoke up, now sounding much quieter and meeker, “what else were we supposed to do? We couldn’t just leave her in a room in the palace! Not after-”
“Oh, there you all go again!” she huffed indignantly, before Pinkie rapidly saw her feet take off and begin to approach. In moments, they had stopped right in front of her face, and soon after they shifted slightly, as if their owner was a bit confused how to proceed, before the body they were attached to arched around and put a face in hers.
A freckled girl glad in a beautifully made and yet simple pale golden gown with long hair spilling onto the dingy floor and a rose flower in her hair was smiling at her as best as she could. It wasn’t easy as she was also wearing a necklace made from seashells that she struggled to hold on with one hand.
“Hi there!” she said cheerily. “So sorry about this! It’s a terrible mixup!”
“Oh really?” Pinkie innocently answered, still seemingly oblivious to her situation.
“Yeah, everyone was just a little freaked out when you landed…well, I say crashed is more accurate, and I should know since I was there…a month ago right into the palace garden. So they’re all a bit on edge. I said you just came and fell right out of the sky right when I was looking for a new shell for my hermit crab collection, but everyone started claiming ‘assassin’ this and ‘regicide plot’ that…and before you knew it they insisted on throwing you into the dungeon and torturing a confession out of you. I thought I had talked them into just leaving you locked up until you woke up, and then you could explain yourself, but they must have misheard.”
“Ooooooh…” Pinkie answered back knowingly. “Yeah, that makes perfect sense.” A pause. “Wait…I crashed into your palace? I didn’t know there were any palaces still in Equestria.”
“Equestria?” one of the men in the room echoed.
“What does she know about Equestria?” another added. “Is that how she was able to teleport herself into the royal garden?”
Pinkie saw the girl roll her eyes before she leaned herself back up. “Oh, there you go again. Put her right side up and let her out right now!”
“Wh-what?!”
“Princess, she might be dangerous!”
Another sigh. Soon, she was leaning down into Pinkie’s face again.
“Sorry about all this. Before I let you up, could you please just tell us how you got into the palace garden in the first place?”
“Hmm…” Pinkie thought aloud, easily peeling one of her hands and wrists outside of its restraint in order to scratch her chin before replacing it (much to the shock and alarm of those guarding her). “I can’t really remember too well even with all of my blood flowing to my head, but I’m starting to remember Twilight and the rest of us were in a big fight with Nightmare Moon and this demon version of Sunset Shimmer, and everyone exploded, and then I woke up here.” She let out a gasp. “I must have been blown here from Equestria!”
The girl looked back at her in puzzlement. “Blown here from…Equestria?”
“Come to think of it,” one of the ones near the doorway spoke up, “didn’t she show up here soon after that big explosion was seen from Equestria?”
“Oh, that’s ridiculous!” the original man spoke up. “No human being could just be blasted away from a burst of that size and arrive here unscathed! If there was anything to do with that blast, then that means it had to be a new weapon or device! And we know only Trottingham deals in such things, and that means she’s from Trottingham!”
Pinkie let out a gasp. “Oh, you’re good! You guessed I was from Trottingham!”
“Aha!” he immediately retorted. “You see? She admitted it at last!”
“Well…technically I’m from Flinton,” she corrected soon after. “At least the rest of the Pies are. They had to go to Trottingham when all of the local animals started turning mean and eating all of their neighbors ‘cause of the Lunar Fall. That’s what big sister Maud tells me.”
“Wait,” the girl began to answer, “does that mean you’re a Gaitian?”
Another gasp. “Wow! You all are really good at these guessing games! My turn! Um…” she thought for a moment. “Oh! I know! Where am I?” A pause. “No, seriously, where am I?”
“You’re in-” The girl cut herself off, let out a sigh, and stood up again. “Could you turn her chair back upright already?”
“But-”
“She answered your question.”
“She could be lying!”
“Oh! Listen, I told you to do something and that means you have to do it! That’s what Aunt Ocean Flow says it means to be princess and heir apparent!”
There was a bit of a pause, before a resigned sigh rang out. Soon after, the lever was grasped and pulled again, and Pinkie Pie let out another “whee!” as she was spun around back upright. Now that she was finally seated normally, she got a good look at everyone again. The princess was right in front of her, surrounded by the same men from earlier. They stood at a distance but were frowning and glaring at her; their tools at their sides. There were even more people crammed around the entrance of the chamber, but they didn’t look nearly as rough or strong as the other men. They seemed to be dressed more nicely, like the princess was, and had the look of officials or attendants.
Now that Pinkie was up again, the princess’ demeanor changed to become far more friendly once again. “I’ve never met a real Gaitian before…or someone from Trottingham…or really anyone else outside the palace, for that matter… Oh, this is Mount Aris, by the way. You’re in the royal palace on top of its peak.”
“Oooo!” Pinkie exclaimed in delight. “I must have been blown really, really high if I made it this far!”
“Were you really blasted all this way? Or, do you mean you were on an airship that blew up? Or maybe you got fired out of one of those big cannons from a circus?”
One of the attendants at the door put his hand in his face. “Really, princess…”
“Hmm…you know, to be honest, I don’t really know for sure,” Pinkie shrugged. “All I know is things went all flamey and melty when Sunset Shimmer turned into a demon, and then everything went to black, and now I’m here!”
“And how were you in Equestria?” the man nearby suddenly spoke up, far more sharply. “That far in, you should have been eaten alive. And more importantly, why were you in Equestria?”
“Because that’s where the airship was stole from Trottingham crashed when we went to stop Nightmare Moon.”
There were puzzled looks all around at this response for a few moments, before the princess lit up. “Wow…are you saying you actually stole an airship from Trottingham? How did you do that?”
“Oh, it was easy once we managed to get away from the two other airships that Sunset had.”
“Wait, wait…” She was sounding more excited on hearing this news. “Two more airships? As in there were three of them? How did you manage to get on the first one?”
“That one we took when it was still landed,” she answered casually, again removing a hand from a restraint and waving it. “It was fighting off Sunset and all the other Trottingham soldiers that was the hard part. But we had to because we had to save Twilight.”
“Twilight… Who’s Twilight? And why was she captured?”
This back and forth continued for several minutes, all the while the princess grew more engrossed and entertained by the story. In spite of the chagrin of the others in the room, she was soon leaning so forward she was propping her elbows up on Pinkie’s own arm rests and supporting her chin with them so she could marvel at everything. Yet as more and more was revealed, the others too soon began to pay more attention to the details. Especially the ones about Promethian Sigils.
“…And Manehattan just let you go just like that?”
“Well, they made us promise that we’d help them from now on. I think that means we have to make sure we do stuff like not tell anyone else too much about everything we told them and not let the big secret of Nightmare Moon and the Promethian Sigils out to just anyone.”
After saying this, she sat there smiling innocently…totally oblivious as to what she had just said.
The princess was still delighted at everything and beaming in awe. The others, on the other hand, turned to one another. “I think we were in luck to get this one. She’s a bit thick…”
“We were right to have the ambassador demand the territory. Considering the fact that Manehattan is weaponizing these ‘Promethian Sigils’ along with Trottingham, and we’ll soon need all the buffer zone we can get.”
“We’ll need to move fast… We’re behind the curve of both countries when it comes to knowledge of this power…”
“That story. Was. Amazing!” the princess remarked in elation. “Is there any more to it?”
“Sure! I haven’t even started to tell you about what we did in Griffonstone!”
“G-Griffonstone?” one of the attendants spoke up. “She knows about what happened in Griffonstone? With that disaster?”
“Buuuut…” Pinkie spoke up again. “I’m a little hungry right now and all this talk just made me hungrier. Can I get a snack or two? Five if they involve cookies?”
The man frowned. “We’re not giving you anything but-”
“Of course!” the princess interjected. “It’s almost lunchtime anyway…” She suddenly lit up, an idea coming to mind. “Oh…oh! I got the perfect idea! You can join me for lunch!”
Now everyone around the room really did get shocked. “P-P-Princess! You can’t-”
“I always eat all my meals alone nowadays! I’d love to have some company! You like lemonade, don’t you?”
Pinkie let out the biggest gasp yet as her eyes practically went starry. “Do I?!” A pause, as she turned pensive. “…Do I?” She lit up again. “Yes, of course I do!”
The princess leaned up and gestured to the chair. “Ok, let her out of the chair.”
“But princess…”
“Ugh, you’re not going to start that up again are you?”
“I admit she’s shared a lot of valuable intelligence, but we need time to verify that all of it is-”
“No problem!”
Everyone stopped and looked back at Pinkie when she called. She had simply removed her hands to undo her own restraints, then slipped them back where they had been before lifting them out of the undone restraints. Soon she was free, standing out of the chair, and smiling broadly.
“Took care of it myself! Thank you though! By the way, you really should fix that ride so it spins all the way. It’ll be a lot more fun and get your much dizzier.”
While most of the people in the room were dumbfounded, the girl merely snickered. Now that Pinkie was standing, she could see that, despite being younger, she was much taller than her. She immediately reached out and took her hand, which the Gaitian allowed her to do, and began to lead her through the interrogators who could only silently gape and mutely protest.
“We’ll get you a guest room where you can clean up before we eat. Maybe some new clothes that aren’t so burned-to-a-crisp either.”
“Really? Gee, that’s so nice! You don’t even mind that I’m a Gaitian either, do you?”
“You kidding? This is the first time I ever get to meet one!” she cheered in a near singing voice as she led her to the door. The attendants rapidly pulled back and away, letting her pass and then following her and Pinkie behind as she quickly let them to the stairwell. “Oh, I almost forgot! I never told you my name, did I? It’s Skystar. Princess Skystar of Mount Aris.”
Pinkie let out yet another surprised gasp. “You’re the princess of Mount Aris? You mean you’re Queen Novo’s daughter?”
She smiled and nodded again, although she winced a little as she did. “Well, um…that is to say I was her daughter. You heard of her though?”
“Oh, of course! I’ve even seen her once!”
Skystar turned more fully to her as she walked along, getting excited all over again. “Really? I was only six when she passed away, and she was always on official business, so I don’t have many memories. I’m always trying to have everyone in the palace tell me more stories about her. Can you tell me… What was she like? What did you think of her?”
Pinkie nearly opened her mouth to respond, but froze in the middle of doing so, before she looked a bit uneasy herself. “She, um…looked like she had lost weight compared to the photos…?”
Pinkie’s demeanor had mostly remained unchanged throughout the entire “ordeal”, if one could call it that, but she was still looking much better about two hours later. Skystar had granted her a guest room in the palace, despite the protests of those around her, and she had even gotten a fresh pair of clothes out of it to replace her ruined ones. After that, she headed to the “personal” kitchen that was reserved for use of the royal family alone, which, she discovered soon after, usually consisted only of Skystar. She had relatives who were still alive, but most of them had been relocated away from the capitol for fear that an enemy or Nighttouched attack would kill who was left of the royal family.
Skystar herself, Pinkie found out in short order, was guarded vigorously. There wasn’t a passage or room that the princess showed her that didn’t have a guard posted watching her at all times. That included the kitchen and the small table in it. It was reserved for the staff, or was supposed to be, but Skystar revealed she preferred to eat in it as the main dining room was always too empty and big. Usually she preferred at least the company of the palace staff, but today she was overjoyed to have a new companion to eat with.
“To tell the truth, I was hoping you’d turn out to be nice, even if I didn’t know who you were when you landed in the royal garden,” she giggled as she dabbed the last of her tomato soup with the crust of her grilled cheese. “You seemed like you were nice-looking, but I also wondered if everyone else had a point. They’re always scared that assassins or invaders will attack the palace and try to get rid of the last member of my mom’s direct line.”
Pinkie had already polished off her own lunch, not due to hunger only but due to the expected promise of cookies she had heard about earlier. She did, however, help herself to her eighth glass of lemonade. “I’m glad you ended up being so nice! Most people don’t really like Gaitians, especially when we show up out of nowhere.”
“By the way, I’m sorry again about…you know…tying you into that chair and having you interrogated thing…”
“Oh, don’t be!” she waved off. “It’s not like it’s the first time it happened!”
Skystar went a bit wide-eyed at that. “You mean…you’ve been treated like that before? What happened?”
She shrugged. “Eh, I wandered off our reserved property once because I thought I heard the candyman going down the street. There was this group of four or five big tough guys who saw me and asked what I was doing heading off of the reservation. When I said I was looking for the candyman, they said he didn’t have any candy for dirt-licking, inbred devil worshippers like me. Then they asked me if I was all alone and when I said I was they grabbed me and drug me to town, and I got put in a chair just like the one your friends put me in!”
Skystar’s look belied Pinkie’s casual smirk and smile. “That sounds…pretty awful. What happened?”
She shrugged. “Don’t remember, but big sister Maud always told me to care about my enemies and those who…what’s the word…‘persecute’ you…oh, me I mean. She said that’s what Gaia Everfree wants, because she cares about everyone no matter what they do.”
The princess smiled a little back. “Hehe…you’re sister sounds like a pretty neat person.”
“Maud’s the best! She was my first and bestest friend! I can’t wait to introduce Twilight and the others to her!”
Again, Skystar’s smile faltered as she looked to one side. “Sounds pretty nice…having so many friends.”
Pinkie looked up a little at that, puzzled. “Huh? What’s the matter? Don’t you have a lot of friends too? I mean, you’re so nice! You gave me lunch, new clothes, and a shower right after we met!”
“I don’t get to see too many people in here. No one who isn’t the castle staff or family. Everyone’s too scared of the royal line ending before I have a chance to be queen. So…usually I just stay right in the palace.” Her face sank a bit more. “If it wasn’t for the garden, I wouldn’t really get outside at all…”
Now Pinkie was frowning sympathetically as well. “Gee…that really doesn’t sound like fun. Even ma and pa and me and the sisters at least get to go outside…”
Skystar continued to hang her head a bit longer, but then brightened up and smiled again. “But hey! I made one new friend today, so why be so down? Let’s get into the cookies!”
Pinkie instantly lit up again. “Now you’re talking!”
The princess quickly excused herself from the table and made her way to a cupboard. She returned with an earthen jar that was rather tall and rotund, and brought it right in front of Pinkie. On opening it up, she lit up to see a sizeable amount of chocolate chip cookies inside. She quickly took one as Skystar helped herself as well and sat down, and was already devouring it greedily before the princess had a chance to take a bite.
However, by the time she did, Pinkie’s face had changed quite a bit; looking uncertain. She only slowly swallowed. She took a moment to clean the inside of her mouth as Skystar smiled and ate her own. “Aren’t they great? They’re the cook’s own recipe!”
“Um…well…” She hesitated, eventually smiling sheepishly. “Er…definitely not to sound ungrateful, and definitely no disrespect to Miss Cook, but…has the cook ever tried adding a little spice to the cookie batter?”
Skystar seemed a bit confused at that. “Spice? What’s spice?”
Pinkie’s jaw nearly hit the table. “You…you never heard…of…of…of spice?!”
She shook her head as she reached for a second cookie and started eating it.
“You mean, you’ve never used vanilla?”
A head shake.
“Nutmeg?”
Another head shake as she kept munching.
“Ginger? Cinnamon? Cloves?”
She kept shaking her head as she reached for another cookie. “I think the cook used brown sugar instead of white once…”
Pinkie let out a near whimper and held a hand to her forehead. “Oh boy…where are the Cakes when I need…”
She trailed off as she saw Skystar reach inside the jar. Doing so gave her the first good look at the back of her hand when she reached in, and she happened to notice that there was an emblem in her skin with six points mounted on it.
“Hey!”
“Hmm?” She froze, hand still in the jar.
“You have a Promethian Sigil on the back of your hand too!”
She paused, holding her hand up and looking at it. “Oh…yeah, I guess I do! Yup! Just started itching my hand about eight months ago, and it came right out!”
Despite her normally flippant attitude, Pinkie looked confused. “And…you’re not at all worried about it? Worried about…you know…going crazy and trying to smash everyone’s heads in all around you in an uncontrollable, blind rampage?”
“Oh no!” she giggled, waving it off. She began to reach for her necklace. “You see, we ha-”
“Ahem.”
Skystar immediately froze; her smile vanishing. Both she and Pinkie looked up to the sound of the new voice and found themselves looking at the entrance of the kitchen. Framed by the two guards who had stood silent and immobile there the whole time was a new man; taller with a long, hawk-like nose and a dismissive look about him. At the moment, he was glaring down it at both Skystar and Pinkie…far more the latter of the two with no shortage of disdain.
Skystar, however, lit up immediately and rose from her seat. “Uncle Sky Beak! You’re back already!”
“Yes, your highness,” he somewhat drolly answered, still keeping his eyes on Pinkie Pie even as Skystar rose up to walk to him. “It seems the conference was largely a waste of time and only an excuse for our so-called allies and enemies alike to make threats. Speaking of which,” he gave another look to Pinkie, “it seems you decided to make our intruder into a houseguest.”
Skystar nearly raised her arms to get a hug. However, she stopped herself, as if suddenly realizing she was supposed to be too old for that sort of thing, and pulled back instead. A moment later she lit up again and quickly backed up. “Oh, this is Pinkie Pie! She’s a Gaitian from Trottingham! And you wouldn’t believe everything she’s seen!”
“Yes,” he continued, still looking at her, “that’s what my subordinates tell me. She’s been quite verbose about her own country’s secrets. I’m not exactly sure, however,” Here, he finally gave a look to Skystar, and a critical one. “That we should be as liberal with our own, your highness.”
Skystar blanched, and then cringed like a child being scolded by an adult for being a ‘big mouth’. “Oh…right, right… I’m sorry. I just got carried away. She has a Promethian Sigil too, though, and I just thought-”
“That it was alright to disclose national secrets to someone you’ve known for less than two hours, princess?”
Skystar gulped. “Well, she’s been so nice and so open and-”
“And I’m certain someone who had ill intents in mind for Mount Aris would only come wearing a black mustache and chortling evilly. Certainly not looking like an innocent friend, would they?”
The princess began to sweat. She looked so uncomfortable that Pinkie began to raise her hand. “Um, if I’m doing anything that’s bothering the princess, then-”
“I’d prefer if you did nothing at all for a few minutes. In the meantime,” He squared his gaze on Skystar. “Your majesty, I request a private audience with you…now.”
In spite of his deferential tone, it was quite clear to Pinkie that if anyone was calling the shots in that room, it was Sky Beak. The princess meekly nodded back before slinking out toward him with an ashamed look. He, in turn, snapped around on his heel and walked back out of the room with her following. At the entryway, she looked back over her shoulder one more time at Pinkie with a look of regret, before turning and leaving. She was soon alone with the guards, and considering their own cold looks, it wasn’t long before she was feeling uncomfortable herself.
Skystar and Sky Beak were gone for a long time. Enough for Pinkie to start trying to eat the bland cookies again to just stave off growing anxiety. There were no windows or clocks in the room so she had no way of monitoring passage of time. Eventually, however, Skystar rounded the corner and walked back in alone. She was a bit downcast still, although less so than when she left.
“Sorry about that,” she apologized. “Although I’m really the ruler of Mount Aris, well…” She winced. “I’m not as wise or as experienced as my mom was. I’m not even old enough to be crowned queen yet. So that means I can’t always just do what I want without talking to people who are older and worked under my mom, like my uncle Sky Beak. He’s our Chief of State and…well, until I can take the role…he’s Acting Commander in Chief too. He gives me a lot of advice on things. And he keeps me from making dumb mistakes that could get our country in danger.”
She grimaced a bit more.
“It also means I get lectures from him from time to time… I’m sorry, but I almost blew a big secret back there. And he wasn’t very happy with me making you a guest either… He told me I wasn’t really shaping up to be like my mom acting thoughtless like that…”
Realizing she had been the source of this consternation, Pinkie sank a bit more in her seat too. “Um…if it would help…I could always go back to my stone cell and the spinny chair that’s broken…?”
“Oh no!” she retorted, suddenly adamant. “Certainly not! It’d be rude for me to do that. You’re my guest now and that’s that, no matter what my uncle says.”
Pinkie paused a moment, before an idea came to mind. She began to smirk.
“In that case…what do you say I show you the Cakes’ recipe for snickerdoodle cookies?”
“Snickerdoodles? I never heard of those before…” She smiled a bit. “But they sure sound fun…”
“Not nearly as much fun as eating them!” Pinkie grinned back as she got up. “I’ll show you how to make them so you can have them whenever you want! But, um…we’re going to need to find some spices in this palace first.”
Sunset’s eyes weakly cracked open. She had fallen asleep in her makeshift bed of old packing straw and newspapers not too long ago, and it had been sleep she had desperately needed. Yet now that she was fully awake, it was only moments before her throat began to burn again. Before she could stop herself, she let out another deep fit of coughing. She winced each time; for each one felt like a rake on her already inflamed throat.
She struggled to focus on who had spoken but it was impossible. She had picked the alleyway to lay down in specifically because it was dark and obscured, albeit extremely filthy and not far from a rather dirty smokestack on one of the local factories. Even if it had been daylight, however, she would have seen nothing. She was too weak from days of eating scraps, drinking filthy water, and fighting a mostly-losing battle against keeping her numerous wounds clean long enough to heal. Even now her whole body was still tender, and that was before she had first gotten a fever three days ago.
It was all she could do to show the slightest hint of recognition that she was even aware someone was present.
They seemed not to notice because they kept talking as if she wasn’t able to hear them. “Ain’t she a pretty face? Fancy findin’ the likes o’ her in a place like this.”
“You know what that means, don’t ya’?”
“Indeed I do, chum. She must be on the lam. Ain’t no reason a face as tender as hers’d be out here otherwise.”
Sunset felt a twinge of anxiety inside her, but not nearly as much as she should have. Her senses were too muddled. Between the weakness, her soreness, and her poor health she could barely even comprehend the words being said—let alone be scared for them. It hardly mattered; she was too weak to even get up right now let alone run for it.
She tried to make a move nevertheless. All she got was a moan and one of her arms shifting. Even stretching a little outside of the newspapers made her cold all over again to the point of shivering.
She vaguely heard the voices closer than before. “Even need the chloroform for this’n? Looks half dead already.”
“Just ‘cause she can’t walk don’t mean she can’t scream, does it?”
“Fair point as usual, chum.”
Sunset became aware of shadows falling over her. In one last feeble attempt, she tried to raise her arms. She didn’t get them far before she easily found them pushed down again. After that, she got the vague sensation of a rag to her face and a curious odor, then nothing.
Sunset wasn’t sure she fully regained her senses or if she was having a delusion when she could remember things again. All she could make out was that she was being dragged between two powerful sets of arms. Her hair was hanging low and splayed out over her head, so when she opened her eyes all she could make out was the ground beneath her and two pairs of dirty, worn boots on either side of her.
She felt both hot and cold at the same time. Her forehead felt like it was on fire while the rest of her was freezing. Her teeth began to chatter, but neither of her captors noticed. She felt aches all over, but knew it wasn’t from fresh blows or injuries this time but rather her sickness. She was nauseated from the rough treatment, but it hardly mattered as she had nothing in her stomach to throw up and no strength to do so if she did. Her mouth was dry and she barely managed to move her tongue in it enough to moisten it to try to moan, let alone make any words.
“Ain’t no use callin’ for help, missy,” one of her captors retorted the moment she made a vague sound. “Ain’t no one gonna hear you ‘round these parts.”
A dark laugh that Sunset barely registered came from the other one. She stopped trying to make sounds, instead focusing on lifting her head up. It was so dark and her vision so blurry that it was almost impossible to see anything, but somehow she realized she was in some sort of structure that was being kept unlit. Unlit, that was, save for a couple of old, uncleaned oil lamps up ahead. Their fiery flickering provided the only illumination, and at first all Sunset could see was a vague blur.
Yet as she was drug onward, she gradually made out the wall on which the oil lamps were mounted. They were posted on either side of a rather broad pen with iron bars. It seemed like it had been used for livestock processing at some point, especially now that she was beginning to smell the remains of animal waste and see remnants of blood along the walls and floor. Now, however, it seemed to have been converted into a large cell.
Through her daze and sickness, she began to hear the sounds of whimpering and crying. After being drug a bit closer, she saw that the inside of the cell was filled with straw, and lying on top of it in various positions were four young women. One of them was huddled in fear. Another was sobbing for her mother. The other two shrank away from the bars as soon as the men carrying Sunset came near. Only when she reached it did she see a third man step out of the shadows and step in front of the three of them.
“What’d we got ‘ere?” he snorted. “Another sick one?”
“Yeah, but look how fresh her face is. Twice as good as the best of the rest.”
“And y’know Verko can’t afford to be choosy no more. Not with no more Light Eaters. Used ta’ be we’d have this place filled to the brim by now with runaways. Lucky we got these five. ‘Specially since Trottingham ain’t as motile as it used ta’ be, get my drift?”
“Hmph…can’t argue with that. Might as well hang onto ‘er fer a while. Might bounce back.”
With that, he turned to the bars. He must have had some sort of key along with some sort of weapon on him, or perhaps those imprisoned were too scared to resist, because the bars moved aside and none of them made a run for the exit. Seconds later, Sunset was shoved forward so violently that it caused her senses to muddle again. In moments, she was thrown through the entrance and landed face down in the straw.
The trip was so violent that it caused her senses to black out completely. The last she heard was the faint sound of a cell door locking again behind her.
Heat, cold, and darkness. Darkness, heat, and cold. Cold, darkness, and heat. That was her world and that was all she knew for the longest time. She couldn’t tell if her eyes were open or closed. She couldn’t tell if her world was heating up or cooling off. All she kept feeling were the temperature extremes. Her head was on fire; her body was on ice; all was blackness.
Am I hungry? Am I thirsty? Am I still alive? Am I dead? Am I dying?
Darkness everywhere. Darkness in the day. Darkness at night. Darkness when my eyes are open. Darkness when they’re closed.
“She looks really bad…”
Am I hurting? Am I relieved? I don’t know what pain is anymore. I don’t know what relief is anymore. How long have I been lying here?
How much time has passed? Is it now? Is it then? Is it to be?
I can’t move. I can’t wake. I can’t do anything. I can’t see anything. I can’t hear anything.
“Don’t get near her. You don’t want to catch what she’s got…”
How did I get here? How long will I be here? Who brought me here? Does anyone know I’m here? Does anyone miss me?
When I’m gone, will anyone care?
Is this where I end? In the darkness? Alone?
“How long has…she been here?”
How long has she been there?
There?
Her.
She’s right there.
Sometime, in the countless inscrutable units of time that passed in the blackness, she became aware of her. Was she in the darkness all along? Did she only see her now? Was she watching her? Was she enjoying what she was seeing?
She could see her now. Not in the headmistress uniform. Not in her civilian clothes. Not in any of the outfits they had on their outings.
No…the way she was meant to be. Adorned like a goddess. Dazzling as the sun. Pristine and pure as fresh white snow. Radiant as all the colors of a rainbow.
The look on her face one of condemnation and judgment.
“Can’t you see she’s sick? Look at her!”
“Look at you.”
If Sunset had the strength to cringe or wither beneath that gaze, she realized she would have. She had no shield now. No pride. No smugness. She was naked and exposed. Even now, she could only think of herself as the helpless child on the swingset. No…lower than that.
“You were so full of pride. So arrogant. So cocky. You thought your rightful place was making this world your footstool. Now…now look at you. You’re what you always were. What everyone always said you were: nothing.”
P…Please…
“Please! Isn’t she worth more to you alive? What if she gets the rest of us infected?”
“Please? Why Sunset, I thought that word wasn’t in your vocabulary anymore. I thought you didn’t need to ask for anything. I thought you just took what you wanted. How many people asked ‘please’ of you? From the students you tormented to your own subordinates to those people you let die over Equestria? Now you have the gall left in you to say ‘please’…”
L…Leave me… I’m…I’m already…s…suffering…
“Oh, you’re suffering, are you? Is that what you want, Sunset? Do you want me to gently cool your head with a damp cloth and sing you to sleep? To let you rest in my own bed and make you soup that’s easy for you to swallow? Just like old times? Have me ease your suffering? Well, I can’t, Sunset. And you know why. All because of you.”
She stiffened and began to tremble. She felt something seize her and purse her lips, and then force something cold down her mouth. She nearly choked and gagged on it, for it felt like murder over her sore, dry, cracked throat. Pain through relief. Torture through deliverance. It was the cruelest thing she could think of.
“You’re nothing without your magic, Sunset. Nothing but a small, hateful coward. You know it. Deep down inside, you always knew it. Everyone and everything scared you. You were never brave or strong. You just had a stick you used to beat other people into submission. A stick I made for you. A stick I placed in your hand. You were worth nothing before you met me. Now you’re less than nothing.”
N…No…
“You owe everything that you are to me. That’s the funny part. You thought killing me would somehow free you to ascend higher than me. The truth is you aren’t anything at all without me, are you? The truth is the reason Twilight Sparkle was my true star student is she ascended without me. You ended up right here, in a filthy hovel, waiting to be raped or sold or die of disease or all three.”
“Come on. Work your mouth. Get it down…”
“And you know one more thing too, don’t you? The only memory anyone will ever have of you is to be glad to be rid of you. Be thankful, Sunset. At least people will remember you…if only to spit on your grave or to wish they could kill you themselves for what you did to them.”
With that final word, she vanished into the blackness again. Or was she ever even there? Sunset didn’t know, save for the fact that she was now trapped in the same infinite darkness again.
This time, there was no one to watch her, either to comfort or torment her, as she cringed and wept.
When the darkness came back, it was far “sharper” than before. She was still cold, and her head was pounding, but the two extremes weren’t nearly as strong. Her throat wasn’t as sore, her body wasn’t as achy, and she could actually feel a bit of poking and scratching on her back from the straw where she was lying.
She lay there only a few moments more before her face furrowed in the slightest confusion, realizing that she was on her back when, in her vague memories, she recalled landing on her face. She let out a stiffened grunt, and heard it clearly this time in spite of lingering weakness. She clenched her face, and realized that the reason for the darkness this time was her eyes were closed. She slowly cracked them open.
A blur and a headache greeted her, but her vision cleared rapidly to spot the oil lamps from earlier illuminating through a shadow of grating into her cell. She could hear rustling on the hay nearby, but she used the moment to gain her bearings before looking that way. She leaned her head up, a bit surprised she had the strength to do so, and saw that she was, in fact, between two blankets…one for the straw to convert it to bedding, and the other over her. Not only that, but she saw the remains of a wooden cup and plate nearby with bits of droplets and crumbs on them; indicating someone had been feeding her.
She blinked a few times and looked around but saw that outside the pen was empty. Even the guard from before wasn’t in visual range, assuming he was there at all. There was only one other person in the pen at the moment. It was another woman, a bit older than the previous denizens, tending to something.
She lay silent and motionless for a time, before she realized anyone in the same cell as her wasn’t any better off than she was and definitely had no other power over her.
“Hey…” she tried, her voice dry and croaking from disuse, but audible. “Hey…hey you…”
The person stopped what she was doing and looked up at her.
Their gazes met.
Sunset’s pupils shrank. Her pallor went pale all over again.
“…You!”
Twilight Sparkle stared back mutely; a grimace slowly forming on her face. She closed her eyes and sighed before she turned and revealed she was holding a “fresh” cup and plate. “Alright…I kind of expected that whenever you finally woke up.”
She began to approach.
Using what strength she had, which was, in all fairness, more than she expected, Sunset wriggled away from her, pathetically clinging for the top blanket as a shield while cringing in on herself. “Stay away from me! I m-m-mean it!” She grit her teeth in self-anger at how she couldn’t even manage that without a tremble of fear and weakness.
Twilight simply stopped long enough to sigh again. “Could you keep it down?” she said much more quietly.
“Shut up! Don’t come any closer! And why should I listen to you?”
Now she looked annoyed. “First thing: if you’re too loud, you’re going to get their attention. And I’d much rather spend as much time as I can alone in this cage with you without them around. Second thing: if you’re worried about me attacking you, then I’ve had plenty of chances to do that for days. I would have done something to you long ago instead of tending to you.”
Sunset nearly retorted but froze on hearing that last part.
“Wait…you were taking care of me?”
“And you’re still not fully over your fever, so I wouldn’t do anything to agitate it. Or any kicking around to knock over this cup over here. Do you know how much I had to beg them just to give me some clean water and day-old bread for you, let alone the two blankets?”
Sunset didn’t move. She only sat there stunned at what she was hearing. She had to take a moment to look over Twilight and see if who was probably the single most hated person she knew was really alive and right there with her and not doing anything to seize advantage of the situation. As she slowly began to realize that this wasn’t an illusion from sickness, it only left her more confused and unable to understand.
As a result Twilight finally started to move forward again. For the first time since realizing she didn’t have any magic, Sunset didn’t cringe or shy away. Ironically from the one person she expected to hate her the most. The truth of Twilight’s other words also settled in as she got closer and sat next to her; about how she had plenty of chances to kill her and hadn’t taken them.
The fact that she hadn’t began to make Sunset feel just a touch of something she hadn’t felt since awakening in Equestria: relief.
And that, in turn, began to allow a touch of her old self to come out.
Now next to her, Twilight quickly drank half of the cup and then held the rest to her. “We need to share this. Drink.”
Sunset was still mostly apoplectic. She stared at the cup silently for a moment, hesitant, but then opened her lips slightly. Almost mechanically. Twilight frowned but put the cup to her lips and tilted. She drank some. It was ice cold and bitter, and it irritated her still-raw throat, but not nearly as much as in her nightmare. And thirst eventually made her drain it. Once it was done, Twilight yanked it away before tearing the piece of bread in half and putting half in her lap. She began to greedily eat her own.
“They gave us two a day when you were still sick. Now that you’re awake it’ll probably be back to one. You should probably eat it before the roaches come out for it.”
Sunset didn’t answer. She looked down at the bread in her hand, stared at it, then back up to Twilight who was rapidly finishing her own.
Finally she frowned.
“Why?”
Twilight stopped in mid-bite, turning to her. “Excuse me?”
“Excuse yourself. Don’t play stupid. I asked you a question, and you know full well what I meant.”
Twilight frowned. “My, you sound rather grateful for someone I could have left to rot in the straw.”
“Exactly. Why didn’t you leave me to rot?”
She huffed. “Maybe some of us are just nice people who aren’t out to get all the power they can for themselves at the expense of others.”
This actually brought out more of Sunset’s attitude. Relaxing had caused her to realize more of what was going on in the situation, and in doing so she was able to think sharper and put more together.
“Really now? That’s what you’re going with?” She turned her head slightly before pointing. “I see you still have your Promethian Sigil, but for one reason or another you’re in this cage along with me, which we both know is held by some kind of human traffickers. Neither of us want to be here by choice, and yet you, with your own magic still intact, could have busted out of here long ago. Instead you stay here and decide to nurse me back to health when if I saw you burning up from a fever I wouldn’t piss on you to cool you off?”
Twilight grimaced at that, but not simply the crudeness.
Sunset took a bite of the bread, winced a bit at how hard it was, but chewed and swallowed as best as she could before crossing her arms. “So I’ll ask again. Why didn’t you leave me to rot?”
Twilight was silent for several moments but at long last her face broke. She sighed and lowered her head.
“Alright, I admit it. The truth is I’m stuck here.”
“Why don’t you just melt the bars or electrocute the guards?”
“Not in this pen…in Trottingham,” she continued nervously. “After…after everything that happened in Equestria, I woke up without Spike or the rest of my friends and crashed into a bunch of old boxes in a back alley in Trottingham’s main city. My mana was gone, I had no money, nobody to turn to…not even a set of clothes that wasn’t ruined. All I could do was hide and wait for my mana to recover. But I couldn’t move anywhere. Promethian Sigil bearers are all wanted enemies of the state here.”
Sunset grimaced a little, knowing that had been her doing.
“I thought I could make my way out of the country past the authorities, but then things got worse. The Regent was deposed and that ‘Storm King’ guy took over, and his new admiral is rounding up people with Promethian Sigils even faster than before. Not only that, she’s rounding up lots of other people too. Ones who don’t even have sigils. I couldn’t figure out why or how, but I tried to trace the pattern. While I was doing that-”
“Wait,” Sunset cut off. “You were on the run from the Trottingham authorities, trying to get out of the country, and you still tried to investigate what was going on with the government?”
Twilight paused, before she began to blush and look rather sheepish. “Well, it…seemed like it was something important… I couldn’t just ignore it so long as I was right here in the country able to see it best firsthand.”
Sunset rolled her eyes and groaned.
“Anyway,” Twilight went on, “I followed the wrong group and they ended up being those human traffickers, and they threw me in here.”
“Again, why didn’t you just blast your way through them? Don’t tell me you still can’t use magic after all this time.”
“Of course I can! I mean…at least I think I can. But I can’t go slinging around spells in the middle of Trottingham! Especially not with those new soldiers and their leader! She’s even worse than you were without your sigils!”
“Yeah…” Sunset muttered quietly. “I noticed…”
“There’s no way for me to bust out of here without alerting the authorities, and there’s no way for me to get past them without showing off more of my power, so I’m stuck here!”
“Alright, but what does that have to do with me?”
She hesitated before closing her eyes, taking a deep breath, and exhaling. “When I saw you in here, I knew this would probably be the last thing in the world you’d want to do, but I hoped that if nothing else we would be in a situation of quid-pro-quo…”
Sunset looked up again. “Are you trying to say that you wanted me to help you get out of Trottingham?”
“I’m pretty much that desperate… You’re a fugitive now. I learned that much. I was hoping that meant we were in the same boat enough to try and scratch each other’s backs.”
Sunset stared at her silently, almost blankly, for a few seconds.
After that, however, she simply burst into a smile and began to chuckle in a mixture of mockery and bitterness. It didn’t take long for Twilight to look confused, but she simply shook her head and turned away.
“You really are dense, aren’t you?”
“What? I don’t-”
“Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that I somehow got amnesia and forgot the fact that the whole reason I was lying in a back alley alone, starving, dehydrated, sick with a fever, and without two pennies to rub together was because of you and your friends to begin with, and that you’re probably the last person in the world that I would help out with anything,” Sunset began tiredly. “Take a good look at me. What makes you think I can help you?”
Twilight blinked a few times. “Um…you’re the one who said she had connections, money, lands, authority-”
“Did you already forget the part where I’m a fugitive?” Sunset nearly snapped back, only to pull back on wincing in lingering pain. “Look at me… More importantly, look at this!”
She held up her blank hand and waved it in front of her face.
“See any Promethian Sigil here? No? Then that means I’ve got nothing! The only value I had to Trottingham was when I could do magic! That’s how I got my way around here! Without it, I have nothing! Not a single thing! I’ve got no ‘connections’ for you. I’ve got no money. No lands. No authority. Just hundreds of people who want me dead.”
Groaning at her own admission, her face sank. She wrapped her arms around herself and let her head fall. “Without my magic, I’m useless to everyone and good for nothing. I’m scared of everything and I’ve got no advantage over anyone. If I have to choose between spending the rest of my life hiding in gutters like a rat and ending it here, I’d rather let it just end.”
“But-”
“Just…just leave me alone,” she cut off with a quiet mutter. “Let me enjoy the last little bit of peace I’m going to get before the only value I end up having is someone’s nighttime ‘hobby’…”
Twilight began to lean in closer. “But that’s-”
She was cut off again, this time by a more distant sound. Sunset, reverting back into her previous mood, didn’t even react although she recognized it as the sound of a door unlocking. She simply leaned over and sank back against the straw.
Twilight, on the other hand, tensed up. “Oh no… They’re coming!”
“Sounds like it,” Sunset muttered detachedly.
“Every time they come they take away another of the women they have here! We’re the only two left! They must have saw you were getting better!”
“Then just teleport or blow them away.”
“I already told you I can’t do that! And that doesn’t help me get out of Trottingham!”
Sunset simply exhaled and lay there, picking a spot to stare at and saying no more.
The sound of a door shutting again distantly rang out before a bolt turned again. Twilight looked out anxiously into the darkness for a little longer before turning back to Sunset. After hesitating again, she took a deep breath and leaned in at her side.
“You’re right in that being stuck with you is probably the last place either of us want to be right now,” she whispered loudly, “but we have to try and help each other out if we want to get out of this, and I know for a fact that you’re the one between the two of us that can do that even without magic.”
Sunset didn’t react.
“It wasn’t just magic that let you get your way until now. You made that move on Manehattan to draw me out, and you knew that I’d make for the train. That wasn’t magic; that was street-smarts. You said it yourself. Both of us could do magic, but of the two of us only one of us managed to get that position in Trottingham while the other one was living on the street.”
Sunset’s eyes opened a bit wider on hearing that. Her apathetic look changed, instead forming a mild one of realization.
“You somehow managed to get five of Celestia’s Anima Viris too!” she went on as her whispering grew louder. “And you snuck around behind her back in order to learn about things even I didn’t know about! You’re more than just magic, Sunset! A lot more! That’s why I know you can get us out of this! Please!”
By this point, footsteps were becoming audible and Twilight could say no more. Swallowing, she leaned back and sat up; pretending to be dutifully tending to Sunset again. As for Sunset, she continued to lay there. However, the look on her face continued to change and improve. The earlier fear and anxiety didn’t return so strongly…
At last those incoming made it to the bars. In addition to the three unwashed, surly thugs that Sunset had seen before, there was now a squat little man with thick glasses, grubby, clutching fingers, and a look of avarice and lecherousness about him in a dirty tux. He came closest to the bars and gazed inside.
“Well, well, look who seems to be up and at ‘em!” he laughed aloud. “And here we almost gave you up for a loss, ‘Bacon Head’. Good thing this other broad was here to play nurse mate to you, wasn’t it?”
Twilight didn’t answer. She could only grimace and cringe. Sunset, her eyes still open, simply lay there and said nothing.
Her mind, however, had begun to move again.
“Too bad for her I think you can take it from here. Good thing too. You look like you got the kind of spunk that’s perfect for one of my repeat clients who likes to play rough. He can wait a few more days, though.” He grinned widely at Twilight, causing her to gulp. “You, on the other hand, are ready right now. Don’t you worry, mousy-face. This cat I’ll introduce you to likes to play with his food for a good long time.”
He stepped back and gestured forward.
“Get her out of there. Hope you boys had a light lunch, because after the price I get for her we’re having a night on the town!”
One of the thugs grinned back as he stepped in front of the door. His key came out and he began to go for the lock. Twilight trembled uneasily, but finally swallowed a lump in her throat. Her hand began to slowly trace a symbol…
“So you like money?”
Everyone froze, including Twilight, on hearing Sunset suddenly speak up. The hunched over man turned to her.
“Oh, you got a voice other than a moan? What did you just say, girlie?”
“I said… ‘So you like money’?” Sunset echoed, before turning in place to face him. “Because it sounds like you don’t from what you have in mind for the two of us.”
The thugs began to frown, but the small man merely grinned again and snickered. “Oh, that’s where you’re wrong, girlie. You’re worth quite a ton of money to me. More than any ransom anyone who’d want to pay for you would be willing to give.”
“I know I’m worth a ton of money. I know she,” she indicated to Twilight, much to her surprise, “is worth a ton of money. The only one who doesn’t seem to think we’re worth a ton of money around here is you and your buddies.”
The thugs frowned a bit more. “I liked this one better when she was too sick to talk…”
“I can shut her up if you want, Verko.”
He held up a claw-like hand to him to quiet him down. “Not sure you understand your situation, little lady. You see, I run a very lucrative ship around here. Property like you can get me anywhere from 15,000 to 50,000 a head. And I plan to get close to the higher end for the both of you. That not enough money for you?”
“Twilight,” Sunset called out, causing the woman to nearly jump in surprise, “what’s the principle four exports of Appleloosa?”
“Uh…um…” she stammered.
Sunset gave her a sharp glare. “Twilight?”
“Uh…that is…grain, corn, rye, and apples.”
“What’s 857 times 329?”
“Oh, er…281, 953.”
“How many miles across is Fillydelphia at its narrowest border-to-border crossing?”
“2.65.”
“What’s the standard profit margin on liquors?”
“80 to 85 percent on hard liquors, 80 perfect for bottled beers, 75 for beers on tap, and 60 to 70 percent on wines.”
“How many combinations of 7 can be made out of a set of 50?”
“99,884,400.”
Sunset actually got her old smug smirk back as she gestured to Twilight. The thugs looked baffled and confused. Verko didn’t seem much better.
“So what? She’s a trivia master and that’s supposed to mean something?”
“What it means is that she’s worth a lot more than some 15,000 at worst and 50,000 at best; the same with me. Haven’t you ever heard of Southern Equestria?”
Verko snorted. “Bah. Way too far in an oversaturated market. Never bothered with it.”
“That explains why you’re still running your operation out of this little hovel. Slavery is a real business over there. They need them for a lot more than just bringing some old, impotent rich guys pleasure. They use them for all sorts of tasks. Anywhere from cleaning to farming to mining to service industries to management of property and other slaves to scientific assistants to any other position you can think of you’d normally have to pay someone to do. And nicer slaves like us? Ones with educations who know our way around? We’re worth up to a fifth of a million for the right buyer.”
The eyes on the thugs nearly fell out of their heads. Verko’s glasses nearly dropped off. “A f-f-f-fith…a…?”
“You’re lying!” Verko said after a moment. “You’re just wanting a better deal for yourself!”
“Of course I want a better deal for myself,” Sunset retorted. “That doesn’t change the fact that people in Southern Equestria will pay me twice what you think I’m worth at least. We both get something out of this. The two of us end up in a much more relatively good position, and you end up with a much fatter wallet. Ask anyone about the slave trade in Southern Equestria and they’ll tell you the same. But…”
She shrugged.
“If you’d rather get your miniscule profit from just dumping us onto the first horny guy who’s willing to pay you a couple thousand extra, be my guest. It might be our loss, but it’s much more yours. Especially considering how hard it is nowadays to make money off of human trafficking, and how much harder it’s going to get under the Storm King.”
The four men paused. The thugs exchanged glances; no longer mean ones. Verko himself looked through the bars; his glasses lenses so thick it was almost impossible to see his eyes and what emotion they were betraying as he rubbed his chin. For a good long while, there was nothing but silence.
Finally he frowned and snapped his fingers. “Let’s go check out the word on the street. See if this broad is telling the truth. If she ain’t, she really is gonna have bacon for a scalp.”
With that, he snapped around and walked back the way he came. The other three thugs fell in with him, and within a minute they had vanished into the darkness. Twilight and Sunset continued to sit there quietly until they heard the door open and shut again. Only afterward did Sunset let out a loud exhale and slump, suddenly shaking all over again and a bit wide-eyed.
“I…I don’t believe it…” she half-exhaled to herself. “I got them to listen…”
“Listen?!” Twilight echoed back. “You just got us sold as slaves!”
Sunset, still stunned at her own behavior, absent-mindedly raised a hand and waved Twilight off. “Slaves is much better than what they had planned for us. They’ll find out I was telling the truth soon enough. Then they’ll try and find a way to get us to Southern Equestria.”
“How does that help anything?!”
“It’s not Trottingham, is it?”
Twilight opened her mouth but froze on hearing that. The realization soon made her shut it again.
Sunset blinked a few times, took in a deep breath, and then turned to her. She stared at her for a moment or two before frowning. “Alright, as much as I may not like it, I guess this makes us partners for right now. At least until you’ve paid me back for that.”
Twilight looked surprised. “Um, didn’t you just pay me back for bringing you back to health?”
“I’m not at a hundred percent yet, and I could have easily just answered those questions myself. I may not be as bookish as you but I was a good student. I tried to get you in on it because I still need your magic to get me free.”
Twilight crossed her arms. “I’ll admit that’s true, but now that we’ve both scratched each other’s backs, why should I help you do anything else?”
Sunset paused momentarily before getting a trace of her old sly smirk. She pretended to cup a hand to her mouth. “Oh Verko, there’s something important you should know about your ‘merchandise’. See that little thing on her hand? It’s a Promethian Sigil and it-”
“Okay, okay!” Twilight quickly cut off, nervously looking around her to make sure no other hidden guards were nearby to have heard that. “But that only means I’m willing to help you break out along with me! After that, you’re on your own!”
“I don’t think so. I may not have my magic anymore, but I realized there’s something I have that you want: the rest of the things I learned from Celestia and her libraries that you didn’t. In fact, now that Equestria is darkness-free, I’m betting I can get back to her secret libraries in Canterlot Palace. And I’m the one who knows how to get into them.”
Twilight paused again, realizing the point she was making. Sunset herself was showing more and more of her old confidence the longer she dealt with Twilight. She wasn’t sure why but she didn’t knock it. Even her dislike for Twilight was worth dealing with to feel more of it and less fear and anxiety.
“And…what do you get in return?”
“You swear you don’t hand me over to the Storm King, Tempest Shadow, or Trottingham, and when we get back to Manehattan you get me a full pardon in exchange for what I know to the government.”
“I can’t guarantee that! I’m on thin ice with Manehattan as it is!”
Sunset shrugged. “Suit yourself. A real pity, though. Even I never had a chance to read all those books. You wouldn’t believe some of the things that were inside them. Some must have never been read by anyone other than Celestia herself-”
“Alright! Deal!” Twilight hesitated a moment after blurting that, but then she thrust out her hand.
Sunset, a bit hesitant herself, reached out to take it. Right before grasping it, however, she paused. She could see Twilight’s emblem.
There were now two runes evident on it.
“You got one of mine?” In spite of everything else she had to worry about, her voice sounded almost angry.
Twilight pulled her hand back and looked at it. She sighed. “Yes, I did…but not one of the ones you used. This is the one that came from Nightmare Moon.”
“Who is it?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean you don’t know?”
“Look.” She extended the hand out to Sunset. She glanced at the rune and soon became puzzled. Unlike the other one, which was clearly readable as Starswirl the Bearded, this one was a total enigma. It didn’t match the symbology she learned, and seemed almost to be a sigil in itself rather than matching the patterns of a character.
“I can’t read it at all. That’s the main reason if you can get me to Celestia’s library, I want to go there and find out what this is. I’ve never heard of a sigil having a different character set from all the others. Celestia told me they were all supposed to be the same writing by default, no matter who it is. Needless to say, I still can’t call on anyone by Starswirl.”
Sunset was rather perplexed. A hint of intrigue, every bit as strong as Twilight’s own curiosity, lit up in her eyes for a moment.
In the end she waved it off. “Starswirl will be more than enough for the likes of these guys. We just have to wait for the right moment, and then we’ll finally both be done with this miserable country.”
“First off, Ms. Fluttershy, I want to thank you personally for agreeing to the goodwill tour. It definitely means a lot to everyone in my administration as well as to Manehattan at large. Please, allow me to shake your hand.”
Fancy Pants punctuated this by extending his hand forward. Fluttershy stared at it only a moment before she forced a pleasant smile and accepted. She looked around the room and extended the same smile, just in time to get a puff of flash powder as the photographer snapped a picture of her, to the tune of many other heads of state and government officials, likewise smiling, applauding her. She did her best to keep that smile on her face even as she blinked to clear the spots from her eyes, and as soon as that was done she did her best to stay calm and pleasant surrounded by so many strangers.
It wasn’t easy. If not for the fact that she had talked the Grand Chancellor into allowing her to bring Angel in a satchel at her side for “stress management”, she probably wouldn’t have had the confidence at all.
When the applause finally died down, the Grand Chancellor took a step back. This allowed another official the opportunity to step forward, still smiling just as much, and gestured to the table in front of him. “Now, as you can see, everything here in your itinerary has been prepared. Every stop on your trip has been approved and accommodations have been made for both you and your animals. This path right here,” He gestured to a map of Greater Everfree, and a route with various waypoints marked on it. “Shows you every stop along the way, and every connection is either by rail or steam carriage. Of course, you will have an escort with you at all times, in addition to the local authorities anticipating your arrival, so there is nothing to fear.” He smiled a bit wider. “The first stop on the trip is right here in the main city of Manehattan, in the old city hall in the eastern borough.”
The mere sight of the map, the distance, and all the major population centers involved caused Fluttershy to reach into her satchel, scoop Angel out, and then begin to hug him for support--much to his chagrin.
"It's very simple. We'll be sending some of our own state department officials along with you. They'll handle the introductions and presentations. You just wait until you're invited out at each location, say hello and wave to the people,"
She hugged Angel a bit more tightly just for that.
"And then, once that is done, you introduce yourself and say a few words about yourself."
She gulped on hearing that. "S-s-say a few words about myself?"
"Of course! We'd prefer...obviously...if you'd omit the parts regarding your involvement in affairs of international concern, but telling them about what it's like to have one of these Promethian Sigils, how you feel, how you go about day to day...just basically reassuring them that you're still living out a normal routine with a normal life."
"B-B-But...I'm not living out a normal routine..."
"Well...normal-ish, one might say. The important thing is to reassure the public that these individuals have no reason to immediately be afraid of themselves and others have no reason to immediately fear them, and you're living proof of that."
"But...but what if they...they act like the people who went wild?"
The official's smile ebbed a bit. "Ms. Fluttershy, the whole purpose of this visit is to calm the public down--not get them dwelling on what-if scenarios. Please remember that."
"Ok..."
The smile returned. "Good. And once that is done, you can answer a few questions."
"Wh-wh...what?!"
"Not many, not many! Only three or four at most! The state department will handle the rest! Then maybe you can shake a few hands, use some of your power to heal a scraped knee or something, you know? Anything to help give a more beneficial image."
"But...but what if-"
Fluttershy cut herself off as she felt a furious rapping against her side. She looked down and saw she was now clutching Angel so tightly the rabbit was almost throttled and desperately trying to get her attention.
"Oops! Sorry!" She exclaimed, releasing him at once. As the rabbit gasped for air, however, he also gave her what seemed to be a dirty look before leaping back into the satchel.
"Now don't tense up about this, Ms. Fluttershy," the official continued. "I'm sure there will be some bumps in the road and getting used to, but everyone here is confident in your success and grateful for your cooperation. This promises to be a major benefit for everyone involved." He held out his hand to her to shake. "Very good luck to you, madam."
Swallowing a rather large lump in her throat, Fluttershy reached out and nervously took it.
"Very...good luck to me, too."
Fluttershy hadn't been this nervous in a long time, which was understandable considering she had gone from effectively zero human contact to a public face in a little over 48 hours. Bright and early the next day she finally packed up her animals and left for the public forum of city hall of Manehattan itself. Everything was already prepared by the time she departed Rarity's business. Wagons had been made up for her animals, a steam carriage was waiting for her personally, and they even provided her with a nicer wardrobe to wear along the trip. (Although she was somewhat embarrassed to be changing in the carriage itself.)
That, unfortunately, did little to assuage her nervousness all the way to city hall. She was shaking like a leaf and obsessively petting Angel as he sat in her lap so much that even the rabbit seemed to grow tired of it by the time they got there. Ironically, it might have been a good thing that she was so centered on her personal anxieties that she didn't see the stream of reporters passing their own carriage or following it all the way there, to say nothing of the local officials and hundreds of concerned residents. Even with the public appearance being limited to only so many attendees, the area was rather jam packed by the time she arrived.
Naturally, they escorted her in through the back ways with a full escort, although she wasn't able to avoid at least six different reporters snapping her picture on the way in. She didn't have the heart to say that being surrounded by the escort made her about as nervous as being surrounded by the crowds, and she was still gulping and sweating once they got backstage in spite of having a curtain between her and the crowded forum. The mere presence of officials and police officers all around the back area was bad enough. Especially since many of them apparently were as nervous as the basic populace, and kept giving her uneasy looks.
"Now this forum should be a bit bigger than the normal goodwill tour stops, but don't tense up," the same official from yesterday coached her. "Just stand right here as they field the questions until they tell you to come out, and then you'll be cut off and escorted backstage as soon as they feel you've fielded enough. Sound fine?"
"Ok..." she spoke in a barely audible whisper.
"This will go great. Trust me."
"Ok..."
He stepped aside afterward. Fluttershy was left listening to the speakers at the podium just on the other side of the curtain. It was quieted considerably as a result, but she was still able to make it out. She heard quite a few questions that challenged the assumptions that the government was making: namely stating all the reasons there was to be nervous about individuals with "symbols on their hands" and asking if the grand chancellor had considered all of this before endorsing the idea of "eidolons". Still others asked if this was in response to a seeming militarization of the same and if this was a sign of increased military action on Manehattan's part. By the time they got to questions about Fillydelphia supposedly walking back on its treaties with Manehattan, the questions were cut off and the fateful moment arrived.
"I am pleased to introduce one such individual who has been impacted by this 'symbol phenomenon', Ms. Fluttershy."
There was no chorus of applause, but one of the police nearby looked at Fluttershy when she failed to move and gestured forward; indicating that was her cue. She swallowed, her knees knocking, in response. The officer gestured several more times with her either not responding or looking to step back. It wasn't until the one on stage once again introduced her that the officer stepped forward and moved the curtain aside. Now partially exposed, she yelped, whimpered a little, but then moved forward and stepped out from behind the curtain.
It was worse than she thought. The entire forum, in spite of supposedly being a "limited" event, was filled from side to side with people. She could only make out the back support columns for the chamber and the exit doors. Everything else was a flood of faces. It didn't help that no less than thirty flashbulbs went off as soon as she risked a step forward. She nearly turned and bolted right back behind the curtains, but somehow she took a deep breath and forced herself to practically slink out to the podium.
As soon as she stood there, she felt like she was on public display for an execution. She had to swallow two different times just to whet her throat enough to speak. When she did, even the first row was unable to hear her.
"Um...hello."
Silence in the room for several moments. The official that had introduced her was nearby, and was now looking a little uncomfortable himself. He leaned in closer to her, which made her jump back a little before remembering herself, and made a gesture behind the podium to say a bit more.
Looking back out, she swallowed again.
"Nice...nice...to, um...meet you."
The official stood there rather uneasily, as Fluttershy herself cringed a bit and went dead silent. After several moments of awkward silence, he realized he wasn’t going to get any more out of her than that, and finally turned to the audience.
“Alright then, without further ado, Ms. Fluttershy will now take several of your questions.”
The room became far more boisterous at that, with every reporter immediately raising his or her hand and shouting out their question. Even if Fluttershy hadn’t been startled at the gesture, the result still would have been such a cacophony that it was impossible to make out what any one individual was saying. She nearly yelped and ducked for cover behind the podium, and would have if Angel hadn’t let out a loud growl to get her proverbial “head in the game”. Nevertheless, she could only stand there petrified for several moments.
Again realizing she wasn’t being any help, the official began to sweat as he turned to the audience and pointed out. “Um…you, sir, with the Continental.”
The rest of the reporters quickly quieted down as the singled out one spoke up distinctly. “Ms….Fluttershy? How exactly did you come about your current affliction?”
She swallowed another lump. “Um…”
Immediately, the official intervened. “I remind you that the Manehattan government does not consider anyone it has designated an ‘eidolon’ as someone with a sickness or medical condition in the traditional sense, but more of a unique state of individual.” With that, he quickly turned to Fluttershy again and motioned for her to proceed.
Yet another lump. “I…um…well…I just…” She degenerated into a mutter.
The reporter blinked. “Excuse me?”
“That is…well…” More muttering.
“Could…you perhaps speak a little louder?”
“I said…I…um…woke up with it one day.”
The reporter raised an eyebrow, clearly having hoped for more than that, and only slowly writing it down. After a moment, another reporter raised her own hand.
“Yes,” the official called, “you, ma’am.”
“Manehattan Inquirer. Ms. Fluttershy, have you been afraid at any point that you might begin to…shall we say…act as irrationally as other individuals who have had these mysterious symbols appear on their hands?”
She gave a quiver. “Oh… Oh yes.”
Again, there was silence. The reporter looked unnerved. “Could you…elaborate on that a bit?”
“I’ve been, um…v-v-very afraid.”
Sweating a little, the official quickly looked over the crowd and picked another one. “Um, I see the one with the Everfree Star has her hand up?”
“Yes!” she quickly spoke up. “Ms. Fluttershy, is it true that you have begun to exhibit unusual abilities yourself since your symbol confirmed your new status as an eidolon?”
“I…um…that is…I really don’t think of myself as an eye-donut,” she quietly answered, shrinking a little now from increasing nervousness. “But, um…well…maybe…maybe just a little…”
“Would you say that you are capable of doing the same damage that Trottingham’s rumored ‘Fire Witch’ did on her strike on Manehattan soil several weeks ago?”
“Oh…” she shuddered again. “My, um…my power isn’t so…er, bad as that. At least…I really hope not…” A pause. “If, um…someone has a cut or a scrape, or maybe just a plant that’s wilting…?”
Letting out a bit of a moan himself, the official pointed to another person.
“I’m with the Regional Herald. Is there any truth to the rumor that the administration is using this as a smoke screen for the supposed predicted GDP downturn next month?”
Fluttershy went a bit wide-eyed. “I…I don’t really know anything about-”
Yet hearing that question was like blood in a shark tank. Soon, another reporter blurted out their question. “Has there been any correlation with the decreased incidents of public violent outbursts from eidolons and the supposed resurgence in adherents to Harmonia?”
“Er…”
“Do you feel that you might become a danger to other members of society?”
“Uh…”
“Do you think that you and other eidolons might be impressed into government service by complying with the Manehattan Doctrine?”
By now, Fluttershy was paralyzed with anxiety by the influx of questions, but as it turned out that was the straw that broke the camel’s back. As the questions continued to pile up and began to speak over one another, the official quickly stepped forward to the podium, putting a hand out and practically shoving Fluttershy away, before standing before it.
“Thank you all, no more time for questions today, please direct all further inquiries to the state department, thank you again.”
At once, he backed up to push Fluttershy behind the curtain, and she was just in time to spot the others quickly getting brushed off stage before the cloth dropped over her and the official; cutting off the growing sound of more reporters throwing out more mixtures of questions and near-accusations. They were still coming up when the official let out a large, loud sigh and turned back to her.
He remained that way for a fraction of a second before forcing a smile. “Well, we can’t expect them all to go swimmingly, and that was only the first one. Plenty more where that came from. At least we’ve officially introduced society to a real live eidolon, right?”
Fluttershy, still mostly paralyzed from the onrush of questions (all of which were still coming through the curtain), was only able to barely manage a small squeak. “Yay.”
“Well, don’t worry. The next few crowds will be mostly civilians and local officials rather than these man-eating reporters. I’m sure you’ll be in much better shape for the next 30 stops.”
The woman’s eyes shrank into pinpricks.
“Th-th…th-th-th…th-th…”
She was still trying to calm down enough to say the word when she was approached by another Manehattan official and led toward the steam carriage.
True to the official’s word, the next stop was on the periphery of Manehattan city proper and had more civilians and less reporters. Unfortunately, things didn’t go much easier for Fluttershy there either. She was still jittery from the first stop when she reached this one. So much so that by the time the questions started to come out, she had to be almost pushed on stage and then could only mumble one-word answers to a fistful of questions. There were more Manehattan officials there to field most of the content, but nevertheless it was something of an embarrassment for herself when she was asked by one reporter as to what she thought was the cause of the emergence of all of these ‘eidolons’ and if it had anything to do with the darkness leaving most of Greater Everfree, and her only answer was a muted: “ok”.
She hardly even noticed one of the reporters, for a local newsletter rather than a paper, asking her the question of if she thought this meant the return of Harmonium to the world. She was too busy shaking and focusing on Angel now desperately trying to indicate to her to “get a grip”. At any rate, the conference ended soon after almost as abruptly as before, and she was off again.
She currently found herself back in the steam carriage, getting a bit sore from the ride but focusing more on her anxieties than anything else. She hardly noticed the buildings begin to slowly get smaller around her as she went along and the crowds begin to slowly thin out. She only sighed as she continued to brush Angel’s fur while he rested on her lap. After a whole day of petting and support, he expected payment in full by a pampering session.
The steam carriage came to a halt again. She was used to it by now in the big city, although it only made her more eager to get out of it. She looked out the window as she absent-mindedly kept brushing Angel’s tail, trying to get the fluff just the way he liked it. Her mind barely registered the crowds; even the one walking by holding up a hand-painted sign saying: “A New Day is Coming!” or the numerous business types frowning at their journal reports for the afternoon.
“I’m just not very good at this…” she lamented aloud at last. “I mean, I knew I wouldn’t be that good when I started, but I didn’t expect so many people to gather at these meetings. And I didn’t expect them all to ask so many hard questions…”
If possible, the rabbit seemed to eyeroll.
She caught this, making her sigh again. “I know that look…and you’re right. I never should have volunteered. I just…just was tired of sitting around and feeling so helpless. I thought maybe this was a way I could help.”
The rabbit let out a little noise.
“I know, I know… I can’t even believe myself some days. I told myself I’d just tend to animals from now on, but…but everything changed after meeting Twilight and the others. I can do a lot more than just care for animals now. And…and…”
She let out a shudder and bowed her head, cringing a little.
“Can I really just hide around like this? Knowing I have this power that can help people?” A pause. “That’s right… I can help people now, can’t I? Doesn’t that mean I should? Even…even if…”
She was cut off as the steam carriage began to roll again. It gave her a start, nearly making her brush too hard and causing her to sit upright. Angel gave a small growl, and Fluttershy nearly turned to apologize to him.
Before she could, however, her eyes drifted back up over the window and saw through the glass pane of a small coffee shop. She spotted something in there.
When she did, for once, she forgot all about Angel. She looked for one full second before the carriage rolled further beyond, causing the window to vanish from view behind one of the structural columns that made up the building, and the individual inside as well.
“Was…was that…?”
She stared a moment longer before she turned forward. Quickly, she picked Angel up and put him gently to one side, and then leaned over to the divider between the back of the carriage and the driver’s seat. She put her face up to it.
“Um…um…excuse me, but could we please stop for just a moment?”
In a quiet room, someone seated right next to Fluttershy would have had a hard time hearing her. Over the sound of the steam engine it was impossible.
“Um…pardon me, but…could you please stop here, sir?”
The rise in volume was imperceptible.
“S…sir?”
As she continued to speak softly, Angel, getting up and looking annoyed, rolled his bunny eyes again before he quickly drew himself up and hopped forward; bounding so hard that he flew right off of the cushion, through the open window, and collided his feet with the back of the driver’s head. Instantly, it was smacked forward so fast and hard that it wheeled around and knocked itself on top of the hard steering wheel. Shocked, stunned, and now in pain, the driver let out an exclamation and an expletive before slamming down the brakes and grasping his forehead to recover.
Fluttershy was rather alarmed, even more so when she was nearly thrown down from the sudden stop of the steam carriage, but as soon as it halted she quickly nodded in appreciation. “Thank you.” She grasped the door handle and opened it up. Taking a deep breath to steady herself from her social anxiety, she climbed out of the carriage and down into the street. As she made for the sidewalk, the driver was left dumbfounded and stuck in traffic as he tried to make sense of what went on, but as for Fluttershy she steeled herself, cringed her way into the busy roads, and made back for the coffee house as fast as she could.
It took her a bit of time to make her way past the people, but she reached the building and went in through the front door immediately. She looked about for only a moment before she spotted it: the same wide-brimmed, inclined hat accentuated by a long feather. Zeroing in on her, she took a deep breath as she would be navigating a crowded, close-quartered establishment, but made her way toward the hat.
After walking only a short distance, she spotted its owner: a woman seated at a table for one with a newspaper raised in front of her and daintily sipping tea. Between her high collar on her elegant dress, her large hat brim, the newspaper, and the teacup to her lips, it was almost impossible to make out anything about her. That didn’t stop Fluttershy from walking in closer, however.
Once she was just at a distance to be out of personal space, but facing the woman, she stopped. She looked over her a moment, but though she lowered her teacup she couldn’t make out much more. She said nothing and gave no notice of Fluttershy, at least apparently not. She turned right back to her paper.
Fluttershy hesitated a moment, looking around herself, before she ventured forward. The woman never looked up from her paper. She only sipped her tea once but paid no other notice. At last, she made it close enough to halt momentarily. She swallowed and coughed once, clearing her throat.
“Um…” she began timidly, still getting no reaction from the woman, “Rarity?”
The woman didn’t react at all for a few seconds. Then, one of her hands left her paper and went to the table at her side, near an empty seat. She tapped it before returning to her paper.
“Rarity…is…is that you?”
Again, the hand went out and tapped, this time coughing a little.
“I mean, I’m sorry, but you look a lot like my friend, and…I was just wondering…”
Coughing even more loudly and intentionally, she reached out and this time patted the seat next to her with growing irritability.
“Oh,” she shrank back, seeing the whole act as hostile. “I’m very sorry… I’ll just be going no-”
“Fluttershy!” Rarity’s voice came out through pressed lips in a rasping whisper. “Kindly take a seat and stop drawing attention to us!”
The woman let out a small yipe before quickly doing as she was told. Rarity, on her part, held up her menu just long enough to roll her eyes.
“I’m sorry…” she meekly apologized.
She sighed as she lowered her newspaper slightly. “Think nothing of it, dear. I’m the one who should apologize for the rude reception, but I am trying to keep a low profile at the moment.” She glanced over to her from behind the newspaper, giving her a small smile.
“It’s wonderful to see you here, to be honest. When I woke up in a livestock feeding trough of all things, all alone, I had assumed the worst from everyone else. However, I did catch wind of your goodwill tour in the morning paper so I knew you had to be alright. But why aren’t the others with you, darling?”
“Oh…they’re not with me,” she meekly answered. “I just happened to see you when we were passing by in the carriage. I…I kind of hoped you knew where they were.”
Rarity’s own smile faded. “I’m afraid not… As I said, I was the only one around when I woke up. I was fortunate that I was already in Fillydelphia in a township I was familiar with. I suppose the same thing happened to you?”
Fluttershy nodded sadly. “I was even luckier, though. I was almost in Manehattan. I got back to the animals before any of them could take a turn for the worse.” She shook her head. “I haven’t heard anything from the others in weeks, though…”
Rarity looked uneasy at that, but forced a smile. “Well, if the two of us ended up alright, I’m sure the others are fine. It’s just…just taking them a while to get back to Manehattan is all.”
“Oh! Um…speaking of that…” Fluttershy finally spoke up. “If you’re in Manehattan, how come you haven’t gone back to Carousel Boutique yet? Sassy and Coco have been running around ragged trying to get the orders filled, and they’re both worried sick about you coming back.”
Now the designer really did look uncomfortable, enough to lower her newspaper a bit more. “Is that so?” she answered more softly. Her eyes drifted to the table in front of her. “I was afraid of that. I had hoped to be back by now myself, or that things could at least run smoothly without me for the indefinite future. And I really didn’t mean to make anyone so concerned…” She took in a deep breath and shook her head.
“But I’m afraid there are some matters that are more important to me even than my business, and I’m afraid I am not in a position to return just yet. I can’t. That’s why I’ve been in hiding; keeping myself as inconspicuous as possible in this establishment.”
Fluttershy couldn’t help but be a bit confused. Rarity’s outfit was so stylish and eye-catching, especially with the wide hat with the long feather, that it was almost impossible not to have one’s eyes drawn to her as soon as they stepped inside. She decided not to be rude about it, however. “You’ve been…hiding?”
“I decided to go with one of Shadow Spade’s more classic ensembles. I felt a need to evoke an aura of feminine mystique so long as I’m doing this secretive business.”
“Ok, but…why are you in hiding?”
Rarity paused. Her face grew far more serious and grim. She put down the paper, looked about for a moment, and then finally scooted her chair closer to Fluttershy to speak with her more quietly.
“Look over there. The table in the far corner.”
Fluttershy hesitated only a moment before looking. It took her a few seconds before she finally realized where Rarity is indicating. When she did, she saw a pair of men in suits sitting at one table drawn a bit farther away from the others, speaking in quiet voices over their coffee. However, of the two of them, only one of them looked particularly well-to-do and a mark of the normal elite of Manehattan. The other one’s suit was a bit more worn, and his face slightly unshaven with a more overgrown haircut.
“The first building I came upon in Fillydelphia,” Rarity began to speak quietly, “was this ghastly establishment that I wouldn’t have willingly wandered into normally if it was the only building for fifty miles. But I simply had to freshen up before I would take another step after landing in that filth. Apparently the stench was enough for them to let me use the washroom, but the walls in that place were paper thin. I heard that…”
She wrinkled her nose in disgust, as if it sickened her to say the next part.
“…gentleman over there wander in and start asking the local proprietor where he might find someone who was…willing to sell him a ‘Strawberry Tart’.”
Fluttershy went rigid at the mention of that phrase. Some of the color drained from it, and she seemed to almost melt into her seat.
This wasn’t lost on Rarity. “I see I hardly need to explain the local colloquialism. Apparently it isn’t unique to Manehattan… The proprietor said that they didn’t deal in that sort of thing, but that they could put him in contact with someone who did. Specifically, a contact for…the Horned Trip.”
If possible, Fluttershy grew whiter yet. She couldn’t even manage her “oh my”s. She looked nearly ready to pass out on the spot.
“Merciful heavens,” Rarity spoke up, “I didn’t mean to frighten you so, but it seems you know all about them as well. Don’t fear, darling. They don’t have any of their type here. Just that point of contact over there. A Mr. Clamp. I happened to catch his name as he came in. In fact, I made a point of it. Along with a transition of some letter that seemed quite fat enough to carry a hefty amount of bills.”
Fluttershy swallowed and stammered several times, aborting her speech each time, before she was finally able to form a faint whisper. “W-W-Why w-w-would you w-w-want t-t-to d-d-deal with them?”
Now it was Rarity’s turn to look uncomfortable. She turned back to her paper, looking almost like she was going to brush off the question. She swallowed once, and finally exhaled.
“I loathe talking about it. A part of me wants to forget it ever happened. However, I’ve come this far, and you’re here as well, so I suppose if I owe you an explanation for why I haven’t returned to Manehattan or Carousel Couture then you should know.”
She took in a deep breath, steadying herself, and began.
“My mother and father, the former owners and proprietors of Carousel Couture, were both in Griffonstone with most of the older staff attempting to expand the business when the Lunar Fall hit. They were…unfortunately in the northeastern portion at the time.”
Realizing what that meant, Fluttershy bowed her head. “I’m sorry.”
Rarity sighed. “Well…pish posh to that, darling,” she muttered halfheartedly. “Most of us lost someone close to us in the first few weeks. Why should I have been an exception? However, that did leave Sweetie Belle and I alone with a company barely capable of standing on one leg let alone two.”
Fluttershy looked up. “Um…Sweetie Belle?”
“My little sister,” Rarity answered, a trace of a smile painting her face. “She was quite the little angel. She may not have quite shared my talent for fashion, and she did tend to be a bit…well, shall we say, overexuberant at times when it came to trying to do things…enough to where I regret I became cross more than once…”
She trailed for a moment here, her smile ebbing. “But…looking back on those times…I realize I should have liked them for what they were. She was always eager to please. She just wanted to help out and do her part too now than our parents were gone. I should have appreciated that more. Even her…more unique attempts at singing local ballads.” Her head bowed a bit lower. “It’s true what they say about how you never truly miss something until it’s gone…”
She held a moment, then shook her head and continued. “For a time, it was nothing but the two of us and whatever employees were left like Ms. Pommel and Ms. Saddles struggling to keep our debtors pacified long enough to actually start producing something we could sell. Scraping by, everyone had to do their part. Sweetie Belle was no different. She constantly offered to help in any way she could. Making coffee or breakfast for overnight hours, doing runs for special orders of thread or fabric, running letters… Most of the time she found a way to make a mess of those things, at least at first. I dare say she managed to start a fire in the kitchen once trying to make juice.” She smirked and snickered a bit at this memory, before growing somber.
“She was good at running messages, though. And it saved on telegrams or couriers with what little money we could manage. One morning, I needed her to run a message to one of our distributors saying that the next order would be two hours late due to supply issues.” She let out a slow exhale. “She didn’t come back when I expected, but I didn’t mind that much. Things were changing so much in Manehattan with so many businesses changing hands and going under, and always some panic about Light Eaters and Nighttouched, that I thought she simply got distracted again or was taking her time. Then came the message from our distributor asking why we were late. It took me several hours of back and forth before I realized the message never arrived.”
Rarity looked up and exhaled again. This time, she began to stiffen up. Her lips started to quiver, but she forced them back.
“I…don’t want to go into the details of what happened over the next few weeks. The searching…the inquiries…the calls to the police…but most of all…”
She swallowed. She cupped a hand to her mouth.
“Most of all…how I became aware of just how many illicit businesses had started up in Manehattan following the Lunar Fall. How some of them dealt with human trafficking. How…how…” Her voice began to crack. “How they favored children around Sweetie Belle’s age…”
Fluttershy sank more into her chair, but said nothing.
“I…I didn’t want to believe it…but eventually the lead they picked up said they spotted someone matching her description in the vicinity of one of those parts of town known for…for you-know-what. They tried to close those places down whenever they could, but there weren’t enough of them anymore for stopping all of them. And each time they did, they never found Sweetie Belle. Then one day they…they…”
Rarity sniffled at this point. Quickly, she grabbed for her pocket handkerchief. She brought it to her face and quickly began to wipe at her eyes, but tears were already running by then.
“I don’t think I’ll talk any more about this, or I’ll make a scene that I won’t be able to rein in,” she admitted bitterly. Nevertheless, it took her several minutes of sniffling and wiping before she was finally able to compose herself. By then, much of her makeup had run and she was forced to wipe it off, using the tea holder plate as a mirror to clean up. The whole time, Fluttershy stayed quiet and said no more.
She finally took in a deep breath. “Suffice to say what they found…made it clear that I wasn’t going to be seeing my little sister ever again.” She nearly choked again on getting this part out, and was forced to quickly drink some tea to steady herself before wiping at her eyes again. She weakly laughed. “Look at me… Blubbering on like this. You’d…you’d think after seven years I’d be over it…”
“It’s ok,” Fluttershy spoke in a near whisper.
“The bottom line,” Rarity accented with a sniffle, putting her handkerchief away, “is that out of all of the cads and ruffians who have thrived off of the misery of people since the Lunar Fall, I have reason to loathe human traffickers most of all. As unusual and unwieldy as I’ve found this new power that I gained from a Promethian Sigil, it occurred to me when I encountered this particular lout that I had it in my power to do what the police have been unable to accomplish. After some debate over the matter, I decided upon it. I’m taking this into my own hands. I’m finding who is in charge of the Horned Trip by tracing them one person at a time, and once I do I’m putting a stop to this once and for all.”
Fluttershy looked up a bit more at that. “Really? But…but what about Carousel Couture? Or the Manehattan government?”
Rarity grimaced a little. “That’s why I’ve had to be incognito about this. If I go back to the Manehattan government now, my face will become too well known for me to sneak about tailing any of these suspects. And as much as I hate leaving Carousel Couture to fend for itself, I simply can’t look the other way for something like this. Not when this opportunity is so close at hand. Even if I can’t stop it myself, perhaps I can at least make some discovery that could get it shut down.”
Fluttershy was quiet for a few moments. “Then…what are you going to do?”
“Well, therein I seem to have hit something of a ‘snag’, darling,” Rarity sighed. “You see, I followed this man back here from Fillydelphia and I tracked him down to this hooligan, who should be headed back that way. But it’s extremely hard for Manehattanites to cross the border nowadays. What with the icing relations between the two. And there’s no way I could make it without the proper papers or identification. I’m sure this cad has his ways, but those aren’t the sorts of connections I have.” She sighed. “Where is Rainbow Dash when I really need her? And don’t get me started on how hard it was to get this current ensemble. I’m somewhat impressed at my own resourcefulness at being able to scare it up, but after three different outfits there’s no way I’ll be able to keep up this pace forev-”
She suddenly cut herself off, her eyes lighting up.
“Wait…wait, that would be perfect!”
Fluttershy looked up in a bit of curiosity, before shrinking back as Rarity turned to her beaming and nearly getting in her face.
“You could arrange for it, darling!”
The woman was struck at being caught on the spot. “Wha…m-m-me?”
“Why yes, Fluttershy! You’re heading right into Fillydelphia yourself on your current route, aren’t you? And if the papers were correct, you should be crossing the border as early as tomorrow evening!”
She paused. “Well, y-y-yes, but what-”
“You’d make the perfect cover for me then! I’ll simply stow away with you! You’ll still be able to do your goodwill tour, and I’ll have the perfect means to track this man deeper into Fillydelphia and find out whatever channel he’s operating on! Two birds with one stone!”
Fluttershy swallowed a little, beginning to sweat. “I…I’m not so sure about…”
“Oh, come now, darling. We’ve finally gotten back together, and this is a way for us to stick to one another like glue until we find the others. In the meantime, we both get what we want. You’d like to see that dreadful human trafficking ring brought to justice as well, wouldn’t you?”
She grit her teeth and gulped even deeper. “Well…I mean…y-y-yes, but-”
“Then please, Fluttershy!” she insisted more imploringly, clasping her hands and leaning into her. “If not for me, then for Sweetie Belle! It might be just a tad bit of abuse of privilege, but it’s for a worthy cause!”
The woman continued to hesitate. As much as she had been through so far, this made her look more nervous than anything yet. Even their confrontation with Nightmare Moon. She was quiet for a very long time. Enough to where the two men they were monitoring finished their discussion and were packing up to leave. That only made Rarity look even more insistently at her.
“When…when you put it that way…I…I suppose…you could meet up at our next stop and then hide in the steam carriage. Once we leave Manehattan, there’s only supposed to be three escorts with me. I could…say that you’re, um…uh…my, uh…”
Rarity, noticing she was fumbling, spoke up. “Linguistic specialist?”
“Um…sure. They shouldn’t know what you look like, and I could say the government assigned you to me to help with public appearances…” A pause. “I think I’d probably do these public meetings easier if you were here anyway, Rarity. And I did agree to go on this to try and find you and the rest of the ladies, so even if I had to tell the truth it probably wouldn’t be that bad…”
“Oh, thank you, Fluttershy!” Rarity exclaimed, reaching out and clasping her hands and shaking them. The move startled her a bit, but she formed a weak smile and allowed it to continue. “You don’t know how much this means to me! And I think you’re quite right! With two of us together, I feel better than ever about this whole affair!”
Fluttershy managed a weak nod as Rarity slid back into her seat. She quickly drained her own teacup and began to gather her things. “I better hurry along myself if we’re going to be meeting at your next stop. Oh, on that note, where exactly is your driver taking you this evening?”
“My…driver?” Fluttershy blinked, before realization suddenly came upon her. She looked to one of the wall clocks. “Um, Rarity, how long have we been here?”
“No more than half an hour, darling. Why?”
She didn’t answer. She merely gulped as she looked outside. Only now did she realize the traffic out there wasn’t moving, and that at this point the drivers were beginning to exit and look rather irritable.
Both ladies let out exclamations of delight as their bodies, straddling a pair of ancient throw rugs, pitched over the edge of the top step of the longest spiral staircase in the royal palace before beginning to rapidly descend. Like a pair of sleds, the broad, stiff rugs had their ends upturned and the ladies’ knees against them, and as gravity began to work they slid down the staircases like they were snow-covered slopes. Several of the ever-present sentinel guards nearly broke their stony expressions for grimacing and fear as the two laughing women raced each other down four stories worth of curving stairwells; the rugs easily sliding across the marble floors on the flat portions before going down the stairwells on the other side.
After the fourth flight, the two finally reached the bottom floor. With no more staircases to descend, the two were left to slide freely onward across the base level, but by the time they both reached the wall they had slowed down enough to extend their feet to stop themselves. After a couple of light taps, both rolled back on their rugs and peeled out in childish giggling and laughter.
“I can’t believe I never thought to do that!” Skystar finally exclaimed after almost a full minute. “Well…maybe mom saying I couldn’t go running around down the staircase while I was playing had something to do with that, but I didn’t know I could sled indoors! I’ve been wanting to do that ever since the Lunar Fall!”
Pinkie Pie giggled a bit more before leaning up from her own rug. “You’re so lucky that you have so many carpeted stairs! You can go sliding in summer or winter!”
Skystar laughed a bit longer before she sat bolt upright as well. “So! Want to go again? Or is there something else you want to do?”
Pinkie put a finger to her chin, stuck out her tongue, and looked skyward thoughtfully. However, it only took her a few moments before she was distracted by a nearby sound; namely one of rushing water. She turned to the side only to gasp in surprise.
Right in the middle of the base floor, surrounded partially by the rising spiral staircase, was a grand circular indoor fountain. Four separate stone mermaids with pitchers were poised around it, pouring never-ending streams of water, while in the center a spectacular array made of numerous stone-crafted shells and conches rose up to shoot out ascending tiers of water in a central pillar. All along the sides and within the basin where the pool gathered were smaller statues and engravings of marine life, poised to look like it was swimming or flopping around in the water.
“Wow!”
Skystar glanced the way she was looking, before turning back and smiling. “Oh, do you like it? That was my mom’s fountain. She loved the ocean but it was too hard to always come down from the palace for seaside visits, so she had that put in. Neat, isn’t it?”
Pinkie’s eyes lit up before she began to let out an excited gasp.
“It’s just like the old watering hole at home…only indoors!”
Skystar looked puzzled. “What?”
However, Pinkie was already tearing to her feet. She seized her clothes and began to pull them off, starting with her shoes and socks. “We can have a swimming party right here! Come on! Let’s jump in! I’ve got so many games to show you that Maud showed me! There’s this one where-”
However, Skystar cut her off, starting to look uncomfortable and shooting to her own feet and putting her hands out. “Oh, oh no. No-no… Sliding down the staircase on the rugs may be one thing, but there’s no way I could go swimming in there.”
Pinkie’s face fell in mid-removal of her skirt. “Aw… Why not?”
Skystar grimly pointed to one side. “Um…I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t want me in a pool of water with you. They might think…you know…with you being from Trottingham and all that you’d try and drown me.”
Pinkie turned and looked. Sure enough, the guards, as they often looked over the past few days whenever Pinkie ran around with Skystar on their newest game that involved hazards to life and limb, were practically sweating and staring at her with a mixture of exasperation and irritation. This nearly caused her to go into a fit of pouting, like any small child would do. She stuck out her lower lip and slumped her shoulders…
When an idea came to mind that made her light up all over again, before grinning from ear to ear. She leaned in close to Skystar and put a hand to the side of her mouth as if speaking in confidence, but was still more than full volume for the guards to hear.
“I think I’ve got an idea about how they can watch you and let us play in the indoor watering hole.”
Skystar looked up hopefully, while a small shade of dread came over the face of the guards.
That shade had given way to a full frown as the two guards found themselves stripped to their skivvies and squatting in the deeper part of the fountain down to their shoulders. Astride either one, legs dangling across their shoulders, were Skystar and Pinkie Pie, both likewise down to their underwear and grinning dangerously at each other like a pair of knights on horses.
“Ready?”
“Ready!”
“Then get ready to get dunked! Giddyup!” Pinkie punctuated by actually giving the guard a light kick to the sides.
He merely stood there grimacing until Skystar likewise cheered. “Charge!” At that, he rolled his eyes before walking forward with her on his shoulders, and the former guard only sighed and did the same. Soon the two ladies were meeting in the middle over surges of spraying from the fountains and grasping each other’s hands, struggling to knock either one off of their respective soldier. Laughing, giggling, and far too much splashing for the tastes of either guard, who looked embarrassed to even be in the fountain let alone everything else, soon ensued. Although Pinkie was the larger of the two, she nevertheless seemed to be even with Skystar for most of it, and it wasn’t for ten full minutes of roughing around that she seemed to slip long enough for Skystar to spur her “mount” forward and push into her.
Pinkie looked stunned, spun her arms around wildly trying to regain her balance, but couldn’t stop herself before she spilled back and took both herself and her guard down in the fountain with a splash.
Skystar cheered in victory from the back of her own guard as Pinkie and the opposing one bobbed back to the surface. The guard she had been riding hacked and coughed, but Pinkie’s own hair was only flat for a fraction of a second before she shook it, and almost immediately it bounced back to being poofy and curly again.
“Tee-hee! You won!”
“That was…so…amazing!” Skystar shouted. “I can’t believe I never thought to do this before!” A pause. “Well…I’m kind of sure not having anyone to do it with might have had something to do with that…” She shook her head. “Nevermind… Your sister taught you how to do that too? She’s so cool!”
“Oh, Maud’s the best,” Pinkie giggled as she straightened. “I hope you get to meet her and my other sisters someday!”
Skystar chuckled once more before her smile faded a little. “Must be pretty nice…having such a big family.”
“Oh, it’s great! They’re the best sisters in the whole wide world! Maud is just great at everything! My baby sister Marble says the funniest things! And Limestone…well, Limestone can be a bit rough around the edges, but once you get to know her she’s great too! And I haven’t even told you yet about my mom and dad! They’re amazing! Last summer, they actually got the whole family together and…”
Pinkie suddenly trailed off. The last part had made Skystar’s smile fade almost all together, and the light had dimmed quite a bit in her eyes.
“Oh…” Pinkie spoke mildly, beginning to look uncomfortable. “I’m sorry, I didn’t-”
“Oh, that’s ok,” Skystar quickly cut off, smiling again and waving her hand. “No biggie. So…do you want to go again?”
Both guards looked a bit more miserable at that, but Pinkie only cheered and quickly began to climb back on top of her own. “You bet! I’m going to dunk you this time!”
Much to the guard’s displeasure, she was back on his shoulders. The two poised themselves at each other, counted to three, and then took off. Soon both were grappling and giggling as they struggled again. Pinkie, this time, managed to maneuver Skystar right into the path of one of the fountain jets. She ended up getting blasted in the back of the head with cold water, making her exclaim before bursting out into more laughing…
“Your highness.”
Yet as soon as she stopped, a voice spoke over their noise and splashing quite distinctly. Skystar paused in the middle of their struggle, still holding hands with Pinkie, before she turned and looked behind her.
Seeming a little displeased at the watery mess the two of them had made of the fountain was Sky Beak, standing at the side with his arms folded behind him.
“Hi uncle!” Skystar cheered. “Look, look! Pinkie showed me a new game to play!”
“I’m sure the cleaning staff will be thrilled…” he muttered before giving Pinkie the same look he always gave her—an unfriendly one. She was oblivious to it by now and simply grinned back, causing him to wrinkle his nose a bit before looking back at the princess. “I’m afraid I must ask your majesty to postpone your current activity with your…guest. I have something I would like to discuss with you in private concerning her and her place of origin.”
“Oh? Oh…oh alright!” Skystar returned, ending her game by releasing Pinkie Pie. After that, she gingerly looked around herself for a moment, trying to figure out how to descend, before she finally held her nose and let herself fall off the back of the guard. He immediately stood to full height, grateful for the relief, before she came back to the surface and waded to the edge of the fountain.
Pinkie waved to her. “I’ll be upstairs, rebuilding the pillow fort, princess!”
As it was, Pinkie had more than enough time to clean up, get redressed, say her morning prayers, rebuild the pillow fort, finish tidy up the drawing room from the “painting party” that had turned a bit messy, plan out the next incarnation of huckleberry tarts for them to try baking, go back downstairs and help the cleaning staff with finishing up around the fountain, make a round of funny faces on the guards to try and get them to smile all the way back upstairs, and play 17 games of tic-tac-toe with herself and Skystar still hadn’t returned. Her mood had dimmed by then and she slumped on the drawing room table, sighing as she pulled out another piece of paper and began to draw the 18th grid.
She had just drawn a circle in the center when she heard the door to the room click. She looked and was only momentarily dismayed to see even more guards come in, these ones looking like the bigger and meaner type that she had seen when she first woke up in the royal palace, but brightened when she saw Skystar and Sky Beak follow in behind her.
“Yay, you’re back!” Pinkie cheered, quickly sitting up. “I got the pillow forts all ready! I’m flattening your keep this time!”
“Actually,” Skystar quickly cut off, looking just a big uneasy, “we were wondering if you could come with us for a bit, Pinkie. My uncle and I have something we want to discuss with you in private.”
“Ooo! I get to join in on the private secret conversations somewhere secluded in the castle now? Yay!” She hopped to her feet eagerly.
Skystar blanched a little but managed to maintain a smile while Sky Beak struggled not to roll his eyes. “Um, yeah! Just follow us.”
Moments later, Pinkie was in with Skystar and Sky Beak as they walked down the palace halls, in particular down ones that she had been forbidden from going down with or without the princess until now. They were flanked by not two but four guards in all, all of which kept their eyes on Pinkie the whole time. Eventually, they made their way to a room in the castle at the end of a wing, meaning only a single hallway (the one they had come down) allowed any entrance or exit.
On entering, the room was small and largely unfurnished aside from a single round table and a few chairs, of which another royal official-type was seated who gave Pinkie the same stern look. There was a window, but as Pinkie had discovered that the royal palace was on a mountainside by now, all it did was overlook a long, sharp cliff. There were two extra guards here, and along with the other four they soon surrounded the room. Skystar began to move to one seat.
“Your majesty, I would like to remind you one last time that you do not have the be present for this.”
“No, that’s ok. I want to be.”
Sky Beak was quiet, but he soon moved to his own seat. The other royal official rose long enough for Skystar to take her own seat and then sat back down again. As for Sky Beak, he turned to Pinkie and indicated to the remaining chair. “Sit.”
Cheerfully, she half-skipped over, pulled out the chair, plopped down, and pulled herself in before sitting cross-legged on top of it. Sky Beak grimaced a little but pulled out his own seat and sat down as well. The arrangement was such that the three were clustered on one side with her by herself on the other.
“I will explain in brief what I explained to her majesty to you,” he began. “After hearing your story, I took it upon myself to make inquiries. At the moment our country has cut most of its diplomatic ties to its surrounding neighbors as we are enforcing a new policy of isolation for the time being, but several of our embassies are still in the process of closing and we have some contacts who have better insight into the activities of foreign nations and…” He paused momentarily, eyeing the official across from him. “…we have other intelligence methods that I am not at liberty to discuss as well. Suffice to say, we are keeping our eyes open on Trottingham as much as possible and so long as the new administration seems to keen on flaunting certain aspects of their regime, we haven’t turned a blind eye. The short version is that your story appears to be supported.”
Pinkie let out an excited gasp. “Yay! That means you believe that I’m really just a Gaitian refugee and not a dirty, sneaky, covert assassin here to kill the royal family and disrupt the hierarchical structure of the Mount Aris government?”
The way she rattled that out left all three staring at her momentarily, as Pinkie herself looked a bit confused at her own choice of wording after a moment. The other official grimaced but jumped in. “We’ve been trying to keep our eyes on large movements within Trottingham’s borders, as that almost always precludes an attack. We did happen to pick up a passenger manifest during an unusually high amount of train activity, assuming it was troop transport. The name Pinkie Pie was listed on it and, sure enough, it had a class five defection marked next to it indicating that the individual had violated terms of internment and was now wanted by the police. Of course, there is the chance the records were forged or misprinted, but Trottingham doesn’t have the history of some place like, say, Fillydelphia for being so thorough with cover stories…”
Pinkie suddenly raised her hand. Sky Beak and the official eyed her curiously for a moment, before the former rolled his eyes. “Yes?”
“What’s a manifest?”
The older man sighed. The official, on the other hand, adjusted his glasses before explaining. “It’s a listing of cargo or passengers on a vessel or transport of some kind, although this one in particular seems to have been a ‘pick-up’ list of sorts that was being run through local authorities to confirm or deny the presence of individual occupants before the actual run began.”
Pinkie Pie blinked. “Then…does that mean that they wanted to take me for a train ride?”
“Not one that you’d want to be on, I’d think.”
This only made her look more confused. “Huh?”
The official tapped the paper. “We don’t know all the locations on this manifest, but every location we do know of is abandoned territory or grounds rendered unsuitable for development. In other words, if we can believe what intelligence we have received about the situation of Gaitians in Trottingham, including your own, then they’re resettlement areas. They’re cleaning them out. Relocating them deeper into Trottingham territory in centralized locations. Probably to either keep a better eye on them or commit them to industrial labor.”
Pinkie, for the first time since she had arrived, began to look genuinely uncomfortable. Skystar’s own look became regretful; already having put together what she was still trying to figure out.
“Um…just, I don’t know, a random question,” Pinkie said, forcing the smallest of smiles, “but, um…I don’t suppose that there happens to be anyone else they’re giving the free train ride to? Anyone who just so happens to have the names, oh…Igneous Rock Pie, Cloudy Quartz, Limestone Pie, Marble Pie, and Maud Pie?”
The official took a moment to glance back at the sheet. “Actually, this manifest is arranged by family name. With only two exceptions, yourself being one, the entire Pie family is listed for transfer.”
“Pardon me for changing the subject,” Sky Beak interjected at this point, “especially since all of this isn’t likely the news you wanted to hear, but I’m sorry to say that the news I am interested in hearing concerns the welfare of Mount Aris and its royal family.”
Pinkie didn’t react. She stared at the sheet of paper in the official’s hands with an ever-growing look of dread. Skystar began to wriggle into her own seat on seeing that look on her face and glanced to her uncle, but he did not change.
“Now that we’ve established your identity and found at least some proof of your story, I have informed her majesty that I believe it is best if we speed you on your way. You have not yet been privy to any of our nation’s secrets, defenses, or anything else of tactical value, and I’d prefer to keep it that way. While I still believe it would be of more merit simply to detain you indefinitely,” He nearly rolled his eyes again. “Her royal highness insisted on granting you a pardon for your intrusion into the palace. Instead, I am already preparing an escort which will conduct you, blindfolded, of course, to the borders of Mount Aris and send you any way you wish to go.”
Pinkie still wasn’t reacting. It wasn’t even clear she was hearing what Sky Beak was saying, but that didn’t stop him from continuing.
“I believe the best place for that would be the border of Appleloosa. Frankly, you only have two options as it is, Appleloosa or Griffonstone, and both have already closed their borders to incoming migrants. However, of the two, Appleloosa’s border is sparsely guarded and they should at least tolerate you if you’re passing through. Long enough for you to get to a train station at least. Griffonstone is still allowing non-stop railway travel provided the passengers pay a hefty fee, after all. I can understand this might be a little difficult for you to manage but, as I explained to the princess, that is hardly our concern when you are the one who arrived in here unwarranted and so suddenly and unexpectedly. My only concern is to get you out of here. Now, of the two, which nation’s border would you rather be dropped off at?”
Pinkie sat still and motionless.
“I’m really, really sorry about this,” Skystar finally interjected apologetically. “You know…um…there’s a third option that my uncle’s not pointing out.” She smiled. “You could always stay here in the palace! It’s been great having you here! I haven’t had so much fun in years! And don’t you like hanging around here already?” She suddenly stopped, her smile fading again. “But…I understand if you don’t want to. You have friends you need to get back to in Manehattan, after all…and it’s been a long time already…”
Finally, Pinkie looked up and raised her hand again.
Sky Beak rubbed the bridge of his nose in irritation. “…Yes?”
“I just have one question. Which border is closer to Trottingham?”
Sky Beak froze in the middle of rubbing, slowly lowering his hand again. The official nearby looked at her with a more accusatory expression. Skystar herself looked confused. “And…why do you want to know that?”
“Because if I’m going to be walking back to Trottingham, I’d really like it as short as possible.”
Surprise spread around one side of the table. Even Sky Beak looked taken aback. “Are you saying,” the official suddenly spoke up, “that you’re admitting to being an agent of Trottingham after all?”
“Nope!” Pinkie answer, smiling a little and shaking her head again. “I just need to go back to Trottingham if I’m going to help my family.”
“Your family?” Skystar echoed back.
“Yup!” She turned to the official. “You just said on that manifold, marigold thingie that they’re going to be moving my family and a whole lot of other Gaitians deeper into Trottingham so they can force them to work. Even if they don’t, that’ll mean my family gets taken away from the quarry or locked up tighter to where they’ll never get out. I know mom, dad, and Maud all tell me that we need to be ‘passive-fisted’ and not start any fighting, but I can’t just let them stay there and wait for this to happen.”
Her face fell.
“Things were already hard enough on the family when we got forced off our rock farm. Everyone’s been so sad ever since that happened… But now I can help them! Ever since I ran around with Twilight and practiced using my Anima Viri, I know I can get around a whole bunch of soldiers or guards without needing to hurt any of them! And I might be the only person who can! I’ll bet none of the other Gaitians even know what’s going to happen!”
She let out a gasp at that.
“Oh, oh! Maybe I can get more Gaitians out while I’m there!”
Skystar let out a gasp of her own. “Whoa, whoa… You really think you can break into Trottingham just like that and sneak out your family and the other Gaitians just like that? It’s…it’s…well, it’s Trottingham we’re talking about!”
Pinkie waved her hand and scoffed. “Oh, that’s nothing! After everything I went through in Grifftham City and Equestria? This’ll be an easy breezie!”
The official frowned and looked to Sky Beak. “We should detain her right now, sir. She’s flaunting the fact she’s going right back to Trottingham in front of us. She must have heard something-”
Sky Beak held up a hand, stopping the official in mid-speech, as he narrowed his eyes on Pinkie again. “I’m inclined to agree with him. I was willing to give you some measure of a berth before, but I have a hard time believing any Gaitian would want to go back to Trottingham, regardless of personal skill and family attachment. None of that matters if you’re as good as dead as soon as you try to cross the border. However, that belief is moot now. I already told you the borders of Appleloosa are closed to refugees. The same with Griffonstone. Even if you’re telling the truth, there’s nowhere to move your family.”
“What about here?”
For the second time, Sky Beak looked surprised, and even more so now as he turned to Skystar. Pinkie went wide-eyed herself.
“Yeah, that’s right!” the princess went on; the idea freshly occurring to her. “You could bring them right here! It may not look it, but there’s plenty of room in Griffonstone! And we could use more farmers with the food shortage-”
“Your majesty…!” the official blurted out, nearly shouting.
Skystar winced, realizing her mistake, and quickly cringed in her seat. Sky Beak himself looked on the verge of breaking as well, but somehow he restrained it. Calming himself he looked back at Pinkie Pie. “I’m afraid that-”
“You’d really let my family and any other Gaitians from Trottingham live here with you?” she spoke over him, addressing Skystar directly and excitedly.
Skystar recovered at that, enough to smile again. “Sure! Why not? I’d get to finally meet your family! Besides, we’re friends, aren’t we?”
Pinkie let out an excited squeal. “Whee! Oh, thank you, princess!”
“Now wait just one moment…” Sky Beak tried to cut in.
“I want to leave right away! I got a loooooong way to walk if I’m going to be in Trottingham!”
“Wait just…”
She began to spring out of her chair. “Mr. Sky Beak, could you hurry and blindfold me so that we can hurry to-”
“Wait!” the man suddenly shouted, punctuating by pounding his fist down on the table enough to send a rattle through the room.
At once, everyone froze and their smiles disappeared again. Sky Beak, looking quite tense and incensed at this point, took a moment to calm himself down and resume his former decorum, then straightened in his chair and turned back to Skystar.
“Your majesty, I would like to speak with you in private again. If you would please accompany me?” He pushed his chair away from the table and began to rise. The other official made a motion to do the same.
“…Is it about Pinkie Pie again?”
Sky Beak froze. He turned and looked up to Skystar, who wasn’t moving from her chair. He remained in a half-standing position staring back at her.
“Because…” she went on, a bit timidly and uncertainly, but forcing herself none the less, “if it is…I think we can say it while she’s in front of us.”
Sky Beak actually looked a little taken off guard. He turned to Pinkie, who simply smiled and waved back, then back to Skystar. “I truly think this is a matter better discussed in private.”
Skystar paused again, but swallowed and drew herself up. “If this is about Pinkie, then I think she should be here to hear it. That’s what I believe and…and that’s my command.”
Now the official and Sky Beak looked truly taken aback. A few of the guards in the room looked that way as well, as this was the first they had ever seen the princess pull her rank on a member of her own family. After a time, the general frowned before slowly slumping back into his own seat. He folded his hands in his lap as he sat up straight.
“Very well,” he calmly answered, “then I will be blunt. I have not trusted this woman for a single second since she has been here, and the only two reasons I have not had her permanently placed in a cell until she confesses the true reason she is here is because she has continued to be loose-lipped in intelligence regarding what Manehattan knows…which nevertheless, for all I know, is inconsequential information designed to win our trust…and because you have ordered that she be treated as a guest. I have tried numerous times to explain to you how much of a threat she is both to you and to Mount Aris. I have been summarily ignored each time and I have been forced to commit my own soldiers and resources to try and ensure she doesn’t compromise us and endanger the lives of our citizens by placing you under constant surveillance.
“This latest act is, I’m afraid, the final straw. The only thing I was able to do until now was attempt to ascertain qualifications for her character in order to send her on her way as quickly as possible and insure she poses no further threat to our nation or the royal family. I had finally reached that point when she proudly professes her intentions to return to Trottingham under the pretense of assisting her family. This is a slap in the face to our hospitality and an insult to our intelligence. The only thing that would be worse now is if she brings an entire set of ‘family and friends’ worth of spies and covert agents back with her.”
“But she’s not like that!” Skystar insisted.
“Your majesty, how do you know that for certain? Because she played games with you? Because she made you laugh? Do you not think a spy or saboteur would be capable of the same thing? Or an assassin, for that matter?”
“Because she’s my friend!” Skystar almost shouted. “She talks to me and listens to me like a real friend! Not like everyone else in the palace! Not like everyone who won’t even call me by my real name anymore! I’m always ‘your highness’ or ‘your majesty’ now!”
Sky Beak let out a strained sigh, closing his eyes and struggling to hold his emotions back. “Your majesty…princess…if you were Silverstream right now instead of the royal heir the things I would say to you… The ways I would tell you how thoughtless and irresponsible you are being… The danger I would say you are exposing yourself and us to…”
“You see! It’s just like that! No one can even tell me what they really feel or think about what I do anymore now that I’m going to be the next queen! Pinkie always tells me what she thinks!”
“Because she’s not a citizen of Mount Aris and because your welfare doesn’t mean anything to her!” He began to break in propriety again; his voice lacing with emotion. “You care so much about her family but you don’t give a thought to the concerns of your own!”
“All my own family ever does is worry about me! They don’t care about anything else going on in Mount Aris, or with the Light Eaters or the Nighttouched, or with what’s going on with everyone else in the world like the Gaitians! All they cared about…all anyone in this palace cared about when the Light Eaters came…was making sure we were the last nation left once they got rid of everyone else!”
Pinkie’s smile had slowly been fading during all of this. It faded enough when Sky Beak went off on his tirade about her, but as the two began to grow more heated she grew more uncomfortable. “Um…if it’s really too much trouble, I can go live in a cell. Trust me, it’s still way better than the quarry when we first moved in…”
“No!” Skystar exclaimed, turning away from Sky Beak and looking at her. “No, you’re not going to any cell, Pinkie. You’re not going anywhere except Trottingham. And when you rescue your family and the Gaitians, you can come right back here. We’ll extend refugee status to them and they can live here in Mount Aris.”
Sky Beak began to quiver. Her jaw tightened with his last bit of restraint. “Your majesty, please, think about what you’re doing…”
“I’ve already thought about it, and that’s what I’m going to do!” she retorted, almost shouting at him again. “If I really am the ruler of Mount Aris, then that means you have to do what I command! Well…this is what I’m commanding! Right now!”
The room was deathly silent. Pinkie uneasily looked between Sky Beak and Skystar. She swallowed a lump in her throat. She glanced around nervously for several seconds before she finally began to ease into her chair. “Uh, heh…nevermind. You know, I think I can hear lunch burning from here, so maybe…”
“Very well.”
Pinkie instantly went silent, but both she and Skystar alike looked rather surprised at the quiet, mild response from Sky Beak. “What?” they answered in unison.
“As you said, you are going to be the full ruler of Mount Aris one day. I can’t expect to tell you what to do forever. I honestly cannot tell you what to do now. If this is your wish, then I can only carry it out.”
Skystar seemed honestly surprised that pulling her own title had worked after all. Gradually, she began to brighten up further. “Really? I mean…yes! Yes, of course! Good! Very well! Um…alright then! Glad we’re together on this.”
“Sir…” the official began to speak up again.
“The princess has given her command, and it is clear,” he cut off once again. After saying this, however, he looked straight into Skystar’s eyes. “And I would be naïve to assume that her majesty would fail to make at least a few mistakes early in her rule. I would prefer them to be relatively minor with fewer consequences than something that would jeopardize our future.”
Skystar’s smile disappeared again. Instead, she winced uncomfortably, once more sinking back into her seat.
Pinkie, feeling the mood growing ever chillier, forced a hollow grin. “Y-Y-You know what sounds good right now? Another dip in the fountain. How about we forget this whole going-to-rescue-my-family-and-people-from-labor-encampment thing and I’ll just-”
Sky Beak pushed himself away from the table, silencing Pinkie again. He rose to full height, turned, and began to walk out. As he did, however, he focused his raptor-like eyes fully on her.
“Come along now. If this is the princess’ command, then I’m going to carry it out as quickly as possible. The sooner I have you out of the palace, the better.”
True to his word, Sky Beak moved fast. It didn’t take him more than fifteen minutes to assemble a new group of guards who set about moving Pinkie out of the palace; starting with the promised blindfold. She nearly thought she wouldn’t have the chance to say goodbye to the princess when she ran in and interjected quickly, putting a sealed envelope in her hands.
“I wrote this up as fast as I could. When you get back to the border with your family, just show them that and they’ll let you all in. Don’t lose it and don’t break the seal.”
“Thanks again, princess!” Pinkie cheerily answered right before the blindfold went on.
What followed over the next forty minutes was her rapidly being led away, almost jerked around from one turn in a hallway to one staircase after another. She was pretty sure she went both down and up as well as indoors and outdoors more than once before she finally heard the sounds of horses snorting. She realized she was at a carriage before she was pushed inside, squished between two men, and the doors shut. Soon after they took off.
Pinkie truly wished she could have enjoyed the scenery on the ride, but the blindfold was ordered to remain on all the while. It did seem to wind quite a bit and go down some rough paths, which she took to mean it must have been an abandoned or little-known road. They stayed on it for a few hours before the road finally flattened and smoothed out, and their carriage picked up considerable speed. Nevertheless, it was a few more hours yet before she began to hear sounds of movement and commotion around outside, and the carriage slowed down in response. As a result, she was able to make out individual voices, but none of them were talking about her. Most sounded like soldiers and officers calling to each other, while others were shouting things to other people; telling them to stay behind a gate or, more appropriately, warning them.
At last, the carriage stopped. Almost immediately, either one of Pinkie’s arms were taken as she was practically hoisted out of the carriage and onto the ground. At last, the blindfold was taken off and she squinted in the sunlight. “Is it just me, or is the sun on extra high today?”
The soldiers, not caring for her humor, immediately half-dragged her forward. She blinked and looked around for a few moments before her eyes finally cleared enough to see. She made out a deep trench stretching in either direction before her, and spanning it was a wooden bridge just big enough for two lanes worth of vehicles. The whole area was surrounded by Mount Aris armed forces, complete with a few pieces of artillery, and on the opposite side of the bridge a fence and a gate loomed before giving way to a couple hundred different people squatting at the border. Some were lined up to try and get in, but didn’t seem to be having much luck.
“Ooo…this must be Appleloosa!” she chimed.
The soldiers dragging her didn’t even glance her way. She was about to say more when she heard a loud whistle in the distance. She looked and saw, about a half mile down the way, a rail bridge had been built over the ditch and a locomotive was halted there. However, it was idling at the moment, and several Mount Aris soldiers were surrounding it. Apparently, they weren’t too happy about the attempt to drive the train onto their tracks.
Before she could get a better look view, however, she was pushed across the bridge and to the gate. One soldier ran ahead, grabbed it, and opened it up; allowing the two men on either side of her to practically shove her across. Without a word, they turned and began to walk back as the gate was lowered.
She spun around and waved after them. “Thanks for the ride! Have a good day!”
None of them paid any attention to her as they kept walking. That didn’t stop her from smiling and looking casual, however. She looked back to one of her hand, still clutching the envelope, before she sang a bit to herself as she tucked it into her clothes. Turning around, she glanced over the area and the numerous Appleloosans, before putting a hand to her eyes and searching harder.
“Alright…need directions to Trottingham…directions to Trottingham…hmm…”
She let her eyes glance over the various people gathered around, until they finally rested on a man with a hastily-filled knapsack over his back. He looked rather tired and was watering himself from a canteen, but he was also the closest, alone, and seemed to have been used to walking the roads of Appleloosa. She practically skipped over to him just as he finished drinking.
“Hi there!” she cheered, waving her hand at him.
He idly turned to her, but showed nothing other than acknowledgement. She was soon in front of him.
“Pardon me, but could you help out a grateful fellow traveler and point me to the nearest road that leads to Trottingham?”
The man hesitated, giving her an incredulous look. “Lady, I just walked all night and half the day putting as many miles between me and Trottingham as possible. Only soldiers and crazy people want to head to Trottingham now.”
“Hmm…well, I’m definitely not a soldier…” Pinkie thought aloud for a moment, before ignoring it. “Anyway, why’s that?”
He stared at her somewhat dumbfounded. “You don’t get any news out in this part of Appleloosa or something?” He frowned and looked about. “Figures, what with no telegraph lines for twenty miles… Late last night Trottingham declared war on Appleloosa. They’ve already launched an invasion. In a couple hours,” He gestured around him. “There’s gonna be ten times as many people here as there is now, and they’re not going to be nearly as calm about wanting to get into Mount Aris. No need to worry about heading to Trottingham… Trottingham’s coming to us.”
Pinkie’s perennial smile faded once again on hearing the news. Her normally poofy hair actually seemed to sag a little just from hearing that news. She looked up, past the man, and far out to the eastern horizon.
The door barely had a chance to be thrown open before both women were roughly flung inside. After chaffing each other being shoved through the doorway, they both spilled on the hard, rusted, dirty floor and sprawled out…not much considering they were both bound wrists and ankles behind their backs with bags over their heads. Instead, they both moaned in pain and rolled there momentarily.
Verko, framing the doorway with two of his goons, grinned at both of them. “Enjoy the luxury cabin, ladies. Try to get comfy. Wouldn’t want any damaged goods now, would we?”
They heard the door slam shut behind them, before two bolts and the sound of a heavy padlock rang out. Verko’s laugh echoed away before fading to the sounds of the seashore and sailors at work. The floor beneath both of them rocked back and forth slowly, indicating that they had indeed arrived on a boat, but neither of them said a word at first. They only took the moment to stiffly drag themselves up into seated positions.
“Keep it quiet…” one of them finally whispered. “Wait until the engines are running or they’ll hear us.”
The other one simply nodded. As it turned out, both of them ended up sitting there for nearly an hour before the sounds of steam being pumped through the pipes in the floor beneath started to resound. The engine slowly picked up in intensity, and not long after that the propellers came to life. Soon after, they felt the ship lurch a bit as it started to pull out. Nevertheless, both of them kept quiet until the ship had turned about and accelerated to full speed. True to being the leaky, rusted bucket that it was, it didn’t take long for the noise to become rather loud.
Only after it had been running for a time did one of them start to go to work. At first, she inched her way over to the nearest wall. Once there, she ran the bag along it gently until she found a rusty piece curled and protruding. She quickly hooked the end of the bag upon it with a gesture and then tugged and snapped at it. It took some work, but eventually she ripped enough of a gash on the bottom in order to yank it off.
Sunset breathed a bit heavily, much of her former anxiety as well as her lingering recovery striking her, before she looked around the “cabin”. Aside from a couple of fold-up bunks connected with chains to the walls and a tiny porthole letting light in, it was nothing but a grimy, rusty cell. She also saw Twilight was still sitting there with her bag over her own head.
“You can get that off now, I think.”
“What?”
“The bag on your head.”
“I can’t reach it! My hands are tied!”
Sunset exhaled as she leaned back against the wall. “Figure it out for yourself. That’s what I did.”
She proceeded to watch for the next several minutes as Twilight, looking mostly confused and overanalyzing the whole thing, finally began to scoot around on the floor back first and feel out with her hands. It took her some time before she finally found the edge of one of the bunks. Using it as a lever, she slowly manipulated her head down and around to the seam of her bag and used it to pry it off of her head. As soon as she managed to get it off, she exhaled and shook her hair, clearing it from her eyes.
“Alright…” She held her hands behind her, closed her eyes, and began to speak. “Member of-”
“Not yet!” Sunset snapped, so loud that she quickly looked around to make sure her voice hadn’t carried far enough to be heard over the engines. Sighing, she looked back to her. “Wait until we arrive in Abyssinia! Do it here and we’ll still be in Trottingham waters! And trust me, you do not want to get on the bad side of that new admiral.”
Twilight winced before slumping into a seated position of her own.
“And don’t forget, we have a deal. Any time you think of ditching me or turning on me, I’m the one who knows all about Celestia’s secret collection. I’ll only spill it once you get me my pardon.”
Twilight frowned. “You don’t really trust anyone, do you?”
Sunset eyed her oddly for a moment before scoffing. “I think that’s the dumbest thing I’ve heard out of you yet. First of all, you are the last person in the world that I would trust, and don’t think I’m naïve enough to think you’d believe in ‘forgive and forget’ after everything we’ve been through. I’m not that stupid. Second…” She began to ease herself against a wall after that, frowning a bit more. “Even if we didn’t have the issue of our past with each other, I wouldn’t trust you. Trust is for fools. It’s a fairy tale.”
“You really believe that?”
“Anyone with any sense does. There’s no such thing as trust; just mutual exploitation. Everyone always gets something out of someone else. Once that breaks down, so does their precious ‘trust’. Some are just more honest about it.”
Twilight frowned a little more. “You’re wrong about that. The reason we were able to beat Nightmare Moon was because we trusted each other. As friends.”
Sunset let out a snicker. “Yeah right… ‘Friends’. You had a common cause is all. Nothing more.”
“It was more than a common cause! When I ran back in to face you at the Castle of the Two Sisters, they wouldn’t let me go alone! They could have run and saved themselves but they had my back the whole way!”
“Really…” She rolled her head back and let it set against the wall. “Ok, Twilight. Tell me more about your special friends. Like how did you meet them?”
Twilight paused momentarily, a bit surprised by the question. “Well…um…the first one I met was Applejack. She let me tag along with her family when they were headed toward Fort Chestnut. That’s when her cousin went wild from his Promethian Sigil and I had to seal it. Soon after, Applejack got her own, and she…she…”
She trailed off. She realized what she was about to say, and it made her tense.
“Go on, Twilight,” Sunset smugly retorted. “What did she do?”
The woman didn’t answer. She hung her head.
Sunset smirked. “She wanted you to stick with her to make sure that she didn’t go crazy like her cousin did, didn’t she? She wanted to make sure you could use your binding charm on her if she needed to, right?”
“Well, maybe at first…” Twilight hesitantly answered. “But then once we were on the run we met Fluttershy! She didn’t want anything from us!”
“Fluttershy…oh yeah, the one with the special animals that she was keeping from being turned into Nighttouched, right? I’m sure she wasn’t hoping that you’d know a way to cure them, or that you’d be able to help her defend them and move them before the next surge hit.”
Twilight blanched again at that, but kept firm. “What about all the others? Rarity, Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash…”
“Oh yeah. Three people who had Promethian Sigils and knew nothing about them, but had one person nearby who did.” She leaned her head up. “One person who was staying tight-lipped about all of it, just like a good little student of Headmistress Celestia, but letting out enough leaks to let them cling to hope she’d eventually spill something that would guarantee they’d either gain control or keep from going crazy, right?”
Twilight twisted her lip uncomfortably.
“Face it, Twilight. I flaunted my status, but you never realized your own good fortune. You were a rare commodity all along. You’re one of the only people alive who knows anything about the Promethian Sigils. Right now, everyone wants to be your ‘friend’. Well, take a good long look at me. Because if you share enough of your secrets and something happens to take away your power, you’ll be as useful to them as I am. They’ll try to dispose of you like trash too.”
Twilight didn’t answer. She frowned and turned her head away, looking to the floor.
Sunset snorted again before leaning her head back. “This world is a rotten place and it’s filled with rotten people. All I ever did was try to play according to its rules and that made me the bad guy.” She sighed; her face sinking and becoming more morose. “Now I’m back to where I was when I was a kid…spending my life getting the raw side of every deal. I guess Celestia’s last cruel joke to me was leaving me the memory of all my power, then living the rest of my life without it…”
Twilight said nothing more. The two sat silently from that point onward.
“No… I’m sorry… I’m sorry…”
Twilight let out a slight moan as her eyes cracked open. The sun had long since set after she and Sunset managed to drag themselves up and onto the foldaway bunks to try and get some sleep, but there was sufficient moonlight shining through the porthole to provide at least some illumination. As a result, she was able to faintly see Sunset’s outline on the bench across from her as the ship’s engines continued to chug along.
“I’ll forget… There’s nothing down there…” she mumbled as she twisted and turned. Her eyes were shut as she did, and her voice was so muddled that it was immediately clear that she was dreaming. However, Twilight’s own wits were sleepy as she had just been roused by the noise, and she was only slowly becoming aware of all of this. She stared at her and blinked several times, her own consciousness coming up as she saw her move.
Sunset abruptly went still after letting out an inaudible mutter. Beads of sweat broke out on her forehead but she lay still. Twilight continued to fully awaken, but as she stared on at Sunset and saw her remain there, she began to think that it was over and she had gone fully back to sleep.
That was, until she suddenly went rigid.
“Ahh…ahh…aaaaaaah!”
Abruptly her eyes shot open as she sat bolt upright in spite of her bindings. The scream had been so loud that it made Twilight shoot up as well in alarm, for it resounded through the metal cabin even louder than the engine noise. She stared at Sunset, but the woman only glared forward; her pupils pinpricks, her breathing heavy, and sweat running down her face. She looked half scared to death.
Twilight was stunned at the look of her, but gained enough of her own bearings to try and respond. “What’s-”
She went rigid instead a moment later as a loud banging rang against the door to their cabin. “Hey! You two keep it down or I’ll come in there and give you something to really moan about!”
Twilight, shaking a little from the surprise, took a moment to swallow and straighten up again. Sunset, on her part, slowly eased down in her breathing. Her body gradually relaxed and she swallowed, but she continued to shake a little as she started to look around. She eventually glanced up and noticed Twilight staring at her, which made her frown a little before looking away.
“Stop staring at me. I’m tired of you seeing me at my most pathetic.”
“…Nightmare?”
“What do you care?”
Twilight looked back at her for a moment in silence.
“Was it about…the thing in the Northern Keep?”
Instantly, Sunset snapped her head back up and over to her. “What did you just say?” She scarcely kept it in a whisper.
Twilight swallowed a lump of her own, starting to tremble as well. “I…get nightmares about it every once in a while too. I’ve been trying to do what Celestia told me to do and forget it, but…every time I start to forget it I hear its voice again. Its…its horrible laughter… I never should have gone there. She told me not to. I don’t know why I decided to disobey her just that once, but it was the last time I ever did…”
Sunset, forgetting her own fear, turned fully to her. “Did you hear it? Did you…did you see it?”
She shook her head. “I didn’t dare get any closer once it heard me. I couldn’t have if I wanted to. I was terrified. I thought any second it would come around the corner and rip me to pieces. If Celestia hadn’t grabbed me and carried me out of there, I would have been rooted to that spot all night. I thought I was dead once we got out of there, though. That she’d throw me out of school on the spot. But she just put me to bed and told me to forget all about it. She wasn’t angry with me at all. She’d never been angry with me…”
Twilight trailed off at this point and looked up. Sunset was still staring at her, but she had actually formed a small smile. Now she was snickering at her.
She frowned. “What’s so funny?”
“You.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Well I’m glad you think I’m so amusing, especially when you’re relying on me to get you out of here.”
“No-no, that’s not what I meant. You just admitted that you disobeyed Celestia.”
Twilight’s frown faded. She was caught a moment, before she began to blush and look down. “I…I guess I did… But it was just that once!”
Sunset snickered some more. “And here I took you for some goodie two-shoes teacher’s pet. I can’t believe you actually disobeyed her. And about that rule, of all things.”
Twilight flustered more. “Yes, but…but look how wrong I was! Both of us are still having nightmares about it!”
Sunset shrugged. “Maybe, but we still have something in common after all. It looks like both of us wanted to find out more and got impatient waiting for her to teach it to us.”
Twilight nearly protested again, but this time she stayed silent and let her mouth slowly close as the same conclusion slowly dawned on her. Her face, however, remained blank afterward; clearly not certain how to react to that knowledge.
“Say…I know she taught you that binding charm. Anything else she teach you that she never taught me?”
Twilight snapped out of it when she heard that. However, on looking back at Sunset, she started to look hesitant.
“You might as well,” she shrugged. “I can’t do magic anymore. No harm in telling me, right?”
The woman hesitated again, taking a moment to muse over this logic.
“It’s not like I’m going to be going back to sleep again anytime soon. I never can after one of those nightmares… Besides, what’s a bit of ‘lesson swapping’ between two star students? She always wanted all us classmates to work together, didn’t she?”
Twilight let out a slow exhale. A moment later, she leaned back down on the bunk.
“Well…I honestly think she taught you more than she taught me, but there were a handful of things she said were special…”
The sound of the heavy latches being undone alerted both Sunset and Twilight to look to the front of the room, but both regretted it a moment later when the door was flung open wide and bright, clear sunshine blinded both of them. They winced and recoiled on their bunks, barely noticing the man walking in with a tin tray.
“Oh look,” a gruff voice sounded as they both struggled to squint and adjust to the view, “seems you two managed to get the bags off your heads, huh? Well good. Makes things easier.”
Both of them managed to look as he roughly set down a tray on the floor. They barely made out a pair of bowls and two cups along with them, both of which spilled a little from how roughly he deposited them on the ground.
“You two can make like a couple of bitches and lap this stuff up with your tongues then. Have fun.”
With that, he stepped back, slammed the door shut (spilling a little more) and then bolted it again.
The eyes of the two had just started to adjust to the sunlight when they found themselves thrown back into the darkness of the cell again, causing Sunset to sigh and lean back against the bunk. “Great… I’m not sure why I expected these traffickers to treat us with the slightest hint of human dignity…”
Twilight didn’t answer. Instead, Sunset heard a loud thump against the ground nearby. She looked up and over, and saw that her cellmate had already rolled off of the bunk and painfully to the floor. From there, she winced and writhed like a worm as she slowly turned herself around, before beginning to inch her way over toward the food and water on the floor.
Sunset stared at her a moment before shrugging. “Might as well. Not like this is getting any easier…” Taking a deep breath, she rolled herself off the side and dropped to the ground as well. It was a rather hard, rough impact, making her wince and grit her teeth, but soon she began to inch around as well. After that, she began to squirm after Twilight.
While she was still a distance away, she was able to recognize what they had gotten. Nothing more than a couple of cups of water and bowls of what looked like burned porridge. Despite her own hunger and thirst, Sunset couldn’t help but wrinkle her nose in disgust and irritation at it.
“Wonderful… They put our water in cups. We’ll be able to drink half of it at most before we spill the rest trying to get to it.”
Twilight still didn’t respond. Instead, on reaching the tray, she stopped. She took the moment to sit up again and wiggle around so that her back was to it. After that, she slowly inched her way back, feeling out with her bound hands and being careful not to spill any more.
This made Sunset pause in her own squirming. “What are you doing?”
After a moment of work, Twilight was finally able to grasp one of the bowls. Holding it firmly, she began to tuck her legs in.
“What do you think you’re going to do? You’re not going to try and free yourself just so you can eat, are you?”
“No,” she answered, “I’m going to feed you and give you water, and then you can do the same to me.”
Sunset paused, surprised at the suggestion. Twilight simply turned her head and looked at her. “Come on. Just get over here and get on your knees and I can lower it to you from behind me.”
Still the woman didn’t move. She just stared.
“What’s wrong?”
“Is…is this a trick?”
Twilight looked puzzled at the hesitation in her voice. “What?”
“I mean…I…uh…”
“How could I trick you with this? I didn’t even make the food and water.”
“Well…are…are you just going to dump it out when I try to eat it?”
Twilight sighed. “If I did that, then you’d just do the same to my food and water when you do the same for me. Come on. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
Sunset reacted at that word. “Afraid?”
“Yes! You don’t have to be afraid! Come on!”
Sunset’s face twisted a little at that. For a moment, it grew indignant and upset, but that didn’t last. Realization eventually came over her that fear was the reason she was holding back. As a result, she continued to lay there for a bit longer, wrestling with whether or not she wanted to keep going. Yet she considered her hunger and her thirst…
Finally, swallowing a little, she inched forward again. It was more slowly this time, and Twilight had more than long enough to get her legs underneath her and get into a standing position. Once there, Sunset came up behind her. She looked at her uneasily before she only slowly pushed herself up into a kneel. Once there, the bowl of porridge was right in front of her. She stared at it but made no move.
“If you need me to tip it or want me to go for the water, just tell me.”
Sunset didn’t answer. She continued to stare at the bowl. She did so for several seconds longer before finally inching her head forward. Almost as if it would bite her, she put her head out toward the edge. Putting her lips over the top, she grabbed some of the porridge and drew it into her mouth.
It was horrible tasting, mostly due to being burnt, but she forced herself to eat some regardless. She took a second bite soon after. By the time she got to the fourth, she hesitated momentarily.
“Um…tip it please.”
Twilight did so, allowing her to eat more. As bad as her hunger was, however, she couldn’t manage to choke down more than a little over half of it. The rest of it was fairly indigestible no matter how much of an appetite she would have had. When she finally ate as much as she could scrape off with her teeth, she backed up.
“I…guess I’m ready to try the water.”
It took Twilight some time to lower to put down the bowl and take up the water, and getting back up with her hands bound and not spilling it proved to be a real chore. However, the effort was worth it. Rather than having to lap at it, Sunset managed to get most of the precious water out of the cup as a result. It wasn’t the best tasting water in the world but, again, she couldn’t complain.
“Ok,” she finally said, “it’s empty.”
“Alright then. My turn.”
Twilight began to get down on the floor. Sunset watched her a moment as she got into position, then looked to the remaining cup and bowl. She slowly dropped out of her own kneel.
“Could I…get some of the water first? I think I’m going to need all the moisture I can get to gnaw through the porridge…”
Sunset didn’t answer. She was looking at the cup and the bowl. She stared at it for a moment before she finally sat and began to shimmy up to it carefully just as Twilight had. Her hands reached out and gently felt along, and after a short time they finally found the edge of the bowl. Moving past that, they went on and felt the cup.
Yet as soon as she gripped it, she hesitated. The cup was in her hand now. The water inside it was in her power. Lifting it up would be rather difficult. She’d have to move very slowly to make sure not to spill any more. On the other hand, it would be a very simple matter to just dump it out to one side. Let it fall and let its contents run everywhere. Claim it was an accident. Watch as the person who took everything from her and yet fate had left her completely dependent upon her go thirsty the rest of the day…
Her hands didn’t even make the motion to do so, however. Instead, they gripped the cup more firmly, and she slowly tucked her legs underneath her to begin to rise. Not two minutes later, she was helping Twilight sip from the cup.
There were no other meals that day, so both Twilight and Sunset lay back on their cots and went hungry for that evening. As the sun slowly went down, both of them tried to close their eyes and to go to sleep to forget about it.
It wasn’t easy. The burned porridge hadn’t settled down easily, but there wasn’t so much as a hole in the floor within their cabin and Sunset didn’t want to risk trying to relieve herself when she couldn’t move her hands from her back region. She tried her best to ignore it as she lay back down on the bunk and closed her eyes, but every time she opened them she was aggravated to see the sun was still up and only slowly setting. She lost track of how many times she checked, seeing the day give way to shades of red that only slowly grew darker. Occasionally, there was laughter over some dirty joke audible through the wall, but Sunset was grateful for that. It broke up the endless monotony as the only other stimulation was the ship slowly rocking back and forth along the ocean waves and the ever-present, somewhat-headache-inducing pounding away of the engines. Lastly, the memory of last night’s nightmare kept her awake, especially the thought of having it again.
Finally, the sun fully set. The sky turned dark with only a pale light from the waning moon. Sunset let out a long sigh and closed her eyes one more time.
She wasn’t sure if she lay there for hours with her eyes shut or if she actually managed to nod off once or twice. All she knew was that a feeling of motion sickness woke her up again.
It was a most surprising sensation, feeling her stomach dip like that. Her eyes opened up soon after. As she tried to figure out what had caused it, she became aware of several things. First was that the ship was rocking a lot worse than it had been before. After several seconds, she heard a dragging and rattling. She looked up and saw the discarded cups and bowls from that morning were rolling about on the floor. The rocking had gotten so bad that they were now sliding around. She looked up to the porthole at that, half-expecting to see the sky clouded over from storm clouds. Yet on the contrary, the view was still clear. When the ship pitched again soon after, however, a cloud of spray went up and through it.
That was all she needed to see.
“Twilight.”
The woman let out a small moan, but then rolled over and opened her eyes. Apparently, she had been lightly sleeping as well. And just like Sunset, she blinked a few times, but then began to look around herself. She soon seemed to pick up on the situation as well. “What the-”
“I don’t know, but I think something’s wrong.” She began to sit up and started to look around. “We’re rocking too much. We’ve got to be headed for rough water, but I don’t hear anyone on deck moving around.”
Twilight sat up and started to look around as well. She only did so for a moment, however, before her face looked confused. “Where’s that music coming from?”
“Huh?”
“That music.”
“What are you talking about? There’s no…”
Sunset trailed off in mid-speech, however. Now that Twilight mentioned it, she was hearing something faint from the porthole. It seemed distant, like it was off the ship all together, and it was so faint that one almost mistook it for a breeze. However, there was definitely a song on the wind.
As she listened to it, it was like no song she ever heard before. She couldn’t honestly tell if it was someone singing it, a group of people singing it, or some strange animal noise. It was strangely melodious and beautiful, and yet it was also haunting. Eerie. Even chilling…
“I think we should get out of here.”
Sunset turned to Twilight as she stood up from her bunk. “Are you crazy? We’re still at sea! We can’t run this boat by ourselves! Even if we could, we may not be in international waters!”
“We can’t worry about that now.” Her voice had turned grim and serious. “Something’s wrong here. Very wrong. We need to go.”
“But-”
It was too late. “Member of my house, I command you to come to me! Master of Sorcery—Starswirl the Bearded!”
Sunset winced and drew her head back as Twilight’s aura erupted, and in moments she was standing there in the full regalia of a Caster. She nervously looked to the door to their cabin, expecting at any moment for it to burst open and for the thugs to break in on them. There was no way that unique sound hadn’t resounded over the engine and through the ship.
Yet no one came as Twilight generated a fireball in her hands and used it to melt her bonds off her wrists. She sighed in relief as she rubbed both wrists in relief at last, then quickly did the same to her ankles. Sunset was still watching the door when Twilight came over to her and cut off her own bonds with a sharp piece of ice, but when she was done there was still nothing. Only at that time did Sunset’s unease turn to puzzlement.
“There’s no way someone didn’t hear you change just now…”
“That’s just it. I’m scared they did hear me change.”
Sunset looked up to her. “What? What do you mean?”
“Let’s just get out of here now.”
Sunset exhaled and began to rise. Twilight took a moment to look through the room, trying to find anything she could transmute into a wand, but the crew hadn’t even left them a spoon to work with. Eventually, she gave up and went to the door. Sunset couldn’t help but notice that the ship was rocking a bit more by the time she did, and that the song seemed a bit louder and closer. In fact, the louder and closer it was, the more she found herself focusing on it…
Giving up her search, Twilight went to the door. “I’ll just have to brace myself for whatever comes…” Extending two fingers, she used that as her focal point as she quickly traced out the symbol for fire and extended it against the door latch. A bright flame erupted and burned against it, and after several seconds of burning it caused the iron to gleam and deform. Several seconds later and slag rolled out from the latch, destroying both bolts and the padlock on the other side, and the door suddenly gave a creak as it was free. Twilight quickly pushed it open against a cool part and stepped outside; Sunset falling in behind and walking out as well.
They didn’t get that very far before both froze on the spot. The guard was right there, standing straight and tall. They thought they had to have been spotted for a brief moment, before they realized he wasn’t looking their way. In fact, his gun had fallen from his grip, and he was staring forward straight ahead at the prow. He neither seemed to hear them or acknowledge them.
After a moment, both women eased on seeing his lack of reaction. Twilight stepped forward and past him, looking on down the deck. Sunset herself moved forward and turned to look at his face. It was hard to make out in the pale moonlight, but it was expressionless. The jaw was slightly ajar and his eyes had a glazed look to them. In fact, in the darkness, his pupils looked like they had almost faded into his retinas. She hesitated a moment, then risked raising a hand and waved it in front of his face. No reaction. She snapped her fingers next. Still nothing.
A bit longer, and she even reached out and pushed against him. He shifted a bit, but no other action. Nothing except him staring there…and that song. That song growing louder and louder yet… More potent…more haunting…
Sunset felt her eyes drifting upward as she listened to it, before suddenly snapping out of it. She didn’t realize when she had started to focus on it, or when her head had started to move, but suddenly she found herself looking up and back toward the stern. However, no sooner had she come to when she realized that the guard wasn’t the only one on deck standing still. She stepped out further from the cabin entrance and looked up, and saw three different people were all standing around the helm, including the one steering. Each one was frozen in place. Each one had the same glazed look in their eyes. Each one was staring along the prow as the ship continued to rock and roll in the waves…
She turned and looked forward to try and see what they were staring at, but in doing so she fully faced the source of the music. Immediately, that was all she could hear. Suddenly, the rest of the world seemed to fade around her. The song was all that mattered. She thought she could make out voices on it, but it still sounded so natural and yet so inhuman at the same time. The mystic quality of it… The resonance of the notes… It was all around her. Inside her and outside. All she could focus on.
All she could think of…
“Oh no…look!”
This time, Sunset really was snapped out of it. She blinked a few times, but the world around her remained gray and disconnected. Like she was coming out of a dream. It took several moments before it cleared up enough for her to see Twilight on the prow pointing out ahead. When she did, the song was stronger yet, but she saw something else to capture her attention.
The reason the ship was rocking and the sea frothing around it was because they were headed straight for a collection of jagged, razor-sharp rocks surrounding a bare rock atoll shrouded with fog just up ahead. The waters were getting more shallow and violent, but the ship’s course laid straight in. They were going for a direct collision. There was no question that the song was coming from within the fog above it. As they drew closer it seemed to be radiating an ethereal greenish tint or glow from inside it. It became unmistakable in moments.
Even if certain death didn’t await them on the rocks, she knew right then and there she didn’t want to get any closer to that light.
Fear now seizing her and sharpening her senses, she spun around and shouted out to the helm. “Hey! You up there! Turn the ship around!”
The three didn’t even act like they heard her. They remained fixed in their current positions, continuing to listen to the song, and continuing to drive the ship onward.
“Hey!” Twilight joined in, running back up the deck. “Turn! We’re going to run into the rocks!” She ran up to the guard, who was just as immobile as the others, seized him by the shoulders and gave him a shake. “We’re going to crash! We need to turn the ship!”
The guard didn’t move. He barely even shifted his feet in order to keep himself balanced from the crash. Twilight’s shouts fell on deaf ears.
Sunset looked about only a moment longer before taking off for the rear of the ship. Fortunately it was rather small and she reached the helm in no time. She didn’t even bother trying to shout at any of the three rough-looking men staring agape at their incoming doom. Instead, she rushed over to the wheel, ignored the fact that the helmsman was still grasping it, and seized it herself. Quickly she gave it a sharp yank, trying to turn it.
Immediately, the hands of the helmsman solidified and tightened, becoming as hard and unyielding as iron. He locked the wheel right in its place, not letting Sunset move at all. She grit her teeth and dug her feet in, trying to fight him for control of it, but, without even looking at her, he made his own body just as hard and rigid and wouldn’t allow it. She continued to struggle with him for a few more seconds nevertheless…
Until she cried out as she found herself seized roughly by the shoulder by one of the other men. A moment later, she yelled again as she was violently flung away from the wheel and smacked shoulder-blade first into the railing around the steering column. She was still weakened, but even if she wasn’t the force with which she had been flung alone was painful, let alone her collision on top of it. She quickly fell to her knees and cried in pain. She struggled to get back up, hoping to try again…
Before she could, a fist connected so solidly with her head that she collapsed to the deck all together. Her senses went swimming as she sprawled out, and the song as well as the rocking ship faded momentarily. Somehow she managed to push it away, though. Lip now bleeding, she looked up, and saw one of the zombie-like men was now barring the way between her and the helm. While still staring ahead at the incoming atoll, his shoulders and hips were squared between her and the wheel.
However, Sunset didn’t push it. Instead she looked away and quickly began to scramble as far from him as she could. As she did she grunted and started to pull herself to her feet. She was halfway up when Twilight finally rushed up deck to her.
“I can’t get him to wake up! Even shocking him with a mild electric bolt didn’t…” She trailed on spotting her. “What happ-”
“Get to the tender boat!” Sunset cut off, finally pulling herself back to her feet. “Hurry!”
“The tender boat? But-”
“Don’t argue! We don’t have time!” She shouted back as she staggered forward, putting an arm around Twilight both for support as well as to force her on. “If we don’t run now, we’ll go down with this ship!”
“But…but…!”
Sunset used her hesitation to force her on. Her eyes looked up and ahead. The boat in question was on deck, just tied down with a few lines to keep it from rolling about. She practically shoved Twilight forward toward it, and as soon as they arrived she frantically went for the ropes in the back and started to undo them as quickly as she could.
She managed to untie one line before Twilight got enough of her bearings. “What are we doing? We can’t leave… I mean… We shouldn’t…”
“Just burn through the ropes and hurry!” Sunset shouted, looking up again to see their time. “We got to get in the water before…”
She trailed off herself. She had scarcely looked at the prow of the ship before she saw the vessel plunge again with the rising and falling waters. And as it went down, it exposed a massive horizontally lying slab of rock eroded down to a tapered tip; like a giant spear just waiting to impale their boat, and only seconds from impact.
“Oh no…”
Twilight turned and looked, but only managed a gasp.
Moments later, the vessel collided with the rock. As a thunderous sound of rock piercing and scraping metal resounded throughout the air, the sudden stop flung Sunset violently off of her feet and right into Twilight while the entire ship around them began to break and compress.
Just before the world vanished into the chaos and oblivion, her eyes looked into the green fog. She swore she saw the shadows of three gigantic hellish mixes of horse and fish swimming within it.
“And now, without further adieu, Ms. Fluttershy will be taking some of your questions.”
As the official stood to one side, Fluttershy steadied herself on once more being faced with a crowd of people, this time reporters as well as citizens, with many of them raising their hands. In spite of all eyes on her, she tried her best to stay calm even as her heart began to pound. Moments later she heard the fateful noise.
“Yes, you there ma’am.”
One of the civilians in the front row lowered her hand, looking somewhat uncomfortable. “Ms. Fluttershy, my husband’s sister developed one of these…these…Promethian Sigils two weeks ago. She’s been confined to the house ever since and turns away all visitors for fear that she’ll attack someone. Are you ever scared about the same thing happening to you?”
Fluttershy swallowed a lump. She nearly meekly answered ‘yes’, but paused momentarily before she took a deep breath and spoke calmly.
“Actually, I’m very grateful for this ability. It’s allowed me to help my animal friends like Angel Bunny, and it’s given me the ability to make a real difference in helping the world. I might even learn how to cure all of the animals that have been affected by the Light Eaters completely.”
The woman paused, seeming to think this over, before she eased back down into the audience. Mentally Fluttershy breathed a sigh of relief. The official looked over the audience again and picked another. “Ah yes, you there sir.”
“Ma’am, what do you think of the rumor going around that the reason there’s more of these signal things on people’s hands is because there’s a coming of Harmonium just around the corner?”
“Uh…” she stammered momentarily, before again swallowing and taking a deep breath. “That’s a very interesting theory, but I’m afraid that I’m not here to comment about that. I am only here to help people better understand individuals with Promethian Sigils, and how we’re not monsters or freaks but people just like you. And just like you, we’re trying to understand what’s going on in the world too.”
The man looked a bit disappointed at lack of answer, but nodded and eased down. Fluttershy almost risked a small smile at having handled another one. The official looked over the crowd once again.
“Yes. You there with the Fillydelphia Flyer.”
The reporter called on leveled a critical glare at Fluttershy, along with several around her. She instantly felt her tension rise just from that.
“Ms. Fluttershy, it’s clear beyond a shadow of a doubt that Trottingham intends to conscript all individuals with Promethian Sigils into military service for what is no doubt the next major military conflict. The attack on Manehattan proved that. What do you have to say about the alleged rumors that Manehattan is using this entire Manehattan Doctrine order as an excuse to easily do the same and to gain military superiority over all of its neighbors, including Fillydelphia?”
Many in the crowd lowered their hands and focused on Fluttershy’s answer for that. She herself swallowed and let out a tremble. Her knees almost knocked as her face paled. For a few moments, she flustered at the question.
“Well…I…um…”
Finally, her eyes glanced backward, to behind the curtain for the stage she had walked in through. She quickly caught a glimpse of an individual making a gesture and mouthing words loudly to her in an attempt to trigger a memory. On seeing that, her own mind clicked. Fluttershy looked back out and firmed up.
“Do you know what?” she answered almost challengingly. “I’ve been hearing a lot of talk against Manehattan over the past few days of my tour. However, most of the people I’ve heard that talk from don’t have any plan at all for people who have Promethian Sigils beyond quarantine or imprisonment. Manehattan was kind enough to treat me as a human being, which is much more than I can say for most of the other governments who have yet to follow suit. If other nations are displeased with Manehattan becoming a safe haven to all those with Promethian Sigils, they’re more than free to open their own borders to them. In fact, I would welcome it. Until then, I hardly think making wild accusations is a substitute for inaction.”
The reporter frowned but was clearly cowed by that, as were her supporters. A few of the sympathizers in the audience even looked enthused, with a couple even giving her some applause for her response.
As for Fluttershy, she nearly swooned in relief at having dealt with that, but glanced back to the side of the stage again at the one who had given her a hand.
Smiling and offering her own clapping, Rarity winked at her.
“I must say, darling, that was your best one yet. You’re really getting a knack for it.”
Fluttershy blushed and bowed her head, letting her hair fall over her face and pausing in her brushing of Angel’s tail. “Oh…n-n-not really. All I’m doing is just following your advice…”
Seated across from her in the steam carriage, Rarity let out an airy laugh and waved her hand. “Oh, pish-posh, darling. There’s nothing to it when you have time to think clearly about a well-worded and themed response. It’s the presentation before a live audience that’s key, and you absolutely landed it.”
“Really…I’m just glad today’s over already…” she half-mumbled, glancing outside the window. “And that we’re staying some place not so crowded. I don’t really like how most of the Fillydelphians were staring at us on the way in.”
“We can’t quit now, dear,” Rarity responded. “Thanks to you, I’ve been able to stay hot on the heels of that lout from Manehattan.” On that note, she began to reach for her handbag and pull out a list. “I have three names already. After tonight, I’m sure to find another stop on their route.” She laughed again. “This is almost too easy! They must have never expected a seemingly unarmed lady to go snooping about for their operation.”
Fluttershy said nothing, only continued to watch the world pass by. Although this area was still fairly well populated, it was also just outside of the urban area of a major city in Fillydelphia. Here, the larger buildings gave way to smaller ones interspersed with larger houses from the older and richer members of the town. They were just passing through a business square and into the residential street, and with the lateness of the day people were already thinning out although the sky was indicating late afternoon rather than evening. They continued to get the occasional dark look from a resident, but by now crowds were so thin and out from the major urban areas that most either paid them no mind or gave their carriage an indifferent look.
She muttered uneasily.
“I beg your pardon,” Rarity spoke up, “but is something wrong, dear?”
“It’s just…well…there’s still people out there giving us the…um…uh…”
“The ‘stink eye’?”
“Uh…yes.”
“Try not to pay it any mind. It has nothing to do with our Promethian Sigils; I’ll tell you that. If I had to guess, it would be because of the Manehattan insignias.”
Fluttershy turned back to her. “Manehattan?”
“Well, I don’t spend all day hiding behind newspapers without reading a few. National tensions are running a little high right now between the two countries.”
“Oho, don’t worry about that, Fluttershy,” Rarity laughed off. “Our countries aren’t fools. Fillydelphia still needs Manehattan for its economic connections, and Manehattan still needs Fillydelphia for its military. We both know full well abandoning the other would leave us an easy mark for Trottingham. We may talk a big talk and bluster, but our alliance isn’t going anywhere.”
Fluttershy said nothing, other than a small mutter that sounded almost like “I hope you’re right”.
Not five minutes later, they passed through a set of rather solid iron gates patrolled by what looked like Manehattan soldiers; a fact which made Fluttershy clutch Angel a bit tighter. Soon after, they went through a smaller market square before turning a corner for a carriage path leading up to one of the manor houses in particular. Not the nicest one, but definitely up there. Two stories tall with very old trees growing in a spacious yard adjacent to a thicker forest, and looking more rustic and homey than most of the residences in the town. It already getting ready to light up its lamps in spite of the early afternoon, and several Trottingham and Manehattan envoys alike were gathered in front of it; including the same official who had presented Fluttershy earlier. He was smiling and looking rather pleased as the carriage halted at the front steps.
Not long after, one of the envoys came and opened the door for them. Somewhat hesitantly, Fluttershy, still holding Angel, made her way out. Rarity far more readily followed behind her, but the official greeted the former first with an earnest grin.
“Very well done work today, Ms. Fluttershy! I think that was your best one yet!”
Turning a deep red, she shrank into her shoulders. “Um…thank you.”
The official looked up and behind her. “And many thanks to you as well, Ms…. Oh dear, I’m afraid your name has slipped my mind again…”
“Spade, darling,” Rarity answered without missing a beat. “Shadow Spade.”
“Yes, Ms. Spade. Your speech coaching has done wonders for this tour. Manehattan owes you a very great deal of gratitude as well.” He turned back to Fluttershy so that he could face both women together. “Now then, we are currently within the grounds of the Manehattan embassy within this region of Fillydelphia, so feel free to make yourselves at home and be at ease within the gates. This house just happens to be the home of the Manehattan ambassador, and since he has currently returned to Manehattan he has been gracious enough to offer to your tour the lay of the grounds for this evening. Feel free to help yourself to whatever is inside. There are three lovely cafes within the embassy grounds that serve both Manehattan dishes as well as Fillydelphian flavors, and since the wooded areas are in the interior this is a prime location for unwinding with a forest walk.”
“Um…thank you,” Fluttershy meekly answered.
“Yes…” Rarity answered somewhat more hesitantly. “Thank you very much.”
“Well then, I’ll be seeing you. Have a lovely evening ladies. You deserve it.”
With that, the man gave a gracious bow to either woman before replacing his hat and starting off down the trail. The rest of their small retinue began to unload their luggage so that they could park the steam carriage. Fluttershy had noticed the trepidation in Rarity’s response, but she said no more and simply set out for the porch leading into the manor. After a short time, Fluttershy turned to the road again to await the second carriage hauling the rest of her animals before she could do the same.
It was some time before Fluttershy had everyone tended to and unloaded. Fortunately, it seemed the ambassador’s estate had a place for horse stables that were currently vacated, allowing her to house the bulk of the animals there with ease. Angel alone accompanied her inside. She saw that the inside of the house was quite lovely as well. Wood paneled, rustic, well-furnished, and very new looking. The entire front spread out open wide with a staircase against either end leading up to the second floor, where a spanning balcony adjacent to the doors to several rooms looked down over a bannister on the floor below. The two envoys assigned to her were already making their rounds on the bottom floors, now that all the unloading was done. They directed her to one of the second floor rooms for that evening’s bedroom, and soon she was headed up and inside.
She had scarcely opened the door when she heard a humming from within, and on opening it up she saw Rarity just inside. The room that she had been given was rather spacious. Big enough for two separate beds and a full vanity, the latter of which Rarity was making use of at the moment. Fluttershy found herself astonished yet again to see she had managed to somehow either scare up another outfit or keep it hidden until then, because she was wearing something different from when she came in and was well into the process of making herself up and changing her hairstyle.
Having seen this behavior before, Fluttershy let the door shut behind her before she headed over to the bed that had her own few things nearby. “You’re heading out again tonight?”
“Of course, dear. I told you I needed to,” Rarity answered. “Tonight especially. I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to keep my ear to the ground on our trips into Fillydelphia until now, but here, now that we’re in a city that’s more out of the way, as it were, I believe that cad will be making contact with a member of the Horned Trip this very evening. With any luck, they’ll try to make the deal in the backwoods of this town tomorrow night. I’ll either get a more promising lead or perhaps I’ll be able to stop the exchange personally.” She let out a quiver and a grin. “Ooo! I must say, I used to abhor violent conflicts, but after everything I’ve been through this is getting me excited!”
Fluttershy, however, looked a bit confused. “But, um…we’re only staying in town the one day…”
“Oh, I think I’ve managed to take care of that,” Rarity responded, doing one last touch up on her blush before turning around and facing the woman.
“Um…you did?”
“Why yes! Well, it was that gentleman who greeted us’ suggestion, but I thought it was smashing and said you’d be all on board. Rather than moving on to the next town so quickly, he thought what would be an even better idea would be if you would finally have the chance to show how your power is nothing to fear by helping some of the locals.”
Fluttershy’s pupils shrank and she gulped. “Um…uh…already? I-I-I know we mentioned that we might do that, but…”
“And the best thing of all is…you’re going to be helping children!”
Now Fluttershy really did go white. “Wh-wh-what?!”
“Oh, don’t be that way, Fluttershy. This will be perfect! Fillydelphia has so many children that ended up getting hurt from Nighttouched attacks that they have a local hospital nearby that specializes in pediatrics. You just head over there tomorrow and work your magic, figuratively and literally, and I’ll have all day to take care of my business! No need for speeches at all!”
Fluttershy blinked. Her initial shock began to wear off. However, unlike how she normally would have reacted, she didn’t tremble or cringe. While she kept looking tense and fearful, her eyes drifted to the floor and stared at a spot on it.
“I mean, you’re so good with animals already. This won’t be any different. The children will probably be more nervous about you than anything. All you need to do is-”
“Why did you do that?”
Rarity paused, a bit taken aback to have been cut off. Fluttershy hadn’t looked up, but her fear was leaving her. A new emotion, one that Rarity hadn’t seen before, was starting to come over her. “I beg your pardon?”
Fluttershy breathed in and out several times before she swallowed. She suddenly looked up, and Rarity was nearly frozen on the spot. Her eyes possessed the same intensity as her “Stare”, or at least a portion of it, as she looked at her. And it felt like something was gripping Rarity’s chest and almost clenching.
“You scheduled me for this without even asking me!” she half-shouted. “I’m letting you come along with me! You don’t get to say where I go! Especially when they’re places I don’t want to be!”
Rarity was speechless. While the words made sense, to suddenly see Fluttershy revert to such passion, enough to where she was turning her own power on her, made it impossible for the designer to respond. She could only stare back, unable to look away from Fluttershy’s eyes, and make stammering sounds as she was unable to form any words.
However, it didn’t last too long. The woman seemed to realize what she was doing, and when she did her face broke. Her eyes became normal again, and Rarity let out a gasp like something had just gotten off of her.
“I’m sorry…I’m sorry…” Fluttershy quickly apologized, rapidly becoming meek and timid again as she cringed and bowed her head. “I’m really sorry… I didn’t mean to…”
Rarity honestly needed a moment or two to stabilize herself before she was able to offer a weak, and somewhat forced, smile. “It’s…it’s alright, darling. Noth…nothing to worry about…” she spoke a bit more breathlessly than she liked. “You’re right… That…that was out of line for me. I just…I didn’t know you had such strong feelings about that.”
Fluttershy didn’t answer. She closed her eyes and slowly exhaled, keeping her head bowed and looking away.
Rarity finally eased up and risked a wider smile. “I’ll tell you what… I’ll hunt down that official first thing this evening and tell him the arrangement is off.” She began to push up from the vanity. “I’ll do it right now, before he has a chance to make any plans. I’ll run him down if I have to.”
The woman sighed. “No…no, it’s alright.”
“Really? Are you sure? I didn’t mean to pressure you into this…”
“It’ll be fine…” Fluttershy quietly answered, sounding more resigned than timid. “I…I knew I’d have to use my power sometime on this tour. It might as well be now.”
“Are you absolutely certain?”
Fluttershy paused a second more, but finally nodded.
Rarity finally exhaled. “Alright. I won’t do anything like that again.” She reached over and took up a wide-brimmed hat she had hanging from an edge of the vanity, the last piece of her ensemble. She rose soon after, but kept the hat in her hands as she looked on at Fluttershy. “Should I tell your entourage that you’re ready for supper?”
She shook her head. “No…I’m not that hungry.”
“Er, not because of what I did, are you?”
“No…”
“Alright then. I’ll be back later this evening. You’ll probably be asleep.”
“Ok…”
Rarity gave her another long look, but finally put her hat on, turned, and headed out the door to the bedroom. Soon it was swinging shut again behind her, and Fluttershy was left alone with Angel once again.
The silence in the room lasted for a short while before the rabbit looked up at Fluttershy with an expression that almost seemed anxious. He pulled himself off of her lap and continued to give her that look after a time, but nevertheless she kept staring at the floor for several minutes. More than long enough to hear Rarity go down the stairs and out the front door herself. She let out a long exhale and looked up, noticing that the sun had lowered more and was now vanishing under the horizon. She finally turned back to Angel.
“I’m not that mad. I know Rarity meant well… I just…wasn’t ready.”
The rabbit continued to stare at her. After a moment, it poised and stamped a foot, as if upset.
Fluttershy went wide-eyed. “Are you crazy? I couldn’t do that! Not to Rarity! The last person in the world I’d tell is Rarity!”
Angel let out a noise.
“No! I won’t! I couldn’t! I…I…”
She paused, beginning to cringe again and wrapping her arms around herself.
Angel made another sound.
Fluttershy sighed. “You’re right… I don’t like it, but you’re right… But…but I just can’t… Not now… I just wish…I just…” She closed her eyes and cringed in a bit more. “I just wish I could go back to before this all started sometimes…”
Angel let out an angry growl.
She winced and closed her eyes. “No…you’re right. I might be nervous all the time, but I still like being here. I still like having…having them. Even if only Rarity is here I know the others are still out there. That’s the whole reason I went on this tour. But…but it’s not any easier now than it was then. At least I was in control back in that basement. At least I didn’t have to worry about-”
Fluttershy was cut off as a rather loud clamor, loud enough to echo through the walls, sounded from outside. She sat up in a snap and turned her head to the door along with Angel. A second later, the latter began to hiss.
Fluttershy herself stood up but stayed still a moment, until she heard the sound of the two men assigned to her. She heard both of them go into motion and to the front door. Another clamor sounded before she heard the door open and shut again, followed by their fading footsteps down the porch. A third clamor resounded after that, making her a bit nervous. For a moment, she hesitated, thinking of stepping back and perhaps even hiding under the bed. However, she swallowed and steadied herself instead, and, taking up Angel in her arms again, began to make her way to the door to at least try and see what was going on.
Very slowly, she reached it and grasped the door handle. As she turned it and began to pull, gunshots rang out. She let out a panicked yelp and recoiled, but in doing so she yanked the doorknob in such a way to cause the door itself to swing open wide. The result was the upper floor and balcony was exposed. The windows on the front of the building were fully revealed, but with the rapidly setting sun all she could make out was growing shadows of the surrounding trees.
She let out another panicked whine as she heard two more gunshots. This time, she nearly turned and ran back into the room, but before she could Angel squirmed loose, hopped out of her arms, and began to bound over to the bannister for a better look.
“Angel!” she cried, almost immediately clasping her mouth shut in case something unsavory had heard her. She looked around nervously for a moment, her body hesitating, deciding whether or not to make a move. Finally, mustering her courage and whimpering all the way, she put her head down and rushed out of the door to the balcony bannister. She reached over, scooped Angel up, and in another moment would have rushed back into her room.
Before she could, the front door flew open. She screamed and froze on the spot again, but got a double shock when Rarity came in almost stumbling. Much to her alarm she had activated her Anima Viri. One of her sleeves was torn, a bruise was against one side of her face, and blood ran down the other cheek.
“Fluttershy!” she cried. “Fluttershy!”
The woman stammered a moment, but got enough of her bearings to look over and call down. “Rar…Rarity?”
Her eyes looked up to her, wild and panicked.
“Fluttershy, run! Get out of here! As fast as you-”
That was all she got out before a force strong enough to splinter the door frame along with the door itself burst behind Rarity. She cried out in pain as her body was sent flying forward into the house and under the balcony, well out of Fluttershy’s view.
The woman gasped in horror, cupping her hands to her mouth. She remained rigid as the source of the blow slowly walked through the remains of the door opening and inside the room; transfixed in terror of it.
The figure itself was clad from head to toe in armor, but it wasn’t like any of the steam soldiers that she had seen from Trottingham. Nor was it like the armor that the royal guard had worn. It seemed of a more traditional basic plate style, and yet it also seemed new. Strangely new, and strangely unique. Like the metal wasn’t quite a type she had ever seen before. Neither was the interlocking plate design, which, combined with the close fit, seemed to allow as easy mobility as if it was fabric. It fit so closely that Fluttershy was able to tell, based on the figure, that it was an adult female. The only parts that protruded were around the wrists and about the helmet. That part was sheer and centered around a visor that showed nothing but darkness within. Aside from that, the only other things that stood out were strange etchings all over the suit like runes, and a headdress that splayed out like a strange swallowtail butterfly made of the same metal.
Scarcely had the figure walked through the door, her boots thudding loudly on the wood, when she stopped. The visor snapped upward and focused on her.
Fluttershy gasped and quickly recoiled. She nearly turned to break for the room, but her mind made her hesitate, telling her there was no escape in there…
Before she could think any further, the armored figure crouched and leapt. To Fluttershy’s further horror, she easily sailed off of the floor, through the foyer, and around to land right on the balcony a mere ten feet from her.
Fluttershy let out a panicked squeal as she dropped Angel. She began to back up as she shook all over, holding her hand up.
“M-M-Member of my house, I come to command… No…no…”
The figure, never looking away from Fluttershy for a moment, began to advance.
“House of my m-m-member…no, that’s not…”
The figure had already closed half the distance. Trying to speed up, Fluttershy only succeeded in catching the back of one of her feet on a loose floorboard and falling back on her rear. She continued to scramble back as the shadow of the figure started to fall over her.
“M…M…My…. Of…”
She was too frightened. She couldn’t even focus on the words anymore. The figure itself was nearly upon her…
Rarity’s voice suddenly cried the flame spell Twilight had taught her from below. In response, a trio of spheres of flame shot up from the floor below, striking the side of the figure. Fluttershy gasped again and looked over the side. Although she looked even more wretched than before, Rarity was standing up again and aiming a new rapier at the figure like a wand. Unfortunately, that single spell seemed to already be too much for her as she breathed heavily and let her hand fall.
As for the figure, flames burst against her armor and faded…and she didn’t even shift weight. As soon as the third eruption was done, she paused only enough to turn and look over the railing, espying Rarity from up above. Before she could make any sort of move against her, however, Angel suddenly leapt out of Fluttershy’s lap. With as much speed as he could muster, he leapt up to the nearby wall, made contact, bounced off of it, and went sailing for the side of the figure’s head; clearly meaning to strike a blow to knock her off balance.
An instant before making contact, one of the figure’s hands shot up and around and seized the rabbit perfectly by the scruff of the neck. Angel’s hind legs were left suspended and still extended for the figure’s face, before it let out a shocked squeal on seeing itself halted in midair. Without looking away from Rarity, the figure raised her other arm, aimed her wrist down to the first floor, and then let out a loud “pft” noise. Fluttershy caught a brief glimpse of what looked like a pill-sized capsule shoot from the wrist like a bullet…
Moments later, she screamed as a loud explosion went off beneath her, bursting forth enough to bathe a quarter of the lower floor in fire. Rarity, miraculously, must have known it was coming, because she turned and bolted for it, but she still cried out as she was flung off of her feet and into the nearest wall. Even so, when she collapsed to the floor, she was still dangerously near the fires.
Fluttershy nearly called out for her but before the sound could come out she saw the figure move again. Like he was nothing more than trash, she snapped her arm around and flung Angel behind her. The rabbit gave another cry as he went sailing through the air before smacking into the other side of the balcony so hard that Fluttershy heard the knock.
“Angel!”
The rabbit didn’t answer. He merely went limp and slid off the wall to the floor. Once there, he lay there…unmoving.
Fluttershy stared at this in shock for a moment, but only a moment. Her face changed; filling with fire and passion the likes of which her friends had not yet seen. Her shuddering and seizing ceased. Instead, she focused fully on the figure and nearly growled.
“How…dare…you!”
In a snap, she leapt up to her feet and held her hand in the air.
“Member of my house, I command you to come to me! Little Sunshine—Philomena!”
As the figure turned back to Fluttershy, her aura erupted. While her clothing was still transforming into a white robe, she reached out and seized one of the balcony posts. With her growing strength, she pulled it out in one stiff snap, and it rapidly turned into a staff long enough to grasp with both hands with a knobby, gnarled end. She wielded it in front of her like a club just a moment before she let her fury carry her forward.
In a show of violence that would have shocked her in a better presence of mind, she hauled the staff back and let it fly against the side of the figure’s head. Not stopping there, she whipped it back and struck against the other side again, and then a third time against the first side.
She nearly struck a fourth time, but as she swung out again she heard a whistling sound. The figure’s hand shot up and, quite easily, caught the knobbed end in her gauntlet.
Fluttershy’s momentary rage faded as she went wide-eyed, fresh fear seizing her. She may not have been as strong as Applejack or Rainbow Dash, but with her Anima Viri equipped she was still far stronger than almost any other human being. Yet her strikes against the head of the armored figure had done little more than dent and mar her staff. And right now, she found herself being held perfectly and easily with one hand.
A moment later, the figure clenched her own fist. Like it was no more than a handful of crackers, the end of the staff began to fracture and crumble into bits of wood in her hand. Fluttershy gasped at the display of raw strength and, as a result, failed to even react when the figure snapped the end of the staff off with one hand before shooting out with her other, seizing Fluttershy by the throat, yanking her off of her feet, snapping her around, and throwing her clean off the balcony and through one of the windows.
Fluttershy was still feeling pain around her neck when her wits recovered enough from smashing through the glass to see the ground rapidly approaching, right before she collapsed and went for a tumble. Even with her added power, it was still extremely painful; not the least because she had been cut several times by the glass on the way out even with the protection of her thick robe. She practically bounced once as she rolled a bit further before halting, but even then she felt pain all over and her senses were dazzled. She let out a small moan and struggled to look up.
Her eyes focused on the front of the ambassador’s house, seeing the bright flames from the fires inside shining through all of the windows. Yet she stared only a moment before a shadow became framed by the fire, and as her wits continued to clear she soon saw the armored figure hop out from another window and land on the yard. She began to approach her. Petrified all over again, Fluttershy could only gasp and whine as she struggled to get up and pull herself away…
Yet the figure only got a few steps closer before suddenly snapping around and to one side. As a result, she dodged a thrust from Rarity’s rapier as the woman lunged for where she had been. Nevertheless, she quickly recovered, pulled back, and got her sword ready. Beaten and dirty, and a bit singed, she nevertheless stood her ground.
“I’m afraid we aren’t finished, dear.”
Without another word, she lunged forward with another thrust. The armored figure didn’t back up this time, simply sidestepping her instead. When she followed up with a side slash, however, she was forced to take a step backward, and Rarity quickly moved in with more thrusts to the side and torso. Nevertheless, as she kept advancing and slashing and stabbing, the armored figure never lifted her arms. She simply continued to step back or sidestep.
Finally, Rarity drove a thrust for the armored figure’s neck. As expected, the figure rapidly dodged back, but this only made her smirk before shouting. “Lightning bolt!”
Instantly, a spark of electricity snaked down the edge of the rapier and struck the figure right in the visor. Rarity almost laughed at how perfect of a hit it had been, but she didn’t relish the small victory. Instead, she quickly reared back just enough to aim another thrust for the chest, and drove her weapon forward.
What happened next was so fast Fluttershy couldn’t make it all out, but what Rarity had been so eager to do after landing her hit had occupied her attention so much she failed to notice her opponent never balked at the cantrip. Instead, once again, the figure snapped up a hand. It closed in a fist around the tip of Rarity’s rapier. Instantly it was as if the sword was encased in cement, for it halted right where it was…much to Rarity’s surprise. She was left frozen in mid-lunge, stunned for a few seconds, before she struggled to pull her blade loose or drive it in. She succeeded in neither.
The figure calmly reached up behind her head with her free hand. She grasped the end of one of the “swallow-tails” of her butterfly-like array and drew it out. The sound of metal sliding against metal resulted, and both Rarity and Fluttershy were astonished to see a long, gleaming, razor-edged ribbon-like length slowly be drawn from behind her head. She continued to let it lengthen out for several moments, before she snapped her arm; instantly freeing a whip’s length before she brought it around in a crack.
Rarity cried out in alarm and backpedaled, but still held onto the grip of her sword. It hardly mattered. As the crack of the ribbon went down, it gleamed with a reddish light, and an instant later Rarity stumbled backward and almost lost her footing all together.
When she regained it, she blinked in surprise and held up her rapier defensively again…only to see that she only had half a sword. The severed broken hilt was gleaming with heat and she gaped as she saw the armored figure simply toss aside the first half still in her palm. With another crack, the razor whip was to one side of her, snaking out and gleaming with the same light. She reached her opposite hand to the other side of her head, and with another snap and a flourish, a second whip was in her other hand. Both seemed to sizzle as she faced the designer, and all she could do in response was stammer and shake in growing fear.
“Rarity! Run!” Fluttershy finally found the strength to yell.
Whether it was fear or loyalty to Fluttershy that made Rarity pause was unknown, but she hesitated. It wasn’t until the armored figure raised up one of the whips and swung it about that she finally let out a panicked noise and turned to flee. She only got three steps before the first whip lashed out. Fluttershy saw the clothing along Rarity’s back easily raked open, and a red mist erupt from behind her. Rarity let out a cry of her own, this one of pain, before she was rooted in her spot by the sudden trauma. Her stumble gave more than enough time for the figure to snap the other whip around.
This one, mercifully, didn’t slash her like the previous one had, but it still snaked out and whipped around her, lashing around her upper arms and forearms and binding them against her chest. It wrapped around three times until it had her seized, and with a sharp tug yanked her back to her feet. Rarity turned her head around in shock, trying to see what she was planning on doing, but she had no further time to react as the woman snapped her whip back and plucked Rarity off the ground as if she weighed nothing, hurled her over her head, extended her out to full length, and then smashed her body against the ground. She cried in pain from the rough impact, being left stunned just as Fluttershy had been.
With a single snap, the razor whip was dislodged from Rarity and seemed to recoil back to the armored figure. Yet no sooner had she gotten her free when she aimed her wrist at her again.
“Rarity! Get up! Move out of the way!”
Fluttershy’s alarm cry fell on deaf ears, as the woman was too dazzled to move. She barely even managed to writhe before another one of the small capsules was fired. It wasn’t a direct hit, but it hardly seemed to matter. It impacted just to the side of the designer, and on eruption the explosive force carried her off the ground and flung her body sideways into the nearest tree truck. The impact was so hard a crunch went out, and Fluttershy, for the life of her, couldn’t tell if it was the tree or bone. All she knew was that Rarity was totally limp when she fell off of trunk.
“Rarity!”
As horrified as she was for her friend, Fluttershy’s attention was diverted as soon as she heard metal on metal again. She let out another panicked whimper as she saw the figure was now approaching her again; menacingly twirling both whips.
She hesitated momentarily, glancing between the approaching figure and between Rarity. The latter needed help, but she knew there was no way she could get there quickly enough to do anything, and no way she could overcome the armored figure…
Before she could think of what to do next, the sound of the metal sliding and the crackling of fire from the house was broken by loud screeching. She didn’t have a chance to look for the source before it appeared. A swarm of five birds swooped down and began to flap and dive bomb around the head of the armored figure, in particular going for her visor with their claws and bills. In spite of the meager assault, between the five of them and their fury and speed, it was enough to stop her in her tracks. She slowed to a stop with her whips and glanced about in what seemed to be puzzlement.
Fluttershy, however, recognized the birds as her own. She leaned up, but continued to hesitate; not sure if she should move now or if they would soon be assaulted in the same way Angel had been attacked. A moment afterward, the figure began to raise one of the whips again.
However, the birds suddenly split in five directions. The figure snapped its head up, distracted by that, and as a result failed to notice the bear charging up yard straight for her. She managed to turn to it before it made contact, only to take a claw swipe as it reared up and smacked her across the side of the head.
Finally, a blow seemed to be struck that even she couldn’t ignore. Her head wrenched to one side as she staggered back two steps, which was shocking enough as the blow would have taken it clean off had she been a normal person. The bear bellowed in rage as it reared up, stretching over her, and then threw its bulk at her. Its claws slammed on her shoulders as it tried to wrestle her to the ground…
Fluttershy didn’t watch any further. She finally snapped out of it with this newest arrival and turned fully to Rarity. While still sore and hurt, she pulled herself up and quickly dashed to her side before crouching down next to her. Much to her dread, she was breathing but only in a queer way. Even hearing it made her cringe. She extended her hands over her soon after and tried to call to mind the spell that Twilight had told her…
A bellow from the bear distracted her. She turned and looked, and to her surprise the armored figure, in spite of being much smaller than the bear, was actually staying on both feet and wrestling with it. The bear lunged out and clasped his jaws on her shoulder region and tried to wrench her down, but not only did his teeth fail to find purchase in the armor but she kept twisting and moving around, her whips still extended, and prevented him from getting good leverage on her. The birds circled about, struggling to find a way to intervene but finding none. Swallowing, Fluttershy forced herself to look away. She closed her eyes and concentrated, and finally began to speak the healing chant.
She just began to hear the sounds of bones slowly rejoining on Rarity when she heard a loud metallic clicking. It was enough to make her open her eyes and look back to the armored figure, just as she got one hand free from wrestling with the bear and swung it to the ground. Another capsule went off and at her feet, but this time when it erupted it instantaneously blanketed the entire area around her in a thick fog; so dense that Fluttershy could almost not even see her shadow through it. The mist lingered around her as the birds and bear alike flew into it, and after only a second or two saw each of the five birds go limp and fall out of the sky. As for the bear, he slowed down considerably in his movements. His paws slowly slid off of the figure’s shoulders, and soon he was heaving and slumping on his own two feet. He looked like he was barely able to keep standing.
The mist began to dissipate slowly, but the figure didn’t wait. Leaping again, she cleared herself out of it in one nimble bound and snapped both of her whips. Swinging one around in an arc over her head, she let it fly with a crack across the snout of the bear.
That seemed to “snap him awake”, but at the same time a red cloud of mist erupted, and he howled in anger and pain as he staggered back. He nearly braced himself to charge again, but the figure quickly lashed out with another whip. This one raked over his brow. It made the bear growl and shake his head furiously before covering his eyes for protection.
With the bear thus distracted, the figure lashed out with both whips at once. One of them snaked out and wrapped around his legs, lashing them together. The other went around his torso and arms, pinning them to the sides just as they had been with Fluttershy. If the bear would have reacted, she didn’t give him time. Digging her feet in, she snapped back with both arms and yanked the bear forward and into the air. In spite of having to weigh hundreds of pounds more than her, the bear snapped back and past her body, and she quickly leaned in the opposite way and pulled the whips taut. Seconds later, she began to swing around with him, yanking him about like he was a hammer throw.
And just like a hammer throw, she whirled him about only in one complete revolution before snapping her arms down and letting him fly. The bear was sent into the air as if he had been fired from a trebuchet; hurtling through the woods and smashing into and through several tree branches before vanishing into the growing darkness. Fluttershy heard his rather loud impact moments later.
In an instant, the armored figure spun back around and focused on her. She gasped and tried to react, but the figure wasn’t “pacing herself” anymore. With a crack of a whip, she lashed out with one of her bladed weapons, and Fluttershy squealed as she found it soon wrapping around her torso once again. She hardly had a moment to even feel her arms pinned tightly against her before the whip was snapped back, and she was yanked up and flung right toward her.
She barely had time to cry out before the armored individual snatched her out of the sky by the neck, quickly clasping into a choking throttle. Fluttershy, wide-eyed, horrified, bound, and unable to breathe, could only hang there in her one hand as she glared at her with her black, soulless visor. For a moment, she remained hanging, fearing whatever would come next and helpless to do anything about it, knowing no one was left to aid her…
For what seemed like an eternity the visor stared at her without reaction, but finally the figure’s free hand snapped up and twirled itself around. The other whip seemed to recoil at that, retracting back into her hand until it was the same original length it had been. With a fluid movement, she raised it and replaced it behind her head. Immediately afterward, she reached out and extended her palm over Fluttershy’s bound arm…in particular over her Promethian Sigil. Fluttershy, too petrified to look down, only gagged and hung there, but she saw what seemed like a small reddish, purple, and violet glow emit from where the hand was. She feared it was some sort of attack or magic, and nervously waited for pain to come.
It didn’t. Instead, after a few moments, the glow died, and the figure’s whip immediately loosened. Her grip opened at the same time, and Fluttershy let out a gasp as she was dropped to the ground.
She landed in a heap, taking in one ragged breath, but then quickly reared up and scrambled back and away. Yet the figure was fully ignoring her now. Retracting her other whip, she began to walk past Fluttershy and straight for Rarity. The woman clutched for her throat and rubbed it painfully, but on getting enough of her bearings and seeing that she was approaching the helpless woman, she tried to call out.
“W-w-wait… Wait…”
Even if her near-whisper croak had been audible, the figure wouldn’t have halted. Soon she was at Rarity’s body and crouching next to her. Fluttershy struggled to scramble forward at that, desperate to do something…anything…to help her friend…
However, she slowed down and halted in confusion soon afterward. The figure made no finishing move or further offensive move. Rather, after replacing her second whip, the figure reached down and picked up Rarity’s limp hand that bore the Promethian Sigil. She held her opposite palm over it and, this time, Fluttershy saw the light emit from the bottom of it. Not only that, but some sort of lines, similar to the ones that were traced whenever they put on their Anima Viris, went out and etched along the surface of the sigil. It did so for several seconds, but then stopped.
As soon as it did, the figure let her arm fall limp, stood again, and then simply turned and began to walk away in the direction of the woods.
Fluttershy blinked, now thoroughly puzzled. She turned to her own Promethian Sigil and held it up. It certainly didn’t look any different, and she was still wearing her own Anima Viri. She wondered what that had been about…
Her thoughts were interrupted once again as she heard a pair of loud gunshots. She squealed and dove for the ground, looking up in panic. The armored figure had already gone a considerable distance, but she made out sparks going off against the back of her. They had to have been from bullets, but it was like they were shooting a tank. The figure didn’t even stumble as she kept walking away. Two more bullets soon went off with the same result.
Cringing and trembling, Fluttershy looked behind her. She was just in time to see the two envoys, both looking bloody and bruised but able to limp and keep moving, slowly stumble forward with their guns drawn. They fired a third time, but after that both of them clicked as their five-shot chambers were empty. They cursed soon after, but considering their wretched condition they couldn’t chase any further. That became even clearer when, as soon as the figure reached the tree line, she crouched and leapt up into them. She vanished once within the branches.
One of the envoys swore as he shoved his gun back in his holster. “We lost her!”
“Get the gate watch and have them contact the grand chancellor’s aide! We need to get to him before the Fillydelphians start asking about this!”
The first sighed, still in quite a bit of pain it seemed, but nodded and turned to do as he was told. Fluttershy herself was stunned a bit longer before looking around. With all that had just happened, she hardly knew what to do or where to go first. Finally, she turned to Rarity again. Swallowing around her pained throat once more, she crawled her way over to her. In moments she was resuming the chant of her healing magic again.
She heard more sounds of bones slowly reknitting by the time the opposite envoy managed to hobble over to them. “Ma’am? Ma’am? Are you al…”
He trailed off, but speaking to her had been enough to distract her and make her look up. She caught him backing away a bit fearfully, looking to one side of the house. She froze—thinking it meant that their attacker had returned. Yet when she turned in the same direction, she saw it was only the bear slowly making his way back to them. He was much calmer now, but also limping along, and she winced on seeing that his nose and forehead had long cuts across them from where he had been whipped.
He let out a mournful growl.
“Oh Harry! What were you thinking? You could have been killed back there by that dreadful person!” she called to him. “Look at your poor nose! Come over here and…” She froze soon after. “No wait… Angel! Where’s Angel?”
She spun back to the ambassador’s house, but by now, much to her horror, the bottom floor of the home was filling with fire and smoke was belching out continuously. Already, it looked like it was impossible to get back inside. Her heart seized with fear for a moment…
A rabbit’s howl sounded from nearby. She looked back to the ground. Much to her relief, she saw a trio of raccoons approaching her, and one had a somewhat dizzy-looking but otherwise intact rabbit astride his back.
She clutched her chest in relief. “Oh…thank goodness!”
Soon after saying this, she began to hear bird cheeping as well. She looked back over to where the armored figure had used her last capsule, and saw the five birds from earlier were beginning to pick themselves up. Apparently, whatever had been used on them was only a knock-out agent or drug of some sort. She let out a massive sigh before she let her hands fall.
“Everyone’s ok… I was so worried. I thought that…”
A small moan came from Rarity. On hearing it, Fluttershy leaned up again.
“Oh…I…I guess everyone’s not quite ok yet…or could be better… Focus, Fluttershy…”
Extending her hands once again, she resumed her chanting. Fortunately, she had already done some of the work already. And surrounded by her animals and with no more threats nearby, she was able to be calm enough to put her full attention into it. It only took about a quarter of a minute before Rarity’s moans became more distinct noises, and soon after her eyes cracked open.
“Ugh…”
Fluttershy cut off the spell and lowered her hands as she leaned in. “Rarity! Are you alright?”
She blinked once, slowly. “Just…get me my usual latte, Ms. Pommel…and I’ll be ready for the next wave of orders…”
“Rarity!”
The woman blinked again, snapping her head once, and her wits fully came back to her. In an instant she leaned up with a gasp and began to look around frantically. “Merciful heavens! What happened? Where’s that quasi-next-generation-steam clad figure? Did we win?”
Fluttershy quickly put her hand on her shoulder. “It’s alright, it’s alright… She’s gone.”
Rarity blinked a few times, before seeming to get her wits fully back. She looked at Fluttershy in puzzlement when she did. “Did you say ‘gone’? As in…?”
“She just left. After…after, um…”
“After what, Fluttershy?”
She looked a bit uncomfortable, but held up her hand with the Promethian Sigil. “After she, um, held out some sort of light to our sigils. Once she did that, she looked like she didn’t care about us anymore. She just walked off and ignored everything else.”
“Just…just walked off? Just like that?”
Fluttershy cringed a bit. “Well, to tell the truth, I don’t think any of us were really doing anything that could stop her…”
Rarity paused, before her own look began to grow uneasy. “I suppose you’re right. To be honest,” she grimaced, “we should probably count our blessing that she did leave when she did. I don’t even remember how badly I was struck but I’m assuming it was fairly severe if I woke up with you casting your healing magic over me…” She cringed a bit herself. “I’m almost afraid to ask which way she went…or if we should try pursuing her…”
Fluttershy swallowed a lump in her throat. She shook all over just thinking about that idea. “I…I…I think maybe we should tend to everyone who’s hurt first. Harry and Angel don’t look too well. Neither do the men who were with us…”
Rarity nodded back. “I quite agree. And, um…perhaps while we’re at it, we should see if we can do something about that burning house before it completely goes up in flames.”
Pinkie hummed to herself as she rummaged through the variously sized and shaped stones on the trail. Every so often, she would take one up, examine it more closely for a few seconds, and then simply toss it back and start rummaging through the others. After several of these stones, however, she finally picked up one that caught her fancy, and she beamed at it.
Immediately, she leaned down and scooped up some of the mud in the road leftover from the last rainstorm to use as a crude mortar, put it on the end, and then pasted the stone upon a stack of other stones in front of her. It was the finishing touch she needed to create a ramshackle Gaitian shrine simply out of local field plants, wildflowers, bits of wood, and, of course, mud and rocks. Nevertheless, it looked authentic enough. As soon as it was put together, Pinkie took a moment to smooth out her dress, wipe off her dirty hands, slowly lower herself into a kneel in front of it, and finally clasped and prepared to pray.
She just managed to open her mouth when a set of iron treads rolled by and obliterated the shrine in an instant.
Her body slumped. “Aw…”
As the first set of treads rolled on, however, a loud hand siren blared from nearby, causing her to look up. A moment later, she quickly backpedaled as the owner of a second set of treads, belonging to a steam mobile armor the same as the first, rolled by. Several Appleloosan soldiers were on top, swearing and cursing at her for kneeling in the middle of the road, but they quickly passed.
“Damn hunks of junk!”
Pinkie looked up at the sound of the voice, staring back down the road she had come on. She had been so preoccupied with her construction that, in the foggy remnants of the rainstorm she had trudged through that morning, she failed to notice that quite the crowd had gathered down the road. What looked like an entire convoy of horses and wagons was gathered with a couple of large tarp-covered wagons hauling hay up front.
Crowds of Appleloosans with pitchforks were working furiously with the hay, spreading it along the otherwise muddy and near-impassible road. The convoy behind them waited impatiently. A bit of a closer look revealed most were dressed like Appleloosan soldiers or militia, and they were armed to the teeth. Many of the wagons they were hauling were, in fact, pieces of artillery.
Pinkie didn’t seem to mind any of that. She simply lit up. “Oh look! Road buddies!”
Hopping up from the remains of her shrine, she began to skip back a short distance toward the Appleloosans. As she got nearer, she caught not only the one who had yelled but many of the others swearing like sailors as they went about spreading hay along the road over as many mud patches and puddles as they could. They worked at a rather furious pace, practically running between the cart and the road ahead. As she drew nearer and looked at them more curiously, the initial one who had been swearing took a fresh load out and spread it on the road while still muttering.
“…tearin’ up the damn road before we can get the cavalry on the move or the artillery through. Who in the hell do they think is gonna deal with them damn airships?” He threw down the last of his hay and suddenly snapped his head up to glare at Pinkie, making her halt. “And what about you, you damn fool? Sittin’ in the middle of a road when there’s a war comin’ on? You almost got flattened by those armors! You deaf or stupid?”
Pinkie thought about that for a moment. “Well, I’m definitely not deaf and I wouldn’t have heard that…and I’ve never been to school…”
The man groaned and rolled his eyes. “Just stand aside, would ya’? We’ve got a lot of ground to cover and not much time to do it in! We better pray that the road’s drier up ahead or we’ll be stuck out here overnight…”
“Ok!” Pinkie answered. Extending a single leg, she took a single step to one side, not even fully clearing the road. “There you go! Whatcha doin’?”
“We’re trying to get enough thatch on this road to get this convoy through without losin’ half the artillery. What does it look like? Now get out of here!”
“Ooo…sounds like hard work. Can I help?”
He sighed. “I already said how you can help…by getting’ outta here and not botherin’ us anymore! This is hard enough as it is!”
“Then can I join you?” Pinkie chirped. “Walking along by myself has been sooooo boring! Now I have all sorts of people to talk to!”
He let out a mutter as he went for more hay. “You must be nuts. In case you haven’t noticed, we’re headin’ into battle. And we have to be quick about it ‘cause Trottingham’s never pushed this far inland so fast. We don’t take advantage of this rain and get this artillery repositioned they’ll just sweep us with their damn airships.”
“Oh, I’m not scared of that! It’s really, really important that I head east toward the border! Come on…pretty please?”
His teeth grit. “For the last time-”
“Hey!”
The louder voice from the wagon caused both Pinkie and the man to stop and look back to the convoy. As the others continued to work, an Appleloosan officer began to walk forward looking crossly at both of them.
“What the hell is goin’ on here? Wastin’ all this time talkin’ when we need to get this artillery movin’!”
“I told her to clear out, ma’am!” the man angrily retorted as he went for more hay. “She’s not listening! She says she wants to help so she can tag along!”
The officer turned to Pinkie Pie. She cheerfully waved back. “Oh? She does, does she?” she retorted. “Then get a pitchfork in her hands and tell her to start throwin’.”
The man halted in his work, as did a few others nearby. “M-Ma’am? What-”
“In case you haven’t noticed, we’re beggars that can’t afford to be choosers right now. If she wants to break her back slingin’ hay on this road, well…I ain’t ‘bout ta’ look a gift horse in the mouth.” She turned back to Pinkie, pointing a finger at her. “You! You wanna come along?” She gestured to the side of the wagon, where a few extra pitchforks were still stowed. “Pick up one of those and start puttin’ down thatch with the others. Make it quick.”
Without another word, the officer turned and began to walk back to the convoy. The other road workers sighed and resumed their own task. As for Pinkie, she grinned from ear to ear, let out a little “yay” as she jumped in excitement, and then quickly ran as fast as she could across the muddy road toward the supply wagon.
It went without saying that it didn’t take long for the entire work crew to grow irritated with Pinkie’s never-ending stream of questions about what they were doing, where they were going, if they enjoyed their job, if they wanted to build a maze out of the remaining haystacks, if they had ever made mud pies, if they had ever made straw pies, etc. However, no one complained. In spite of her appearance, Pinkie easily had four times the strength of the strongest of them and her stamina never wore out. When the rest of the group began to tire, she was practically doing half of the road by herself. Thanks to her, the convoy was able to maintain a slow yet steady pace.
As hoped, the road did eventually move to a higher elevation and dried out somewhat, even when it began to drizzle again. It stayed that way for a good five miles before they needed to start spreading straw on the road again, giving them a nice reprieve. After another seven mile slog, with the sun past its zenith and coming down once again, the road leveled off for another three miles before it finally began to grow irregular again. This time, it wasn’t from rain alone but from heavy traffic. Footsteps, horse hooves, wagon wheels, and treads had turned it into such an immobile mess that they were barely able to keep going for an additional mile before they started to come across logs and slabs of wood that had been lain across the road to provide some traction. It wasn’t long after that when the convoy reached its destination.
Sprawled out for a quarter of a mile in either direction, Pinkie saw a rather sizeable temporary military encampment. Flags of Appleloosa as well as several of its divisions, including the Appleloosan Civil Defense Corps, were flying over it. Large tents had been converted into the best temporary stable the group could muster while others were pitching as many other tents as they could to store the munitions. Already, it looked as if a half-dozen convoys the same size as the one Pinkie was in had arrived, while more were arriving all the time. The noise, hustle, bustle, and occasional yelling of an officer with an order to bark sounded even over the slowly falling rain.
As the convoy drew near, the officer who had brought Pinkie in earlier stepped out front again. She held out her hand and began to direct everyone. “Alright, get a move on! Get those horses stalled and get this artillery under cover! We may need it sooner than you all like! Then get yourselves out to wherever the mess tent is and eat up! This is the last half decent meal you’re all gonna get for days!”
Pinkie suddenly leapt in a bit of surprise as the officer, walking right alongside her, slapped her hand on her shoulder.
“You earned your keep,” she told her as she spun to her. “I don’t know why you’re crazy enough to be headed toward the front line, but go get yourself something from the mess too before you head on. Don’t worry about not ‘dressin’ the part’. There’s plenty of civilians still coming in who haven’t got uniforms either. Just tell ‘em Lt. Mane said it was alright.”
The thought of a free meal made Pinkie beam. “Okie-dokie, lokie! I mean…” she immediately threw one hand against her brow. “Aye-aye, captain!”
“I just told you I’m a lieutenant, not a-”
It was too late, Pinkie was already off and running.
In no time at all, the pink-haired woman was mingling in with the rest of the soldiers and tents. A few of them gave her a look as they went along, but usually they just scoffed or kept doing whatever they were normally working on. A few muttered something about “scraping the bottom of the barrel”, but she didn’t mind it. She was too busy following her nose, and continued to sniff around until she finally detected the scent of food. It was definitely far inferior to what she had been eating in the royal palace. She could tell that much from the first whiff. However, the scent was still much better than what she got back in the quarry, where it wasn’t unusual for the family to season their thin soup with rocks.
The aroma led her straight to a large canvas covered tent connected to a trio of wagons functioning as kitchens. The area underneath was already filled with soldiers and militiamen, who were using everything from stumps to bags to simple stacks of cloth on the ground as chairs while they ate their bowls of stew. Grinning in delight, she bounded right up to the nearest unoccupied individual with a kettle and ladle at one of the wagons.
“Hello there! Lt. Mane said I could stop by here!” She put on a fake highbrow accent. “Might I have a bowl of your finest stew, madam?”
The cook looked back at her dully a moment before grabbing a bowl, practically slopping a ladleful into it, and then shoving it out. “Unless you think the finest is pork, beans, and potatoes, then no.” She groused before practically throwing a spoon into it.
Pinkie scooped it up immediately, but paused on seeing it. It certainly wasn’t the most appetizing looking dish. Even the beans were hard to see through the gravy-like surface. “I…don’t suppose I could get a side of bread, could I?”
The cook frowned. “What do you think?”
Seeing the unfriendly look, Pinkie smile faltered a little. “I…think I need to go find a place to eat my pork, beans, and potatoes.”
Still smiling, she quickly swung her legs up behind her and inched backward, making her way back from the wagon until another hungry soldier stepped in to fill the void that the cook was all too willing to help (likely because he was far less talkative). As for Pinkie, she quickly made her way to the ground under the tent, spotted the nearest dry patch of ground that had miraculously escaped rainfall, and then took her spot.
Several other soldiers were around her, many of them muttering to themselves or talking in between bites. Pinkie herself looked at her bowl one more time before shrugging, taking up her spoon, and getting a bite ready. Yet as soon as she tipped it into her mouth and swallowed, her lips curled, her face pursed, and she looked rather displeased with the entire affair. A moment later, she slowly put her spoon back and began to look around for signs of any rocks. She thought she spotted one near a trio of soldiers and inched closer.
As she got near, she began to hear their muttering more loudly. “Never seen ‘em all mobilize so many so quick.”
“Well, Trottingham means business this time. That yellow commodore of theirs… She likes her airships. Uses ‘em to drop troops right in the middle of a battlefield once she’s done blowin’ out a path.”
“That ain’t gonna work this time. We got cover of all this rain. They’ll have to fly in low, and when they do we’ll light ‘em up with the big guns.”
“No…you ain’t seen ‘em lately. They changed things up on us.”
“How do you know? You ain’t seen ‘em neither.”
“Yeah, well I heard from a guy who spoke to what was left of the Official 17th. They got new weapons or something. Big ones. That ain’t the half of it, though. The soldiers they got. It’s like they ain’t even human…”
Pinkie looked up a little more on hearing that, almost forgetting her stew.
“Why don’t you just shut up ‘bout all that? Ain’t no need to work everyone up on account of something you heard from a fella who heard something.”
“Well tell me how else they hit the front in four places and three of them just up and fold like houses of cards then? Even if all that stuff ain’t true, they can pretty much pour right into Appleloosa now and hit us high and low at the same time. If that ain’t reason to be nervous as a cat in a room fulla rockin’ chairs, I don’t know what is.”
“I’ll tell ya’ why it ain’t,” one spoke up with a grin. “’Cause you know why that fourth spot didn’t go down? Civilian Corps 39. And guess what? They got here early this afternoon.”
“Civilian Corps 39? There ain’t no Civvie 39th.”
“Oh, there is now. And believe you me, there’s nothing those Trottingham bastards have that’s gonna get past them. I was there when they tried to break past them. Chewed ‘em up and spit ‘em out like Old Hickory tobacco.”
Now Pinkie turned her head totally toward the three.
“That ain’t no big deal. Any Appleloosan can lick five of the best Trottingham soldiers in a straight fight.”
“Naw, that ain’t what I’m talkin’ ‘bout. You shouldn’t seen ‘em. ‘Specially the one in charge. Just leapt right in there and started takin’ ‘em down left and right like it was nothing. And these weren’t no small fry either. They were big. Burly. Like they’d all been raised on a cattle farm along with the rest of the steers. Big enough to fold a man in half. Didn’t matter none to her. She and the rest o’ them mowed ‘em down. She didn’t even use guns to do it! Or horses! Imagine that!”
“Aw, come on, you’re pullin’ our leg! There’s no way anyone could do that without getting cut to pieces!”
“This one sure as hell did. You know what? Ain’t you heard the news? All that talk ‘bout them people who can do magic tricks or what have you? What if this corps is a whole mess of ‘em?”
“Don’t start talkin’ like that! Last thing we need is a bunch of ‘em in this camp! They go nuts and then we won’t have to worry just about Trottingham cutting us to-”
“Excuse me!”
All three soldiers stopped talking and, as one, turned to who had just interjected into their midst. They found Pinkie grinning as she poked her head into their small circle.
“Sorry to interrupt, but do you happen to know where I might find, um…what was it…Civvie 39th?”
For a moment, the three just stared at her; none of their expressions looking too pleasant at having been interrupted. Then one of them raised their hand and gestured over their shoulder. “Last I saw ‘em, they were taking up patrol on the eastern edge of the camp. They don’t rest fer-”
He cut himself off, for in an instant Pinkie was gone so fast that she left nothing but her bowl behind, spinning in a circle from the almost superhuman speed she had displayed.
Pinkie, of course, wasn’t there to hear it herself. She was already outside the mess tent and charging along through the muddy rows between tents, darting and dodging around people, horses, and artillery. Even with the rain and clouds she still had her sense of direction about her. Her eyes stayed skyward as she glanced over the various banners and flags between where she was now and her destination, reading off each one. Some were well designed and others were merely paint on a rag, but she was able to make out the numbers.
Finally, as the path widened up near the edge of the encampment, she looked up ahead and saw one particular flag flying that had a crudely painted apple with a “39” emblazoned across it in green paint. She looked down and saw an entire group of civilian soldiers gathered together; some of them moving out to patrol with guns in their hands but many of them centered around one individual in particular whose back was currently to Pinkie. However, seeing that this one was wearing a wide-brimmed hat and had just a tuft of a straw-blond ponytail poking out from behind it was all Pinkie needed to see.
Bursting into a grin, she seemed to double her speed. She reached the individual just as she concluded talking to the others; causing them to break off from her. An instant later, she leapt in the air, extended her arms and legs, and landed on the individual’s back so rapidly it made her stumble forward in shock as she found herself wrapped in a big hug.
“Applejack!”
The shout plus the sudden “attack” caused several of those who were nearby to freeze and spin back, but none elicited so much of a reaction as the woman herself. She remained stunned only for a moment before she made a sharp twist and a turn—wrenching herself free from Pinkie completely. A second later, she began to reach for her side, where a fairly new claw hammer was hanging from one of her belt loops along with other field gear more typical for a civilian-turned soldier. However, she froze halfway on reaching for it on spotting who it was.
“…Pinkie Pie?”
Oblivious to the fact that not only Applejack but those around her had been going for their weapons, Pinkie merely grinned and literally leapt for joy. “Yay! I knew it was you! The moment I heard those other soldiers say they saw someone who was chewing up and spitting out enemy soldiers like they were Old Hickory tobacco and they said they weren’t using any guns I thought to myself, ‘Hmm…there’s only one person I know who could be chewing up and spitting out enemy soldiers like they were Old Hickory tobacco without using any guns…’, and here you are!”
Seeing this reaction, as well as the fact that Applejack had stopped from drawing her own weapon and was now looking astonished at the pink-haired woman, the others continued to ease up. “Uh…” one spoke, “you know this lady, coz?”
Applejack was still stunned for a moment, and had to shake her head to sort things out between Pinkie’s description. “Yeah…uh, that’s is…yeah! Sure I do! She’s one of them folks I ran inta’ Equestria with! The ones I told ya’ about that were with Twilight!” She turned fully back to the bouncing woman. “Pinkie, what in tarnation are ya’ doin’ here? The others wit’ ya’?”
Pinkie stopped bouncing and giggled. “Hehe! No, silly! The others are with you!” Soon after saying this, however, she realized the context of what Applejack had just said. Her face fell soon after. “I mean…aren’t they?”
Applejack grimaced. “Er…’fraid not… I was kinda hopin’ when I recognized ya’ that they were with you. ‘Specially now.”
Pinkie hung her face low for just a moment more, before brightening up and smiling. “That’s ok! I mean, you’re alright, aren’t you? So that means the others have to be alright too, doesn’t it?”
Applejack was quiet momentarily. “Yeah, maybe…” she half-muttered, before she forced herself to look up a bit more. “Naw…you’re right. I’m sure they are! We made it through and so did they! I mean, if we got blown all the way to Appleloosa, then I’m sure they’re out there somewhere too!”
“Whoa…” one of the others around Applejack spoke up. “You sayin’ that this gal got blasted halfway across Greater Everfree too, cousin? Them Promethian Sigil things really are somethin’!”
At that moment, Pinkie suddenly saw that same family member look down at her side for a moment before holding up her hand. While she was standing a bit far from her, Pinkie managed to spot the etching of an emblem on it.
“How do you reckon I could go ‘bout gettin’ me one of ‘em…what’s it called…animal…animal faeries?”
Instantly, Applejack wheeled around. “I told y’all ta’ keep that quiet!” she snapped, causing her cousin to recoil in alarm. “Don’t go blabbin’ ‘bout that ta’ everyone here!”
The cousin swallowed and quickly nodded, and Applejack took a moment to compose herself before turning back and weakly smiling. “Heh…eh…nevermind none of that. Jus’ yackin’ a bit. I guess ya’ kind of figured out I got blown all the way back to Appleloosa after what happened in Equestria. Well…seems I was in for a spot of luck, ‘cause I got blasted just forty miles from home. When I came to, I started walkin’ and I wasn’t more than three miles ta’ go when some crier on horseback came runnin’ around yellin’ that Trottingham was gettin’ ready ta’ go to war with Appleloosa, so as soon as I get back I see the rest of the family that didn’t already join the corps is already gearin’ up ta’ fight. And, well, uh…”
She began to look a little uneasy, but kept her weak smile.
“One thing led to another, an’…an’ here we are.” A pause. “I, uh, haven’t introduced ya’ yet, have I?” She turned and gestured to the one who had just spoken, an auburn-haired young woman with a kerchief clasped around her neck with an old apple symbol. “This here is cousin Candy Apples.” She gestured to the next one nearby, who seemed a bit messier and freckled. “This is her brother and my other cousin, Apple Split.” She gestured on to the third nearest one, one with hair almost as curly and poofy as Pinkie Pie’s own. “This here is my third cousin Apple Brown Betty.” Finally, she turned to one who stood head and shoulders above the other three; solidly built with hair the same straw color as Applejack’s.
“And this here ox is my older brother Big Macintosh.” She smiled a bit more, this time looking more genuine. “He ain’t the biggest talker in the world, but he’s swell in a fight and the second-hardest worker you ever did see, so that don’t bother anyone none. Does it, Big Mac?”
“Nope,” the big man simply answered.
Pinkie gave them all a wave. “Hi, Apple family!” She looked back at Applejack. “Actually, that’s kind of funny you should bring them up, because now that I’ve found you, I needed to ask you some-”
“Uh, Pinkie?” Applejack immediately interjected, sharply cutting her off. Her face began to fall again. “Could, uh…um…” She glanced about, back to her family members, and then back to her. “Could whatever yer about to say be, um…said in private? Just between the two of us?”
Pinkie looked slightly puzzled by this, but Applejack immediately rolled with it. She turned back to the others. “I need ta’ talk with Pinkie fer a bit. Why don’t y’all run along and finish gettin’ settled in? Then let’s all head to the chuck wagon in ‘bout half an hour. From what I’ve seen, they need all the help they can get makin’ somethin’ worth eatin’. Big Mac, I know the young folks are messin’ up their tent. Think a seasoned veteran like you can lend a hand?”
Big Mac hesitated. He could clearly tell something was off with how hurried Applejack was being. From the looks of it, it seemed like the other three members of her family were much the same. However, he simply nodded. “Eeyup.” With that, he turned and began to walk off. The others looked puzzled a bit longer, but then began to head off as well.
Pinkie blinked. “I was just going to ask-”
Before she could say another word, Applejack spun on her, took her by one arm, and began to lead her on. “What’dya say we talk over there in the supply tent, Pinkie? It’s a lot drier than standin’ out here in all this mud like a couple o’ pigs in swallor.”
Not picking up on her change in tone, the woman merely smiled back. “Ok!”
Since she followed along, Applejack didn’t hold her arm long. She merely walked alongside her to the nearest tent. Applejack pulled the flap aside and walked right in, with Pinkie almost skipping in after her. As soon as she entered, she caught the woman walking in a few more steps until she was well and clear from the entrance, and then she abruptly stopped and pivoted around. Her face had become rather anxious.
Pinkie opened her mouth to speak, but Applejack cut her off.
“Alright…I know what you want to ask me, Pinkie. And I wanna say yes. I may’ve had to agree to help out Manehattan ‘cause I had no other choice, but when I say somethin’ I’m honest about it. I always stick to my word. The problem is…I…I just can’t right now.”
Pinkie looked a little puzzled at that answer. “Um…I really wasn’t-”
“The whole reason I set out from home in the first place with so many members of my family was because we had to join up with the Appleloosan Civil Defense Corps to save the farm. It was the only way they’d let us keep it.” She let out a massive groan as she pulled off her hat and ran a hand through her hair. “Then this war breaks out with Trottingham just as they got a whole peck of new weapons to try out on us, and most of the rest of the family save for the youngin’s and older folks join up too. Right after the last Nighttouched surge ‘fore we busted up that nightmare woman. I don’t even know where they got the rest of my family. All I know is we’re all gonna be thrown into this war pretty soon.”
Pinkie frowned with a sad look. “Gee Applejack, that sounds really bad…but I was-”
“That’s why I can’t leave ‘em here,” she cut off again, looking straight into Pinkie’s eyes. “This Promethian Sigil thing… I still don’t know if I’m gonna go nuts or not, but I do know that I’m worth a hundred soldiers with rifles easy thanks to it. And you saw what’s goin’ on out there, didn’t ya’? With the rest of my family? We got four other kinfolk who’s growin’ those things outta their hands now too! One of them’s my brother! What if they go nuts on the battlefield? They’ll get shot by the Appleloosan cavalry lickity-split! Someone’s gotta be there ta’ tie ‘em down! I’m the only one strong enough!”
Pinkie was beginning to look anxious herself. “Ok, but-”
She was cut off yet again as Applejack leaned in. “So please…could ya’ just let me do this fer right now? I’ll head back to Manehattan as soon as I can, but for right now my family needs me, the farm needs me… Hell, even Appleloosa needs me. We got rid of Nightmare Moon and whatever Sunset Shimmer turned inta’… So can I just do somethin’ for my folks now with this power?”
Finally, Applejack was quiet. Pinkie was left standing there, staring back at her as she implored her with clasped hands. She blinked twice.
“Um…I guess so, but I wasn’t going to ask you to come back to Manehattan, Applejack.”
Applejack’s hands dropped. She quirked her eyebrow. “Uh…come again?”
“In fact, I’m out to help my family too!” Pinkie went on, beaming again. “I landed all the way in Mount Aris, and I got to meet Princess Skystar and live with her in her palace for a couple weeks! And guess what? She said I could bring my whole family and any other Gaitians out of Trottingham and bring them to live in Mount Aris instead!”
Hearing that last phrase seemed to catch Applejack, causing her to rear back. “G…Gaitians?”
“Yeah! We’ve had a really rough time in Trottingham ever since the Lunar Fall meant so many of us had to move there. They keep us all in special lots where we can’t move around or work anywhere else. Ever since we lost our rock farm back home, the family has been miserable. And now they’re saying that they’re moving all the Gaitians farther away from the borders.”
Applejack seemed to have been lost in thought until that point, only half-listening to Pinkie and instead beginning to look thoughtful. However, on hearing that part she once again snapped out of it. “Wait, wait… You say they’re movin’ the Gaitians that are livin’ in Trottingham further from the border? Why would they be doin’ that?”
Pinkie shrugged. “I dunno. Maybe they heard about how I walked across and they’re worried that more Gaitians will do the same thing?”
Applejack stared at her a second longer before looking at the ground. “I…s’pose they could be worried about them defectin’…” she said to herself, her voice dropping with each word. “Gaitians…”
“Soooo…” Pinkie finally finished, twisting her hands behind her back and leaning in. “I was wondering if you could help me get them all out of Trottingham!”
Applejack again snapped out of it, looking even more shocked than before. “Wh-wha…me?”
“Sure! You’re big! You’re tough! You’re strong! With you helping me, I bet we could charge right through the Trottingham army and then charge back out of it again! We could hop across the border, grab my family and any other Gaitians we could find, and then we could hop back and head to Mount Aris! It’ll be easy! And since a friend is along, it’ll be fun too!”
Applejack, however, looked hesitant. For once, her gung-ho attitude and tough demeanor was failing her. “You…you want me…to help you bust out a whole bunch of Gaitian refugees from Trottingham?”
Pinkie looked a bit confused at that question. “Well duh… You’re one of the toughest people I know and all, and I might be able to break in but I don’t think I can break out again. So what do you say?”
Again, Applejack hesitated. For a moment, a trace of anxiety lingered on her face. Possibly, as surprising as it was for her, even a hint of fear. However, she pursed her lips soon after, looked around once, and finally broke. At once, her face looked big and bold again as she narrowed her eyes and grinned from ear to ear.
“What do I say? Why shucks…I say bring ‘em on! No problem! Ya’ can count on me!”
Pinkie’s own grin spread across her face. “Yay! Thanks, Applejack!”
“And we’ll have the perfect shot at it comin’ up real quick,” she went on. “See this camp right here? We’re all gettin’ together to stop Trottingham cold in the next big battle. We’ll send ‘em packin’ and while they’re cryin’ home to their mas and pas, we’ll break through, get to your kinfolk, and then break on back while they’re still pickin’ up the pieces!”
“Hooray!” Pinkie cheered, before immediately losing her smile. “Wait…um…doesn’t that mean we have to beat an entire Trottingham army and fleet of airships first?”
“Well, we won’t be doin’ it alone. We’ll have the whole Appleloosan army and civilian corps backin’ us up every step of the way. And it ain’t like they ain’t licked Trottingham before. They just need to get back in the swing of it is all. ‘Sides…”
She smiled smugly, leaning in closer.
“When Twilight and the rest of us were together, we whooped Nightmare Moon and she was a crazy moon god. Compared to her, how hard could beatin’ up some Trottingham gunnies be?”
“Ok, that’s two cups a day for eight days… No, no…it won’t break down even that way. That’s three half cups a day for eleven days… No, wait…we can do seven eighths of a cup for seventeen days. That’s over half a month! But wait…if we do that, then we might not have enough strength to call for help or row to a boat if one comes by… Maybe we should double up after all. But we’re uneven…”
A loud groan came from the other side of the other side of the tender boat, interrupting Twilight’s train of thought. There lay a body covered from the waist up with a thick canvas tarp to try and keep out the sun. The end of it flipped up, just revealing the upper half of Sunset sprawled on the boat floor.
“You’re rationing the food again?”
Twilight grimaced, looking down at her lap. On one of the raised planks of the tender boat for sitting, she had arranged, several times over, neat little piles of the bag of corn meal that they had somehow managed to get from the ocean in the middle of the ship sinking. “Well…it’s not like there’s anything else to do. Besides, this is important. I got to plan to get us to survive as long as possible on this. It’s all we have.”
Sunset groaned again as she let the tarp fall. “Considering the fact we don’t have any fresh water? We’re going to die of dehydration long before starvation settles in.”
Twilight grimaced even more. Sighing, she took up the bag to start scooping the meal back into it. As soon as she was done, she leaned back and covered herself with part of a similar tarp like Sunset had.
The two sat there silently momentarily, hearing nothing but the now much calmer ocean slowly rolling about them, and the water lapping against the edges of the boat. A couple minutes of silence passed.
Twilight eventually broke it. “Did you…see things last night?”
“Yeah…” Sunset sighed in response, “I saw a boat get into a huge shipwreck by having a crazy crew run itself aground that I barely survived.”
“That’s not what I meant. I meant…in those rocks. The mist above them. You saw inside it, didn’t you?”
A momentary pause, before she answered more quietly. “Yeah, I saw inside it.”
“There were things flying around in it, weren’t there?”
Another long pause. “It kind of looked like it.”
“That sound they were making… They did something to the crew. They made them crash the ship. How?”
“Don’t know—don’t care.”
“But they made everyone on that ship commit suicide.”
“You really expect me to care that much about people who wanted to sell me into slavery, at best? Good riddance. Since you’re so big-hearted, you should be happy that we were the only people they were trafficking on that ship.”
“This is serious. What if they’re doing that to other ships? Those things had to be some kind of monster, but they definitely weren’t Light Eaters or Nighttouched. They would have flown over the boat and ripped it apart if they were. So what were they?”
Sunset let out a sigh and lifted up her tarp. “Look, you’re wasting your strength talking about it. It’s over, it’s done, and it’s behind…”
Twilight noted that Sunset trailed off. Hearing that, she began to pull aside her tarp as well. “What is it?” she asked as she got her head free. “Do you see a…boat…?”
As soon as her eyes were looking back out at the ocean, Twilight trailed off as well. The waters of the sea had been clear and void of any other presence not long ago. But either a lot more time had passed than either of them realized, or the ship they were now looking at was far, far faster than it appeared.
Pulling slowly up alongside the tender boat was an archaic, crude, wooden sloop with a structure not from anywhere near Greater Everfree. Standing on the deck as still as statues, staring at them with expressionless faces, were a trio of individuals with skin far darker than their own in clothing from the southern portion of Lesser Everfree.
The two ladies stared silently back, so taken aback by them being there that they forgot to even cry out to them for help.
Even long after both ladies were on board, their boat was tied to the side of the ship, and the sails were fully unfurled to carry them onward again, Twilight and Sunset were greeted with nothing but stares and silence. They were on one side of the sloop now, facing off against the three men on the other. Aside from the moments when they tended the boat or adjusted the sail or steering to make sure they were still headed in the right direction, they never looked away. None of them made a move on the two of them, but the silent staring was more than enough to leave the two uneasy. As time wore on, in spite of the fact they had been plucked from the ocean, they began to wonder if they were better off there.
At length, Sunset spoke up to Twilight. “Why don’t you say something to them?”
Twilight, looking just as uneasy and not turning away, answered. “What’s wrong with you saying something?”
Sunset grimaced uncomfortably. She stared back at the three with a touch of growing unease before she finally raised a hand and gave a feeble wave. “Uh…hi.”
No response other than staring.
“Thanks for…saving us.”
No response.
A longer pause, before a touch of confusion. “Can…the three of you understand me?”
Still no answer.
“They might not be able to answer us,” Twilight finally spoke up. “From the looks of the boat and how they’re dressing, I think they’re from Zebrabwie. The native tongue there is pretty different from the main one for Greater Everfree. It’s hard to make the transition.”
At once, Sunset’s eyes narrowed as she gave Twilight a glare. “…Why didn’t you mention that before I started babbling to them like an idiot? I don’t suppose you can talk to them, can you?”
She shook her head. “I tried learning the click-tongue method a couple years ago, but I never could get it down. I think I can manage ‘cat’, ‘dog’, and ‘tree’. I’m not sure saying any of that will help us…”
“Great…so we have no idea what they even want from us. For all we know they pulled us out of the ocean to take us to shore, sell us to someone themselves, or slice us into pieces and use us for chum.”
“If it makes you feel any better, I think if they wanted to kill us, they would have done it while we were still on the boat before bringing our bodies on board.”
“It doesn’t.”
If Twilight had a response to that, she never had a chance to get it out. At that moment, a voice from the opening into the topside cabin echoed out over the deck.
“Pair of castaways from the sea…I bid you now come stand before me.”
Both Sunset and Twilight were taken aback yet again. The voice spoke clearly enough in spite of having a Zebrabwie accent, but it was also resounding and smooth. Definitely female from the tone, and it spoke melodiously like it was saying a bit of verse rather than simply calling out. It left both women surprised.
“So…there’s a fourth person here?” Sunset finally asked aloud.
“Do you think she’s, um…the captain?” Twilight ventured.
“I own this boat,” the voice responded, causing both women to nearly jump again, “that much is true. Now let me get a good look at you two.”
Sunset noticed the rhyme once again. “Well, she speaks our language, whoever she is. And she understands us too. But why is she talking like that?”
Twilight thought for a moment. “I…think I recall reading somewhere that most Zebrabwians who learn Everfreen ended up doing so through literature classes that were heavily into poetry. It led many of them to believe that’s how people from Greater Everfree prefer to be spoken to.”
“Well for me it just creeps me out. What do we do?”
Twilight shrugged and began to step forward. “Do what she says, I guess.”
“You sure that’s safe?”
“Well, they did save us, and if they want to do something to us we don’t have many options to get around it. What else are we going to do? Stand on the deck for who knows how long?”
Sunset sighed, but couldn’t argue with the logic. She frowned but began to walk after Twilight as she headed for the opening. The sloop had no doors, but there was a dark aperture ahead that was half-recessed into the deck, such that one had to step down a bit to get into it. It had no covering except for a length of cloth stretched in front of it. Twilight reached it first, took a deep breath, and stepped down and inside. Sunset hesitated even longer, taking an even deeper breath, but followed suit.
Considering the fact that they had both been out in the bright sun for most of the day, at first all the two of them could see was a mostly dark chamber. As their eyes adjusted to the window slots allowing natural sunlight in, however, both were taken aback yet again. It was like no ship’s interior that either of them had ever seen. It looked more like a folk magician’s place of “work”, so to speak. Various masks with an assortment of strange and even grotesque expressions were along the walls for decoration, along with various bottles and jars. Some were glass, but for the life of them neither woman would have known what was inside of them. A few books were mingled here and there, but most of them were old and falling apart from excessive use, and the entire chamber had a musty, odd aroma about it.
Most of the scent had to be coming from the center of the room, where, in a specially fitted iron grating in the floor, there was actually a hot coal pit keeping what looked like a cauldron in a constant boil. An especially pungent scent was arising from that. Seated behind it, looking over the odd, multicolored surface and over what seemed like leaves bobbing on it, was an older woman. She held her head high and her neck straight as she sat there, although they weren’t sure if they were just imagining how high she was holding it as she wore several golden-colored bands around it, and it served to give an optical illusion of a higher neckline. Similar bands were around one arm. Large hooped earrings hung from either ear lobe, almost enough to stretch them downward, and her hair, white and black striped, was arranged in a mohawk.
Even considering the time it took their eyes to clear, and in spite of the fact she had been the one who had called them in, the woman didn’t seem to notice them at first. She was preoccupied with her cauldron. Every so often, she would reach up with some sort of stirring tool and shift it about, in particular the leaves on the surface, but do no more. Nevertheless, the two only went in a short distance before stopping and waited there. They looked around the chamber a little as the silence lingered even after their eyes cleared.
After a time, the woman looked up at them. Her face was not particularly friendly. In fact, it seemed only slightly less cold than the men outside. She raised an eyebrow. “What odd forms an omen takes. How unassuming you be…for what may be my mistakes.”
Sunset could only stare back in confusion. “Uh…”
“Wow,” Twilight remarked, both in regards to her as well as the environment, “Pardon me for asking, but…but are you a real Zebrabwian shaman?”
Sunset turned to her. “A what?”
“A mystic from Zebrabwie. Celestia told me some of them had unusual powers even for people who went to her academy. They could do some things even beyond the scope of magic.” She turned to her in some puzzlement. “Didn’t she tell you about that in her tutorials on unusual races?”
Sunset grimaced and crossed her arms. “I was mostly worried about magic users on Greater Everfree. I didn’t want to waste time on ones half a world away. Someone like her can use magic too?”
Twilight winced a little. “Er…not exactly. Not spells like we know them. They have some special techniques that we don’t, however. Divination is a big one.”
“You know something of me?” the woman spoke up, getting the attention of the women again. “You two are quite shrewd. Yet talking of me as if I’m not here is just rude.”
Twilight and Sunset both winced a little. “Um…sorry about that. I just got carried away. It’s…it’s, well, just my first time seeing one of you in real life. To be honest, I’m a little curious about you. And, um…” she glanced about the room again, “uh…what you’re up to.”
The woman stared back unchanging for a moment.
“Zecora is my name. A shaman I be sincere. That, however, is not why I called you two here. From the ocean I bid my shipmates you two to pluck, but do not think that I came across you by luck.”
“Wait, you were coming out after us?” Sunset spoke up. “Why? You definitely don’t look the type that would be working with Trottingham or that Virgo guy.”
“On my morning rituals, I was struck with a vision,” she continued, her voice deepening and growing in volume. “One that compelled me to come to a decision. Never before felt I an aura of such force. It took me no time at all to have the ship change course. What more, the omen was quickly made true. I was shown to get two ladies, and I quickly found you.”
Sunset only looked confused at this. “Are you saying that when you were…” She glanced around the room, and made a roundabout gesture with one hands. “…doing…whatever it is you do in here all day, that you got some sort of vision about us that told you to come get us?”
“That must have been some of the Zebrabwian divination!” Twilight immediately exclaimed, only to look confused herself. “But wait… I thought that was only supposed to be general fortune telling and questions about seasons. I didn’t think it was supposed to be that specific…”
“My art is far more than mere fortune telling,” Zecora answered, “and I see more than what this year’s weather is foretelling. This vision, however, was never before seen.” Her voice lowered again. “The clarity…the vivacity…like it has never been. It was as if I was there; already acting. ‘Why?’ is the question since then I’ve been asking. Now that you stand before me, though, the answer is clear.”
She fixed them both in her gaze. Her eyes widened enough for them both to see the blue-green colors in them, yet at that moment they both seemed to shimmer like the gold she wore for just a brief second.
“Powerful and dread omens hang about you, I fear.”
Now both women looked very confused…to say nothing of a little unnerved at the way the woman said that. She did not change however. Only held for a bit before leaning back and beckoning.
“Come closer, you two. Have a peek at my brew.”
They hesitated. Sunset found herself looking to Twilight and vice versa, actually silently consulting each other to see if they should try it. At length, however, they both turned forward and, rather hesitantly, did as they were told. They walked right up to the cauldron, or, rather, as close as they dared before the smell became a bit too much for them.
Zecora reached for the side when they did. When she came up, she had a fistful of the leaves, and spread them along the top of the concoction. “A sign hangs upon one of you two.” That done, she reached up with her other hand, revealing a small vial of liquid. She immediately poured it inside. “Black is the color; very dark is the hue.”
The moment she poured the substance onto the cauldron, it reacted with what was already in there; causing it to belch forth a cloud of thick smoke. Soon it was billowing up so rapidly and dark that Zecora was obscured behind it, and the two women covered their noses and found themselves leaning back. They nearly raised their hands to wave it away, when they paused.
Although it seemed to be only a cloud of vapor at first, now that they looked into it, they began to see the clouds condense. At first, it seemed to be only an illusion or a trick of the eye, but as they stared longer it was unmistakable. The cloud was filled with shapes. All of them were somewhat oval, but bulging on the bottom. And they had indentations in the center, while the bases were irregular and jagged. Staring a bit longer, their form became clear to them.
Human skulls. The cloud was forming into a cluster of them.
Zecora’s voice sounded again…deeper this time, yet with great strain and mounting anxiety. It sounded almost breathless. Almost hollow.
“Death hangs about you, gruesome and foul. Blood and destruction; misery doth howl. Never before in all the times I did brew have I seen such an aura as dark as on you. It shakes me to my bones, my face it does pale, when I think of the tears and the cries you’ll make wail.”
The two women, struck by the gravity of her voice, were left standing silently for several moments. After a time, though, Sunset simply frowned and crossed her arms. “I don’t think I did all that much, but thank you so much for the ‘flattery’.”
Twilight turned to her. “Huh?”
She rolled her eyes. “She’s talking about me, obviously. All the stuff I did because of working with Trottingham, remember?”
“This is not the past.”
Zecora’s voice had such an edge on it that it almost seemed to stick both women. They turned back to her, just as the vapors finally cleared enough to see her face and eyes once again.
“My cauldron lacks that power. What you are seeing now will unfold yet on some future hour. Whoever you are and what you’ve done until now…it’s nothing compared to what’s coming, I vow.”
Again the two were rendered mute, and now even Sunset began to look a little uneasy. They glanced to one another again, and then back to her. By now the vapors were nearly clear, but Zecora was staring at them more intensely than ever. Her voice dropped to its lowest yet.
“Young ladies, if this was all there was about thee, rest assured…you’d have both been cast back into the sea. This portent is so dread, this sign so gray, the blood of two women is a small price to pay.”
Now both women began to look downright uncomfortable. Twilight swallowed a bit of a lump. Sunset started to regard Zecora with a touch of fear, and her body visibly began to tense up. Before she could make a move, Twilight nervously spoke up again. “I might regret asking this, but…why did you help us then?”
Zecora kept staring for a moment of silence. Her hand moved and picked up a second vial, this one with a more pinkish liquid inside it. She dumped it into the cauldron just as the previous smoke finished fading.
A second cloud billowed up in place of the first. It was as thick and opaque as before, but this one formed quite a different image. The center of it rose straight out and split and branched, while the clouds around it remained low until they were to the edge of the cauldron before curling up. These bits of vapor became covered with bumps all over them, until it looked like a great multitude of people all gathered around the center. As for the center itself, the oddly shaped bits of vapor seemed to form into a pair of individuals. One looked like they were kneeling down and almost falling, while the other looked like they were reaching out to help them up.
“A second omen, this I see. Far gentler, kinder, and tinged with mercy. In days to come, perhaps years I have wagered, you will meet with someone who’s life is endangered. By saving this one, who otherwise would have died, you’ll save many whose fates with theirs is allied.”
Both Twilight and Sunset stared again at this latest image of vapor, as it slowly faded away once again. Zecora, on her part, finally eased and leaned back. “So you see, if I had left you both out to drown, then it would be the fate of millions let down. And since my own head might be on that block, I chose to risk fate…and have this small talk.”
Twilight was open-mouthed a bit longer before blinking. “Let me see if I get this straight… You’re saying there’s a second omen on us, and this one says that one of us is going to save someone who’s going to save a bunch of other people who’ll die otherwise?” She paused, glancing to Sunset, who was still looking uneasy and growing uneasier yet, before looking back. “But…which one of us?”
“An omen only ever speaks of one.” Zecora simply answered. She crossed her arms, her eyes now beginning to go from one to another in front of her. “Which of you two is this? Quite the conundrum…”
Silence once again hung over the cabin. Zecora continued to study the two of them while Twilight looked rather uncomfortable. However, Sunset was far more so. She continued to grow more uneasy, looking between Zecora and Twilight. She nearly began to take a step back…but before she could she frowned and balled her hands into fists.
“You know what I think? Neither…because this is a bunch of smoke, mirrors, and garbage,” she spat angrily.
“Sunset-”
“Don’t start!” she practically yelled. “What would this witch doctor know about the future? Just from dumping a bunch of rotten smelling stuff into a big cauldron like she can just conjure it up? Come on, use that brain of yours you supposedly have! If she could just whip up stuff like that, everyone in the world would be crawling to her for lottery tickets and international advice!”
Zecora said nothing and showed nothing; simply kept her arms crossed and stared at Sunset. Twilight, on her part, couldn’t help but look more uneasy before she turned fully to her. She began to reach out. “Look, just…just calm down, will-”
“You stay away from me!” she snapped, taking two steps away from her. “And don’t even think about starting to call on your Anima Viri around me!”
Twilight went wide-eyed. “Sunset…don’t mention that around-”
“I don’t care about that! All I care about is you keeping your distance!” She wheeled on Zecora. “And that goes for you and your crew! Get this straight! As soon as I have my pardon, I’m going to spend the rest of my days in a country house a thousand miles away from the nearest Nighttouched. No rescuing people…no aimless death and destruction…none of that! So your little ‘prophecy’ is full of crap! This goodie two-shoes over here…” She gestured to Twilight. “Might end up saving tons of people, but that’s got nothing to do with me! I think you’re just some street fortune teller! There’s only two things I want to know about you, and that’s if you’re planning to take us to shore or not and where?”
In spite of the anger and shouting, Zecora remained calm and composed the whole time. She stared at Sunset for a few seconds before uncrossing her arms and setting them in her lap. “We’ll reach Fillydelphia in two days time. From there, your paths will diverge from mine.”
“Good! Let’s speed things up and start that right here, right now,” Sunset retorted, eyes darting between Twilight and Zecora. “From now on, no one gets within six feet of me, morning or night. I’m not going to wake up with a knife in my back because of some backwater horoscope…”
Crossing her arms, Sunset took one more step back until she was a good distance from both women, and then went silent; taking time only to glance toward the entrance searching for signs of any of the men on deck coming down trying to pin her in. Twilight looked at her a bit anxiously before turning back to Zecora.
“Well…thank you very much for saving us, and for taking us to Fillydelphia. We’ll just…uh…be headed back to the prow to hang out until we arrive.”
She turned to leave, but stopped herself after only a short distance and looked back.
“Wait, one other thing… This…this is going to sound rather awkward, but…I don’t suppose you’ve heard any recent stories about anyone, um, going for a sail and…having their ship run aground on rocks on an atoll that has mist and…uh…” She took a deep breath. “Monsters on it, do you?”
Zecora raised one eyebrow at Twilight. Again, she was quiet for several seconds.
“The ocean is no longer a safe route, my dear. Many boats have gone missing, from all nations, I fear. More gone every day,” She eyed Twilight more strongly and curiously. “Yet this is the first of ‘monsters’ I hear.”
The way she said that, and the way she was eyeing Twilight now, made it abundantly clear that she wanted to know more from what she was leading on. Yet realizing she had said too much made the woman blanch. “Oh! Oh, uh…is that so? Heh, what are the odds? We get in a shipwreck and it just so happens that shipwrecks are becoming more commonplace along this route, huh? Weird!”
Zecora continued to eye Twilight carefully. After another pause she spoke again. “To children, we tell of a very old lay. Of creatures who lived on this ocean route’s way. Who brought down many great men with their song, to deep watery graves no matter how strong.”
Twilight perked up at that. Sunset, in spite of her anxiety, turned to her as well.
“Their…song?”
Zecora hesitated again, but then simply shrugged. “But there is no need to worry yourself hoary. After all, it is nothing more than a children’s story. They were slain long ago, and cast far down below. The remains are nothing but fodder for roe.”
Twilight didn’t look entirely convinced, and honestly neither did Sunset. Yet she merely smiled and nodded. “Well, uh…that’s a relief to hear! Thank you again! I’ll just…be going now!”
With that, she turned and began to head out, and Sunset quickly pushed on ahead of her to make sure she wouldn’t get too close. In a few moments, both of them were pushing aside the cabin covering and exiting onto the deck. They left Zecora in the chamber, who still was not smiling, and who now raised a hand to her chin and held it as she stared into the leaves of the cauldron. After a few moments, she raised her stick and gave it another turn.
Needless to say, the next two days that passed on the boat were even more tense than the time spent on the slaver’s ship. Sunset never seemed to sleep and constantly kept her eyes not only on the crew but Twilight. It wasn’t until she had restated all the terms of their deal multiple times, including her agreement to share what she had learned from Celestia’s private collection only on the condition of securing her a pardon, that she began to ease up. That wasn’t until they were nearly at the shore, however.
The crew never stopped giving them the same cold regard, but they did share their food with them and left them to their own devices. In truth, they ate better over the next two days than they had in quite a while. The two of them ended up sleeping on deck under the stars both nights, having had their fill of being shut up indoors. While Twilight was interested in hearing more from Zecora, she had little more to say to either of them. She spent all her time with whatever was in her cauldron, and many of those times she forbade anyone from coming in on her.
After two days had passed, on the morning of the third the coastline of Greater Everfree came into view. By around noon, they were clearly and steadily approaching a port that Twilight recognized as Baltimare—one of the largest in Fillydelphia. However, they just managed to enter the waters of port city itself when the boat came to a halt.
When that happened, both Sunset and Twilight looked up and saw the men on board move to their tender boat. They soon began the process of lowering it into the ocean. Shortly thereafter, the curtain pulled aside to the topside cabin and, for the first time since they had come on board, Zecora emerged.
“My shipmates will let you off here in the bay. I regret that from here you must go your own way.”
Twilight let out a small whimper. “We’re still a good three miles from shore…”
“If we get off this ship faster, then I’m all for it,” Sunset retorted, already making her way to the boat.
In spite of the situation and how tense the past two days had been, Twilight at least said thanks before departing. Sunset, however, said nothing, and neither did they receive any more replies from Zecora or anyone else. As soon as the two had rowed their way from the boat a short distance, the vessel unfurled its sails and continued on away from the port.
“I figured they would have wanted to dock too…” Twilight remarked as they went. “Then again, Greater Everfree isn’t exactly that welcoming of Zebrabwians. Think they were afraid to take us to shore?”
“I’m just glad they’re gone,” Sunset flatly answered. “Focus on rowing. We’re still far from shore and we’ll be worn out long before we get there.”
Twilight grimaced. “Don’t remind me…” she muttered as she kept rowing.
Needless to say, after a full hour they were still a good distance from shore, although their own boat began to intermingle with other arriving ships. Most of them, in particular the ocean liners and yachts owned by the more upper-class members of society, regarded them either curiously or humorously considering how far out they were. The multitude of people at the busy shoreline, either working, loading, unloading, docking, or getting on board ships, began to become distinct as they settled on a pier and began to move inward.
“Been a while since I’ve been in Baltimare…” Twilight huffed between rows. “I’m pretty sure they charge a toll to dock… And even if they don’t, I’m kind of wondering how we’re going to get back to Manehattan from here without money or papers. One thing at a time, though, right? Heh…heh…”
As she trailed off with her nervous laugh, she paused. She realized suddenly that their boat had slowed quite a bit and now seemed to be spinning in the direction she was rowing. Immediately she stopped and looked over at Sunset. The woman had already ceased, and was staring at the shoreline and the multitude of people there. The look of anxiety was back on her face.
“What’s the matter?”
“So many people…” she nearly muttered. “They could be anyone… Thieves…traffickers…thugs…agents for the government…”
Twilight glanced at the shore, then back at her. “Well, I guess…but most of them are just civilians like us.”
“It doesn’t matter if most of them are. All it takes is one.”
“I suppose…but the odds of running into that one are pretty small.”
Sunset sighed. She shook her head and looked back at her oar.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“No, it looked like you were going to say something for a moment.”
“It’s nothing,” she answered, dipping her oar back into the water. “Nothing I don’t already know the answer to, anyway.”
“I…don’t follow.”
Sunset began to row. “I was wondering how you could look at all of those people over there and not be nervous. Then I forgot…you still have your power. If anyone looks at you the wrong way you’ll just burn them.”
Twilight grimaced as she started to row with her. “You know, lots of people get along just fine with big crowds like that who don’t have any power at all. It’s really not as bad as you think.”
She snorted. “Really now.”
“You’re going to have to learn to trust more people than just me some time if you want to have a life.”
“First of all, whoever said I trusted you? Second, I’ve never run into a single person in my life who didn’t eventually stab me in the back once they found out about my power and that they could step on my face if they wanted. I guess you could say that leads me to have certain ‘trust issues’.”
Twilight kept rowing, but she began to look a bit confused. “But…you lost your power, didn’t you? So they can’t find out about it anymore, can they?”
For the second time, Sunset slowed in her rowing. Her eyes opened a little wider. She seemed to realize what Twilight had pointed out for the first time. It made her pause for several seconds. She said nothing in response, but when she began to row again she no longer had the same expression on her face. For the next fifteen minutes, her look was far more pensive and thoughtful as she only absent-mindedly paddled.
Docking ended up being an interesting problem in and of itself. They rowed their boat to the first low-set dock they could find with an opening on it, but they had no way of tying the boat and no one waiting for them. With no other options available, they simply aimed straight for the dock as if they planned to run it aground. On arrival, they simply stood up, balanced themselves as best as they could, and then jumped out and onto the dock before letting the tender boat adrift.
They caught the attention of a port authority by the time they were walking down the pier toward the nearest street. “Hey!” she called after them. “You can’t park that boat here without a permit and a toll!”
“Uh…” Twilight hesitated. “Um…keep it!”
The port authority looked at them both in puzzlement, but they, in turn, picked up the pace and quickly seized the opportunity to slip into the nearest crowd and make their way to the street from there. Fortunately, that wasn’t difficult with the amount of activity going on in the port at midday. Even once they reached the road and began to walk down it they had to constantly shift one way and another to avoid traffic coming out of the warehouses and ship yards to either side of them, along with the occasional steam carriage or loader chugging up or down the street. Nevertheless, they were soon leaving that pier behind, and only when three more piers were behind them did they slow down enough to breathe a bit easier.
“Well, we made it.”
Sunset continued to look around uneasily at every passerby, especially the ones who looked back with an unfriendly stare. She took in a stiff breath and struggled to keep walking. “Terrific. Now what?”
“I was thinking about that on the boat. We need to get to the Manehattan embassy. There’s always one in the big port cities. Once we’re inside, they’ll take care of getting us back to Manehattan.”
“Even though I’m with you?”
“I’m sure it will be fine. Just, uh…say you’re in my custody.”
Sunset grimaced. “That’s comforting…”
Her grimace got a bit wider two seconds later as a steam wagon chugged by fast enough to whip up a loose newspaper and send it flying right into her face. Letting out a mutter, she reached up and tore it off to get a full view of the headline. She paused for a moment to reread it, then rolled her eyes. “Looks like it’s going to be a bit harder than you think.”
“Huh?”
Sunset handed the paper to her. She reached out and took it, reading over the headline.
Manehattan-Fillydelphia Tensions at All Time High, New Chancellor Threatens to Close Embassy
Twilight’s jaw dropped while Sunset rolled her eyes. “Terrific. Now we have a time limit on reaching the embassy…”
“But…but how? Why?” she exclaimed as she began to speed read the article. “Trottingham and Fillydelphia have been allies for years!”
Sunset crossed her arms. “If I had to bet, that’s the reason they’re getting hostile. When they had a common enemy that was one thing, but Trottingham has been giving Fillydelphia the raw deal for years. They let them do all the fighting for pitiful reductions in tariffs and a few measly waived tolls. They’re always last to send support and when they do it’s always less than what they promised.”
Twilight looked up at Sunset curiously.
“I didn’t get that position in Trottingham without learning a lot about my enemies and how to use them,” she explained. “That’s probably why the Storm King is making the move on Appleloosa. Neither will be able to send support. In a week’s time he can split the biggest alliance against him into three pieces.”
Twilight blinked in astonishment then looked back to the paper. Sure enough, just below the main headline was another one talking about how the Appleloosan border had already been breached by Trottingham, and that a new war, while just declared, was quickly escalating. “I don’t believe this! After everything we did to put a stop to the Light Eaters and Nightmare Moon, everyone is just jumping into a new war?”
“Still think I should trust people so easily?” Sunset asked, a hint of smugness in her voice.
Twilight simply frowned and began to fold up the paper. She looked to the sky, took a deep breath, slowly exhaled, and then kept walking down the street. “Alright…no worries. There were still Manehattan ships in the bay, which means they can’t have closed the embassy yet. All we have to do is get there before it closes, and make sure that we stay calm, stay inconspicuous, and avoid getting ourselves into anything that might draw any attent-”
Twilight aborted her talk into a wild cry as she recoiled, for at that very moment the door of the old pier warehouse they were passing by was obliterated by the body of a burly, unsavory-looking thug being hurled through it. Not only Twilight and Sunset, but half the street froze where they were and turned to the sudden spectacle in alarm as he collided with the pavement. He let out a mixture of an angry and dazzled grunt and started to lean up.
He didn’t get very far as a rainbow-colored streak shot out, and moments later a woman with a fierce look, tanned knuckles, tight muscles, and loose attire landed right on his chest so hard he let out an “oof”, before he found his collar seized and his head yanked up. Soon he was looking eye-to-eye with a grinning woman.
“Oh no you don’t!” she shouted. “You think after giving me the runaround for two days I’m just going to let you get up and run away? Take a nap!”
With that, her fist shot out and sent out an echo so loud it boomed up and down the street. The thug let out an exhale of defeat as he collapsed.
She immediately grinned wider and sprung off of him. “Aw yeah! Record time! Money in the bank!”
Twilight and Sunset were stunned for several more seconds, before the former of the two gained enough of her wits for her recognition to click. “Rainbow Dash…?”
In an instant, she snapped over to her and brandished her fist. “Who’s asking?!”
Twilight recoiled in fright, but only moments after laying eyes on her Dash quickly lowered her fist and blinked in surprise.
“Twilight? Is that you?”
Still a bit alarmed, she took a moment to compose herself before hesitantly smiling. “Um…yes?”
Dash paused for a second longer before she grinned all over again. “Well what do you know? I don’t believe it! What are you doing all the way over here in Fillydelphia?” She snickered right after saying that, still oblivious to the crowd of onlookers they now had. “Ok, dumb question. I mean, I got blown all the way here. I should’ve figured the rest of you had too. But awesome! Great to see you! Where are the others?”
She immediately looked to the one at her side, laying eyes on Sunset Shimmer soon after. Sunset instantly grimaced and began to tremble again. As for Dash, she stared a moment before her face twisted.
“You aren’t one of the girls…but I’ve definitely seen you before. Where did-”
She cut herself off as her eyes widened in realization.
Twilight swallowed. “Um, perhaps I-”
Before Twilight could say another syllable, Dash lunged forward and punched Sunset dead in the face.
The woman slammed down into the street soon after, causing a chorus of gasps from the surrounding onlookers. Twilight blanched and glanced at them once, before she quickly stepped in between the two women. A good thing too, because Dash’s look had gone from confused to enraged in a very short time period. Her knuckles were cracking as she stood ready to tear the woman on the street apart.
As for Sunset, she writhed in pain for a moment before wiping at her mouth, taking some blood away with it. “I think you almost split my jaw…”
“Then I guess I got more tired beating up those goons than I thought, because I meant to smash your nose so hard I’d send the bone into your brain, you bitch!” Dash sneered. “Get up! I’m going to knock your teeth in!”
“I think I’ll stay down here, then…”
“Wait!” Twilight quickly interjected. “Rainbow Dash, it’s not what it looks like! She’s…” She paused on saying that, grimacing a bit at the admission. “She’s, well…she’s, um…she’s with…I mean…she’s kind of with me…”
Sunset groaned. “You say that so convincingly…”
Dash, meanwhile, had wheeled to Twilight in shock. “What?! What do you mean she’s ‘with you’? Don’t you remember what she did back in that castle?! Speaking of that…” She spun back to Sunset. “How come you aren’t a ten-foot tall raging fire demon anyway?”
Now the crowd was beginning to look confused and mutter. Twilight started to wince at the scene that was being made. “Could we…um…perhaps discuss this in somewhere more private? …Please?”
Dash, still oblivious to the situation, looked back at Sunset and gave her another stink eye. Sunset herself began to push herself off the ground, wiping at her mouth, which nearly made Dash spring on her again. However, she somehow restrained it and turned around.
“…Fine. But we’re not going far!”
Dash hadn’t been kidding about that.
Rather than find a nice secluded building several blocks away, Dash simply led them back in through the broken doorway into the very chamber she had just smashed her way out of. The interior wasn’t much better. Three thugs just as big and as mean-looking as the one they had seen were strewn about the area moaning and groaning but otherwise not moving, and the entire room itself was busted and broken up from her knocking her opponents around. With the gaping hole in the entrance, it was pretty clear that it wouldn’t be hard for anyone passing by to overhear them. However, realizing they wouldn’t get much better, Twilight rolled with it.
At this point, Sunset was back up but standing a distance from Dash and looking at her tensely, expecting another hit at any moment, but at least able to maintain some modicum of normal behavior and appearance. Dash, on the other hand, was staring at Twilight open-mouthed.
“Let me get this straight… You’re actually helping this bacon-headed, heartless, dirty, slimy piece of crap just so she can tell you what she read in some books? Sheesh, Twilight…just how much of an egghead are you?”
Twilight frowned. “Things aren’t over yet.”
“Yet? What ‘yet’? Come on, Twilight. Nightmare Moon’s history and so’s the night over Everfree. They don’t need us to mop up the rest of the Nighttouched.”
“That’s not all,” she insisted. “You remember what I told you about on the train, didn’t I? I still need to get back to Canterlot castle and see for myself if it’s really over. Even if I didn’t, we still have problems. More people are arising with Promethian Sigils every day. Stopping Nightmare Moon didn’t stop that. I have to understand more about what’s going on, and right now Sunset is the only one around who knows more.”
Dash frowned and cast her a scowl. It made Sunset twist uncomfortably, but she did no more. “I still say we should pound her into a puddle and then leave her in a gutter.”
“She’s harmless now. She doesn’t have any magical abilities anymore.”
Sunset winced even more uncomfortably at the reminder. However, this seemed to pacify Dash for the moment. She crossed her arms and looked back at Twilight.
“So you don’t know where the others are?”
She shook her head with a frown of her own. “No… If I ended up in Trottingham and you ended up in Fillydelphia, they could be anywhere in Greater Everfree. But we both ended up alright, so I’m sure they’re safe too. They’re probably waiting for us back in Manehattan. At least I hope…”
Suddenly, her look became puzzled.
“Speaking of which, what are you doing here in Fillydelphia? I thought you would have headed back too.”
Now Dash’s own look grew a bit uneasy. She began to rub the back of her head and look to one side. “Yeah…well, um…I would have headed back to Manehattan by now, but I got a bit…sidetracked.”
“Sidetracked?”
She sighed. “Look, before I ran into Rarity and got started on this whole crazy quest with you guys, the bottom line is I tended to drink a lot of cider…and I ran up a lot of tabs while I was at it. Being a Huntsman means you know a lot of people from all over. That also means they keep track of you pretty good. I made some promises and I had to take a few jobs in order to raise the money. It’s been kind of rough getting them all.”
Twilight looked around the room. A bit of broken glass picked that moment to fall out of its frame, decorating the already rubble-strewn floor and the three thugs that had been knocked out. She seemed even more confused. “Those four shouldn’t have been much of a problem for a Disciple. Not after everything I’ve seen you do.”
“Yeah, well maybe I didn’t want to do it as a Disciple.”
Both Twilight and Sunset looked to Dash in puzzlement when she said that, especially the way she almost indignantly stated it. She kept her arms crossed and her head to the ground. She frowned a moment before sighing.
“Look, I just don’t…don’t like using that Anima Viri unless I really have to, ok? Anyway, the bottom line is this was it.” She stuck out her thumb and gestured to the door. “These four creeps were my latest job. Once I bring them in, I get the last bit of cash, so good timing. Let’s just drop them off at the Huntsman’s Guild, get my fee, and then we can head out.”
This only left Twilight and Sunset looking perplexed again. They looked around at the floor and at the fallen men, each one of which was easily bigger than either of them, and turned back to her. “Um, we’d love to help, Rainbow…but how exactly do we get them there?”
“Oh, we’re definitely not drawing attention to ourselves now…” Sunset muttered.
“Ah, can it,” Dash retorted as she kept pushing a wheelbarrow loaded with two thugs unceremoniously dumped on each other. Twilight and Sunset, on their part, had either arm of a second wheelbarrow and were pushing the other two in it. Twilight was wincing in embarrassment as both of them tried in vain to keep their heads low. It was no use. The sight of three ladies pushing four men down the road like that was getting stares from everyone on both sides of the street.
Unfortunately, they had been attracting looks for some time. About ten blocks worth, to be exact. They had left the shipyards behind but moving into the main urban areas of Baltimare only exposed them to more pedestrians, travelers, and workers who had little else to do but stare at them as they went one way or another. It didn’t help things that they were still in a rather dirty and unsavory part of town, although that was mostly Fillydelphia in a nutshell. It didn’t trouble itself with looking as presentable as Manehattan, especially in the middle of a work day. Hence, they had their fair share of smoke and soot to choke on as they walked along.
After coughing at one point to clear her throat, Twilight looked up. “How much farther?”
“Not far,” Dash called back to them. “We should be getting close to the turnoff.” She let out a sigh. “You always know it by the bell.”
“What bell?”
She scarcely finished saying that when a loud dong, obviously from a bell tower, peeled out over the streets. It proceeded to do so three more times, fully sounding out the hour.
“That bell.”
Walking a bit further, the industrial “fog” cleared enough to make out the outline of a tall steeple that was the source of the bell tower. Sure enough, a clock was mounted on it, and following it down one could make out the angled roof of a type of church. The three continued to walk along, Dash looking a little more irritable with every step, until all three could make out the symbols for a church of Harmonium. This one wasn’t shut down. A few more steps and Twilight could make out where boards that had previously been used to shut it up had been pried loose, and the building was in full operation again.
As they drew near, Dash let out a long sigh. “We turn here,” she half-muttered, before pitching the wheelbarrow around and walking on down the street. The church itself was on the corner, so there was no way other than walking down the middle of the road to avoid it.
As Twilight and Sunset followed suit, they both noticed that there were a pair of individuals who seemed to be affiliated with the church with arms full of pamphlets. They were greeting people with smiles as they passed by, before handing them out to them and waving them on. Some took them, some politely declined, and some ignored them, but Dash seemed to clench her jaw just at seeing them handing them out. She kept her head forward with a look that made it clear she wasn’t interested as she pushed her wheelbarrow along; hoping, it seemed, that the sight of two unconscious bodies would be enough to dissuade them from approaching.
Apparently it wasn’t. One of them began to walk up to her. “Huntsman? Thanks for helping keep our streets safe!” he cheered as he neared her with a pamphlet outstretched. “Would you like to come to our chicken dinner? We’re holding it in two nights to celebrate our grand reopening! Only 3 bits for-”
Dash suddenly wheeled on the man, snatched the pamphlet out of his hand, promptly ripped it in half, and threw it on the ground before brandishing her fist. “Beat it before I beat you!”
Shocked and scared, the young man rapidly shrank back in alarm; too stunned to even form a response. Dash, on her part, muttered something before turning and pushing her wheelbarrow on. Both pamphlet handlers stared uncertainly at Twilight and Sunset as they walked by; the former only able to offer a sheepish smile of apology as she went.
As soon as they were clear, Sunset rolled her eyes. “So what are we going to do next to keep a ‘low profile’? Commit arson?”
Twilight focused up ahead. “Rainbow Dash…”
She let out another sigh, this one far more “mellow” than before. “I know, I know… It’s just…they tick me off, is all. All of ‘em. It’s not just these Harmonium people. It’s the Gaitians, Solarians, Zebrabwians…the whole bunch. I’m just mad at them right now. They all cut and run for years then crawl out of the woodwork praising Harmonium for taking away the eternal night.” She snorted, jabbing her thumb in her chest. “We took away the eternal night. Not some god.”
She sneered as she glanced back at the church over her shoulder. “You talk all about your god being so good and so gracious… Where was your god for the past eight years? How much good did all those prayers do to all your little church buddies who got eaten alive by Nighttouched? The least you sycophants can do is give some credit to who actually did something except wait for some woman in the sky to come save them!”
Twilight gave Dash an uncertain look. Even Sunset looked a bit taken aback at her sudden backlash. However, she simply exhaled before turning around and walking on. “Don’t tell Pinkie I said any of that.” After saying this, she was silent for the rest of the way.
Two blocks later, they came up to a more run-down part of the city, and a large beaten and sooty building with broken out front windows. The emblem and name of the Huntsman Guild was on top of it on a large sign posted over the entrance. As they began to draw near, Sunset grew tenser yet. Enough to where Twilight began to see her change in mood. She turned to her.
“What’s the matter?”
Sunset turned to her with a look that spoke volumes of how dumb the question was. “What’s the matter? What’s the matter? We’re headed right for a Huntsman Guild! You think Trottingham hasn’t put out a bounty for me yet?”
“Just relax and keep quiet,” Dash shouted back over her shoulder. “Trust me. If there was a bounty for you in here I would be bringing you in to collect it myself.”
“Again…not terribly comforted,” Sunset muttered.
On passing through the wooden double doors to the interior, the three found themselves surrounded by rough-looking, variously-armed types that resembled Rainbow Dash. Multiple tables and chairs were set up in a large entry area, with about half of them taken by the various types in the room. Wheeling in the four unconscious men attracted their stares no less than it had outside, but the three ignored them (or tried to) as they pushed past. Soon they were walking past two different boards filled with job requests and postings, and right up to an old, broad, heavy, and scratched and splintered clerical desk that took up the entire rear of the room and blocked off the general floor from a couple of doorways in the back.
An old woman with one sound eye and a dead, paling orb for the other was seated there. She glanced up when Dash crossed about half the room, and immediately her one good eye drifted over both Twilight and Sunset, pausing for a moment on Sunset, before looking over the four men with them. Nevertheless, she said nothing and showed nothing as they closed the last of the distance. When Dash finally stopped her wheelbarrow and set it down, walking around to walk up to the desk, she finally cracked a grin.
“Been busy lately, ‘Sonic Rainboom’, heh,” she remarked as she leaned on top of it. “Who you got for us today?”
“Heya Gram. Check it out.” She grinned as she gestured behind him. “All four of the Cattle Rustlers. Better tell the cops to bring out the extra large wagon for them.”
“Gram” leaned up from behind the desk to look them over, opening her bad eye a bit wider to see them all. “So you do. Heh…pretty good even for you. That’s a cool 8,000 in all. Really been getting the lead out the past two weeks, haven’t you? Ain’t going to leave anything for the younger folk. You want to cash in on this one?”
She shook her head. “Nope. Wire it to the same place as last time. And as for me, I think this is the last you’ll be seeing me in here for a while.”
“Oh really?” she remarked just as she began to reach for a voucher. “Leaving us now? You haven’t stashed so much as a cent this past month. Sure you don’t want one more for the road? Get yourself a nest egg to go out on?”
She shook her head again. “’Fraid not. I’m after a bit bigger score now. A little past the pay grade of the local Huntsman Guild, if you get my drift.”
“Yeah? Don’t tell me you’re actually rejoining the military, are you?”
“Heh, I’m fearless…not brainless. You take care of yourself, Gram. The newbies need someone looking out for ‘em.”
“Same to you,” she answered, before her good eye narrowed a little. Squaring Sunset in her sight, she leaned over the desk again. “’Specially with that one over there. If she’s with you, take care. Looks so much like that Fire Witch from Trottingham someone might try to club you in the back of the head to bring her in on the chance we get a bounty for her.”
This was said more than loud enough for both Twilight and Sunset to hear, which caused the latter to run her hand along her face and sigh. Dash, on her part, grimaced a little before speaking a bit more quietly. “I’ll, uh…be careful. Thanks. Keep the wheelbarrows. These four don’t need them anymore.”
Turning away from the desk, she walked back up to the two of them. “Alright, show’s over here. We can head straight to the embassy. Just a couple blocks up the street from here and I know a shortcut.”
“Finally…” Sunset sighed as she let Dash get ahead before walking after her again. “8,000 for a single tab? Just how much do you drink…?”
“So long as this is the last stop on the way,” Twilight interjected, “I think it’s just going to be smooth sailing from here.”
Sunset’s eyes narrowed. “Unless they’ve already closed the embassy.”
“…Yeah, there’s that. But other than that, I don’t think we have anything to worry about from here on in.”
“Especially now that I’m with you guys,” Dash grinned. “You heard Gram. I’ve been kickin’ it for weeks. Now that I’m with you, nothing’s gonna stand in our way.”
Reaching the front wooden doors, she reached out and put a hand on them. Flashing them a thumbs up, she shoved forward to fling them both open and let all three of them exit.
They only got one step before they froze to the tune of no less than eighteen different gun barrels pointed at them cocking at once. Each one was in the hands of a Baltimare police officer, a number of whom were now spanning out in front of the Huntsman Guild and staring at them coldly.
The three stood there in total astonishment, gradually giving way to anxiety to see themselves surrounded with loaded firearms. They stared blankly at the officers facing them, not making a move or a sound for several seconds.
“All of you,” one of the officers shouted in an ordering voice, “get on the ground with your hands behind your head. You three are under arrest.”
Dash’s jaw dropped. “Arrest?!” She took a step forward. “What do you mean-”
She was cut off by the sound of a loud gunshot rocketing out and embedding itself in the door frame right above her head. Sunset instantly cringed. Twilight let out a shriek. Even Dash was forced to halt where she was in alarm.
The officer cocked her weapon to chamber a new round. “Don’t make any sudden moves, don’t shout, and don’t attempt to raise your marked hands above head level.”
Swallowing, Twilight quickly put her hands on her head. Sunset followed soon after. Dash, on her part, grit her teeth and began to tighten her knuckles. Before she could do anything stupid, however, Twilight quickly called out to her in a whisper. “Don’t! You heard them! They know about the Promethian Sigils! If you start calling on yours, they’ll shoot before you’re done!”
That only seemed to make Dash more upset, but she muttered once before putting her hands up and on her head.
“Sunset Shimmer,” the officer went on, “you are under arrest for crimes against the nation of Fillydelphia, including theft, arson, murder, vandalism, terrorism, harassment, and at least 18 violations of international treaty.”
She frowned and sighed as she began to get down on her knees to get on her stomach. Dash only looked confused again. “Alright, I get her, but why us?”
“You two are under arrest for aiding and abetting an international fugitive.”
“Aiding and abetting?!” Dash nearly screamed, beginning to lower her hands.
Half the guns trained on her. “On the ground! Now!”
Dash began to curse and swear under her breath as she started to get on her knees, casting constant angry glares back behind her at Sunset. Twilight, however, couldn’t help but close her eyes and moan as she began to get down as well.
Seeing both of their reactions, Sunset frowned a bit more as she began to tense up even more. “Well…I expected to get stabbed in the back again,” she muttered. “Let’s see how long it takes before one of you does just that…”
Needless to say, neither Rarity nor Fluttershy got much in the way of sleep following the attack. While they were promptly relocated to the barracks area of the embassy grounds, both were up practically the whole night and on edge following the encounter. Fluttershy got a chance to demonstrate her power in an unexpected fashion by using it to heal both their personal bodyguards as well themselves while the rest of the guards on the compound went into high alert. Yet after the initial commotion of the local fire brigade being called in to salvage as much of the ambassador’s manor as they could, they found no trace of their attacker.
It wasn’t until the early dawn of the next morning that a squad of guards, the prime minister’s personal envoy, and the commander of the compound were finally able to get the women together at the same table in the barracks to discuss what had happened. At the moment, the officer was seated across from them with a pad and paper out; ready to jot down anything else he could get.
“Now is there anything you noticed about your attacker that you failed to mention?”
Rarity rolled her eyes. “Oh, scads, sir. That sallet that she wore was clearly inspired by mid-Appleloosan but the visor was distinctly Equestrian. It was dreadfully flat even with that metal plumage, however. It could have used a trio of combs to make it look more aesthetically pleasing. I’d never seen such a segmented design on a pauldron before, but it seemed to afford excellent mobility. Now, the breastplate was rather unremarkable, aside from those grotesque and tacky designs etched over every inch of it. However, one can’t argue against the Trottinghamesque austerity it bore. And at least it wasn’t one of those atrocious ornamental…ahem, how do I say it…‘breast’ plates. I’m sure you know the type. Fine for a ceremonial ball but it would only redirect a blade toward-”
The officer cut her off with a sigh. “I mean anything significant.”
Rarity looked at him almost indignantly. “Pardon me, but an individual’s sense of style is always significant, sir.”
He rubbed his eyes before turning to Fluttershy. “Ma’am? What about you?”
The woman swallowed at being put on the spot. “Um…well…she tried to kill us…and, um…uh…gave up and went home…I think.”
The officer let out another sigh, this time sounding more like a groan, before beginning to stand up. “I think the agents assigned to you have everything else covered. If that’s all, we’ll get the word out to be on alert for this individual.” He turned to the envoy and nodded. “I think we’re done here.”
“Thank you, major,” he answered with a nod of his own. The officer turned and began to leave, causing the other soldiers in the room to get up and leave with him. As for the envoy, he began to approach the table, but sighed and rubbed his brow as he did. “This is a true mess. I scarcely got word of the cooling relations between Fillydelphia and Manehattan last night when a messenger burst in screaming about this attack of all things.” He looked up. “Are you two ladies certain that it wasn’t anyone affiliated with any nation or group? Did they say anything?”
Fluttershy simply shook her head.
“I’m afraid not,” Rarity added, “but they certainly weren’t dressed like any member of any military I’ve ever encountered. Assuming that was some sort of steam armor, even Trottingham didn’t show the like.”
He ran a hand through his hair. “Well, needless to say, today’s stop on the tour is cancelled. For the best, I suppose. Two other spots on Fillydelphia’s route are already closing down by order of the new administration. And that’s only giving them new things to worry about in town. There’s a rumor in the air that after today’s trading there could be a run on the banks.”
Fluttershy was somewhat puzzled. “They’re going to…run…to the bank? That’s a bad thing? Why not just walk?”
Rarity sighed. “Fluttershy, darling…a ‘run on the banks’ means that everyone is going to be closing their bank accounts at the same time. The results could be quite disastrous for the economy.”
That only seemed to make her more confused. “But…I thought banks were where you put your money to keep it until you needed it?”
Both the envoy as well as Rarity grimaced a bit at the childish sentiment. “Yes, but banks don’t make money by simply holding onto one’s cash in a big safe. They loan that money out to others and they collect interest on the loans until they’re paid back. They’re able to do this because banks do not expect someone who deposits their money to have any need to withdraw all of it immediately. At no one time does a bank have any more than a fraction of the money that was deposited in it available.”
“Oh,” she answered, taking a moment to process that. “Oh my… So if the bank doesn’t have any money and people want to withdraw it…?”
“Let’s just say it ends up being bad, and not just for the bank.” Rarity turned back to the envoy. “Whatever could be causing this? I thought the end of the night over Equestria would mean good news for everyone.”
“Well, the behavior of the new administration is causing it’s fair share of worry, I’d imagine,” the envoy responded with a shrug. “Their decorum at the recent summit didn’t inspire a whole lot of confidence for future foreign relations. No one wants to invest in someone who might seize foreign assets for themselves. Likely, they’re spurring a great deal of divesture…but all of this is besides the point. The only thing that concerns us is that this means worsening relations, and therefore it might be best that we packed up and returned to Manehattan.”
Rarity tensed on hearing that, nearly protesting before shutting her mouth again.
“In any case, today has just become an unofficial respite. Ms. Fluttershy, you and Ms. Spade will be staying here this evening as well. Until then, feel free to move around the embassy grounds, but stay within the fence for now. At least until we have this situation cleared up.”
“Oh, um…certainly,” Fluttershy answered.
“But…but…” Rarity began to stammer and protest, before wincing. After composing herself, she put a faux smile on her face and tried to be pleasant. “S-S-Sir…I believe this entire event has been…quite stressful. Surely we could just go for a short, um, constitutional outside the grounds?”
He shook his head. “I’m afraid not. Until we can confirm the area is clear and have a better idea of the nature of the attack last night, or at least until Fillydelphia becomes more cooperative or guarantees there won’t be any unrest due to finances, we’ll have to keep the grounds closed. Already the mayor is accusing Manehattan of somehow attracting terrorists this morning, and if that word gets all the way to the capitol we’ll have to be ready to leave at a moment’s notice.”
“But…”
“Good day, ladies,” the man cut off with a nod. Without another word, and leaving Rarity stammering, he turned and headed out in the same direction as the soldiers.
Once he was gone and the door swung shut behind them, it was down to just the two women. Rarity let out a massive groan before throwing her head back and started to moan pitifully. It was so loud that even Fluttershy looked a little nervous to be around it. As for Angel, sitting in her lap, he somehow managed to pull his ears down and cover them with his paws before letting out a complaint of his own.
Fluttershy risked a small smile. “Um…we could…walk around the compound instead, if you want?”
Getting out and walking served to keep Rarity from alerting any soldiers in the building, but it did little to improve her mood. On the contrary. No sooner had they gotten out and started walking when Rarity’s moaning turned into wailing and exaggerated tears. It was a little hard on Fluttershy as she walked along, especially since her sniffling and sobbing was so loud and grandiose that it wasn’t long before they couldn’t pass anyone without attracting a few stares.
In an attempt to get her to calm down, Fluttershy finally led Rarity into the nearest public building they could find, which just so happened to be the embassy’s mail building—a one-room, open-doored chamber with a few slots for the various officials and residents in the compound. Once there, she tried as best as she could to comfort and calm her. At last, Rarity pulled out her handkerchief and gave one of the loudest blows the woman had ever heard before she finally sniffed her tears and began to wipe at her mascara.
“Oh…sniff…I’m so sorry for making a spectacle of myself, Fluttershy,” she apologized through a cracked and strained voice. “It’s just we’ve come so far and I’ve gotten so close! And now…now it’s all for nothing! Nothing!” She nearly began to break down again.
“Um…there, there…” Fluttershy quickly cut in, putting her hand on her shoulder in an attempt to stifle the next wave. “It’ll be alright… We’ll find another way.”
Rarity sniffed again, before her lips curled into a frown. “It’s all because of that…that…that beastly woman from last night in that audacious getup! If it wasn’t for her I’d still have my lead!”
Fluttershy winced, really not wanting to think about that woman again from last night. However, if it would keep Rarity from making a scene… “Yeah…she was, um…very scary…and strong… Do you think she was…um…like us? You know? Using an Anima Viri?”
“Only at her most savage did Sunset Shimmer seem nearly as strong as she did…” Rarity muttered in response. “But no, actually. I got a good look at both of her hands last night. Neither of them had any Promethian Sigils on them. And she wasn’t glowing with that aura that we normally have either.” She began to reach into her pocket. “The only thing she did seem to have in common with our sigils is this.”
Soon afterward, she pulled out a folded up sheet of paper. She unfolded it and showed it to Fluttershy. She looked, but saw nothing other than a strange runic symbol etched onto it. “What is that?”
“It’s the symbol she had all over her armor, darling. I wanted to make sure I got the pattern down before I forgot. It was a distinguishing feature and, as graffiti-esque as it was, I felt it important to make a note of it. I don’t know what to make of it myself, but if we ever do run into Twilight Sparkle again she can hopefully read it. It might be something important.”
As Rarity began to fold up the paper again, Fluttershy puzzled over this. “But…if that symbol really is like ours…then doesn’t that mean that whoever that was really does have a power like ours?”
Rarity looked a little uncomfortable at the thought. “That would stand to reason…although I won’t rule out this is some strange new weapon that anyone like Trottingham or the Dragonlands could have put together for a test run.”
“Then…why us? Any why did she leave after she…she, um…did that thing on our hands?”
Rarity paused. Her face looked more uncertain. “I’m afraid I have no answer for that either…”
Fluttershy bowed her head and touched a hand to her chin. “It was almost as if she was trying to find something… Maybe she was looking for someone with a certain symbol?”
Rarity thought about that for a moment. “Well, that’s terribly odd. No one even knows the full story behind these Promethian Sigils. How would someone know there’s a unique one to look out for?”
Fluttershy didn’t have an answer for that. She simply stood there and kept thinking.
Rarity sighed. “Well, I suppose it doesn’t really matter right now. And perhaps this is all for the best. We don’t want to be outside of Manehattan if Fillydelphia turns hostile, after all. There’s still Carousel Couture to worry about, and I’m certain it would be far easier on your animals if you were in one place to take care of them rather than pulling them every which way…especially if brutes like that lady show up again.”
Fluttershy grimaced a little at the thought.
“Who knows?” Rarity answered as she wiped her eyes one last time. “Perhaps the others will be back in Manehattan by the time we return. I will say I’d feel much better running into that brute from last night again if Applejack or Rainbow Dash were with us. And…”
She trailed off.
“Oh dear. I can’t believe how thoughtless I’ve been…”
Fluttershy looked up a little. “What do you mean?”
Rarity turned to her. “Fluttershy, we’ve been together for a while now, but I don’t think I’ve ever asked what you did for a living before you were forced to live in that underground hovel that Twilight told us about.”
The pallor on Fluttershy’s face seemed to fade a shade or two. Just like back in the days when they first met, she swallowed and hung her head down, letting her hair fall over it to shield her face. However, this time was worse. Distinct anxiety began to creep along her features.
“Oh… Oh, um…that? It…it really wasn’t so much of a ‘hovel’. You should have seen how nice Angel and I made it. Along with everyone else. It was really quite cozy once you got used to it.”
“Yes, but it had to be away from any major city. You had to be constantly under the threat of Nighttouched and Light Eaters… Actually, that brings another question to mind. Why in the world would you put yourself in such dreadful danger? Animals or no, surely it would have been safer to move to a closer town, wouldn’t it?”
Fluttershy began to shake. Her eyes looked away and she reached up a hand to brush some of her hair back. Rarity didn’t see that the gesture was also used to try and wipe away some mounting sweat. “Um…well…yes, it would have, but… I’m…I’m not one for living in…um…big, crowded, noisy places… It scares the animals and…and works them up…and…well…”
“Yes?”
“Well, um…that is…uh…” her voice grew quieter and quieter, beginning to degenerate into inaudible muttering.
Rarity nearly pressed it, but before she could she suddenly found herself struck from behind hard enough to stumble forward a few steps. Surprised, both she and Fluttershy turned and looked over. Rarity opened her mouth to protest as to who had done that, but the sound caught in her throat on beholding who it was.
A blond-haired woman with messy hair, the uniform of a message courier, and, most noticeably, a pair of walleyes was looking back at her. She was clutching what had to be a new telegram in one hand with a satchel filled with similar messages, but it was her eyes that quickly caught the attention of the two.
“Oops! Sorry!” she chimed. “I was just so busy trying to find mail room that I wasn’t watching where I was going.”
Realizing after a moment she was staring, Rarity quickly forgot about being upset at the collision and tried to look away. “It’s…quite all right, dear. We shouldn’t have been loitering about anyway.”
“Actually, since I stopped you, maybe you could help me,” she went on. “I have a telegram here from the office that I needed to rush out to a Ms. Fluttershy?”
The woman looked up in surprise at the mention of her name. “Oh, really? Golly…I don’t know who would possibly be sending me one…”
“Oh? You’re Ms. Fluttershy?” the messenger asked. “Well, that’s a relief! I thought I had gotten so turned around I’d never find you! That makes my job so much easier! Now I only need to find the other contact I missed last night… Anyway, here it is!”
At once, she clicked her feet together and held the telegram up. It took her a moment for her walleyes to focus on it correctly, but she soon began to read off in a messenger’s sing-song voice.
“Commerce has gotten bad in Fillydelphia. Stop. Need to reschedule to next month on the 7th in Trotten location. Stop. Will have at least six strawberry tarts to choose from at that time. Stop.”
Immediately after finishing this, however, the messenger looked puzzled. “Wait…that doesn’t sound right…” She held the telegram closer, and her eyes widened. “Oops! This is the other telegram for the man I was supposed to deliver to at that pub last night! My mistake! Your telegram is over here…” She began to reach for her satchel, but paused in mid-reach. “Gee, what an odd telegram. Why would someone need to choose between six desserts? Is it some sort of tart-making contest?” She shook her head. “I mean, please forget I read that to you. Privacy rules and all. I don’t want to be written up!”
Rarity barely looked like she had heard her. Her face had begun to brighten up all over again while Fluttershy’s began to tense up. She turned to her soon after with a delighted gasp. “Fluttershy, dear…did you just hear that?”
“Um…uh…”
“Don’t you see? That telegram was obviously meant for that cad I’ve been pursuing! And thanks to this little mishap just now, we know exactly where he will be next month!”
“Let me see…” the messenger muttered on, oblivious to the conversation. “Ah, here it is!”
“Oh…uh…um…” Fluttershy began to stammer, “…yay…?”
Rarity looked a little puzzled. “Fluttershy, you sound almost disappointed.”
“Oh no. It’s not that. It’s…it’s great news. I’m very happy that…um…the trail didn’t go cold.”
The messenger spread the telegram in front of her face and coughed. “Sorry it took me so long to track you down. Stop. I have very important information to share with you and especially Twilight Sparkle. Stop.”
“I’ll say it didn’t!” Rarity answered, smiling again. “Now that we know where they’re operating out of, we can set a proper ambush! In one month’s time, we’re not only going to bring those felons to justice, but we’re going to do the same to the Horned Trip! We have weeks to plan!”
“Uh…um…y-y-yay…”
“I’m going to come by tomorrow morning but I won’t be able to get into the embassy. Stop. You’ll need to come out to meet me at the gate. Stop.”
“Um, Rarity?” Fluttershy finally ventured. “I’m…I’m not so sure that…that I…I…I…”
“Well, what are we doing wasting time around here for?” Rarity proudly proclaimed, reaching out and practically seizing Fluttershy by the hand. “Let’s not dawdle! We need to return to Manehattan with all haste! Let’s see if we can’t expedite that envoy now that the tour is cancelled!”
“Starlight Glim-” The messenger, however, found herself cut off as Rarity, still not listening to the message, pushed right past her and pulled Fluttershy, much to her shock and surprise, along with her. The move was so sudden she nearly dropped Angel right then and there, forcing the bunny to cling to her arm and causing him to give Rarity a rather dark glare. She paid no mind, however. She rushed onto on the streets of the embassy grounds and took off.
“Now where could he have run off to?” Rarity muttered aloud. “There must be someone around here to ask for directions…”
“Um…Rarity?” Fluttershy began to try and respond. “I don’t…eep!”
She was cut off again as Rarity took off down the road with her in tow. The designer ended up pulling her down several buildings before she finally reached a turn in the road. On reaching it, she looked just long enough for Fluttershy to try and speak again before she spotted a soldier posted on the corner just up the street.
“Oh! I’m sure he’ll know!” she exclaimed. She was soon pulling Fluttershy up the road as she walked toward him. “Excuse me? Pardon me, sir? We’re looking for someone! Could you help us?”
The soldier didn’t answer. He remained posted with his rifle at his side and his eyes forward and unmoving.
Rarity frowned as she kept approaching. “Must be one of those proper guard types…” she muttered as she slowed a little in her step, but kept approaching and leading Fluttershy with her. “Sir? Sir, if you please? I hate to make you break decorum, believe me, but this is important.”
The soldier remained unmoving in his position as Rarity and Fluttershy kept nearing. Finally, they drew to a distance of about ten feet away, and Rarity slowed to a halt.
“Sir, please. It’s very importan…”
Before Rarity could finish, the man’s knees gave way, and he fell to the ground like a puppet clipped of its strings.
Embedded in his back by its fangs was a monstrous snake. It was easily eight feet long, but more than that it had the same darkish purplish color about it that was the tell-tale sign of a Nighttouched.
In broad daylight.
Fluttershy instantly let out a gasp as she cupped her hand, newly freed by Rarity, to her mouth. Rarity was far less subtle. She reared back and shrieked in horror. That may have been the wrong thing to do, because it prompted the beast to immediately remove its venom-dripping fangs from the man’s back and rear up in an angry hiss; coiling to strike again. It was only at that point that the two noticed something else about this snake.
It didn’t have the normal pale gleaming eyes of a Nighttouched in spite of its body and form. Its retinas had turned the color of blood, and its corneas were a sickly green color. It almost looked like they were smoldering, for it seemed like a purple mist was rising from them…
They didn’t have long to look at them, though, for an instant later the snake began to rapidly slither forward; bringing itself fully into striking range.
Rarity was pale as a sheet, but somehow she got enough of her bearings. “Member of my house, I command you to come to meeeeeee!”
She aborted her call as the snake reached striking distance and lunged at her. Its fangs shed venom everywhere as it opened wide, ready to plunge them into Rarity’s outstretched arm…
Right before Angel leapt out of Fluttershy’s arms, sailed through the air, and smashed both feet down at the side of its head. The impact was hard enough to wrench both fangs to the side and snap them clean off, and the hiss turned angrier yet as it was sent to the ground. Angel landed a moment later, but quickly hopped away as soon as he touched down. The snake, not deterred by the loss of its needle-like fangs, continued to shed venom as it angrily twisted around and lashed out for the rabbit again.
As he returned to Fluttershy, Rarity swallowed once and then raised her hand again. “Member of my house, I command you to come to me! Inspiration’s Guide—Daisy Cheerilee!”
An explosion of aura later, and Rarity was fully clothed in her Magician’s form. While the snake turned away from Angel and diverted its attention back to her, she used the brief moment to reach for her side and draw out a dagger that had been her pen moments earlier. Taking aim at the creature, she quickly called up the fire spell that Twilight had taught her and sent out a ball of flame. On contact, it burst with enough force to even cause Rarity to step back, and the snake found itself blocked by a pillar of fire.
Still not deterred, however, the snake hissed even more angrily and began to slither around the flaming barrier.
“Persistent, isn’t he?” Rarity remarked, taking aim with her dagger again.
“R-R-Rarity…” Fluttershy began to stammer.
“Don’t worry, Fluttershy. I’ll get it with a direct hit on this next one…”
“Rar…Rarity! Look!”
The woman glanced up as Fluttershy pointed, and soon let out an even louder wail than before.
The snake had “friends”. The very street beyond it seemed to have come alive as a slithering, waving flood of several hundred of them were pouring down the road. Each one had the same eyes as the first one, and they moved in unison with a violent and hungry look toward the two women.
Rarity let out another shriek as the nearest ones suddenly increased their speed, and quickly babbled out her spell before swinging her dagger downward. A plume of fire erupted from it and quickly traced another flaming barrier across most of the rest of the road, forcing the creatures to halt or be incinerated. Yet that didn’t daunt them either, as they quickly tried to move around for any gap that could be found.
It hardly mattered, as in moments they weren’t the primary matter on the women’s minds. A scream from someone who wasn’t the two of them peeled out over the street. They both looked skyward and heard a second cry, this time followed by a chorus of gunfire. More gunshots soon echoed after it, erupting not in just one direction but throughout the entire complex. However, most of them didn’t get more than two shots before the scream and gunfire alike was cut off. A loud rustling began to echo and resound even over that, causing both women to look to the sky. Peering between the roads, they were horrified to see a massive flock of Nighttouched birds swooping down the street to the left of them like a living wave. Sounds of glass breaking rang out as they smashed their way into buildings fiercely looking for prey.
That was nothing compared to what happened soon after, however. A tremendous sound burst out over the din that the birds and gunfire were making, this time from the other side of the road. The two looked and were able to glance up the hill on the compound—just in time to see a legion of blackened monstrosities literally tear into a building. Bricks and mortar flew everywhere as they barreled straight through it. Rarity thought she caught a glimpse of their bodies long enough to make them out as some sort of malformed rams with horns that had not only enlarged but bifurcated, but smashing their way through one building didn’t slow them down from barreling straight into the next and beginning to pound their way through that one as well.
The entire embassy was erupting in the sounds of fighting and death. On top of all of that, the snakes had wormed their way to the edge of the flames and were clambering over each other to squeeze through the small opening between the fire and a building framing the street. The two continued to look around horrified as the truth of what was going on dawned on them, no matter how impossible it seemed.
A Nighttouched swarm was happening right there, right now, in the middle of the day.
“We…we have to get out of here!” Rarity finally managed to say, her body tensing and beginning to step away from her fire. “We have to get out of here now!”
Fluttershy stood and stammered a moment longer before her pupils shrank into pinpricks.
“The animals!”
Like the crack of a whip, she spun around and ran back to the side street before darting down it, heading back in the direction of the stables. Rarity was too aghast at what she was seeing to get her bearings at first, but after a moment she blinked and turned behind her, only to look more shocked. “Fluttershy! What in heaven’s name are you doing?!”
“Member of my house, I command you to come to me! Little Sunshine—Philomena!”
In an instant, Fluttershy managed to double her speed in spite of being clothed in a white hooded robe. Rarity winced, looked back to the street in front of them and saw it filling with more monsters all the time, and that the first snake had now gotten clear and was swerving around for her, before she turned and bolted after her.
“Fluttershy! Wait! You can’t!”
Fluttershy didn’t answer as she ran on, even as her face twisted into an expression of terror and she held Angel tighter to her. She practically closed her eyes to keep herself from looking at the horrors around her as she ran on.
They found little in the way of help. They ran past one road where two soldiers had been trying to fight, but it was too late for them. No sooner had they spotted them when they saw a pack of five misshapened foxes begin to rip them to pieces. As Rarity continued to run after her, she heard the glass shatter behind her. She turned her head around to see another soldier surrounded by three dozen birds literally cleaning the flesh from his bones. Another tremendous boom rang out as a second herd of malformed rams came down and smashed through another building, right before a second echoed behind her. Within the next few seconds, the last sets of gunshots died down to nothing.
“Fluttershy! We have to run!”
“No!” she shouted behind her in a weak and breaking voice. “I have to get to the animals! I can’t leave them here!”
Rarity nearly protested again when she heard an ear piercing caw above her. She looked up and nearly froze in place as a crow the size of an eagle descended with claws outstretched for her eyes. She screamed as she held up her knife and, through pure dumb luck, impaled it through the groin region before its digits could reach striking distance. It began to bleed out as she yanked her hand back, but two more were already sweeping around and zeroing in on one of the last folks alive in the compound.
Somehow, through her fright and panic, she managed a lightning spell to strike them both down. However, both sides of the road were beginning to fill with more stragglers of all species. “I can’t keep them back, Fluttershy! There’s too many!”
Fluttershy didn’t answer. Just up ahead was a turn in the road, and beyond that, just a bit up the hill, were the stables. Holding onto Angel even more tightly, she ignored the rampant death and destruction spreading around them and forced herself to turn around the corner. She opened her eyes up again at last to focus on her destination…
And instantly halted. Her mouth opened in utter horror as fresh tears welled up.
She could see the stables from here, or what was left of them. A swarm of frogs bigger than adult men with the same misting eyes and purplish-black skin had already smashed the place to bits with their gigantic hops. There was no sign of life there anymore. Nothing except a few discarded bits of clothing and guns, and one frog in particular that Fluttershy got a good look at.
She was just in time to see a horse’s leg dangle out of its massive mouth before it swallowed and gulped it down along with the rest of animal.
Her free hand cupped to her mouth. She tried to speak, but no sound came out. She only could stand there immobilized, mumbling silence as tears rolled from her eyes.
Moments later, Rarity rounded the corner. Her own hand clutched for her mouth and throat at the grotesque sight. She stood there only a moment, however, before her eyes turned to Fluttershy. A second later, she swallowed and ran up to her, putting her hand on her shoulder. “Fluttershy…”
She didn’t move. She didn’t say anything. The tears just kept falling.
“Fluttershy…we have to go.”
She stood there a second longer. Finally, Rarity heard her voice. “May…maybe…maybe some of them are still under the rubble…”
Rarity took one more glance at the monstrous frogs, especially as two of them turned and began to eye the two ladies and shook her head. “It’s too late. We have to go.”
“They may still be alive… I have to look… I have to be sure…”
“Flutter-”
Rarity cut herself off as she heard a new sound coming, this from the street across from them. She turned and looked, and paled on seeing a new horror coming. This time it was a plague of rats…so many and so deep that they raised a full two feet above the ground with thousands of voracious, demented little bodies. They were pouring down the road hungry for whatever prey they could find. More sounds of destruction rained around them as the rams kept doing their work, and the sound of bird cries in unison began to peel out. They were massing again…possibly for the two of them.
Rarity grasped her shoulder and pulled. “Fluttershy! We have to flee! I’m sorry, we can’t stay!”
She still wouldn’t move. She actually began to oppose it as her senses came back. “I have to see! I can’t leave them behind! Not any of them!”
It seemed as if in a moment she was going to break free and run for the remains of the stables. Even if she didn’t, the swarm of rats and the bird flock were coming closer. Even Angel wormed his way out of Fluttershy’s grasp only to look up at her with an almost pleading and insistent look. Rarity finally realized there was no time for this.
Raising her knife, she let out a sigh. “I’m sorry Fluttershy. I’m glad Twilight taught me this one…”
She quickly drew a symbol in the air right behind Fluttershy’s head and drove the knife into the center of it, executing it. The sigil instantly melted away and seemed to sink inside. Enough of Fluttershy’s senses came back to briefly notice what was happening, before her eyes glazed over, her eyelids drooped, and she let out a heavy sigh. Moments later, she went limp, letting Angel fall out of her arms, and started to collapse.
Rarity wouldn’t let her. She quickly darted inward and seized her around the middle, bracing her now unconscious body. Angel, on his part, landed on his feet but immediately began to hop and squeak insistently. Rarity had to take a moment. She grunted and strained as she slowly let Fluttershy’s body fall over her.
“Rainbow Dash or Applejack would be so much more suited to this…” she muttered as she maneuvered her over her shoulders, then quickly braced her in a “shepherd” pose. Grunting a little, she forced herself back to her feet. “But I’ll simply have to make do! Let’s be off, Angel!”
Turning away from the doomed stable, Rarity began to run down the only road not dominated by Nighttouched. Angel quickly fell in alongside her, hopping along frantically the whole way.
Running down the road kept the sounds of the monsters from getting any closer, but it also exposed her to new noises. Down the street was the entrance of the embassy that was closer to town, and she could hear echoing up from it the sounds of gunfire and more screams. That wasn’t all, however. She heard the sounds of more homes being destroyed further along, along with the sounds of what seemed like trees being knocked down. The flood of Nighttouched weren’t confining their attack to the embassy but were attacking the town as well.
She also became aware of something else as she ran. Not only were the sounds of the monsters behind her not getting any farther away, but the only way to go from here was down the road and toward a town likewise being ransacked by Nighttouched. It also wasn’t too far before she began to start feeling strain coming on from carrying Fluttershy while running.
By the time they reached the fence to the embassy grounds, Rarity saw several malformed gigantic insects hunched over the remains of the guards posted there, but fortunately the gate itself was wide-open. Trying her best not to look at the insects, she tore out through the opening as fast as she could and onto the road beyond. Yet she quickly came to the dreadful realization that it was in vain. She was exposed and in the open. Worse than that, she noticed Angel stopping and then chittering at her again, trying to urge her on faster.
That meant she had to be getting slower. She could feel sweat mounting on her brow already. Worse than that, the noise of her pursuers seemed to be getting nearer…
“Rarity!”
Hearing her name called shocked the woman out of her growing terror and made her look up. She was nearly flabbergasted at what she saw. Just up the road, grasping a revolver with one hand and frantically waving at her with the other, her clothing stained with a bit of fresh blood, was a familiar face.
“Starlight!”
“Hurry!” Starlight Glimmer shouted back. “The engine is parked right over here!”
Rarity hadn’t been paying attention to the telegram enough to not be surprised on seeing the woman, but she didn’t question it as she redoubled her efforts to run after her. It was only a short distance before she saw Starlight turn and go off the road, vanishing behind a stand of trees at the turn. Soon after, she ran up behind her and turned just in time to hear another gunshot. She spotted Starlight holding her firearm at the tree line, but she quickly pocketed it and ran toward the open hatch of her comrade’s trackless carriage. The rusted, beat up, tank-like vehicle was the best thing Rarity had seen all morning.
“Get in!” Starlight shouted out as soon as she was inside, even as Rarity saw Nighttouched starting to emerge from the tree line around it. Fortunately, she was faster than them in her current form. She made a bee line straight for the hatch and paused only long enough to go in sideways to avoid bumping Fluttershy. Angel hopped in soon after and Starlight immediately reached out and swung the hatch downward.
“Hit it, Double Diamond!”
Rarity had barely had a chance to stop before the engine beneath her gave such a lurch that she was thrown fully off balance and to the floor of Starlight’s cluttered vehicle. She managed to throw Fluttershy clear so she at least didn’t land on her. She didn’t really care, however, so long as the engine was getting them out of there. She put aside her thoughts of Starlight’s timely arrival for the moment as the engine backed out into the road, turned about, and soon began to chug with full steam ahead.
As soon as they were going in a straight line and accelerated to full speed, Rarity managed to pick herself up. By that point, Starlight had already run to the front cab of the engine, and she quickly rushed up to join her. Grabbing a support rod she stared out the narrow viewing window at what was going on.
The Nighttouched continued to leak out into the road as they sped along, but as it was a fairly straight shot they were able to keep going at full speed and passed them by quickly. The few buildings they passed as they went were swarming with them, however. One flood of them, creatures that Rarity couldn’t even recognize, looked like they were tearing one apart brick by brick. Two of the bits of masonry were even flung against the side of the trackless engine as they roared past, letting out a couple of nerve-inducing heavy noises against the side.
That was nothing, however, compared to a few seconds later when they came upon a wide turn. As the engine came forward, the three of them saw a second flood of the same Nighttouched rats come pouring down in the opposite direction. This one surged an entire foot higher and spread across it like a deluge of eyes and teeth.
“Oh no…” Double Diamond remarked; his hand nervously creeping toward the throttle lever to slow down.
Starlight immediately shot her own hand down and seized the throttle, making sure it kept going full speed. “Don’t slow down! Hang on!”
He began to tense up and grit his teeth, but he held onto the steering. Rarity winced and grabbed the support rod with her other arm. Moments later, they plowed into the monsters.
It was a grotesque mess. Rarity kept her eyes shut for it, but she could hear the horrible noise as wheels, gears, and the momentum of the trackless engine tore into the wall of flesh. The sounds of what had to be hundreds of bones a second crunching rang in her ears, and the squeals both of rage and agony from the legion of rats echoed throughout the entire inner compartment. She actually felt the engine slip and slide a bit like it was on ice from the bodies it was rolling over, and she feared for several seconds at any moment they would derail while still swarming in the midst of the monsters, and then they’d worm their way in and pick them apart…
Yet after eight full seconds of tearing into the flood, the sounds died off. The engine sputtered and choked a bit from what had to be pieces of remains that landed inside it, but it kept chugging forward and slowly evened out again. After another half a minute, Rarity risked opening her eyes and looking again. She nearly retched on seeing the front window mottled with remains, and not all of them blood, but the road was now clear beyond. No more signs of Nighttouched or anything else.
She removed a hand to clasp for her chest as she slowly sat down. Starlight let out a long sigh as she released the throttle; just in time to let Double Diamond grab it and ease them into a more narrow turn. She wiped her own forehead before turning back to her. “I think we’re clear. You’re lucky we showed up when we did. That was just in the nick of time.”
Rarity had to take a moment longer to compose herself before she allowed her brain to fully process what had just happened. She stared at the woman and blinked. “Starlight Glimmer? What are you doing here?”
“I could ask the same thing about you. Didn’t you get my telegram?”
“Telegram…” Rarity mused. It was a bit hard to remember considering everything that had just happened, but she vaguely recalled what the messenger had been saying. “That…that was you?”
She let out a half-chuckle. “I’ve been looking all over for the six of you…well, seven including Spike…ever since that night broke. You wouldn’t believe what’s happened. The Lunar Discovery Society has been surging with members, especially now that we’re finally able to make inroads into Equestria!” She paused. “Of…course, the only reason we’re able to do that is because we’ve been masquerading as a road cleanup agency, so we’ve been focused primarily on meeting quotas instead of making discoveries…but forget all that. Where are the others?”
Rarity looked puzzled. “Others?”
“Yes, Twilight and the others? I mean, the newspapers only said Fluttershy would be out in Fillydelphia, but you were there too so I figured the others were with you and just riding incognito.”
Rarity bowed her head at that, beginning to look uneasy.
Starlight took a moment before she began to realize what that meant. “Oh…so it was just the two of you?” She hesitated, but then sighed. “Well, I guess it’s for the best. If any of the others had been in that town, there’s no way we could have gotten to them. I mean…did you see that back there? No Nighttouched I’ve ever seen acted like that before. And in broad daylight…”
“And here I thought life was going to start returning to normal…” Rarity sighed. “First that mysterious assailant from last night, and now this.” She ruefully turned and looked to the back. Fluttershy was still out, but it only made her more uncomfortable. “I imagine she’s not going to be very happy with me when she wakes up, but there was no time. I don’t think the two of us even with our Anima Viris could have fought off all of that…”
“Mysterious assailant?” Starlight echoed back. “Like one of those people who goes crazy because of their Promethian Sigils?”
Rarity looked back at her and shook her head. “I’m afraid not. This was something…and someone…totally different. Although they sort of pale in comparison to what just happened just now. If the Nighttouched are attacking in broad daylight, then even without any more Light Eaters we’re in serious trouble. Everyone is.”
“Let’s not jump to the worst case just yet…” Starlight reassured. “Our first order of business is getting to the next city and warning them about what just happened.” She exhaled and slumped into a seat herself. “And while we’re on the way there, it looks like we both have a lot to tell each other.”
This puzzled the designer. “Both?”
“I’ve been trying to keep an ear and an eye open for the six of you for weeks, but it wasn’t until a little while ago that I forced myself to make enough time to start searching for you with Double Diamond. It became a little more important around that time. We found something big.”
Rarity’s curiosity was piqued. “What do you mean…‘big’?”
“As in could-redefine-science-and-technology-of-the-world-as-we-know-it big.”
Although she hadn’t been the one called, Pinkie Pie perked up on hearing that sound. It was a bit hard to find the source. It was getting late and, although the rain had let up, the sky was still thick with clouds; leaving only a few small and purposely dim campfires around most of the military encampment to serve for illumination. She managed to catch the glimpse of an outline of a new figure in a uniform on the periphery of the Civilian 39th’s area.
Applejack herself, seated across from the fire and, like the rest of her kin, doing her best to get one last real meal in before the next conflict, immediately rose to her feet. “Yes sir!”
“The word’s been given! We’re moving out in one hour! CO said that she wants you in on the briefing!”
“Yes sir!”
The figure turned and walked off. Pinkie turned to Applejack with an excited gasp. “You didn’t tell me you were a sergeant!”
She frowned. “Well, I wasn’t ‘fore yesterday. One of them field promotions I guess. Anyway, hop on up. You heard the man. We gotta head over to whatever they’re plannin’.”
“Ooo! I get to come?” Pinkie asked excitedly as she bounced to her feet. Since she was an official draftee along with the rest of them, the rest of the company had managed to scare up a uniform for her that fit, although between her pink poofy hair and her childish mannerisms it was still hard to imagine her as a soldier.
“Damn straight, ya’ do. You may not be as tough as me, but you’re worth a good fifty soldiers too,” she answered as she quickly moved over to her. “’Sides…we’re gonna both need to know when’s a good time to cut and run fer the border. Even if we lick these Trottingham types, I gotta make sure the rest of the family can handle it from here before we push on.”
Applejack grimaced just slightly as she led on. “In the army, it’s ‘yes sir’.”
“Yes sir, sergeant sir!”
The two had a bit of trouble working their way over to the briefing tent for their company. This was, after all, a secondary briefing following the main one that the head officers had already had. By now the word was going out over the entire camp as well as others throughout the countryside that it was time to mobilize, and the brief respite that the armed forces had was now rapidly coming to life preparing the mobile artillery and whatever cavalry could be mustered to move out. The camp lanes, that had been drying out somewhat, were now quickly being obliterated into fresh mud and filled with traffic as they wormed their way through one after another.
Finally the two reached a larger tent that had guards posted at the front, and was well illuminated on the inside. Many other officers were already pouring in. Applejack and Pinkie both approached the entrance, but on reaching the threshold one of the two guards at the entrance put out a hand and stopped her.
“Lieutenant and higher only. This is an official briefing.”
She frowned indignantly. “Y’all called me out here ta’ begin with!”
The guard nearly responded, but before he could the other guard spotted her and quickly interjected. “Let her pass. That’s Sgt. Applejack with the Civvie 39th. Her CO wants her in on this.”
The other guard paused. He looked back to the two of them, now turning to Pinkie Pie, who cheerfully waved back.
“What about that one?”
The guard was silent. He looked to Applejack, who in turn stood plainly for a moment, glancing back to Pinkie and then forward again. “Well…she’s someone I want in on the briefin’.”
The two soldiers looked to each other. However, there were other officers beginning to fill in behind them, and all of them were beginning to look impatient. After a moment longer, one of them finally turned and looked. Apparently, whoever the CO was for the Civilian 39th had been watching the entrance, because one of the officers stared right back and gave a single nod. When that happened, the two guards finally parted ways, letting the two walk inside.
As soon as they were in, they spotted a large pair of tables set up in the center, covered with both maps of the area as well as small figurines to indicate forces. They even had tiny flags on pins attached to them to represent which corps the figurines represented. The tent was already filled with officers in addition to the CO that had helped wave them in. Applejack immediately went to her and fell in alongside.
“Thanks fer bringin’ us both in,” she mentioned.
“Well, if she can do half the stuff you can, she’s more’n welcome,” the officer responded.
“Aw, you bet. Wait’ll you see her on the battlefield. She’s tougher than any other boy you got in the unit.”
“Ooo!” Pinkie chose at that moment to exclaim. She began to wander away from Applejack and to the table. “They’re going to play soldiers over here! I’ve never seen figures like these! Hee-hee! They’re just like the soldiers in the army! Where’s the cannons? I want to blast the bad guys! Boom-boom-boom!”
Applejack grimaced. She turned to her CO, who gave her a half-frown. Quickly she began to chuckle nervously. “Uh…heh…she saves it fer when it counts.” Quickly, she parted from her side, ran up to the woman, grabbed her by the arm, and drug her away from the table. “Get back here already!”
“Aw…” Pinkie remarked disappointedly.
Applejack didn’t care much for having to keep her friend’s attention when she was acting like a little child, “ooh-ing” and “aah-ing” at every little thing, but fortunately she didn’t have to worry about that for too long. The last few attendees soon arrived, and as soon as they did the room became quiet. Only then did a single officer in particular step forward. Neither Applejack nor Pinkie Pie had seen the one in charge of their entire group yet, but considering that he looked older, his uniform was decorated for that of a colonel, and that everyone was giving him their full attention, they soon reasoned this one had to be the person in charge.
“Alright,” he announced with a gruff, impatient tone, quieting down the remaining noise, “I’m going to keep this short as we need to get a move on, so pay attention. This is the move that’s going to halt the Trottingham advance and, with any luck, send them packing in retreat.”
He gestured down to the map, in particular toward a large set of figurines holed up in one area. They were painted a red color unlike the green color of most of the other figurines, and the flags that they bore were those of Trottingham. In addition to figurines of numerous troops, there were a few large ones that looked airship shaped.
“The advance they’ve made this time is different from their past attacks on Appleloosa. The new commodore pushed hard and fast in a quick campaign. We weren’t ready for it and we paid the price. However, so did they. They pushed forward so fast without a place to fortify themselves or resupply that they’ve spread themselves too thin. The main bulk of their forces pushed deep into our territory using their airships to cover them, but now they’re low on ammo and fuel and without any of their tank divisions or most of their artillery to back them up. They’re holed up right here in the town of Deadwood, likely because it’s the only town that has a railway that still passes all the way to the east border. They’re planning on staying there until they can resupply and catch their breath. We’re going to counterassault them before they get the chance.”
He proceeded to gesture around the map to the nearby locations, starting with a rather large force that was made of regular figurines, artillery figurines, and ones with horses.
“Our main force is gathered here. Supporting it, we have two companies, including the one headed by myself that you’re all part of.” He proceeded to gesture to two smaller groups of figurines, one to the north and one to the south. After that, he reached for the table and grabbed a wooden pole with a flat rod braced over the top of it. He extended it over the map behind the largest force, and pushed it inward toward the enemy figurines.
“Shortly, the main army is going to make a push to Deadwood in what we want the enemy to think is an attempt to retake the city through superior numbers and firepower. However, the enemy knows the surrounding fields are still muddy and inundated from the rain and they’ll count on our cavalry to be largely out of commission. They’ll come out to counter us and try and drive us back before we can move artillery into range.”
He moved the rod to the opposite side of the friendly units and pulled them away, before reaching out with it to some of the enemy units and pulling them after them.
“At that point, the general is going to break before them and pull back, which we plan on drawing out the rest of their army in pursuit in an attempt to keep us from coming back until they can resupply. At that time…”
He moved the rod around and had the two smaller companies sweep in on the line from the north and south.
“This company and its sister company will move in and attack simultaneously from two fronts, north and south. We plan to split the enemy force clean in half. When that happens, the main army will turn back and wipe out the force that went too far, while the two companies turn on Deadwood itself and drive out the attackers. They should be helpless to do anything but fall back with the rest of their army, and we’ll have retaken at least half of the territory we lost and the station in Deadwood. Any questions?”
“What about the airships?” one spoke up. “They’ve been using those to get the upper hand on us since this fight got started.”
“Yes, but these ones have exhausted most of their munitions,” the colonel answered. “They aren’t even much in the way of flying artillery, let alone enough to drive us back. Plus the rain will be hurting them too. The clouds are so low that they won’t be able to get a good shot unless they put their big fat asses right in range of our anti-air artillery. They shouldn’t be much of a factor. The fighting is mostly going to be man-to-man. Anything else?”
Silence from the rest of the group. Pinkie, looking like she felt left out, began to raise her hand, but Applejack stopped her before she could make a scene.
“Alright then, get to it. We move out in forty minutes.”
“Ok…so, first we need to move out and get them to run after us…then we need to come around and go in…then we need to get their airships to run after us… Wait, no…what was that all again?”
Applejack sighed and rolled her eyes. “All we gotta do is move out, waiting for the bugle to blow, then tear inta’ the Trottinghamites, Pinkie,” she tiredly corrected.
“Oooooh…” she responded knowingly. “That sounds much easier. Why didn’t that man in the tent just say that?”
Applejack grimaced but kept walking. However, she only got a few more steps before Candy Apples walked up alongside her, looking a bit uneasy. “Uh, coz? Are you sure she’s gonna hold her own when we get there? I mean…”
“Don’t worry,” Applejack half-sighed back, “Trust me. She can handle herself. Just make sure you stick behind her and pick off what gets by her, alright?”
Candy still looked rather uncertain about it, especially on looking at Pinkie again and seeing her merrily skipping along, but nodded and fell back with Big Macintosh and the others.
At this point, the entire Apple family along with the rest of the Civilian 39th and the accompanying divisions were making their way to Deadwood. As much as they were able, they stuck to the roads, especially with the cavalry. The surrounding area was nothing but farm fields, much of which had turned into muddy quagmires in the wake of the continuous rain. Only the ground closest to the road was dry and stable enough to move any horses or light artillery on. Everyone else was doing as best as they could, trying to stay out of puddles and mud as they trudged on their way to their destination. It didn’t help things one bit that it was still quite dark outside. In order to get as much surprise as they could, their company was being forced to march all night to get into position, such that when first light broke they could rush on the enemy. That really didn’t help them avoid any mud patches or huge puddles that were littering the area, however.
At any rate, following the last exchange, Applejack and Pinkie Pie had a bit of privacy to themselves. Considering her power, Applejack’s CO had put her at the head of the Civilian 39th, both to lead the charge when they reached their destination but also to handle any surprises that might try to leap out and stop them along the way. As a result, their current arrangement gave them a bit of privacy. Applejack and Pinkie were walking in front, the four “special” members of the Apple family were next behind, and the rest of the troop was bringing up the rear. So long as they kept to that arrangement, the two were effectively out of audio and visual range.
For that reason, Applejack took that moment to speak up to them. “Awright, here’s what’s happenin’. After we win this here fight, Trottingham’ll be in full retreat and we can link up with that other company that’s got the rest of my kin in it. My family’ll be together and we’ll have bought some time, so we can go take care of your family. We ain’t gonna stop once the battle’s over. We’re gonna keep on pushin’ and head all the way into Trottingham right on the heels of these palookas.”
“Neat!” Pinkie cheered as she kept hopping along. “But what if we don’t?”
“Huh? What if we don’t what?”
“What if we don’t win?”
Applejack snorted. “Didn’t ya’ hear back there? We got this in the bag already. Trottingham may have made a good run of it but their luck just ran out. They made a deep push but they ain’t got no steam left. They may have got the best of us at first, but now they’re playin’ on our side of the field. This sorta thing happens all the time whenever there’s a war. We lose a bit at first, then we push back and they lose a little…and when it’s all over and done with we’ll be back where we started. ‘Sides, they got us here. So this company sure ain’t gonna lose.”
Pinkie thought of that for a moment. “Hmm…I guess you’re right.”
“Course I’m right! Don’t you be worryin’ none ‘bout this. Just worry ‘bout beatin’ the stuffin’ outta ‘em pretty soon. Pay ‘em back for everythin’ they had Sunset Shimmer put us through.”
“Oh, I can’t do that, Applejack.”
“Huh?” she retorted, looking almost indignant. “Why the hell not?”
“Gaia Everfree says we shouldn’t seek personal revenge against people who wronged us. That’s what Maud tells me.”
“Well you can-” Applejack began to retort, before sighing and quickly composing herself. “Well then, just worry ‘bout beatin’ them up so we can get to your folks, alright?”
“Okie-dokie-lokie!”
Realizing that was the best they were going to get for now, Applejack turned forward and kept marching.
It was such a slog and took so much of the night that everyone was feeling a little tired out by the time they finally reached their destination. At length, however, Applejack and Pinkie Pie alike both began to see a glow on the horizon being reflected from the clouds. It was rather faint, but it definitely wasn’t moonlight or anything natural. Applejack would have estimated it was still a good ten miles away when they suddenly heard the sound of a trumpet letting out a single long note blare over the entire company.
At that, Applejack stopped. As Pinkie kept walking, she quickly put out a hand on her to halt her as well. “That’s the signal for company halt,” she informed her before she could ask.
“Oh…that means we stop, right?” she answered, even as the large army behind them quickly made the sound of shuffling to a halt as well. “Great! So what now?”
“We wait here for the next signal. That one’ll be to charge.”
Time slowly ticked by. Pinkie never lost her own enthusiasm, and Applejack and the rest of her family remained bold as they stood at the front raring and ready to go. The rest couldn’t be said for the remainder of the Civilian 39th behind them. Most of them looked rather nervous, constantly wrenching and grasping their weapons in their hands, wiping at their heads, or shifting in place. Occasionally, far, far in the distance, they heard sounds of some sort of large mechanical movement, but nothing en masse or to indicate any major move.
At last, in spite of the clouds, the first glow of the coming dawn began to break over the horizon. When that happened, those gathered finally began to hear a movement. It was a low, soft rumbling; obviously the sounds of many feet marching out in unison. As time passed, the sound of a drummer keeping the beat for the pace began to echo over the field as well. When that happened, the group gathered began to finally see something. While still quite distant, against the rising sun’s glow, they saw a faint outline of an airship begin to lift off into the sky. Soon another joined it, and a third after that.
Applejack’s family had their own arms at the ready all along, but Applejack had nothing on her save for her claw hammer at her waist. She drew it out at this point, but didn’t stop there. Reaching behind her, she felt around for a moment before she grasped something else and held it before her. It wasn’t much…just a pot lid with a metal handle. However, she twisted it around in front of her with one hand and the hammer with the opposite.
Applejack merely smirked back. “Jus’ you wait and see.”
Pinkie merely giggled as she got out her own “weapon”…an old, dull, meal knife she had gotten from the eating supplies that the Apple family had lent her. Nevertheless, she looked daring enough as she brandished it.
Not five minutes later, a distant bugle blared. The first sound like a bunch of firecrackers echoed over the field. More quickly followed after it, followed by several much deeper and booming sounds. The distant battlefield erupted with burst of light and clouds of smoke rising in pockets all over. Nevertheless, the company held its ground and patiently waited as the battle unfolded.
Time ticked by again, with the blasts growing more violent and frequent. The battlefield became blotted out again with all of the smoke from the gunpowder, the fighting, and chaos that unfolded. It became impossible to make out anything going on. Nevertheless, none of the group was at ease. The entire division remained on high alert and tensely waited for the moment to come.
After what seemed like an eternity it happened. The noise that everyone had been waiting for peeled loud and clear as the bugle sounded over the Civilian 39th.
“That’s it!” Applejack shouted. “It’s time!” She held her hammer into the air. “Member of my house, I command you to come to me! Bastion of the Field—Bright Macintosh!”
Applejack’s aura erupted soon after, and within moments she was clad once again in the role of the Warrior. As on previous occasions, she wielded a warhammer, once again a bit different from the other two she had previously used. The other noteworthy difference, however, was in the stove top lid. It had transformed as well, this time into a round buckler large enough to protect her entire upper torso if need be.
“Hey! You got a shield now, Applejack!” Pinkie cheered. “My turn! My turn! Member of my house, I command you to come to me! Sage Geologist—Maudileena Daisy Pie!”
Pinkie’s own aura erupted, and in moments she was standing there in her own familiar role of the Rogue. Unlike Applejack’s new and more impressive look, she was still very much in her old form, and her dinner knife had become a simple dagger once again. Nevertheless, she seemed to be just as enthused as she tossed it up and down, almost bouncing again already.
Seeing her in that form made Applejack smile wider. “Alright…let’s show these Trottingham sons of bitches! Stick behind us! Charge!”
With that, she tore off across the battlefield. Pinkie immediately moved alongside her. The four Apple family members quickly fell in behind, and the rest of the Civilian 39th plus the remainder of the company brought up the rear.
For several minutes, the charge was no more than that. The bugle continued to sound several times before changing fully to the drummer, but even that began to fall faint as Applejack and Pinkie Pie easily outstripped the rest of the army. Finally, they heard a thunderous noise in front of them, coupled with a flash of light.
“Split up!” Applejack yelled as she veered to one side.
“Why?” Pinkie asked innocently as she ran the opposite way.
The farmer didn’t need to answer that question as the response came in the form of an artillery shell hitting the area where they had been. It burst in an eruption of flame and shrapnel, but with the speed of the two of them coupled with the fact artillery fire wasn’t meant to hit individual targets they were both well in the clear. More cannons, however, soon thundered all around them as the rest of the guarding artillery opened fire.
Applejack quickly leveled her shield in front of her and kept charging, while Pinkie merely laughed and went into a series of merry skips. The area around them lit up with one cannon eruption after another, but none of them could make any direct hits against two targets the size of normal people running. Several of the shells came close, but it was no use. Applejack stayed behind her shield and barreled right through the fire and shrapnel. As for Pinkie, she merely laughed and twisted and leapt through the clouds of firepower that went off around her, completely undaunted and actually treating the entire experience as a game.
Soon the cannon fire subsided. The ones manning the artillery were forced to reload. Applejack lowered her shield and grinned when it happened. She glanced behind her as she kept running, seeing the field still smoldering and settling from the first volley. However, the shots had also been wasted trying to hit the two of them. Now the rest of the Apple family and the civilian corps behind it had smooth sailing. She turned back forward, just in time to spot the first gun emplacement. In a hastily dug-out pit a smoking field gun was being frantically serviced by a crew of four Trottingham soldiers in an attempt to fire again.
She never gave them the chance. Keeping her shield at the ready, she charged straight at it, leapt into the air, hoisted her hammer over her head, and brought it down on the barrel. With a tremendous metal snap, she half-broke it off and dented the rest inward. Immediately, two of the crew members dropped what they were doing and went for their rifles. In the time it took them both to get them up, her hammer had come down two more times and flattened the other two members of the crew. They both fired at point blank range, but it was useless. Applejack raised her shield in front of her face long enough to deflect both shots, then whipped out her hammer to simultaneously break and knock the rifles out of the hands of the soldiers as well as broke the wrists of those holding onto them. With another swing, both soldiers were struck down and the emplacement was clear.
“Yee-hah!” she yelled as she jumped out of the hole. “That’s one! Let’s lay up the others!”
“Applejack, look!”
The Warrior’s enthusiasm ebbed momentarily on hearing Pinkie’s alert cry, but even without her yelling she would have seen it soon after. While the fog of war was already reducing visibility on the battlefield considerably, there was no mistaking that she heard the roar of airship turbines. Through the smoke of the gunpowder and the low hanging clouds, she saw a large shadow loom. The noise of its engines quickly grew louder as it hovered closer.
Her face showed a trace of fear on seeing that the airships were coming for them rather than the front, knowing that the small amount of firepower they still held could do far more damage than the artillery shells. She quickly braced herself for what she expected to be a bombing run.
However, her fears were unjustified. The airship didn’t even lower enough to go into firing range. It simply continued to roar past and soon it sailed right over her head. She continued to stand there momentarily, looking behind her to see if it was saving its payload for the rest of the Civilian 39th. It didn’t drop bombs on them either though. It continued to shoot by and vanished. Not only that, but two more airships soon followed suit after it. None of them dropped their bombs either. Soon the sounds of their engines were fading in the distance.
Applejack looked at this in some puzzlement for only a moment longer, before she heard another cannon fire off. Gritting her teeth, she spun around to Pinkie and motioned. “Nevermind them! We got a job to do! Take out the rest of these guns ‘fore any more of them can fire!”
“No problem!” Pinkie cheered, giving a salute to her before taking off just in time to evade another cannon shot. She proceeded to bounce in a serpentine manner straight for the next nearest gun emplacement. Its own cannon leveled itself at her and three of its own crew members pulled out their guns to meet her, but she was too fast. She jumped into the hole and was soon moving around them in a blur. Moments later, she hopped out again, now behind them, and leaving the befuddled gunners confused. After a second, one shouted to shoot at her from behind, only for, moments later, all of their weapons to fall apart in their bare hands. That was exactly two seconds before their cannon did the same.
The two of them made quick work over the rest of the field, jumping from one gun emplacement to another. Not only did this serve to keep most of the attention focused on them, but it allowed them to quickly make the area safe for the remainder of their group. It wasn’t long before Applejack busied herself simply disabling the cannons and moving on. Pinkie did much the same with disarming the field guns she came across. The rest of the Apple family quickly followed up behind them and polished off the gunnery squads that were associated with them. In no time at all, the bulk of the Civilian 39th was pouring over into enemy territory, and what few cannons were still functional found themselves hopelessly outmanned. A few struggled to stand their ground, but they didn’t get off more than a shot or two before they were overwhelmed.
“Awright!” Applejack shouted over the growing din, for now conventional gunshots from both their forces as well as those of the Trottinghamites were beginning to mingle together. “Don’t go lyin’ down on the job now! Time fer the big push! Let’s kick their sorry asses outta Deadwood!”
The charge began again, once more with Applejack and Pinkie Pie leading the way and the Apple family right behind them. They didn’t have to go too much farther, for the Trottinghamites were coming out in ranks to meet them. The fog of war provided some protection at first, but as soon as they became visible the two ladies saw the soldiers taking aim at them both and preparing to fire.
They didn’t get very far. Applejack charged right at them with her shield guarding her, while no rifleman could land a hit on Pinkie Pie no matter how sharp they shot. Soon either one met a firing squad. Applejack laid into hers, flattening them left and right and leaving them strewn across the battlefield in moments. Pinkie easily took apart their weapons as simply as she had taken apart the cannons. In moments their first groups of opponents were disarmed or disabled, and the two were moving on to the next.
With the two in the lead, the division plowed into the enemy like rock into water. None could hold back or restrain Applejack and Pinkie Pie as they moved in. What few tried to move in around them soon found themselves meeting the brunt of the rest of the Apple family. Apple Split and Candy Apples seemed to be natural dead eyes with their own rifles, picking off Trottingham soldiers faster than any of them could draw a bead on the two. Apple Brown Betty kept up support by hurling grenades into the midst of any large groups that came upon them. As for Big Macintosh, seemingly not to be outdone by his sister, he barreled right into the midst of riflemen whenever they paused to reload or get their bearings and proceeded to pick up the biggest and burliest one he could find—using him or her as a human shield as he bashed and beat his way through the others. Their assault kept the enemy at bay long enough to let Pinkie and Applejack keep plowing forward while the rest of the army quickly fell in their footsteps and shredded the disorientated ranks.
The two barely attacked for 30 seconds before the troops began to break before them and pull back. Not only them but also the small troop behind them, allowing the push to move forward practically unhindered. The biggest exhaustion to Applejack was simply running across the field in moments, not actually battling. At their current rate, it was inevitable that the enemy ranks would be split in two and collapse. The thought brought a smile to her face, even as she finally broke a sweat. She had more than enough steam left to finish this battle, and Pinkie looked like she was enjoying herself all too much.
“Heh…almost too easy…” she couldn’t help but mutter as she finished off the latest attack platoon. “Thought after last time y’all would bring out those big fellas! Or did they all turn yellow and run fer it?”
“Wait! Come back!” Pinkie shouted to another group as they fled into the fog of the battlefield. “I haven’t had a chance to take out your firing pins yet! Anyone? Anybody at all?”
Applejack snorted as she watched the next nearest group flee into the smoke as well. “Ya’ all lose yer nerve after the last whoopin’ I gave ya’? How ya’ expect ta’ win a battle when y’all just run away? Not that I should be complainin’…”
“Gee, Applejack,” Pinkie called as she got the opportunity to bound back over to her. “It’s almost like they don’t even want to fight us!”
“Well, I can’t blame ‘em fer that. I mean, ‘tween the two of us we got ‘em…”
Applejack trailed off. Her enthused look dimmed.
“Like they don’t even want to fight us…” she whispered to herself. “What the…?”
“Applejack!”
Snapping out of it, the Warrior looked up and saw Candy Apples running to her. Yet she noticed something else. Surrounded by smoke from the gunpowder and cannon fire, it was impossible to see most of their company. In fact, they had apparently spread so thin that she saw no more than a hundred bringing up the rear behind her. More than that, however, she saw that the field had vacated in a hurry. The only troops she saw was their own. No sign of anyone from Trottingham.
Apparently, Candy had noticed that too. “What gives, cousin? We ain’t got no one left to shoot already!”
“Hell, I ain’t even thrown half of these yet!” Apple Brown Betty spoke up, hoisting a grenade. “That was all they got? Fight’s already over!”
“Fight ain’t over at all!” Apple Split retorted. “Can’t you hear that?”
Applejack stopped and listened, and Pinkie soon bounced up to her side and lent an ear as well. Sure enough, in spite of the field being clear, gunfire was going off rapidly in huge choruses. It made sense. With the heavy amount of smoke on the field, how could it be otherwise? Although there was no enemy in front of them, their company had to be engaged in heavy battle. She only now noticed that even the drummer had gone silent.
“Someone’s fighting…” Pinkie remarked, her own chipper attitude beginning to wane a little. “But who are they shooting at if the bad guys are all in front of us?”
Applejack listened a bit longer, before her eyes widened.
“They’re shootin’ behind us.”
Coming to the same realization, Big Macintosh’s own pupils shrank. “Eeyup…”
“Behind us?” Candy Apples echoed. “But…but they can’t be doin’ that unless…”
“Applejack! Applejack!”
This latest call was far more frantic and louder. From out of the fog of the battlefield behind them, the mists parted to allow a single officer to charge out. She was bloodied and looked like she had already been hit in one arm, and her hat was gone. It took a few seconds for the group to recognize her as the CO.
Applejack blinked in astonishment on seeing the fearful, tense look on her face and the wounds she sported. “Ma…ma’am?”
“It’s the airships! They dropped a battalion behind us rather than bombed us! We’re getting massacred! We…”
Her own eyes suddenly widened, and in moments Applejack realized she was staring past them.
“Look out!”
Applejack whirled back around, just in time to gasp as she saw the fog of war part again. This time, reorganized and fortified, huge rows of Trottingham troops sporting rifles charged out of the gloom and into the light. As soon as they spotted the Appleloosans, they wasted no time. An entire forward line of them dropped to their knees and took aim while the ones behind them quickly leveled their rifles from a standing position. Applejack scarcely could muster her wits past her surprise to raise her shield before the gunfire went off.
“Augh!”
In spite of getting the shield in front of her head, hot, burning pain still ripped into one of her legs and through it as gunfire erupted. She faltered and fell to one knee, but grit her teeth and kept from buckling under the pain. She looked down to her side and saw blood was now oozing out of one of her shins. A rifle bullet had pierced it. Off center, but it had gone all the way through.
She gnashed her teeth in a mixture of anger and pain. In her current body it would take more than a single rifle shot to stop her, but she wasn’t invincible and it didn’t fully negate the pain. Still toughing through it, she lowered a hand to her shin guard, adjusted it over the wound, tightened it to act as a form of tourniquet, and then forced herself back to her feet. She couldn’t put her full weight on that leg now, but it didn’t stop her from brandishing her hammer again.
The rest of the Apple family had managed to hit the dirt, partially because Pinkie jumped on three of them and the other two followed suit. Yet she quickly saw the soldiers behind them weren’t so lucky. They had been cut down almost to a man…including the CO. She caught just a glimpse of her head before she fell down and sank beneath the grass.
Applejack fury flared. Her teeth grit harder than before. She spun around, and in a moment she would have barreled right at their new attackers in spite of their renewed numbers.
Fortunately, even from the ground, Pinkie seemed to spot this. “Uh…I think that might be a bad idea, Applejack…” she spoke up a little nervously.
Applejack wheeled on her with a furious and incredulous look. “Are ya’ serious?! Look at what they just did to us! To the CO! They gotta pay for what they’ve done! Let’s get up and get ‘em! They ain’t gonna stop either of us with them rifles! Not like how we are now!”
“But…what about your family?”
Applejack froze, her anger abating. She looked up to her family. Sure enough, the ones who had been thrown to the ground by Pinkie were wide-eyed and gasping, realizing just how narrowly they had evaded death. Big Macintosh and Apple Brown Betty weren’t much better. Both were now rather nervously looking up at the closing troops, and unlike Applejack they didn’t have higher pain and stamina tolerance to protect them.
Pinkie continued to look at her anxious. “Don’t you think…maybe…sorta…the reason the CO came running back was because she wanted us to get the army to fall back?”
“Fall back?!” Applejack echoed. “Fall back?! After all they…”
However, she trailed off as Pinkie kept staring at her, and she kept seeing the fearful looks on the faces of their family. She looked back up and around and saw the Trottinghamites were still marching forward and had reloaded. Standing their ground was hopeless. There was no way she could protect them all unless they all aimed at her, and if they did she knew, as much as she hated it, she couldn’t protect herself.
Gnashing her teeth in anger but also resignation, Applejack hefted her hammer and her shield. “All of ya’ stay behind me and fall back as fast as ya’ can!”
A moment later, she got to her feet. She was immediately greeted by rifle bullets, but this time she kept her body hunched and her shield in front of her. The gunfire was intercepted even as she forced herself to hobble back as fast as she could. The rest of her family quickly got to their feet, Big Macintosh and Apple Brown Betty helping up the others, and bolted for it. As they did, Pinkie ran out front to Applejack’s side, providing a second target to shoot at. Fortunately, even with all of their weapons behind them, she proved to be just as nimble and unhittable now as she had been before.
Or, Applejack thought, perhaps a few of the shots did hit her but it didn’t matter…
Between the two of them, in spite of Applejack’s injury, they were slowly able to put some distance between them and the approaching soldiers. The repeated firing eventually began to hinder their attackers as the increasing amount of gunsmoke finally created a curtain. The enemy soldiers tried firing blind into it a few times, but by then the rest of the Apple family was able to turn and run for it. After blocking a few more attacks, Applejack and Pinkie Pie turned and ran after them as well. Only then did the former of the two begin to realize just how badly her leg was hurt as she hobbled painfully on it as fast as she could stumble across the field.
“Are you ok?” Pinkie called over the firing both in front and behind them. “Need me to help you walk?”
“Nevermind me! We got to take out whoever they dropped on us from behind! And I’ve gotta good guess of who…”
The two soon reached their own troops. Most of them were scattered and in panic, especially since most of the errant firing had caused the whole field to be shrouded in smoke and the constant eruptions of gunfire only drove them into further fervor. However, Applejack came yelling for them all to rally to her as she tore across the battlefield, and on hearing her sound the rest of the Civilian 39th quickly fell in behind her once again. And as their own corps began to consolidate, the rest of the company began to rally and come in behind them as well.
It wasn’t too long, however, before Applejack and Pinkie began to come across the first of the dead. Initially, they saw that they had been felled by rifle bullets. Yet they only had to run a bit more to see new types of bodies on the fields. Ones the looked folded in half. Or broken into pieces. Or twisted in some inhuman angles. They only picked up in frequency as they got nearer. Both Pinkie as well as many of the troops falling in behind them spotted the bodies and began to grow increasingly uneasy.
Applejack and the “veterans”, however, only stiffened their lips and kept running as they started to see gunfire and hear animalistic noises just through the fog ahead.
“Get ready, Pinkie… I ain’t sure if ya’ got some rule ‘gainst killin’, but I think ya’ might have to break it pretty soon…”
A few more steps and they broke through. As soon as they did, Pinkie’s jaw dropped.
Applejack sneered. “Knew those gutless sons of bitches would come in from behind…”
“Um…are those soldiers, or gorillas?” Pinkie asked.
It was rather hard to tell the difference looking at the field. A force of muscle-bound soldiers, so hulking that they looked more like apes than men, were moving down the field and mowing down everything in their way like they were a group of harvesters cutting wheat. Unlike most Trottingham soldiers, these ones wore some sort of metal body armor over their uniforms that would have slowed a normal human to a snail’s pace yet didn’t seem to be hampering them. Their faces were concealed behind metal masks that showed only their eyes, although those seemed to almost gleam from the slits that were left for them.
The weapons they bore were colossal, looking more like small barrel cannons rather than guns. It didn’t stop them from firing them without personal injury, however, and considering the caliber they never fired without tearing through at least one opposing soldier. That wasn’t the half of it, however. The bayonets they had mounted on each rifle were large enough to be the size of axe heads, and they made use of them as such as soon as they were out of ammunition.
Judging by the sheer number of dead on the battlefield already in their wake, it looked as if they had mostly finished their bullets. That wasn’t stopping them. If anything, they were even more brutal now as they were charging at the soldiers and cutting them down from behind while growling like beasts. The soldiers were fleeing in their wake, and the reason soon became clear. Single or even double shots from rifles weren’t killing them, and shots to the head were useless due to their metal masks. Even a misfire should have left them injured or unconscious, but any bullet that struck their head protection only left them stunned for a few seconds before they kept coming.
Applejack glared at them without fear. “I’ll tell ya’ what they are… They’re about ready ta’ get lain down right next to the last bunch I ran inta’!” With that, she took off straight for the nearest one.
The goon in question was charging in to cut down a straggling Appleloosan soldier. Panicked and nervous, he managed to get his rifle reloaded and up. He took aim and squeezed the trigger just as the goon reached him. The gun went off right in the enemy’s abdomen, but he barely faltered before letting his momentum carry him forward and swing out with his weapon. The rifle the Appleloosan held was struck down out of his hands and nearly cleaved in two, and the soldier himself cried out as he was knocked off balance and onto his back. Bleeding but still coming, the goon stood over him and raised his weapon over his head to split the soldier’s skull next…
He didn’t get the chance. Applejack, vaulting over the fallen soldier, swung upward with her hammer and landed a solid blow that left a ripple in the air under the goon’s chin. As hulking and massive as he was, even he couldn’t stand up to that. His arms went limp as he fell backward and sprawled on the ground.
Not wasting any time, Applejack left that one and the soldier behind and charged right for the next. This one saw her coming, and quickly brandished his weapon. He swung out for her as she reached him, but she countered by swinging out with her hammer and knocking his weapon aside. Unlike with the previous clash, however, he managed to maintain his grip. It didn’t do him much good over the next moment, though, for Applejack dashed inward and smashed him in the helmet with her shield. The blow was solid enough to make him stagger back two steps, but then he sprung back to life and drove his axe-head bayonet inward, trying to gouge her side.
Luckily, she had already recovered her shield arm and deflected it. Twisting around, she ran inward and swung the claw part of her hammer inward toward his torso. It landed in his shoulder, piercing the armored pauldron and digging into flesh beneath. He let out a roar that almost didn’t sound human, and quickly snapped back his good arm, released his weapon, made a fist, and drove it forward smack into Applejack’s face. Her head did snap back a little and she snapped backward, ripping the hammer out at the same time, but the blow didn’t leave nearly the impact the goon had hoped. As he reached for his bleeding shoulder and tried to mount a counterattack, Applejack recovered, came back inward, and swung her hammer head laterally at the side of his skull. With a resounding crack, he went limp and fell to the ground.
She quickly hefted her hammer again, and just in time. Two were bearing down at her from either side. Before she had much chance to react both were swinging at her one after another. She quickly backstepped to avoid the first slice for her neck, then had to implement her shield as well as step back to deflect another slice aimed for her ankle. The first quickly followed up with another cross-slash for her side, which she had to batter away with her hammer head, before the second thrust out for her head. She quickly raised her shield up to deflect it skyward, but left herself open for the first to try and bury his own axe handle into her gut.
She countered by swiveling her hammer head around and bringing it down to catch the axe handle with the claw of her hammer. As the second pulled his axe back and moved to drive the tip into her exposed side, she grunted and twisted her hammer arm to keep one pinned before swinging her opposite arm in a circle to deflect the tip before sweeping her arm about to pin the gun barrel of her opponent’s weapon in an arm lock. She swung it down to her side to hold him there, and for a moment struggled with both opponents at once.
As the first suddenly wrenched his arms to try and pry himself free while twisting her wrists, the second used the fact he was closer to reach out with his fist and pound Applejack in the side. For a moment, she only grit her teeth and took it as he punched her once…twice…thrice…buckling slightly under each hit but toughing through it. Finally, he reached up and seized her by the arm. If what had happened to the others was any indication, he looked ready to dislocate it from its socket to get his weapon free.
That, however, was what she had been waiting for, and she tightened her muscles before twisting her hammer with all of her might. With a sound of metal snapping, she broke the axe head of the weapon she had caught in her hammer’s claw completely. The goon holding that weapon went stumbling back at suddenly being released, and she used that moment to snap her arm up, around, and drive the claw into the center of the chest of the goon attempting to seize her. This time, the mark hit true and mortal, and she immediately felt him go limp in his grasp. Letting him fall, she released his arm, spun around, and proceeded to give her other opponent a pair of slams across this head with her freed hammer. He soon was dropped as well.
Breathing a bit harder now and no longer showing a lack of trauma, Applejack looked up to face her next round of opponents. Unfortunately, four were now targeting her. And of the four, two of them still had ammunition. They stood at a distance and both took aim with their rifles, while the other two brandished them like partisans and ran in from either side. For a moment, a faint look of worry came over her as she once again readied her hammer and shield, clearly not knowing if her defensive item could protect her from their large caliber bullets…
Fortunately, she didn’t have to find out. She saw a pink blur dash past both individuals, and they pulled their respective triggers only to have their weapons fall apart completely. Their two comrades continued to run forward only to have their weapons disintegrate in their bare hands, stunning both of them. When gunfire did go off, it wasn’t from them but from behind her. She turned around, just in time to see her family fire as one on the attackers. While the goons might have been strong enough to take a bullet or too, even they couldn’t stand up to four shots at once. One of the former gunners spasmed and fell to the ground.
Applejack regained her own wits at the same time and ran up to the two that had tried to assault her. Digging in, she leapt and lunged at one of them, twisted her hammer around, and delivered a mortal blow to the side of his head. The power was so strong that the mask snapped in two, sending one piece flying off and into the mask of his comrade. The resulting collision stunned him and made him stagger back, allowing Applejack to land on her feet, run up to him, and soon take him down with another two swings of her hammer. The final remaining goon didn’t have a chance to act before gunfire went off again, this time not from the Apple family but from a few soldiers that had managed to regain their bearings and counterattack. Two of the shots merely winged him, but the third bullet sailed into vital spot above his torso that sank into his chest. He fell to the ground soon after.
Pinkie hopped out, shaking her hands to dislodge a mess of firing pins and bolts, before she saw the next squad of goons coming in. By now, they had become fully aware of her and Applejack and were rushing in from both sides, trying to catch them in a wedge rather than go straight at them. Realizing that, she gulped and shouted. “Uh, Applejack?”
The farmer had already picked up on it as she readied her hammer and charged straight for the space between them. “Everyone get behind me!” she yelled as loud as she could. “We gotta smash our way out! Don’t give up!”
With that, she picked her next target and ran straight at him. The rest of the Apple family quickly fell in behind as they frantically reloaded their weapons, and the rest of the Civilian 39th quickly started to consolidate with the remains of the other groups to bring up the rear.
What followed was a far more violent struggle than Applejack, Pinkie Pie, or any of the other members of the Civilian 39th had expected. Suddenly forced on the defensive and being crushed in on both sides, they had little choice but to lock together and punch through. As powerful as the Warrior and Rogue were, the best Applejack and Pinkie Pie could do was throw themselves right at the enemy and attempt to break their line. Had they been normal soldiers it would have been easy, as there was no more than 250 of them in all. Yet each goon was worth at least five soldiers and only the two of them could deal with them toe-to-toe. Meanwhile, they kept crushing in on either side of them, trying to divide their already-hurting force into pieces so that their attackers from the north could move in and sweep them. They came close more than once as well.
Yet in the end, the two Anima Viri bearing members made the difference. The enemy was unable to overcome the two, and they continued to dig through the line and finally breached it. As soon as they did, the Civilian 39th and the remainder of the company with them broke through and went into full retreat. For a short while, the enemy nipped at their heels and struggled to cut them down from behind. Fortunately, the goons weren’t terribly fast for all of their other plusses, and the soldiers that brought up the rear were cut off by their own burly comrades and unable to pursue as fast after them without splintering their own line. After a mere fifteen minutes pursuit, and with the sun rising and the fog clearing, the group was in the clear and able to fully run for it.
It was only when that happened that Applejack halted, prompting Pinkie and her family to do the same. She frantically motioned the rest of the company on, but as she did she took the moment to look back.
“What’s wrong?” Apple Split asked.
“Listen…”
Pinkie inclined her head to the air, and soon lit up. “Oh! I can hear the bugles again!” She paused. “Um…that’s a good thing, right?”
Applejack frowned and slowly shook her head. “’Fraid not.”
“That’s the…retreat call…” Candy Apples slowly muttered.
Even without hearing that sound, it became clear that was the case before long. With the cloud cover leaving and the sun rising, they could see clear across the fields that lay before Deadwood. Judging by the smoke and haze hanging over the field, it soon became clear that their company wasn’t the only ones who had fallen victim to a surprise attack. The other company had done the same, which meant that the attempt to split the Trottingham forces stationed at Deadwood had gone south. Now the bulk of the army was in full retreat of the enemy forces coming out to rout them.
Pinkie, noticing all of this, sank. Her hair almost seemed to actually lay a bit flatter against her head. “So…does this mean we won’t be charging into Trottingham?”
Applejack’s frown turned into a wince. She looked back at her, but could offer no consolation. “I’m…I’m sorry, Pinkie.”
“So what do we do now?” Candy Apples spoke up.
“Only thing we can do,” Applejack answered tiredly. “Fall back to camp while we can.”
“Eeyup,” Big Macintosh answered, before hoisting his weapon and beginning to move again.
Applejack, dabbing at her own brow, soon was on the move as well. Pinkie grimaced a little before more reluctantly hopping along after her, while the rest of the company slowly began to pick up the pace again. Their own exhaustion from the combination of fighting and running was far more evident. Some were gasping as they limped along, and those who were helping the injured looked even more worn out as they helped them hobble or hoisted them on their backs.
Yet as it turned out, none of them moved much farther before their next break. As soon as Applejack led the group on another two hundred yards, she stopped in her tracks.
“Are we back already?” Pinkie spoke up hopefully.
The farmer pointed. “Look. Someone’s comin’.”
Sure enough, they were crossing near to one of the roads by now. A horse and rider bearing the colors of the Appleloosan army was racing down it at a full gallop. It wasn’t until he was practically bearing down on them that he rapidly pulled the reins on the horse, stopping so abruptly that he was nearly flung from his mount. He looked to the gathering rather anxiously. In spite of the fact he had been riding, he looked tired, sore, dirty, and out of breath.
“Y’all need to head due west. Fast as you can.”
“West?” Applejack echoed back. “What for?”
The rider turned and gestured to the horizon. “Look real careful like out there.”
Applejack hesitated, but did as she was told. Seeming to use her own poofy hair as a sun visor, Pinkie did the same. The rest of the Apple family behind them looked on as well.
The group had mostly been focused on keeping moving forward. As a result, they hadn’t devoted much time to looking too far ahead other than the immediate area. But now, on the edge of the horizon, they could just make out dark shapes moving and moving far too fast to be animals. Their speed was that of ships sailing. They also began to realize that what seemed to be clouds on the horizon was, instead, more smoke. After staring a bit longer, Applejack’s jaw loosened as it clicked.
“Airships…?”
“Whole thing was a trick,” the rider spoke gravely. “Thought they were holed up there waitin’ fer reinforcements, but they were comin’ ‘round the whole time. They hit our camps while we were away. Everyone we had left in the reserve got ambushed. Now the whole defensive line is fallin’ apart. Nothing’s left to stand up to ‘em.”
For the first time since Pinkie had seen her, a shadow fell over Applejack’s face as she began to look truly uncomfortable. The rest of the Apple family soon formed the same expressions. In spite of the fact they had just escaped a major battle, only now, after years of petty wars between Appleloosa and Trottingham in which their back and forth had failed to gain an edge, did they ever suffer such a loss. With this bit of news and what had just happened, for the first time since the Lunar Fall, it was a very real possibility that Appleloosa could actually fall to the Trottinghamites.
Pinkie’s expression showed she slowly realized that getting into Trottingham was the least of their worries. “So…um…what do we do now?”
“We gotta decide quick,” Candy Apples spoke up, nervously looking behind them. “If we’re the only ones who broke outta that fight, they’ll be turnin’ on us soon. And them airships they got could spin on us any moment when we’re out here in the open.”
“Eeyup…” Big Macintosh nervously added.
“Like I told ya’, there’s only one place y’all can go now,” the rider spoke up again. “Last place we can hold up and get a chance of beatin’ these sons of bitches back. We gotta head west now while there’s still any of the army left to fall back, and pray we can get some reinforcements from somewhere or there ain’t gonna be an Appleloosan Army to defend the country with ‘fore long.”
Applejack looked up to him as he started to turn his horse around. “Where’s that, exactly?”
The heavy cell bars came off the rollers and snapped shut with a clang. No sooner had they done so than the guard locking the three in turned and stepped away when Sunset sighed and put her hands up and on them.
“Gee…just as I was getting used to not being in a cell…”
At once, four rifles snapped up and aimed at her. “Hands off the bars! Step away from the door!” one of them barked.
Gulping, she shrank back when she found herself confronted by the firearms. After a moment, she nervously took a few steps back before risking turning around and putting her back to the soldiers.
Unfortunately, there wasn’t much to find there in terms of relief. Twilight was already pacing back and forth in the small pen, but Rainbow Dash was giving her a look that could kill.
“Sheesh…even when you’re not trying to kill us you still get us into trouble.” She craned her head and yelled. “Hey guard! We’re not even with her! She tried to slice us all up before turning into some raging she-demon that wanted to burn us to a crisp!”
“Quiet!”
Dash let out an angry mutter before slumping back where she was; propping her head up on her arms. “I got enough time getting in trouble with the law without having someone else drag me into it…” she muttered.
“Alright you three! Look over here!”
All three, in various states of irritation or fear, looked up to the guard at the door. He proceeded to step away from the back of the prisoner-model Steel Lion and gestured to what was right behind it…one of Fillydelphia’s own tank models. As its motor idled and it belched clouds of black smoke, its rather massive gun aimed directly at them.
“The gunner’s got a dead eye and he can see every move you make. You raise your hands or do anything else funny and you all get blown to hell, got it?”
Twilight swallowed at the threat. Sunset began to sweat all over again, but timidly nodded. Dash rolled her eyes and groaned. “Yeah, yeah, yeah…”
The guard sneered at her. “Keep that attitude while you can. All three of you are looking to swing for this.”
With that, he turned away and joined the rest of the guard…which numbered about thirty in all. That was aside from not one but two tanks following behind the Steel Lion that had the prisoner’s cell mounted in the back of it. That wasn’t counting the one in front of it with another gun barrel aimed at the vehicle and yet another Steel Lion after that transporting even more soldiers. This veritable parade was attracting more than its share of stares from the locals, who by now were treating this entire thing as a spectacle. Yet the soldiers were neither embarrassed nor deterred. They sharply came together to form ranks, squared their shoulders, and waited. Not long after, their CO gave the order to march and the Steel Lion along with the rest of the retinue began to chug down the road.
Twilight looked up rather uncomfortably at all this. “Well…I think it’s safe to say we aren’t welcome in Fillydelphia…”
Sunset rolled her eyes. “…Really? What was the first clue?”
“Since this was your fault, I wouldn’t try to be such a smartass,” Dash retorted, before looking around the area a little. “I can’t believe we’re getting dragged all the way to Rider’s Island.”
“Huh?” Twilight answered. “Rider’s Island? How do you know? They didn’t say where we were going.”
“Trust me. They wouldn’t be sending all of these delivery boys out and not put us down on the spot if they weren’t taking us anywhere else. That’s the most secure prison they can put us in.”
Sunset gave a weak chuckle as she moved over to the side of the pen, leaned against the bars, and let herself slowly sink to the floor. “So long as they feed us decent? It’ll be like a hotel compared to where we’ve been. At least until they hang us…”
“Hang you, maybe,” Dash retorted. She glanced around her cell, especially at the tank that was following them, before turning her head away from it and speaking quietly. “Twilight, what do you say we bust outta here now?”
She looked to her in surprise. “Huh?” She realized a moment later she had said that with her mouth in full view of the rear, and immediately she blanched and turned her back to the entrance. “I mean…what are you talking about?”
“The two of us can get out of here easy once we put on our Anima Viris. Sure, it might be a little tight and we’ll have to be on the run for a bit, but no big deal after we got through Griffonstone. We can handle this in a snap.”
Twilight hesitated. She looked back behind them, not only at the cell and the people looking into it, but also to Sunset. She picked up on this and immediately began to tense again. She looked almost fearful when Twilight laid eyes on her.
“What about Sunset?”
“What about her?”
“They’re going to fire that tank the moment we try anything. Whether we dodge it or not, she’ll be hit. And she doesn’t have any protection like we do.”
“So what?” Dash snorted back. “She didn’t really care about whether or not she killed us when she fired on us back at Mount Aris, did she? Or whether she’d kill her own soldiers back on the airships?”
Sunset grimaced, tightening her fists and bowing her head. Twilight again turned back and glanced at her, this time staring for several seconds before looking back.
“I’m sorry…but I’m not moving if we’re going to leave her behind to get hit by whatever we do.”
“Oh, come on!” Dash outburst, nearly breaking their cover. “They could be serious about that hanging thing, you know! You’re wanting to stick around long enough to get stuck in some prison cell and make it harder for all of us to bust out of here and get back to Manehattan all on account of her? After everything she did to us? That’s crazy! You can’t want to keep her around just because she read some dumb old books that you didn’t! She’s not worth it!”
Twilight glanced back at Sunset again. She bit her lip, twisting a little in place. “It’s…not just that.”
“Well what is it then? Why should we all risk getting our heads stuck in a noose because she got her own head shoved into one?”
Twilight held a moment longer, wincing a bit more, before she finally spat it out. “Because…it wouldn’t be right.”
Sunset looked up at that in a show of genuine surprise. Dash stared at Twilight unblinking for several seconds, before her eyes narrowed dully at her. “You have got to be kidding me. Wouldn’t be right? Wouldn’t be right?!”
“Look…” Twilight sighed, “we did have a deal, and she’s held up on her end so far. She kept me from blowing my cover in Trottingham and kept me out of being traded to some hormone-crazed perv. She helped me eat and stay hydrated when we were being transported across the ocean, and she helped me get on the boat and stay above water when the ship wrecked. Sure, I might have helped her out too, but I made it this far working with her and I wouldn’t have otherwise.”
“But she’s just doing it to help herself!”
“Be that as it may, she did still help me. And just because she might not care about leaving someone who can’t help themselves to die doesn’t mean I don’t care. And neither should you. I don’t know why I was born with this power, but at this point I know that Headmistress Celestia always thought because I had it that I needed to use it to help people. I respected her more than anyone and yet I spent most of the past eight years letting things get worse and worse because I felt too scared and too defeated to try and make a difference. And…well…”
She grimaced a little, bowing her own head.
“Well…if that’s the case, then I can’t say I did much better than Sunset when it came to trying to end the eternal night.”
Sunset looked even more stunned; her jaw dropping a little on hearing that. Dash looked likewise surprised.
She looked back up. “But I can help people now. And the only reason I need is that it’s the right thing to do, so that’s what I’m going to do. I really don’t want to hold you back if you get a chance to escape, but I’m staying here until I find a way to get all of us out. I’m sorry but that’s my decision.”
The pen was silent. Sunset continued to stare at Twilight with an open-mouthed look, astonished at what she had just heard. Dash stared back at Twilight with quite a different look—this one a solid frown. However, she didn’t change.
After about half a minute, Dash rolled her eyes, let out a massive groan, and slumped back where she was seated. “Great…I guess that means I’m stuck here too.”
Hearing that made Twilight smile just a little. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me,” she sharply retorted. “I’m staying behind because I’d never leave you behind. First chance we get to where I think I can get both you and me out of here and leave bacon-head back there behind, I’m taking it. But for now, I’m staying put.” She held a moment longer before sighing and leaning back. “Well, get comfy. It’s a ways to Rider’s Island.”
The trip did speed up considerably once they got out of Baltimare. At that point, the soldiers loaded up again while the tanks remained trained on the cell, but the entire convoy picked up speed to where they were making a good 15 miles per hour. Because of that, they didn’t have to worry about being stuck on the road for longer than early afternoon. By the time that rolled around, they were already coming down and around on Rider’s Island.
Fillydelphia had an inland sea that stretched for quite a distance and made up a good natural barrier between it and the defunct former nation of Cloudsdale. Within that sea were a number of small islands, of which Rider’s Island was one. Initially Fillydelphia had used the area as a fort to protect against potential sea-faring invasions and later airship attacks. Those times had come and gone, and since then the government had determined that the island was just as well-suited to keeping people inside it as it was as keeping people out of it. As a result, the fort had been converted into a maximum security prison for all the offenders not eligible for the country’s penal colonies.
Thanks to the bars of the Steel Lion, the three saw it coming from a long way off. They abruptly began to descend downhill until they saw the sea looming large and spacious in front of them and could begin to hear its surf as it slowly lapped against the shore. A bit further on, and they were able to make the building itself out far from shore. Perched on an amount of rock and rising up above the waters was a block of fortified construction material stretching a good seven stories high. Rising above it was four separate towers: a large one in the center and three arranged around it that served to connect the main structure to a fortified wall that stretched around the perimeter of the entire island. As for the rest of the island itself, it was nothing but rough and jagged stone and cliffs—without a single visible place to land for embarking or disembarking.
Even seeing it was an intimidating sight to Twilight.
“Still think not busting out when we could was a good idea?” Dash sardonically asked.
Getting there wasn’t easy either. Their parade of vehicles made its way down to the ocean shore and rolled along it until they came to a single heavily guarded ferry. There was only enough room for a single Steel Lion on board it, so the one holding them rolled into place while the rest of the guards disembarked for the sole purpose of surrounding them with their firearms ready to shoot at a moment’s notice. Considering several of them looked “itchy” in terms of trigger fingers, everyone was too tense to make the slightest move as the ferry pushed away from shore.
Fifteen minutes later, they reached the island. Seeing it up close, Twilight was rather astonished as well as puzzled to see the place was heavily armed. Not just with guards posted but with what looked like cannon emplacements, blockhouses, and even anti-aircraft artillery. And for a base that had supposedly been converted into a prison, all of the armaments looked fairly new and well-maintained. At any rate, the only place to land was in a small U-shaped area with a dock constructed over the rough land of the island. On docking there, the three were finally led out of their pens, but only to have their wrists and ankles chained together. After that, they were none-too-gently forced to walk along in on the island and toward the main structure.
After passing through the fortified wall, which was nothing more than solid stone, iron, and barbed wire on top, they passed through the small inner court before entering the main building. Once inside, they crossed through a short stone corridor before finally going into what looked like a true prison. Nothing but a massive corridor with four stories worth of cells lining the walls on either side. Very dim gaslighting illuminated the ceiling with a glow that would have barely given enough light to see during the night, although, fortunately, it was day for now and the heavily-barred windows allowed in plenty of ample sunshine.
They only crossed into this area a short distance before they spotted something up ahead. Another group was fast approaching them. This one too was surrounded by soldiers but, unlike their own group, there were several individuals in the center who were free to move. They also seemed to be talking fast. About what was anyone’s guess, although from the looks of them they were mostly men and women in suits with a few military officers. Hardly the type one would expect in a prison or a fort.
Abruptly, their escort ordered them to halt. They did so as the other group began to approach. Their own talk diminished as they looked forward and zeroed in on the three of them. Most of the ones in suits and official attire soon began to look nervous and excused themselves or stood to one side on spotting them. Two, however, continued to focus on them as they neared.
The first was a rather unfriendly-looking man. His hair had grown long and was combed back down to his neck, and his eyes held a perpetual look of disdain as well as seeming annoyance to them. He had no mustache, but his beard was pointed enough to be a spear tip. The second, running along at his side and struggling to keep up, as well as struggling with at least three heavy books or ledgers of a sort in her hands, was a girl with a head full of curly hair and a yellow ribbon tied to one side. Her look wasn’t exactly friendly either, but more uncomfortable and straining under the load she was bearing and the pace she had to maintain.
The two, with the first in the lead, reached the three of them and came to a stop. The first looked them over a moment, giving them a rather cold glower and dismissive stare. The three stared back silently for several seconds.
As it turned out, it was Twilight who broke it. She formed a look of puzzled realization. “Representative…Neighsay?”
The man looked up a little at this, raising an eyebrow to her. “You know of me?”
Dash and Sunset likewise turned to her, rather confused as well at her act of recognition. She suddenly appeared put on the spot. “Well, I…that is, I know who the current representatives of Fillydelphia are at least.”
“Hmm,” he answered. “Well, I’m afraid to inform you that your information is outdated. It’s Acting-President Neighsay now.”
Twilight looked surprised. “Did…did you say ‘Acting-President’?”
“Yes I did, Twilight Sparkle.”
Now she really looked surprised, as did Dash and Sunset along with her.
“Surprised that I know your identity?” he remarked demurely. “Thought that Fillydelphia would simply side with Manehattan’s word and leave it at that as they have so many other times? I’m afraid things will be changing under my administration, Ms. Sparkle. Drastically changing. Even with the eternal night gone, it appears that matters for Fillydelphia have gotten worse than ever, and right now a new system of order and control is desperately wanting. We won’t be working with Manehattan again anytime soon. Especially not now…”
He leveled a cold stare at the three of them.
“Now that we have proof that their little ‘task force’ of abominations and mutants was working with the Fire Witch of Trottingham herself the whole time.”
“Wait…what?!” Dash exclaimed.
Twilight likewise stared open-mouthed for several seconds at the sudden accusation; left speechless in the wake of that unexpected statement. “Now hold on just a minute! We’re not-”
“There’s no need for you to make some vain attempt to defend yourselves,” Neighsay snorted. “We already are fully aware that the last you were reported being seen was when you were going on your Manehattan-appointed mission directly into Equestria, when suddenly you were struck and supposedly killed by Trottingham forces. And yet, here you are. We have witnesses reporting that you rowed your way right into Baltimare with this woman…” He paused long enough to give Sunset a glare and a sneer. “…in spite of supposedly being on opposite sides of an international conflict. I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if this entire thing was indicative proof of Manehattan dealing behind Fillydelphia’s back with Trottingham. I assure you, under my administration, I shall not allow our country to be a mere stooge to this sort of backhanded dealing.”
“But you’ve got it all wrong!” Twilight insisted. “I mean…I know this looks bad, but it’s just about how we ended up! We both had to escape Trottingham in a hurry and the only way was-”
Neighsay interrupted by raising one of his eyebrows. “Trottingham? So you admit that you both departed from Trottingham?”
“No!” Twilight quickly sputtered. “I mean…well…yes, but that’s not what it sounds like either! The only reason we were…I mean, the reason I was in Trottingham was because that’s where we were blown to after we broke the night over Equestria!”
The man let out an unamused chuckle. “Utter ridiculousness. Do you honestly expect me to believe that you somehow survived an explosion that launched you all the way into Trottingham and that no one in the country would have immediately seen you land and responded? Even if there were such cannons in existence powerful enough to fire a shot that far, anything fired out would annihilate from the force alone. And yet somehow you were able to do it?”
Twilight was stricken silent. “Well…” she fumbled, “I…I admit I don’t know how it happened exactly, but we’re here now!”
“Hey!” Dash spoke up. “Doesn’t the fact that we’re the ones who took out the eternal night count for anything? Or are you trying to think that was a dumb Manehattan and Trottingham plot too?”
“Whether or not you are the reason for why the eternal night over Equestria broke is irrelevant,” he responded. “There is only one fact that interests me right now.” He pointed right at Twilight’s hand bearing the Promethian Sigil. Put on the spot, she actually recoiled and covered it. “Whoever has one of those emblems bears incredible powers. Powers strong enough to destroy warships, obliterate factories, and raze entire metropolitan areas to the ground if so desired. Manehattan and Trottingham are both privy to the secrets of those symbols and I find it impossible to believe they don’t know something about why they are occurring, yet Manehattan refuses to share any of such secrets with their greatest ally and, now, we find that they are working right with our enemy behind their backs.”
“That’s not true!” Twilight insisted. “Sunset is defecting to Manehattan! She’s not even with Trottingham anymore!”
This, however, only made both Sunset and Dash wince and slap their palms against their faces. “All the more reason,” Neighsay sharply responded, “for us to be upset with the Manehattan government. They apparently orchestrated this entire thing behind our backs to consolidate this new power for themselves. Meanwhile, we’re left with citizens spontaneously developing these afflictions left and right, with no idea how many there are going to be or how to properly control them should they go wild, and the best they offer us is some song-and-dance ‘goodwill tour’ that only serves to attract an entire flood of abnormal Nighttouched to wipe out everything in its path!”
The three looked curious on hearing that. “Wait…what was that about a flood of abnormal Nighttouched?”
He sneered. “I’m not going to let you insult me any longer by pretending you don’t know, and I’m not going to let you waste my time any further with your flimsy alibis. I came here for one reason and one reason alone: to verify with my own eyes that Manehattan and Trottingham were in kahoots with one another when it comes to their so-called ‘eidolons’. Now that I’ve seen it, I’ll make sure it’s reported to our house of legislature at once. This should be the final straw they need to break off this pointless, one-sided alliance with Manehattan and work toward a truly autonomous Fillydelphia.”
“Wait!” Twilight tried to protest. “Could you just-”
Neighsay, however, was already looking away and to the girl at his side. “Make a note that all of my earlier suspicions were verified, and start tracking down the nearest telegram operators for the heads of the current congress. I want this vote to come to the floor tonight as soon as I’m sworn in. Also, wire the capitol. We’ll need the presidential airship to take us directly from here back to the legislature. We’ll wait upstairs for it to arrive.”
As she nodded and quickly began to fumble with her ledgers, he turned to the main guards next while gesturing to the three. “Have them put under maximum security and keep a tight watch. I’ll give them a little time to come up with something useful to tell us, but if they insist on playing this game then I’ll have them executed as soon as we can perfect a method guaranteed to work on the likes of them. Until then…”
He gave them another glance.
“You know full well that the key is in their ability to call on whatever monsters they have living in their hands. And you know what to do to stop that.”
Twilight looked rather uneasy when she heard that. Sunset cringed a bit again. Dash let out a groan. “I really don’t like the sound of that…”
“MmmmmMmmmMMmmMMM!”
Twilight wasn’t exactly sure what Rainbow Dash said, but assumed it had to be another string of cursing as she pranced around her cell frantically yanking at the very hard and uncomfortable headpieces they were forced to wear. Neither she nor Sunset felt much better about it themselves in spite of sitting quietly in their own positions.
At this point, all three were shackled with what they could only describe as “horse bits”, considering the fact that they were pieces of iron headgear that stretched around their heads and forced mouthpieces into their mouths that prevented them from moving their tongues before slapping metal over their lips. It was hard to even breathe through the restraints, let alone actually make any noise through them. Other than angry mutters, they couldn’t even talk to one another.
Twilight had wondered at one point how they were supposed to eat or drink through the restraints, but she soon began to realize it likely didn’t matter. The cell that the three of them had been shoved into was guarded by nine people (three guns for each of them) and from the looks on their faces the only thing they were planning on was waiting for the signal to either fire their weapons into them or haul them off to whatever grounds they would go to for interrogation or execution.
Dash gave up her latest fit of trying to pry her headgear off, and stomped over to the bars to let out another tirade of angry chatter at them.
Twilight let out the best sigh she was able to manage before leaning back in her seat. Yet on doing so, she caught something out of the corner of her eye.
The cells that they were staying in weren’t terribly clean. They obviously had been out of service for a while, and they had only been shoved into them as a last minute change. A layer of dust had been on everything, including on the short benches where they could sit and on the floor. Most of it had been moved around and muddled by now, but there was an intact patch in front of where Sunset had been seated.
Neither she nor the guards had noticed, but she had moved her toe around on it absent-mindedly since being placed in the cell, and now she had managed a message.
Still think not cutting and running when you could was a good idea?
Twilight grimaced as best as she could through the bit. She looked up to Sunset, who simply stared idly back. After a moment, she only exhaled and shrugged.
Sunset didn’t react at first, before she bowed her head. She held in that position for a while, seemingly reluctant about what she was going to do next. After about two minutes she shifted her hands out to her sides and placed them on the bench near the intact dirt. On the hand between her and Twilight, she slowly extended a finger and wrote something else.
Thanks.
Twilight actually showed a small amount of surprise. She looked back up to Sunset, but she was already looking away and hunching over. She wasn’t going to get much more out of her than that.
On realizing that, Twilight turned away and faced the floor as well. She might have formed just a hint of a smile, but it was impossible to see around the headgear.
“…just be a few itty-bitty moments. President-Elect’s orders!”
Twilight stirred to hear the sound of a rather young, bright, chipper, and eager voice sounding through the bars of the cell. She blinked a few times and leaned up from where she was seated, realizing she must have fallen asleep. Considering that there was far less lighting in her cell than there was when she last looked, she realized also that the sun had either gone down a bit or it had clouded up considerably.
As her eyes cleared she looked around the cell. Sunset was stirring from her own spot, having obviously fallen asleep much as she had. Dash, on the other hand, was letting out muffled snores through her own headgear as she sprawled out on the floor. Through the bars, however, the guards had something else drawing their attention. A little to Twilight’s surprise, the same girl who was with Neighsay earlier was now talking to them.
She still had the same ledgers that she had earlier, and at this point she began to shift them around in her grip until she got one on top. Once there, she cracked open the cover as she went for her pen. “He told me to get every bit of detail I could on them! Height, hair color, eye color, distinguishing marks… You know, that sort of thing! So we can finish filling out their dossier and get a file started! You never know…some of these folks with Promethian Sigils might have things in common!”
The guard sighed and indicated back. “Alright, but be quick about it. We have to be ready to shoot in a hurry if they try anything and having someone at the bars blocking our shots doesn’t really help things.”
“No problem!” she chirped as she began to walk up to the bars. “I’ll be in and out before you know it!” With that, she happily made her way up to the bars as she finished pulling out her pen. Once there, she paused a moment and looked inside. Sunset gave her a glare. Twilight looked a bit anxious at everything she had just heard her say. Dash continued to snooze away on the floor.
“Golly! They sure don’t look like much, do they? Just the same as you and me!” she remarked before she began to write things down. However, Twilight noticed something almost immediately. Her jotting was rather erratic and sloppy. Like she didn’t have a true interest in what she was putting down… “I guess that means it really can happen to anyone! Boy, I’m glad this cell is right here!”
She reached out and knocked on one of the bars, getting a metallic clang to ring out.
“Those folks who made the Rider’s Island prison sure knew what they were doing! It’s amazing how tall they were able to make it and still have all these cells in working order!” She glanced into the cell a bit, before her eyes rested on the back. “Hard to believe that all of them get heated in the same way through the same big vent!”
Twilight, a bit puzzled by this line of talk, turned and looked. Although she hadn’t paid it much mind before, there was, in fact, a single solitary vent in the back of the cell mounted into the wall with an iron grating.
“Toilets are top of the line too!” she went on. “You three better get it over with and try it out if you got to go! You’re going to be in there for a while!”
Twilight became even more puzzled that she would call that out, but the girl didn’t offer anything else besides that. She promptly withdrew her pen and shut her ledger with the sound of the heavy book shutting. “Well, that takes care of that! Keep up the good work, everyone!” Without another word, she spun around on her heel and made her way back through the rows of soldiers. Within a few moments, she had finished passing through them all, turned a corner, and departed.
Twilight sat there still for several moments. She looked to the others in the cell. Sunset stared back with much the same befuddled expression. Dash, on the other hand, had slept through the whole thing. At length she looked back to the guards, then turned her eyes to the floor and stared. Time slowly passed as she thought over everything she had just seen and heard.
Finally, hesitantly and uncertainly, she made a move. She rose from her spot. She froze a moment later when four guards snapped their heads to her, but they merely watched her rather than went for her weapons. She swallowed a lump, shrank a little, but then made her way gingerly and nervously over to the toilet. Once there, she looked it over a moment. In spite of the girl’s claims, she didn’t feel much like getting anywhere near it. However, it was one of the only spots free of dust and grime, indicating it had at least been cleaned recently.
Grimacing and dreading the thought, she reached for her pants and began to unfasten them. One of the guards sighed and looked away. The others rapidly followed suit. It did little to make Twilight feel comfortable. After all, they were still in an open cell. Not to mention Sunset kept staring, seeming puzzled at her entire turn to use the commode. Nevertheless, after pulling down her pants, she sighed around the bit and slowly sat down.
Nothing happened. Nevertheless, she sat there for some time, looking around idly, shifting her weight, and expecting some sort of reaction. Nothing came. It was just a regular toilet.
After sitting there for a few minutes without doing anything, the guards were beginning to glance to her again; wondering what she was doing there. That made her tense up more. She had thought of looking into the water reservoir, but there was no way to do that without looking suspicious. Even then, what would that do?
She sighed into the headgear, deciding to drop it. She nearly got up right there, but paused as she realized she should at least look like she had tried to do something. With that, she began to reach for the paper…
And paused again. The roll was not merely thrown on there. Someone had gone to the trouble of folding the corners of the first square inward, much like one would see in a hotel or the like. Certainly not in a prison cell.
She was curious about that a moment, before she reached out, grasped it, and unrolled a little.
At once, she felt a small piece of metal fall from under the folded roll into her hand. Twilight’s eyes widened a little. She kept her hand right there momentarily, and slowly pulled it out from underneath the roll to see what was inside.
A small key.
Immediately, she went rigid. Her eyes turned upward, but by some miracle none of the guards had been staring at her at that time. They had gone back to giving her privacy now that she was using the paper. She looked back down to the key once more before quickly making a fist, concealing it from view. She tried to act as nonchalant as possible as she immediately went about the rest of her business, finishing up and flushing all while still hiding the key in her hand. Once done, she made her way back to the bench and sat down again.
Sunset was staring at her, having picked up on her change, but Twilight tried to act as casually as possible. As she held the small prize in her hand, her mind worked over what kind of lock the small key could fit. Certainly not the cell, and it wouldn’t matter if it could. She couldn’t waltz right up to the guards and try with a key she found and expect not to get caught. However, the headpieces that they were wearing were secured with a small lock behind their heads…
Twilight leaned up against the side of the cell, pretending to be trying to recline. Soon after, she pretended that she was still uncomfortable, and while she was shifting around she put her hands together and shifted the key unseen from one to another. After that, she leaned up again; this time bringing up a hand to prop her head up. In doing so, she passed the key up into the space behind her head.
Seeing as the back of her skull was aimed inward toward Sunset, it was impossible for the woman to not see the key when Twilight produced it. Her own eyes widened, but she quickly composed herself and looked casual as well. As for Twilight, she moved the key slowly over to the lock behind her head, all while pretending to still be reclining. Moving very slowly and deliberately, with skill honed from years as a street magician, she inched the key over to the lock, extended it, and slowly felt around for the keyhole. It took her a moment, but when she found it and shoved inward she felt the key slide right in easily.
Before she could do anything else, however, an alarm bell suddenly began to peel throughout the entire cell block. It was so sharp, piercing, and out of nowhere that Twilight jumped in place and moved her hand. As it was, a second later she winced and rapidly reached for the back of her head again, for fear of accidentally losing the key. Fortunately, it remained in the lock throughout the ordeal. As for the guards in the room, however, they immediately looked up and to the ceiling.
Seconds later, the alarm bell broke off, only to peel again in a pattern of three short rings. It continued to peel out this pattern afterward. The guards hesitated. They looked down to one another, seeming to weigh their options and what to do next. Finally, however, one of them motioned to the others and quickly counted off three of them. The others shouldered their weapons, turned, and took off the same way the girl had gone earlier.
Dash, by now, was groggily coming too and complaining into her headgear, but Sunset and Twilight both watched as this took place. They didn’t know what had caused the people to be called away, but the guard that was watching them had been lessened considerably. Twilight turned back to Sunset briefly. She stared back simply for a moment, before turning her head and looking nearby at the grating. The girl had mentioned that too…
Twilight looked forward again. The three remaining guards looked uncomfortable at the fact that there were only three of them left, but they were staying posted. The alarm, whatever it was for, continued to blare and was loud enough to easily cover a whisper.
She realized she wouldn’t get a better chance. After delaying for ten full seconds, during which she began to sweat and tense up, she made her move. With her hand still behind her head, she grasped the key and turned. A click went off, inaudible over the alarm, and she used the moment to pull the lock up and out. Part of her headgear was unhinged but, miraculously, it didn’t come off all together. It loosened just enough for her to move her mouth out.
She held again for several seconds, nervous and hesitant, but realized she was at the point of no return. After a few moments more, she finally acted. Holding her hand up as little as she could, she began to draw with it while whispering out the arcane command words.
She was nearly done with it when one of the guards turned their heads. In an instant, they saw the sigil that was being drawn in front of her. “Hey!”
The shout alerted her two companions. Soon, all three were rapidly raising their weapons. Twilight, however, couldn’t stop now. As their rifles went up, she let her voice get louder to embolden the spell, and finally finished the symbol. While they were still taking aim, she executed it.
The sigil melted away into three tendrils of smoke, which quickly streamed through the air and into the eyes of the three guards. They were able to fight it only for a second, before their expressions slackened, their vision glazed over, and their weapons dropped out of their hands. Seconds later, the rest of them fell to the floor alongside them.
Twilight let out a massive sigh of relief as she let her hand fall, but also panted a little. “I didn’t know I could pull off that kind of sleep spell without an Anima Viri…”
Dash, by now, was wide-awake and staring at Twilight in surprise. Sunset, however, wasn’t wasting time. She promptly got to her feet and rushed over to the grate. Dropping down on her knees, she reached out with both hands, laced her fingers around it, and gave a pull.
She nearly fell to the ground soon after, for although the grating looked like it was mortared into the cell wall it popped out along with some of the masonry immediately; revealing it had been chipped away at for some time. What was left behind was a narrow opening, but one large enough for an individual to crawl through.
Dash snapped to that and went even more wide-eyed. She began to mumble into her bit a stream of confused chatter.
Twilight, on her part, quickly tore off the rest of her headgear before going for the key in the back. “We should talk later,” she told Dash. “Right now, we need to get out of here while we still can. I just hope there is a way out of here…”
Fortunately, the siren kept blaring as the three got to work. Twilight hurried and fumbled with the key on Dash and Sunset’s headpieces, and then the three crammed into the hole. It was a rather tight squeeze for even the smallest of them, but they managed to wriggle through. Sure enough, on emerging on the other side, they found themselves in a massive air shaft that ran behind every cell both for plumbing as well as heating. More than that, it ran through every cell on both the lower blocks as well as the upper blocks.
The three hesitated for a moment, looking around in this new area. “So…what now?” Sunset asked.
Twilight looked skyward and squinted. “I think I see a bit of daylight up there. If we can climb up, there may be a way out.”
“On the roof? That’s a way out?”
“Hey, we definitely aren’t going to find one on the ground level,” Dash answered with a shrug.
Sunset couldn’t argue with that. “Alright…then how do we get up there?”
Twilight looked around before pointing. “The pipes. Let’s see if we can climb up them.”
In moments, the three were scurrying up the plumbing running behind the cells as best as they could. It wasn’t exactly smooth sailing. There wasn’t much to grab onto and they were hardly meant as ladders. Twilight and Sunset themselves both fumbled multiple times before Dash moved in front of them and led the way, causing them to fall in behind her and mimic her movements. It also didn’t help that it was so dark behind the cells and nearly impossible to see handholds or footholds. At one point, Twilight put her hand on one brace of metal holding a pipe to the wall as a step only for it to break under her foot, nearly sending her falling back down on Sunset.
Nevertheless, the climb wasn’t too far from their current floor to the top floor, where Twilight could see the light coming from. As a result, they were able to shimmy all the way to the top where a grating had been fastened to the wall to provide a place to stand upon right below the ceiling of the cellblock. Dash quickly dismounted onto it and helped Twilight and (far more reluctantly) Sunset onto it, and the three took a look around.
Soon they spotted the light source again. It was gleaming from a square-shaped opening in the ceiling itself. Dash moved over to it and put her hand on it, giving it a light push. It gave, but soon ran into a stop. It was apparently locked or bolted from outside.
That didn’t stop her. She simply made a fist and drove it up into the opening, sending it flying up so rapidly that it snapped loose whatever lock or bolt was holding it. It swung open wide and easily on its hinges soon after, and Dash pushed it aside and began to climb out to the other side.
The other two followed, and the three emerged into a small shack-like covering over the opening they had just passed through, looking to be mostly just to prevent leakage during rainstorms and the like. Three walls surrounded them, but the fourth wall was gone; affording a rather stunning and somewhat nerve-wracking view of the rooftop area of Rider’s Island. Twilight herself was rather nervous to find that from their position they were mostly nestled behind one of the three surrounding towers that made up the perimeter structure of the prison, but nevertheless they still had a fairly good view of the main central tower and its several floors, as well as whatever guards would be posted on top. In short, it was impossible to tell how exposed they were. The only thing in their favor seemed to be that the skies had indeed clouded up, and as a result there was a shadow hanging over the small structure they now found themselves in.
Dash let out an exhale. “Well…we’re on the roof at least.”
“Yeah…” Sunset remarked. “Now I kind of wonder who got us here and why.”
“Hello there!”
The bright and chipper voice was all too familiar from before, and Twilight and Sunset immediately registered it before they turned around back to the aperture. Much to their surprise, poised on the other side of it against the back wall was the same girl from before, now beaming and grinning at them.
“Golly, I’m glad you three managed to understand my directions! Sorry about that, but it’s the best I could do on such short notice!”
“Uh…” Dash responded uncertainly, “who are you and what are we doing here?”
“Gee, how silly of me! I haven’t even introduced myself!” the girl answered before stepping forward. “I’m Cozy Glow, official assistant for the President of Fillydelphia! As for why I helped you, the truth is Fillydelphia needs your help much more badly than the President knows!”
The three were left dumbfounded for a moment. “Wait…are you saying Acting-President Neighsay went to all of that trouble to put us into a prison cell just to try and sneak us out again?”
Cozy let out a small giggle. “Oh no, he doesn’t know anything about this. I’m the one who got you out of there.”
“You…?” Sunset asked incredulously.
“You bet! I’m Acting-President Neighsay’s number one assistant! So when I asked if I could inspect your cells to make sure everything was in working order, the guards had no problem letting me in! After that, I just made sure you were put in a cell with a loose grating and placed the key on the toilet paper roll! Everything else was just hint-dropping from there! And here you are!”
“But wait a second…” Dash spoke up again, still looking the most confused out of all of them. “You aren’t doing what Neighsay wanted…but you’re busting us out? Why?”
“Well, like I told you, the future President needs your help and he needs it badly! Everyone in Fillydelphia does!” Cozy’s face began to look a bit downcast. “I do what the Acting-President says, but…sometimes I kind of wonder if he’s saying the right things. He’s not interested in making accommodations for folks who end up getting Promethian Sigils. I don’t know if Manehattan just wants them for the military or not, but Mr. Neighsay? He doesn’t want them at all. I already know what he plans for his administration. After we break things off from Manehattan, he’s going to start setting up centers where anyone who’s an eidolon has to go so that they’re out of Fillydelphian society. Even if he has to break up families to do it.”
All three of the women looked mutually uncomfortable on hearing that.
“It would be bad enough if the Acting-President was just doing that, but it gets a lot worse,” Cozy went on. She proceeded to point at the open wall. “Just look out there!”
The three turned and looked. A moment later, Twilight and Sunset both yelped, and all three of them quickly went to one side to try and hide themselves. They were just in time to miss the looming shadow of a Fillydelphian airship, one of three all together, as it sailed in low over the prison complex. They weren’t civilian aircraft or light cruisers either. Each one was tricked out with cannons, plate armor, and even musketeers…clean polished and ready for war. They weren’t alone, either. Several smaller objects, much faster and jetting about in a different way all together, were also surrounding it like a swarm of flies.
As they came in low over the prison, they began to swerve about and head for the tallest tower. Evidently, they planned on docking there; using it as a hub to disembark. Seeing all of this happening immediately made things clear to Twilight.
“This prison…isn’t being used as a prison right now, is it?”
Cozy shook her head. “Nope! It’s not public knowledge yet, but this fortress is getting rearmed to protect against Griffonstone. They’ll be moving in through former Cloudsdale territory any day now.”
Dash nearly spun on the girl. “Wha…Griffonstone? They’re actually trying to invade Fillydelphia? You’re joking! They’d get creamed on the spot!”
“Oh, not anymore,” the girl answered nervously. “They’re welcoming their own eidolons. In fact, they already got a new wing of their own military that’s devoted just to eidolons. They’ve fought a few sorties against us already and our own troops got wiped out in those fights. All of the military advisors have been telling the Acting-President that they’re just testing them for now. Now that we’re moving to try and stop them, though, they’re going to start fighting us for real.”
This latest bit of news made the group even more uncomfortable. Twilight bowed her head and ran her hand through her hair fretfully. Sunset likewise looked uneasy as she crossed her arms. “I knew this would only be a matter of time… That’s why I tried to keep my own Promethian Sigil a secret to anyone except those I knew I could tru…well, dominate at least.”
“That arms race is coming true…” Twilight spoke uneasily. “I hoped it wouldn’t… I hoped people would have just been happy the night was gone… I thought they’d at least wait a little longer for this… It’s only been a few weeks, for crying out loud!”
“If Griffonstone keeps getting more eidolons to fight for them, I don’t think Fillydelphia has a chance,” Cozy continued anxiously. “The Acting-President says we don’t need eidolons to fight on our side. He says we’ll invent ways to stop them. But if we do, who’s to say we’ll stop with the eidolons on the other side of a war? What if we end up doing that to eidolons everywhere? Including right here in Fillydelphia?”
She looked up at the three with a weak smile.
“That’s why I hoped that maybe I could do something about it if…if I helped you…?”
The three again looked back at her. “Us?” Twilight echoed back.
“Sure! I know the Acting-President thinks this is all a big Manehattan/Trottingham alliance, but I think you were telling the truth back in the cellblock. And if you were telling the truth, that means not only are all of you heroes for stopping that horrible eternal night and all of the nasty Light Eaters, but that means you might be able to get back to Manehattan and stop anything from happening if our Acting-President decides to put his foot in his mouth.”
Sunset frowned. “I’m not really sure what we’ll be able to do for you or Fillydelphia. All they’re going to think of us is that we broke out of our cells and escaped to Manehattan. I don’t see how that helps our case much against the Acting-President.”
“Well, that’s true,” Cozy admitted, “but the Acting-President isn’t the only person in charge of Fillydelphia, is he? There’s lot of other representatives who don’t really like how he’s planning on treating the eidolons and who don’t want to break the alliance with Manehattan. And if you and other Manehattan eidolons were to jump in and stop the Griffonstone ones? That’d sure make a lot of people, including our representatives, think that eidolons and Manehattanites are good people to have around, wouldn’t it? Besides, you’ll be able to do a lot more to help us out there than stuck in a cell waiting to be executed, won’t you?”
The three paused, looking to one another. Dash shrugged. “She’s got a point there.”
“For right now, just know you’ve got a friend in Fillydelphia in a high place,” Cozy smiled. “We can talk more about what we can do once you’re back in Manehattan. Don’t you worry about a thing…I’ll find a way to get ahold of you from there. For right now, just concentrate on how you’re going to get out of Rider’s Island and the rest of Fillydelphia.”
The three wheeled back to her. “Wait…what?” Twilight retorted. “I thought you were breaking us out of the prison!”
“What, me?” Cozy answered in genuine astonishment. “Golly…I’m just the Acting-President’s assistant! It was all I could do just to get you this far! From here on in, I thought you could use your powers to get out the rest of the way! Oh! Speaking of that…” She quickly reached down into her pocket, producing a watch soon after and looking at the time. “It’s about time that my rooftop inspection should be over, so I got to get back downstairs before anyone starts suspecting anything!” She quickly put the watch back and waved to the three even as she pushed through them for the opening. “Good luck, everyone! I’ll be rooting for you!”
Twilight struggled to reach out for her. “Wait a second!”
However, she pulled back soon after as Cozy Glow walked out from the enclosure, as following her would have meant exposing herself as well. Both she and the others were helpless to do anything else but see her gingerly make her way back over to the rooftop access doorway and slip inside. Moments later, she was gone. The three were left in the small enclosure with the roar of numerous flying vehicles still arriving at the prison hovering all around them.
Dash stood dumbfounded a few moments before frowning. “Well…that just happened.”
“She had a point,” Sunset shrugged. “It might have been the best she could do just to get us out of our cells and to the roof.”
“Yeah…” Dash sardonically answered, “and got us right in the crosshairs of the guards as soon as they realize we’re gone.”
“To be honest? It was probably going to come to that sooner or later anyway,” Twilight responded. “At least they don’t know we’re gone for right now. It seems like most of the guards were tending to that alarm. Maybe they were trying to see to all of these ships arriving…whoa!”
Twilight abruptly snapped back away from the opening even further as a roar of steam shot by. No sooner had she recoiled when she gasped in astonishment. One of the smaller flying vehicles she had only seen from a distance before now was shooting past the entrance. As a result, she got just enough of a look to see it was some sort of harness that was expanded into armor that was enclosing a single individual wielding a massive gun and a goggled helmet. They roared right past on jets of steam like a rocket, before veering to one side and shooting up for the main tower.
Sunset looked a bit amazed at the near flyby, and Dash, surprisingly enough, actually broke into a grin on seeing it. Twilight, however, was nearly aghast. “What…what was that?!”
“Heh…that’s a bona fide genuine set of Steam Wings.”
Both Twilight and Sunset looked to Dash when she said that. By now, however, her eyes were in the sky, watching the steam armor as it shot into the heavens with a look that was equal parts nostalgia and admiration.
“Been a long time since I’ve seen a set of ‘em. Looks like Fillydelphia really hammered out the dents in their design. They fly almost as great as the Cloudsdale ones.”
“I’ll admit, I never seen a set myself before,” Sunset spoke with an air of amazement. “Not with all my years in Trottingham. I almost thought they were counter-intelligence, when I heard the stories about how great they were supposed to be.”
Dash let out a loud laugh. “Ha! You’re not the first one to think the stories about the Steam Wings were a bunch of hot air! That’s just because that’s how amazing they are! Check ‘em out! Special Cloudsdale technology carries tanks of ultra-pressurized steam and jets it out in bursts so strong that it’s like you’re flying! For 30 minutes a pop, you feel like you’re king of the world! They can blast you so strong you can outstrip falcons in mid-dive!”
“D-D-Did you say ‘falcons’?!” Twilight nearly shrieked. “That’s over 200 miles per hour! Do you have any idea how much compressed steam it would take in order to keep you in the air jetting around like that for 30 minutes?”
“Sure I do,” Dash said as she jabbed her own chest. “Former Wonderbolt, remember?”
“But…but…that’s like strapping on a bomb!”
“Heh-heh…and that’s why the Wonderbolts were the best of the best out there. Only the greatest of Steam Wing pilots were good enough, brave enough, and even cool enough to handle jetting around in their league. Doesn’t matter if you bring out armies, cannons, airships, tanks… Nothing could beat us when we were in the air! Fast and furious…that was the Wonderbolts in a nutshell! No boundaries, no rules…just you and the sky! There was nothing better!”
Sunset rolled her eyes a little. “I hate to disrupt your little trip down memory lane, but we still need to think of a way to get out of here and those Steam Wings are going to make that nearly impossible with all their eyes up there. Anyone got any ideas?”
Dash shrugged. After a moment, both she and Sunset looked to Twilight in unison.
She grimaced a little before sighing. “Alright…getting out by the ground is no good. There’s no way we can sneak back down through the prison and get aboard the ferry without being seen. Swimming for it is out of the question. Even if all of us were strong enough to make it to shore, we’re surrounded by guard towers and sentries who would spot us. So…” She inhaled nervously. “…that leaves one option.”
She turned and looked back out the opening again. The others followed her gaze, all the way to the top of the main tower where the airships were docking.
“You’re kidding,” Sunset remarked.
“Either we steal a ship or sneak on board one, but the only way out of here is via the air.”
Sunset groaned and held a hand to her head. “This is insane…”
“This is…awesome!” Dash immediately chirped, grinning from ear to ear. “Now we’re talking.”
Sunset looked at her incredulously. “Are you out of your mind? Do you know how hard it’s going to be to get out of here on an airship?”
“Well yeah, but so what? We can handle it. And can you think of anything cooler that racing out of here on one of their own airships? That’s something only out of the action novels!”
Sunset let out a sore mutter again. Twilight, on her part, exhaled and wiped for her brow. “Alright. I guess the first stop is the hanger. Let’s see how much ground we can cover before they start looking for us…”
As if on cue, the three heard the same bell alarm from before start going off. Only this time, it did so as a continuous note. Within seconds, the watchmen that they could see from their position began to spring to life and started scanning the area more vigorously. Beneath them, they heard echoes of footsteps as stationed soldiers and guards began to move. They even heard the distant sound of dogs barking.
Sunset grimaced. “I’d go with ‘none’.”
Moving about the prison when it was being converted back into a fortress and after they had been placed inside as inmates, escaped from their cell, and had the entire installation put on alert went about as well as one could imagine. The next thirty minutes was spent darting in and out of the view of watchmen, ducking behind every obstruction, wall, or obstacle they could find that could hinder someone’s view, and waiting desperately for conditions to improve or it to grow darker out for them to move further. If Twilight and Dash’s Anima Viris could have offered any assistance, such an opportunity was lost on the three of them. They didn’t dare changing into the eye-catching forms with their glowing auras. Everyone was forced to move as near-normal people.
The alarm cut off soon after they got underway, but it didn’t matter. The main purpose had been to put the facility on alert and it had succeeded. Now the lack of an alarm simply meant they had to tread lightly everywhere and couldn’t risk calling out directions to one another. On the plus side, while places to hide were few and far between on the roof, it also was a place that had a small number of guards in charge of everything. As such, they were able to work their way across it at first. Unfortunately, after clearing about 200 yards, the Steel Wings came into play and joined the patrol for them. Once that happened, it was all they could do to make any headway at all.
Through several near scrapes, the three had managed to reach the edge of the roof. Just below them, spanning the top floor, was a skybridge walkway connecting the wall-like outer complex in toward the central tower. Unfortunately, there was no way for them to get back in unnoticed and take the bridge normally. Instead, the three waited carefully for the gap in the sentries both from one of the surrounding towers plus the main tower, then, one by one, lowered themselves down to the top of the bridge. A small maintenance shack leftover from construction was perched on top of it, flush with the perimeter building. As each one landed, they quickly scrambled inside.
Breathing hard and sweating, the three all pressed themselves against the walls and halted there momentarily. It wasn’t too long before they had to force themselves to clam up even there, however, as they discovered the floor was paper thin when the sounds of people moving underneath became audible. They looked to each other as they heard the footsteps come closer, only to pause right beneath them.
Dash frowned. “This stinks!” she whispered loudly. “We need to just bust through!”
“I don’t know if just two of us can do that in a prison!” Twilight whispered back. “Especially with all of those Steel Wing things!”
Dash opened her mouth to respond, before a voice echoed through the floor below. “Did you hear something?”
Quickly, the three went as still as statues.
“Nah,” one of them answered after several seconds, “just jumpy, I guess… Ever since hearing that those three escaped, I’ve been expecting the worst at every corner…”
“Relax,” another voice answered. “If they really were that strong, they wouldn’t be sneaking around here. That means those freaks aren’t as strong as the news makes them out to be.”
Dash grit her teeth at that, but Sunset quickly reached out and put a hand on her shoulder before she could attempt anything to make them eat those words.
“They aren’t getting out of here. We got the bridges covered, the entrances covered, and the ferry covered. There’s nowhere for them to go: land, sea, or air.”
“I hope you’re right. With that endless night over Equestria gone, I thought things would start getting back to normal. Now they’re going crazier than ever. Didn’t you hear about Slipshire?”
“No. Heard what?”
“That there isn’t any more Slipshire. It’s gone.”
“What do you mean gone?”
“They had another surge of the Nighttouched.”
“Get real! Those things should be hiding in holes all day long now.”
“Well, they aren’t. They had a surge. Worst one ever. I hear it was like a flood of them. They came over the border and they just wiped out everything. Not just people. Building, vehicles, even the local animals. All gone just like that. Worse yet? It happened during the day.”
“Oh, now you’re just swallowing wild rumors! They don’t go out during the day! That hurts them, remember?”
“I’m just telling you what I heard. Something went on at Slipshire. Something really bad. Enough to where the Acting-President wants to keep a lid on it until we’ve taken care of Griffonstone.”
“Well, that won’t be much longer. Hear that?”
The two below them were silent for a time. The three hidden above turned their heads up and listened as well. It was quiet for a while, or perhaps as quiet as it had been before. Yet after a short time, through the thinness of the walls, they made out just the faintest sound of a boat horn.
“What’s that?” they heard below.
“Last bit of munitions. The latest ammunition. Strong enough to put a hole straight through a Trottingham warship if it hit it dead on. Once we have this load, Rider’s Island will be fully up and ready. Not too soon, if you ask me. I got some real intel for you.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Griffonstone’s getting ready to make a move. They said they got two warships coming up the river this morning. By now they’ve got to be in the sea. Not too hard of a run from here.”
“Great… Survive four years of fighting monsters out of Equestria only to bite one in a fight with Griffonstone…”
The two went quiet after that. However, no further footsteps were heard, indicating that neither of them were moving. The three looked up to one another after a short time.
“So…what now?” Dash finally asked in a quieter whisper.
Twilight grimaced. “I…I don’t know. I thought maybe we could cross over the roof on here to get to the main tower, but…” She winced as she looked skyward. “But those sentries will spot us in no time. Even if we could, we can’t get on their roof or inside in time. And we can’t go back from here. It’ll take too long to climb back up…”
Dash eyed her a moment. “Are you trying to say we’re stuck here?”
“I…didn’t say that…” Twilight spoke back meekly. “But…well…considering the circumstances…”
“Ugh!” Dash barely restrained herself from yelling. “Just let me run in there! I’m too fast for them! And look! We’re hidden in here right now! I can whip out my Anima Viri without anyone seeing me!”
“They’ll see you as soon as you dart out of here, though,” Sunset spoke up. “And they have a bottleneck on either end of this bridge. There’s no way you won’t get spotted.”
“So what? I’m fast enough to take ‘em all down!”
“But you might not before they set an alarm! Twilight and I aren’t as fast as you and we’ll be the first to get hit by everyone running to catch up with you!”
She crossed her arms and frowned. “I don’t see you coming up with any bright ideas. I thought you were supposed to be this smart military commander?”
Sunset opened her mouth momentarily at that, but then shut it again. However, she didn’t recoil this time. She raised a finger to her chin and tapped it as she looked around the area. After a time, however, she looked up again.
“What we need right now…is a diversion.”
This prompted Twilight to look up and to her as well. “Huh?”
Sunset sighed. “Look…you can teleport, right?”
Twilight looked a bit uneasy at that. “Well…sort of…”
She frowned. “You can at least go a short distance away and back, right? Especially using your Anima Viri?”
“Well, yes, but I can’t get the two of you out doing that. And I can’t do it that much.”
“You don’t need to. All you have to do is teleport as far away as you can from us, use your magic to start a fire, and then teleport back. Or better yet, an explosive fire. Everyone will assume it’s arson or an attack, and they’ll go running to the outer defenses. Then we can cut across to the main tower easily. Honestly?” She looked a bit wistful for a moment as she crossed her arms. “If I still could use magic, it’s what I would do.”
Twilight looked rather uncomfortable at the idea. “Well, that…that does make sense, but I’m not sure I can teleport twice in succession like that… Especially after casting a fire spell…”
“It’s still the best chance we have. It’s the best way we can cause a diversion without being seen ourselves. If you can’t do it, then we might as well go with Rainbow Dash’s plan, because that’s the best we can get. We won’t get another chance for you two to don your Anima Viris.”
There was a pause between the two sides. Dash, in spite of her earlier bluster, as well as the thought that her idea would have to be the default if nothing else was available, seemed to realize the logic in Sunset’s plan. Although she pumped herself up for being ready to go, she also eyed Twilight and waited for her verdict. The woman looked one way and another, mentally debating whether or not it was possible, but at long last let out a sigh.
“I…guess I could try it.”
Sunset frowned back. “If you’re that uncertain about it, it’s a no-go. Do you think you can do it or not?”
Twilight paused again. “I…I think…” She hesitated, then shook her head and firmed up. “No, I know I can do it. It’ll be tough but I can pull it off.”
Before she could stop herself, Sunset actually smiled back. “Great. Let’s see it.”
Dash shrugged. “Well, if this falls through, we can always go with Plan B: Awesome. After you.”
Twilight let out an exhale. She shook her head and began to limber herself up. “Alright…alright, just give me a second to get ready…” She cracked her neck, stepped up and down a few times, held her hands in the air and practiced a few sigils briefly, mentally went over the right words, and finally stabilized. All of this took her a considerably long time, during which the other two began to slowly grow impatient, but finally she seemed to be ready.
“Ok, I’m going to do it.” She held her hand into the air. “Just hope this works when I whisper it…and that nothing shines through the floor… Member of my house, I command-”
Suddenly, a distant explosion went off within the prison facility with sufficient force to send a tremor even through the small shack in which they were hiding. Twilight froze where she stood with her hand still extended. From below them, they soon heard some noise.
“What the hell was that?”
“It came from below us!”
Both Sunset and Dash looked to Twilight in alarm. “Whoa…” Dash muttered. “I take it back. That was awesome. I didn’t even see you move!”
She immediately lowered her hand. “It wasn’t me! I didn’t even have time to call out my Anima Viri!”
Another explosion went off. A third and fourth one soon followed it. Soon after, the alarm blared again. This time, it signaled off in single note bursts.
“It’s coming from the pier!” one of the voices below shouted.
“We’re under attack?” the other shouted incredulously, obviously referring to the alarm call. “But how? There’s nothing in the air and there’s no way in except for…”
He was drowned out by the sound of numerous footsteps charging down the skybridge right for both of them. Seconds later, they slowed only for a third voice to shout.
“You two! Come on! To the first floor! We’re being shelled!”
“What? How? From where?”
“Where do you think? The supply boat’s been raided! They’ll infiltrating from that!”
“How could they be infiltrating from the boat?”
“Stop asking questions and just move out!”
The footsteps started up again. They rapidly charged out and down through the bridge area back into the perimeter structure of the prison, and after that quickly faded. However, the sounds of chaos were just getting started. Another explosion went off, and soon the sound of distant cries began to be intermingled with them. Gunfire followed up along with more shouting.
The three listened to it for a moment before looking up at each other. After a few seconds, Sunset looked to the opening to their shelter. She risked inching forward and little and looking out. Sure enough, the sentries on the upper tower were now distracted and fully focusing on the pier area below, getting out their weapons and trying to line up shots. She ducked her head back in soon after.
“You think that’s Griffonstone down there?” Twilight asked.
“They’re nuts!” Dash retorted. “You saw how guarded that front was when we got here, didn’t you? If they’re trying to infiltrate from here, they’ll get blown to pieces!”
Twilight grimaced. “Unless what Cozy Glow said was right…”
“Who cares?” Sunset interjected. “Now’s our chance to move, and it could close up at any second! We need to get across this bridge!”
The other two could hardly argue with that. Although it was more impromptu than either of them wanted, they got ready to run. Soon after, with Sunset now in the lead, the three of them took off out of their small shelter and began to dash across the roof of the skybridge.
The trip was rather nerve-wracking. In addition to having to worry about any sentry or watchman spotting them, the roof to the skybridge was slanted and the edge led to nothing but a five story drop down to a rather painful end on jagged, sharp rocks. Whoever built it wanted to ensure the only reasonable way across would be to go through the bridge itself. Nevertheless, none of them looked down, and after a rather anxious minute of a mixture of hunched-over walking and even crawling, they made it to an identical shack on the other side.
They didn’t stay there that long, however. Now across, Dash pushed ahead and began to scale the wall against them, running up the rough texture vertical stone with what momentum she could, and got high enough to reach out and grab the edge of the nearest tier overhead. Quickly, she pulled herself up and over the top, and once there she reached down over the side and held out her hand. Twilight and Sunset looked to each other a moment, before the latter moved up to the wall and bent down, offering herself as a stepladder. Twilight somewhat hesitantly climbed on top soon after, then extended her hand upward until she was able to grasp Dash’s. She readily pulled her up and over, and more reluctantly reset herself to extend a hand to Sunset. The woman grimaced back, but then braced herself and leapt up after her. She let out a small cry when the force dislodged one of the shingles from the roof, but she still managed to make the leap and get caught by Dash. She pulled her up the rest of the way afterward.
As soon as all were on top, they quickly glanced around for the nearest opening. They spotted one in the form of another rooftop access stairway shed not far from them. Having no other options for shelter, they quickly ran over to it. Dash again took the lead and greeted the door with a solid blow from one of her legs, snapping the lock and knocking it inside. It wasn’t the most comforting thing in the world, knowing that sound had to have echoed, but there was little they could do about it now. The three prayed the alarm was loud enough to obscure the sound as they poured inside.
The corridor within was a narrow stairwell, and led only downward a single flight of stairs before opening into a much wider room. Unfortunately, from their position, they couldn’t see in that well. As a result, they only slowly made their way down, keeping their eyes peeled for anything and listening closely.
It wasn’t too long before they heard a voice calling out. “Commander!”
Instantly, the three froze in the stairwell. It was hardly the best hiding place. All one had to do was come by and look up to be staring right at them. They could only hope that the shadows of the narrow passage were enough to obscure them as they hunkered down. All three looked, but only Dash, still in the lead, was close enough to even see the feet of several officers gathered in the middle of a spacious room.
“Yeah, yeah,” another voice responded. “We heard the alarm. What’s up?”
“It’s that team from Griffonstone! They’ve infiltrated the complex! They’re attacking right now! All units are being ordered to mobilize!”
A brief pause resulted. “Did you say all units?”
The other voice sighed in exasperation. “Yes, all units.”
A clap resounded. “Ha! It’s about time we got something to do besides sentry duty, ‘eh ladies and gentlemen?”
A round of snickers and enthusiastic noise responded, from no less than a dozen individuals.
“Not a problem, lieutenant. We’ll take care of things right away. It’s about time we started to break some long-obsolete Wonderbolt records, eh? You don’t mind if the prison gets a little beaten up in the process, do you? ‘Cause it sounds like the attackers sure don’t mind.”
Another sigh. “You’re authorized to use whatever force is necessary to neutralize the Griffonstone eidolons. Just make sure to leave the skybridges intact. They’re the only way in and out of the central tower.”
“Alright, alright…no problem. Ok, fellas! Let’s get to the Steel Wings and show these mutants a thing or two!”
A round of cheers resulted, before the sounds of footsteps rushing off resounded. This time, however, the three were close enough to clearly make out the sound of the direction they went in. The bulk all went to the left while a few other footsteps went to the right before all went silent again. The three kept hanging out in the shaft momentarily, with Twilight and Sunset listening and waiting for any other footsteps.
Dash, however, was gritting her teeth and making a fist. “Like some junky Fillydelphian team could ever beat the Wonderbolts…”
“Forget your ego and get moving!” Sunset shot back.
She grumbled, but finally got up and began to make her way down the stairwell. “If we didn’t have to do all this sneaking around I’d find that commander of theirs and knock out a few of her teeth… I bet I could fly rings around someone like her…”
“Save it for when we’re cornered!” Sunset retorted. As she said this, she lowered enough to enter the wider chamber. Although the stairwell they were in kept going down, they exited here. It was austere, rather like the rest of the prison, holding only concrete floors and walls with windows allowing plenty of outdoor views, but aside from that it wasn’t much. Fortunately, no guards were posted there at the moment, but there were three wide-open hallways in front of them as well as a doorway which presumably led back to the skybridge behind them.
As soon as the three emerged into the area, they looked about briefly. “Alright,” Twilight spoke up, “any votes on where to now?”
Sunset exhaled before pointing down one of the hallways. “That way.”
She turned to her. “Why that way?”
“That’s the way the rest of those people talking about Steel Wings went. I’ll bet that’s the way to whatever they’re using for an airship dock.”
Twilight winced. “That place will be crawling with guards, soldiers, and pilots!”
Sunset shrugged. “How else are we supposed to get out of here? That’s where we planned on going, wasn’t it?”
The spellcaster moaned hopelessly.
Dash, however, grinned and made a fist, punching it into her opposite hand. “Alright! Finally we’re getting somewhere!” She nearly took a step in that direction before halting. Her smile ebbed a little before she exhaled. “Well, if we’re this close, then I guess I better not put it off any longer…” She held her own hand in the air. “Member of my house, I command you to come to me! Leader of the Wonderbolts—Captain Spitfire!”
As her own aura exploded, Sunset turned and looked to Twilight. She sighed once before holding her own hand up. “Member of my house, I command you to come to me! Master of Sorcery—Starswirl the Bearded!”
Seconds later, both were fully in their Anima Viris and radiating their respective auras. Dash took only a moment to grin before taking off down the corridor…going a bit too fast and soon needing to wait up for the others. Twilight soon followed suit. Sunset, running as hard as she herself could move, for even the small enhancement was enough to make Twilight faster than her, brought up the rear.
The corridor itself seemed to be a fairly straight shot, at least in terms of branching pathways. The only route ahead curved slightly, no doubt following the natural curvature of the tower’s edge itself, which meant they didn’t have to worry about veering off in the wrong direction but did have to concern themselves with any threats up ahead. As it turned out, they didn’t have long to wait for any. As they passed the first set of doors leading to a side room, they rounded the corridor only to see a pair of Fillydelphian soldiers running the opposite way.
The two immediately halted, going wide-eyed on seeing the glowing individuals approaching them. “Hey y-”
Fortunately, they only got out half a shout before Rainbow Dash sprung on them. She moved like a blaze before lashing out with both hands together, striking both at a vital point. They didn’t even get out a reasonably loud “oof” or moan before both were dropped to the ground.
“Yeah! Two down!” she cheered as she kept running.
Sunset and Twilight both frowned. “Could we try to speak at a volume not loud enough to bring out any more…?” the former muttered.
Twilight didn’t get a chance to answer before they heard the sound of doors flying open behind them. Both she and Sunset paused and turned around. They spotted three more soldiers running out from the room they just passed, staring at them all the while. They were rather shocked to even see the glowing individuals, but that confusion didn’t last. One of them ran for the nearest alarm panel on the wall while the other two raised their weapons.
Fortunately, Twilight was a bit faster. While without a wand she lacked the fine focus for it, nothing stopped her from quickly drawing a sigil with her finger and causing it to melt away into a cloud of potent gray mist that spilled out the entire hallway behind them. It flooded over the three soldiers in an instant, and before the two could finish aiming or the third reach the alarm all three had their eyes roll back in their heads before the collapsed to the ground, sound asleep.
Twilight exhaled in relief before turning and running after Dash once again, who was already pulling ahead. Sunset did much the same as she turned and ran after her. “Much better…”
The three passed a few more doorways as they ran along the corridor, but fortunately no others came out. There was one remaining squad of four soldiers, but this time their backs were to the group and Dash had even less of a problem getting the drop on them. Nevertheless, this prompted both Sunset and Twilight to pick up the pace as best as they could; knowing they were starting to leave a “trail” behind them that wouldn’t go unnoticed for long.
“Ha! This is too easy!” Dash called back as she picked up her own speed. At this point, the corridor was widening slightly up ahead. It was clear that they were nearly to the next junction around the tower. “Just line up these Fillydelphians right in front of me! I’ll take ‘em all down in no time!”
“Rainbow Dash, I think Sunset is right…” Twilight uneasily called back. “Maybe we should keep it down a little…”
“Relax, Twilight! I got this in the bag! Just let me see the whites of their eyes-”
Abruptly, Dash ground to a halt in her tracks; stopping so fast from digging her feet in that she actually pounded a small dent into the floor. A second later, she rapidly backpedaled. Twilight and Sunset themselves scarcely had time to stop as well to process this when a thunder of gunfire erupted from the bend in the hall just ahead.
Crying out, Twilight quickly did as Dash did—flung herself back and against the curved corridor wall for shelter. Sunset followed suit just as bullets came racing around the corner and blasted where Dash had been. In mere seconds, they were rendered nearly deaf from the choruses of gunfire and the corridor itself was rapidly filling up with concrete dust from the hundreds of bullets tearing apart the corridor wall. Even with Dash out of the way, the gunfire continued to rage for several seconds, during which the section of the corridor they had been approaching was nearly totally decimated.
The guns finally cut off and the echoes slowly died down. Twilight, Sunset, and Dash, still wincing with their backs to the wall, looked at the opposite curve. It looked like a wrecking ball had hit it. Bits of wall and loose stone slowly rained to the floor from the ruins of the passageway wall. Aside from that, the only sound was the clicks of the gunners just around the corner reloading.
Sunset and Twilight both slowly looked at Dash with a critical glare, the former more so than the latter.
She smiled sheepishly and shrugged. “Ok,” she whispered, “I may have gotten a bit too excited.”
“How many did you see over there?”
“I, uh…only got a glance because all of their guns were up, but…twenty? Thirty?”
Twilight went wide-eyed. “That many?!”
“They could have been setting an ambush for those Griffonstone invaders,” Sunset suggested. “Then they heard us coming instead…”
“Well what now?”
“The fact that they aren’t telling us to come out with our hands up means they’re probably not going to take us alive… They’re probably waiting for reinforcements to come the other way then we’ll be pinned.”
Twilight looked over. “Dash, can you get them all?”
Her enthusiastic look turned to one of nervousness as she looked evasive. “Well, uh…there is a lot of them, and they’re all shooting at once, and they’re all expecting me…so…”
Sunset gave her a deadpan glare. “You’re kidding me. A moment ago you sounded like you wanted to beat up the entire prison.”
“Yeah, well I didn’t think I was going to have to hit them all when they all had guns pointed at me and trigger fingers! I can still get them…” Her voice lowered. “Probably…maybe…”
Sunset sighed and turned her head. “Twilight?”
“Alright, here’s what I’ll do. I’ll send a lightning spell down that way. Whoever it doesn’t hit should be stunned long enough for Rainbow Dash to go in and take down. Ok?”
Sunset nodded. “Sounds good to me.”
Dash nodded. “Alright. Just leave it to me.”
Twilight took in a deep breath and looked ahead. Moistening her lips, for fear that a gunner would spot her before she could make the next move, she slowly inched her arms up and away from the wall. She held both in front of her and extended her forefingers. “I don’t have a wand, so this isn’t going to be the nicest spell. Just get in there the second you see the flash around the corner.”
Dash inched away from the side just so she could ready herself to spring up and off. “I got it. Do it.”
The Caster took in another deep breath, and then slowly began to draw the symbol. The first few words of the arcane language came out of her mouth…
Before she was cut off to the sound of a resounding, echoing explosion from just around the corner. Both she as well as Sunset and Dash cried out and ducked for cover as chunks of building material and clouds of smoke burst from around the corner and into the hallway. Their ears were pierced with the enclosed eruption, causing them to grasp the sides of their head in pain as the area around them rocked from the blast. As bad as the gunfire had been moments ago, this was far more intense and harder to withstand. The reverberations alone were enough to leave all three of them stunned.
When they finally died down enough to recover, all three found themselves coughing and snorting from the clouds of dust still billowing down the corridor. Much larger pieces of concrete were still loosening and settling when Dash, wincing, managed to look up and to the corner up ahead. “What the hell was that?”
Twilight and Sunset slowly picked themselves up in turn. Once all were standing, the three women exchanged a glance, but realized there was nowhere else to go. Bracing themselves, they faced the hallway where the explosion had come from and began to slowly creep forward.
It didn’t take long for them to reach another open chamber much like the one they had climbed down into. At least, they reached what was left of it. The set of doors for this chamber was gone along with a good portion of the wall they had been mounted on. The explosion had come from there and had blasted them clean off. The twenty or thirty soldiers that Dash had managed to catch a glimpse of before were now sprawled out everywhere, many of them having taken a severe or even fatal hit when the wall had burst. About half of them were crumpled around rubble or half-buried in it. There were a few moans from the group, but it was clear that none of them were in any shape to do anything about them now.
On entering the area, Dash looked around a bit, before she burst into a smile. “Sweet! Someone took them out for us! Look!” She gestured to the one difference to this chamber from the previous one. Where the last room had three hallways, one of the hallways had been replaced by a wide staircase. “Here’s where we go up!”
“I’d hang on just a second,” Twilight responded.
“Why?”
“Because I think we just ran into that ‘someone’.”
Dash looked back around, and saw both Twilight and Sunset staring at the ruins of the doors. However, the smoke had cleared a bit more, and it was slowly revealing two individuals standing there. Normally, that wouldn’t have been enough to get either woman to pause. However, there was something about them that stood out a bit more than any other soldier they had run into so far.
They were both glowing with auras similar to Twilight’s and Dash’s, and they both had hands with the unmistakable sign of an Anima Viri blazing on them.
“Oh crap…” Sunset muttered.
As the smoke kept dying down, they got a better look at both of them. Based on the fact that both wore some sort of light armor, it soon became clear that both of them were the role of the Warrior. It was small wonder they had charged in through the smoke, as the blast likely wasn’t much to either of them. However, it seemed that they had spotted Twilight and Dash at roughly the same time they themselves had been spotted, and seeing two more individuals who also had Anima Viris was causing them to pause. Nevertheless, as they stood there, they gave the three of them rather dark and unfriendly looks.
They weren’t alone long. Two more shapes ran out of the smoke only to freeze on seeing their companions stopped, and then turned and looked ahead to spot the three. One was wearing a coat and a wide-brimmed hat with a feather, indicating a Magician. The other had a robe and hat similar to Twilight’s own, only this one was also sporting a wand to give away her identity as a Caster. Others quickly ran up to join them. They weren’t glowing, but they were heavily armed and freely baring their own Promethian Sigils on their hands. More so than that, their dull colors, dress, and appearances clearly gave them away as ones from Griffonstone.
For a few fateful seconds, the two sides stared at each other; neither really sure of what to do next. Yet even as they stood and stared, they heard a voice accompanying a final set of footsteps pushing through the smoke.
“Alright, alright, move in already! What’s the big hold…”
She didn’t finish as she parted the smoke and saw the same sight as the others. Soon she was frozen in place as well, likewise amazed.
Dash’s jaw nearly dropped. “Gilda?”
The Griffonstone native stared a bit longer before smirking. “Well now, fancy seeing you here, Dash. Looks like you made it out of that tunnel alive.”
“How’s the boiler pressure holding out, Double Diamond?”
The man at the helm took a moment to look away from his driving for the nearest pressure gauges. After staring for a few seconds, he reached out to tap them and stared again. After a few more seconds, he smacked the side of the gauge with his hand before he sighed and shook his head.
“No good. We must have gotten a leak going through all of those things back there because we’re just not getting good pressure for as much coal as we’re putting in. I don’t think we can make it to Mount Aris without a fresh supply.”
Starlight Glimmer, covered with fresh coal dust and huffing and puffing a bit, finished shutting the panel to the furnace with the end of the scullery shovel before hanging it up. She turned around and picked her way back out of the boiler chamber and shut it again, entering the main compartment of the steam engine. She took a moment to glance to the back of the area.
Fluttershy had awakened, but she had her head bowed and was staring at a spot on the floor with a broken, empty look on her face. There were still tear stains on her cheeks from not too long ago, even though it had been hours since she learned the truth. Rarity was seated to one side of her while Angel was seated to another, but aside from trying to be there for support and generally looking sad they couldn’t do very much to alleviate the situation.
Starlight looked uneasy as well before she picked her way past them and walked up to the cockpit area. Once there, she leaned in and looked at the gauges for both the temperature and the boiler. She frowned a little at the sight before turning to Double. “Just let me know when we get to the contact point, alright?”
He nodded back. “Sure thing, Starlight.”
After clapping her hand on his shoulder, she pulled back and looked into the main steam engine compartment.
“Darling…there really wasn’t anything we could have done,” Rarity spoke quietly at last. “If Starlight hadn’t come along when she had, we wouldn’t have made it out of there ourselves.” She paused, and then bowed her own head a little lower. “If you truly want to blame someone for what happened, you should blame-”
Fluttershy closed her eyes and shook her head. “No…no, Rarity,” she answered quietly. “You’re…you’re right. We couldn’t stay there. You…did the right thing. It’s just…”
Her eyes shut a bit more tightly as her voice began to tighten.
“I promised them…” she barely managed to choke out over the sound of the engine. “I promised them…if they’d stay with me…I’d take care of them. I’d find a way to cure them. That I’d help them in the end. But I didn’t…”
Angel began to nuzzle up against Fluttershy’s leg more intently. Rarity reached out and clasped one of her hands, but it wasn’t enough. She bowed her head further and soon the crying began again. Starlight was left helplessly staring, unable to say anything or offer anything else. She stared back quietly for some time, letting Fluttershy get more of her emotions out.
Finally, she spoke up quietly. “I…I really hoped to get all of you together, but if you and Fluttershy need me to drop you off somewhere, we might be able to make a side-”
Rarity looked up. “Oh…oh no, dear. We couldn’t possibly… That is, I couldn’t possibly. I mean…” She began to bow her own head. “Good heavens, all of this has gotten terribly complicated in such a short period of time… At any rate, I can’t abandon Fluttershy now. If she’s getting off, then I’m sorry, Starlight, but that means I’m getting off as well.”
However, this prompted the woman to sniffle once before beginning to wipe for her eyes. “No…no, it’s alright…”
Rarity turned to her. “Fluttershy, dear, I can’t ask you to come along after everything that’s happened.”
Fluttershy sniffed again, but then forced her head up as she finished wiping. “No…it’s alright. Some of my friends may be gone, but I still have other friends that I can help. If it means finding the others then I need to focus on that.” She paused after saying this, then turned back to Rarity; her face filling with concern again. “But Rarity…what about…um…you know what? Following that lead?”
Rarity winced slightly and looked down to one side. Yet she held only for a moment, before she looked up and waved it off. “Oh, nevermind that for right now, darling. There’s plenty of time before the 7th of next month. It can wait for right now. Finding Twilight and the rest of our friends and letting them know about everything Starlight found is more important.” She turned to her. “I dare say I hope you have better luck than us in doing so. Fluttershy was making that tour in Manehattan and Fillydelphia and yet it was only by accident that we ran into each other. I don’t know where on earth the others could be.”
Starlight looked uncomfortable on hearing that phrase. “That…might be more accurate than any of us like. Considering how far the Castle of the Two Sisters is from where both of you said you showed up? It’s not out of the realm of possibility to say that the others could be anywhere in Greater Everfree.”
Both Rarity and Fluttershy began to look downcast again.
“But don’t panic!” Starlight quickly interjected. “Like I told you before, enrollment in the Lunar Discovery Society has gone way up since the night over Equestria broke! In fact, we should have more intel really soon! We’re heading right for our Fillydelphian contact point right now!”
Rarity blinked. “I beg your pardon, but I’m not familiar with that term.”
“Well, we’re hardly ‘continental’ yet, but we’ve got enough members to have people posted in Manehattan, Fillydelphia, and Appleloosa at this point. They send all the information they can get from the news, local authorities, or whatever job they manage to get placed in, and they send it via mail or telegram to our contact points. It’s a way we agreed on to pool all of our information together regularly. It was because we hit the Manehattan contact point that we knew where to find you two. With any luck, once we hit this next spot, we’ll have a lead on the others.”
“Goodness me, do you really think so?”
Starlight shrugged. “Eh, it’s a better shot than in the dark.”
Both Rarity and Fluttershy started to frown.
“I-I-I mean sure!” Starlight quickly answered, smiling as fast as she could. “Right! Now you two just sit tight and get some rest! We’ll be there before you know it!”
By the time the steam engine managed to bring the group to the contact point, it was after dark. However, that seemed to be the way they preferred it. Even if Rarity had been in the cockpit she wouldn’t have been able to see much of whatever town they rolled up to, but they didn’t enter through the main thoroughfare. They instead diverted themselves to one of the side roads leading around the town that led, much to her displeasure, into another heavily wooded area. For seven years, it was unsafe business to ever be going through a forest in the dark, but following that Nighttouched horde that had attacked earlier it was even more nerve-wracking.
Nevertheless, both Starlight and Double seemed to know what they were doing. He dropped speed and only slowly made his way through the winding road through the woods. After traveling far enough, however, they finally came upon a single room shack perched a short distance from the road. The steam engine pulled up to it before drawing to a halt.
At that point, Starlight herself opened the side hatch. Rarity looked out, but only caught a glimpse of some trees in the darkness before a young man came forward. He didn’t look to be in the most confident of shape. His eyes darted around several directions, as if making sure no one else was there, and he had to confirm Starlight’s face before he finally held up a wad of envelopes and papers. He passed them off to her without a word, gave only a small head nod in greeting (which Starlight returned), and then he pulled back. The steam engine began to move again before Starlight even finished closing the hatch.
“I must say…” Rarity mused aloud. “That seemed to be a tad over-discreet…”
“Oh, well…you know,” Starlight shrugged as she began to sort the wad of papers while moving to a place to sit, “can’t be too careful nowadays. Not with how jumpy everyone is at the thought of eidolons. Fillydelphia isn’t exactly as friendly as it used to be either. Now let’s see…”
Easing onto one of the benches, she began to go over the various messages starting with the telegrams and shifting the letters off to one side. It wasn’t long before her face grimaced.
“Nothing… Nothing… Nothing… That one is a bit interesting… Oh, that one is very interesting…but sadly doesn’t have anything to do with the others… Nothing… Nothing…” She pulled the next one and put it in her jacket. “That one I need to look at after this trip is done…oh!” She suddenly let the rest fall out of her hands as she gripped the one telegram. “This one looks promising!”
“What does it say?”
“Well, Appleloosa is abuzz with activity nowadays, what with the incoming Trottingham invasion…”
Now both Fluttershy and Rarity looked up in surprise. “Wh-what? Trottingham invasion?”
Starlight winced a little. “Looks like news didn’t travel that fast on your tour… I may have to catch you both up. Anyway, the means there’s a lot of telegrams and mail going around. Bottom line…Appleloosa isn’t doing well. They’ve been going to a lot of the militias to try and bolster their forces against Trottingham’s new weapons and soldiers. Well…” She held up the telegram to both of them. “According to this, there’s one unit in their Civilian Corps that’s been doing really well…one that supposedly has someone in it with a strange symbol on their hand and who tears through enemy troops with a big hammer. Sound familiar?”
Rarity lit up. “Applejack!”
Fluttershy looked a bit more worried. “But…but you just said in the militia… How are we going to find her in the entire country of Appleloosa when a…a war is going on?”
Starlight seemed to acquiesce to that. She looked back down at the telegram again before putting it aside and looking at the ones she dropped on the floor. She began to pick them up again, looking over them one by one. She began to wince on spotting one. “Well, that, uh…may be a bit ‘easier’ in a sense than you’d think. It seems like Appleloosa did not do too well on their last counter-offensive. Pretty much their entire front line is collapsing. According to this, everyone who’s left is trying to regroup at Fort Appleloosa.” She lowered the telegram. “If she’s anywhere, it going to be there.”
Now it was Rarity’s turn to look dismayed. “Um…pardon me, but isn’t Fort Appleloosa halfway across the country? And we’re currently in Fillydelphia? We’d have to go around the Hyperborean Mountains.”
Starlight grimaced again. Slowly she lowered the mail. “Well…there is one other way we can get there a lot faster.”
This made both women puzzled; failing to notice Double Diamond, overhearing the conversation, suddenly give an uneasy shudder. “There is? What?”
She reached up and scratched the side of her head. “Oh…we could always make better time by…going through the one country that connects most of the others…and happens to give us an easier way around the Hyperboreans.” She paused. “By going north rather than south…”
Fluttershy went white. “You mean…through…through Equestria?”
Rarity let out a small gasp.
“N-N-Now don’t react like that!” she quickly exclaimed as she held up her hands. “It’s not like in the old days! The sun’s out half the time now! I mean…” Her eyes drifted to the ceiling. “Sure, the sun was out earlier today, but for the most part it’s been safe! Well…safer! And we’re in a big steam engine! It’s just like rolling through in a tank!”
Both Rarity and Fluttershy looked to one another at that, their unease still clearly showing.
“Trust me. We won’t even be there until tomorrow morning, and it’ll be daylight then. We’ll blaze right through and we’ll be in and out of Equestria before you know it.” With that, she turned her head to the cockpit. “Double Diamond, did you hear that? We’re heading north at the next junction. We’ll cut across to Appleloosa, no problem.”
“How can we be sure they’ve been clearing the roads like in Manehattan?”
Starlight grimaced again, but on seeing Rarity and Fluttershy staring at her quickly forced it up into an awkward smile. “Heh…heh-heh…I’m sure it’ll be fine. Besides, with this pressure leak, we wouldn’t be able to make it to Mount Aris if we went south anyway.”
Rarity blinked. “Excuse me. What was th-”
“Northward bound it is!”
The trip wasn’t exactly the most stimulating in the world for Rarity, Fluttershy, and Angel, but that didn’t mean that they weren’t constantly on edge throughout it. While Starlight and Double Diamond handled the navigational work and keeping the steam engine running, the three of them were left only to get themselves situated, perhaps help themselves to a bit of the food that Starlight had brought with her, and otherwise wait for the inevitable.
The night, fortunately, passed without much incident. Double Diamond couldn’t drive forever and Starlight eventually had to take over for him to allow him some rest, but making their way through Fillydelphia didn’t present many other obstacles on the main roads they were taking. By the time morning broke, the roads themselves began to thin out considerably and the surrounding homes and towns became abandoned, indicating that they were crossing into the area that had previously been under the eternal night. Soon after that, civilization faded out all together, giving way to nothing but wilderness and the abandoned road.
“Well…good news!” Starlight exclaimed after about twenty minutes from the last house. “Looks like these roads were being kept clear until recently after all! We should be able to push through so long as, you know, there’s nothing like a tree across the road or anything.”
“And…” Fluttershy spoke up nervously, “what if there is?”
“Let’s not start jinxing it, shall we?”
Fluttershy let out a small whimper as Starlight turned back to driving.
Rarity wasn’t doing much better a few hours later. It didn’t help that the day was already overcast while they drove along, but even if it hadn’t been she constantly kept her eyes forward toward the interior cockpit area and out the window as best as she could. She drummed her fingers against her dress as she constantly waited for a sign of any other Nighttouched making a move against the vehicle, and jumping at more than her share of shadows.
As the hours kept passing, Double Diamond continued to snooze away in the back; looking rather worn out from his own turn at the wheel. Fluttershy, at length, laid down with Angel as well, as she was still rather exhausted emotionally from everything. That left Rarity who, in spite of having been awake nearly 24 hours by now, didn’t feel the least bit like resting after everything they had been through. It was soon only her and Starlight.
After another hour, however, she began to Starlight started to yawn and kept yawning. A few times she shook her head and blinked her eyes in an attempt to keep herself alert, and once or twice she began to lean on the wheel only to snap up and straighten it again.
Seeing all of this, Rarity’s look began to grow uncomfortable. Moistening her lips, she pushed up from her own seat and walked up to the cockpit. She ducked her head inside. “Um, Starlight?”
She caught the woman at a bad time, for she immediately snapped up in surprise and turned to her. “Hmm…what? Oh! Oh, hello Rarity. Uh…what can I do for you?”
“Oh, nothing, nothing…” she answered, waving it off as she inched herself a bit forward more. “It’s just that I couldn’t help but noticed that you seemed a little out-of-sorts.”
“Oh… Well…” she winced a bit. “To tell the truth, I have been up for a while. If I had any sense I probably should have taken a nap while Double Diamond was still at the helm… Too late now, though. The last thing we want to do is stop the engine here.” A pause. “Um, that is, right here is probably not the best place to stop, you know? In case we have a breakdown or something? Heh-heh…”
Rarity blanched. “I could hardly disagree… However, I’m feeling quite bright-eyed and bushy-tailed myself at the moment. Perhaps I could take over for you?”
Starlight blinked. “You mean…driving the engine?”
“Well, you’d have to show me how, of course. It doesn’t look too terribly complicated. Of course, appearances can be deceiving and all. There’s so many different indicators up there…”
“Oh no, no!” Starlight quickly responded. “Come on up! It’s easy as pie! Nothing to it, really. Just have to keep an eye on the boiler temperature is all.” She paused. “Well, and the main pressure gauge. And the oil levels. And maybe the secondary pressure gauge. And the auxiliary water tank. Er, it probably wouldn’t be such a bad idea to pay attention to this one too as the controller isn’t what it used to be. Maybe keep an eye on the RPMs as well as it gets pretty bad when it gets up to 200. Then of course there’s the rear whistle which starts blowing when you let the rear lines get too hot…”
She trailed off. Rarity had been beginning to push her way into the second seat of the cockpit, but by this point she had slowed to a halt as she stared at Starlight with increasing unease and uncertainty.
“Uh, heh-heh… Pretty much just make sure none of these gauges ever go into the part that’s red and you’re fine,” she quickly summed up. “Really now, it isn’t that hard. All there is to it is holding down the pedal for the engine drive,” She reached over and grasped one large lever. “Remember to ease this down to a lower gear if you’re going to be stopping,” She reached back over and grasped the large steering column. “Keep yourself on the road with this,” She shrugged. “And other than that, you just need to keep your eyes on the road and make sure not to hit anything.”
“Oh,” Rarity finally answered as she began to ease forward a little more. She looked out the cockpit window as she did. “You mean like…” Suddenly, her face registered surprise. “That?!”
“Huh?” Starlight answered as she looked forward. A moment later, her face tightened up as she released the engine drive and slammed on the brake as fast as she could. Rarity was flung the rest of the way into the cockpit and Fluttershy and Double Diamond were unceremoniously dumped off of their benches in the back, and the entire engine gave a mighty squeal and a shower of sparks from the wheels as the brakes connected. The engine proceeded to fishtail for a few moments due to the uneven distribution of the braking mechanisms, but after sliding forward another twenty or so yards it squealed to a halt at last.
Starlight, by that point, was hunched over the wheel and panting. Rarity was face-first on the floor and let out a muffled complaint as she began to push herself up. By the time she had grasped the front of the cockpit and used it to push herself upward enough, Starlight herself turned her head up and both looked out the window to what was ahead.
Sprawled across half the road, half-wrecked on the remains of a particularly large tree, was an earth-moving steam engine. Spread all around, looking dirty, tired, hungry, and scared, were somewhere between 30 and 40 people. Some were in uniforms indicating some sort of military experience. Others were civilians. A few were children or the elderly.
One person stood in front of all of them, spreading his arms out like a human shield. He looked no less dirty than the others, but what immediately made him stand apart was the fact that his body was enveloped in a faint aura. His attire was different from the others. He was wearing a white robe with a drawn back hood…one that looked very much like Fluttershy’s own Healer form.
Starlight stared silently for several moments, but Rarity soon looked a bit closer.
“Is that…that young man Rainbow Dash and I met at the train station?”
“I really didn’t think we’d run into anyone out here…let alone a familiar face.”
Rarity did her best to smile back, even if she was still rather overwhelmed over all that had happened in the past few minutes. By now, what little space was available on Double Diamond’s steam engine was well past filled. It was jam-packed with an additional 33 people, with all who needed to lie down doing so and all others standing in whatever room was left. All question of Rarity taking over for Starlight was over, but she seemed to be wide-awake all over again now that she had three other people shoved into the cockpit with her. Double Diamond’s own rest period had been cut short with Fluttershy’s and Angel’s (the latter considerably sore about it), as all had to make room for more of the people.
At the moment, however, most attention was focused on their apparent leader. By now his glow had diminished and his clothes had returned into a similar tattered uniform as that of many of those with him, but both Rarity and Fluttershy had a hard time not continuously glancing to one of his hands. Sure enough, not only was there a Promethian Sigil there but an emblem on one of the points.
“Likewise. Well, just thank heavens that we happened to be in the area, Mister…?” Rarity answered, clearly fishing for a name with the final part of that question.
“Oh, sorry,” the man answered, rubbing his forehead before putting his hand out. “Shining Armor.”
Rarity nearly reached out to take it, but froze in extension. Fluttershy looked up in surprise. “Pardon me…did you say ‘Shining Armor’?”
The man looked a bit confused, but nodded back. “Yes. Is that a problem?”
“I don’t suppose…you have a, ahem, or at least you have someone who claims to be your sister named Twilight Sparkle, do you?”
Now it was the man’s turn to go wide-eyed. “You know Twilight?!” he nearly shouted, his tone suddenly turning more desperate. “Where is she? Is she alright?”
Both Rarity and Fluttershy looked uncomfortable. They exchanged a glance before looking back at him. “I’m…terribly sorry,” Rarity answered quietly. “We don’t know where she is. We’re searching for her ourselves.”
He paused again at that, eyeing the two for a moment. His look became somewhat suspicious. “And…you are?”
“Oh no, we’re not chasing after her or anything,” Rarity quickly interjected. “We’re friends of hers. You see… Well, let’s just say that we got separated for now. We’ve been trying to find her along with our friends Applejack, Rainbow Dash, and Pinkie Pie.”
Shining Armor continued to look apprehensive at first, but when he heard the names of the rest of their friends he eased up somewhat. He was quiet for a moment before he seemed to relent. “Well, if you’re really friends of hers, then we need to find her as soon as possible. There’s someone from Trottingham looking for her. Someone powerful like her.”
Fluttershy held her hand to her chin. “Um…sorry to interrupt, but I don’t suppose the name of that person is Sunset Shimmer, is it?”
Shining Armor found himself surprised a second time, and stood there struck dumb for a few moments. He glanced between Rarity and Fluttershy. This time, however, his eyes drifted down and looked to their own hands. He spotted the Promethian Sigils on both of them.
Finally, he looked back up to Rarity. “This is probably a rather rude question to ask someone’s savior…but who are you two?”
Rarity let out a sigh as she ran a hand through her curl of hair, especially since their conversation was beginning to attract the attention of more of their new passengers. “Oh dear…” She took a few more seconds to steady herself before she looked to him again. “Mr. Armor, I’m afraid that this is all going to be a terrible lot to explain. I don’t know if you’d believe the half of it and I’m afraid I don’t fully understand the other half.”
He opened his mouth to protest.
“However,” she quickly interjected, “I can tell you that what we went to do in Equestria was successful. And wherever Twilight is right now, Sunset Shimmer isn’t a threat to her any longer. We’re interested in finding her for her own well being, the same as you.”
Shining Armor paused, staring back quietly at Rarity. However, it was more than clear that he wanted to ask more than that. Before he could formulate another question, however, Starlight cleared her throat from the cockpit area.
“I hate to interrupt, but so long as we’re the ones who own the vehicle you all are riding in, I think we deserve the rights of asking the first questions around here. Now I’m not sure what all of you were doing here in the forest of Equestria in a broken down earthmover or why, but you should probably know that this steam engine is probably not bound for anywhere you all want to go.”
Shining Armor frowned, letting his head lower. His demeanor turned grim. “So long as you aren’t going anywhere further north, it can’t be that bad.”
Rarity and Fluttershy as well as Starlight took note of how he said that. They also noticed a distinct change among the others in the steam engine. Most of them turned a little pale. Quite a few shuddered or looked uneasily at the floor. One of the children began to sniffle and tear. The entire engine compartment seemed to cool by several degrees.
Fluttershy, seeing the growing discomfort, began to look a bit afraid herself. Although she trembled a bit to ask it, she looked back to Shining Armor. “What…what happened?”
“Yes, whatever left you in such a sorry state?” Rarity chimed in. “And what are you all doing in Equestria? Shining Armor, I thought you lived in Hoofheim?”
Shining Armor closed his eyes. He took in a deep breath.
Rarity grimaced. “I understand you might not feel like you want to be very forward with us, considering the fact that we’re keeping you in the dark, but…”
“No…no, that’s not it.”
Rarity went quiet, a bit surprised by the response. As for Shining Armor, he shook his head and looked back up to her.
“Really, we need to tell as many people as possible what happened up there,” he spoke a bit more readily. “It’s just it’s not the most pleasant memory. For any of us…” He took a moment to find a bare place against the walls of the steam engine and moved over to it to lean against it. Seeing the reactions from everyone, Fluttershy began to let out a shiver. Rarity herself didn’t feel much better as he situated himself and took a deep breath.
“I don’t know everyone’s story, so I guess I’ll start with mine. That person I mentioned…Sunset Shimmer? She decided to pay my family a personal visit looking for Twilight. It wasn’t the friendliest of them either. After she left, I tried to find any trace of where she went or where she was going, but she didn’t leave anything behind for me to follow. The only clue I had was that I knew Twilight was going into Equestria and I knew if she was going to take that train there was only one place where she could. I tried to get a ticket on an express there but before the train arrived the night over Equestria broke. The next day, they froze all the trains leaving Hoofheim and my own military ordered all troops on standby, including me.”
He grimaced a little.
“I tried to sneak out, but…before I could pull that off…” He held up his hand, showing off the Promethian Sigil with the emblem. “This just popped up on my hand. Looks almost just like Twilight’s…well…it does now, at least. It didn’t look like this when it first showed up.” He reached out with his other hand and pointed to the emblem. “This wasn’t there at first. I guess it doesn’t really matter now… All that matters is that once it showed up, command wouldn’t let me out of their sight. They put me under house arrest at a home in town they were using as a temporary barracks along with some others who had the same thing. They kept wanting to understand why this was happening and how.”
He took a deep breath, reaching up and rubbing the bridge of his nose.
“A couple weeks went by. While I was stuck there though, I heard reports. They started sending expeditionary forces into Equestria. Most of them were coming back but one group that headed north didn’t. They sent another group after them and…they vanished too. After that, they put together a more offensive expedition. This time with a tank.” He frowned. “Same story. Command tried to figure out what to do next for a couple days. During that time, dogs, cats, horses, and anything else that was left outside overnight began to go missing. Nighttouched started moving around more at night. Not attacking…just running around and circling the place.”
He lowered his hand and stared at a spot on the floor. His voice grew darker yet.
“Finally, one of the outposts went silent. It was only ten miles north of town. They didn’t send anyone else, just called to the capitol for help. That’s when they let me out. They needed every man and woman they could get. I had just rearmed and gotten into a new unit when it all happened.”
“What happened?” Starlight asked from the front, as invested as the others at this point.
Shining Armor paused again. Now it was his turn to swallow and compose himself while the rest of the people in the steam engine quivered.
“We saw a new shadow. This one wasn’t night. At least…not like any night I’ve ever seen. It was more like smoke or a cloud coming up from the horizon. But it wasn’t natural…” He swallowed. “It had…eyes. Red and green ones. They seemed like they were smoldering purple smoke…”
Fluttershy’s pupils shrank a little at that. Rarity’s mouth began to hang. Starlight herself listened with more interest.
“It wasn’t the shadow, though. It was what was in it. Nighttouched…or…I don’t know…things like Nighttouched. Their eyes were all just like the ones in the smoke. I’ve seen them swarm before but never like this. They never looked like this before either. They were bigger…fiercer…stronger… They came down on the town and started tearing up the buildings and vehicles. They didn’t attack the people though. They just drove them out of everywhere they were hiding. Forced them all to the middle of the town. And then…”
He rubbed for his mouth. His head shook twice as he stared on at the floor.
“Then we saw something else in the shadow. Something that wasn’t Nighttouched. People.” He swallowed. “I don’t know what happened to them. They didn’t look like Nighttouched themselves, but…but I guess I can’t say for sure because I’ve never seen any human ones before… They just had the same eyes as the rest. They all came right at us like a bunch of zombies. I recognized a couple from the outpost. I tried to shout out to them but they didn’t hear…or maybe they couldn’t listen. That cloud…it had them or something. Whatever had those eyes in the cloud did, at any rate. I’m sure of it. They walked right up to us and…and then they started grabbing more people and dragging them into the shadow, one after another. And once they went in…they got same eyes…started acting the same way…”
His hands wrung together.
“Somebody got jumpy. They must have thought there was no other way out. They got desperate and they started shooting. That’s when all hell broke loose. The Nighttouched swarmed over us along with them. The shadow spread everywhere. It came over me and…and…and oh god…” He closed his eyes, wincing as if he was in physical pain, and placed his hands on either side of his head and grasped.
“All I could see were people dying. My parents…my friends…Twilight… All dead and I couldn’t do anything to stop it. And I felt so terrible…like I’d forgotten what it meant to be happy…”
He swallowed a lump in his throat and was forced to stop again. However, as he paused, Rarity and Fluttershy saw similar reactions from everyone else. A few more individuals began to cry, and not all of them were children this time. Others wrung their hands or grasped their foreheads.
Finally, Shining Armor looked up again. “Somehow I saw through it enough to see one of the others who had been stuck under house arrest with me. We had gotten to know each other over those weeks, and we helped each other get out from under that shadow. When we did, we saw it moving everywhere. Covering everything and everyone. I made him come with me to my house. I wanted to get to my parents so I could get them out, but…but…”
He swallowed again.
“But it was too late by the time we got there. Honestly, it was already too late for most of the town, but I didn’t listen. I ran out to them. I yelled to them. I told them it was me and tried to get them to listen. And for a moment, I thought my mom recognized me. Before I could reach her, a flock of those Nighttouched birds came down on us. He pushed me back…threw me his gun and told me to run…and then…”
Once more, he was forced to stop. His eyes closed and his head bowed. He held there for a moment of silence.
“He didn’t make it,” he finally finished quietly. “All I could do was run from there. I didn’t get very far before I started running into these people. Everyone who managed to get away. We started getting together, but as we gathered the Nighttouched started to come after us. There were only a few of us who could fight and we didn’t have many weapons. I used what bullets were in that gun, but as soon as I ran out...” He again held up his hand, pointing to the emblem. “I noticed this. I remember that Twilight had one too. I remembered what she said when she would bring it out. I tried doing the same thing. It took me a couple tries before I got his…his…I don’t know…‘title’ right…but when he did I changed just like her. Well…maybe not just like her. I can’t do any of those spells that she can do. Or any magic, for that matter. But people who were hurt got better when I hung onto them or tried to encourage them, and I felt strong enough to keep running too. Most of all, I don’t think that shadow was able to make me scared again while I was in that form. So I managed to get the rest of these people here together and pushed them on.
“They were coming at us from all sides. They picked off some of us…and there was no way for the rest of us to get away on foot. We manage to get to the train station. There was one engine on the tracks that was warmed up that they hadn’t finished tearing apart yet. We got on board and managed to run it about 30 miles before it broke down. After that, we kept running on foot, but soon we had to leave the tracks behind and head into Equestria when the Nighttouched caught up with us. Finally, we found a building site that was being prepped. It had a couple earthmovers on it so we took those and went as far away as we could from the Nighttouched. We ended up driven into Equestria and…pretty much ever since then we’ve been struggling to make our way south.”
He looked up at last here, gesturing to the people in the engine. “We’re all that made it out. At least…I think we are. There were more of us a few days ago. Some of us managed to tie up a few children whose eyes had turned and we took them with us. When we got far enough away, they stopped moving. Just lay there. But…”
A few more people began to cry. Shining Armor himself shook his head.
“They wouldn’t eat. They wouldn’t drink. They wouldn’t talk no matter what we tried to say to them. And even in that form I couldn’t do anything. Then after a few days, they…they…” He looked up briefly to the others, as if wondering about their feelings about him saying this next part, but finally he spat it out. “They just…withered away. Like there was nothing left of them on the inside…or like something sucked out-”
He cut himself off, on seeing several of the people looking at him making it clear they didn’t want to remember that. He stiffened and bowed his head a moment before looking up again and speaking more normally.
“The last of the earthmovers gave out this morning, just after dawn. We thought it might have been the end of it. That’s when you came along and…well, you know the rest.”
Rarity, Fluttershy, and Starlight were silent for several moments at the conclusion of Shining Armor’s tale, taking everything in. Fluttershy eventually let out a gulp and clutched Angel a bit tighter. “Those…those sound like the Nighttouched that…that attacked where we were staying…”
“I will admit the description of those eyes is too great to be a coincidence…” Rarity muttered.
“Wait a second…” Starlight suddenly interjected, turning her head over her shoulder to glance in back. “I thought you two told me that Nightmare Moon was dead? What in the world was he seeing then?”
Fluttershy cupped a hand to her mouth. “You…you don’t think she’s still alive, do you?” She shuddered again. “Or…or is this something worse?”
This caused not only Shining Armor but several others to look at the women curiously. “…Nightmare Moon? Who, or what, is Nightmare Moon?”
Rarity let out another long sigh. She glanced between Starlight and Fluttershy, before she finally turned around and looked at one of the benches. Several people were seated on it and looking back at her, but she began to move toward it none the less.
“I’ll have to ask you all to make some room. This is a rather long story, after all. I know Twilight might scold me rather harshly for this, but considering what all of you have been through I think you deserve the truth. And maybe after that, Mr. Shining Armor, Ms. Fluttershy can help you with your…new abilities.”
The first thing Applejack noticed when Fort Appleloosa finally came into clear enough view to make out the details is that it was far more impressive than Fort Chestnut. It was a star fort much like that one, but it was built up with concrete and steel rather than palisades and wood. Its walls were broad and spanned out in all directions, but even when they terminated she made a note that trenches had been dug, barbed wire spread, and soldiers were everywhere busy digging for more emplacements for artillery and infantrymen. The fortress itself was well situated behind several lines of these; rising up out of the landscape on the sole rocky hilltop standing out among an otherwise flat set of surroundings. It stretched a good three levels high, and as their group drew nearer she saw it was armed on every level with multiple artillery emplacements. A formidable, immobile pillar rising out of the landscape.
By the time she, Pinkie Pie, and the others arrived, they found they weren’t alone. Their own tired, sore, hungry, and beaten company was being joined by a half dozen others, to say nothing of large groups of civilians, on the roads to the fort. When they finally merged into the one single road leading up to it, they noticed numerous soldiers standing by with heavy tools and plowhorses. They were apparently ready to raze the road as soon as they felt they had everyone they could.
From then on in, they had to slowly worm their way through the trenches up to the surrounding walls of the fort, then maneuver around until they were led to the nearest opening. On passing through, Applejack noticed that the already formidable stone walls had been plated with iron and were topped with more cannons. The same with the second set of walls they had to pass through. Finally, after crossing through that they began to approach the fortress proper.
The main entrance was already closed and reinforced. Soldiers that were gesturing everyone on separated the civilians from the servicemen and women, telling the former to move on toward the city further west while the soldiers and militia were to stay put. It was there, however, that things grew chaotic. Tens of thousands of displaced soldiers had already poured into the fortress grounds, and now they were massing all over it with nowhere to go. While most of the companies were at least putting themselves into small groups and staying in one general spot, the area all around the fort was turning into a mess. Even when the Civilian Corps 39th finally made it to the fort entrance, they were turned away as the inside was already overcrowded.
Having nothing better to do, the group found the nearest unoccupied stretch of ground within the second wall, moved over, and finally came to a halt.
“Well, ain’t this a fine basket of apples…” Applejack grumbled as the exhausted members of her group practically collapsed to the ground putting down their weapons and gear. In all honesty, she was glad for a chance to get off her feet. Her leg was still throbbing and was hurting even more now that her Anima Viri was gone, and she needed the rest. “Looks like the whole army is comin’ here…”
“Yipee!” Pinkie cheered. “That means we can all fight Trottingham together, right?”
Applejack, along with several other members of the group close enough to hear, frowned back. “Not exactly… More like everyone else got run outta wherever they were hidin’ and had ta’ come here.” She glanced around at the other crowds, with far more still coming in, and frowned. “Thought someone would’ve done better than us…”
“Eeyup…” Big Macintosh answered as he dropped his own load to the ground before wiping at his forehead.
“I don’t know how long we’ll be in the clear even here, cousin,” Candy Apples spoke up with a sigh as she let her own rifle and spare ammunition fall. “We’re all rounded up here like doggies in a corral…”
Applejack sighed. “Yeah, I know it. And the last time I was in a fort wasn’t all that great neither…”
“Aw, cheer up, Applejack,” Pinkie suggested, moving over to her side. “Once we turned around, we got everyone else past those big goons and to the fort. And after everything that’s happened, we’re sure to get some good news soon!”
The farmer kept frowning. “I’m not really sure that’s how it works, Pinkie.”
“Cousin…cousin Applejack?”
Applejack’s eyes widened and her frown disappeared on hearing the familiar voice. She turned and looked. Through the crowds of militia and soldiers that were still arriving and messing about with the groups already present, she saw one militiaman coming through with a hat similar to hers and looking astonished. Her eyes widened more on spotting his face and recognizing him.
“Braeburn!”
The recognition was mutual, as her cousin’s own eyes lit up as well. A moment later, both rushed out from their respective sides and ran to each other to embrace.
“There ya’ are, ya’ son of a gun!” Applejack shouted as she hugged tightly. “Where the hell ya’ been?”
“Where the… Where the hell have I been?” Braeburn, half-compressed by the hug and still stunned at everything, half-choked back. “Where the hell have you been! You disappeared with that hitchhiker over a month ago! We’ve been worried sick!”
Applejack hugged a bit longer before stepping back, rubbing at her nose and eyes a little. “It’s a long story…a really long story… Are the others here?”
Braeburn took a moment to catch his breath and adjust his own hat. “Sure we are!” He frowned slightly. “We had no place left to go after we got whooped up at Peach Bottom Flats… Even with some of us havin’ those funny circles on their hands…”
Applejack and Pinkie alike both looked up at that. “Beg yer pardon?”
Braeburn instantly winced, as if he had just spilled a secret. “Uh…uh…well…” He cringed for a moment, trying to think of an excuse.
Applejack answered by leveling a glare at him. “Braeburn, you know how I get when kinfolk start lyin’.”
He sighed in resignation. “Awright, cousin, ya’ got me.” He looked around for a moment, then glanced back at her. “I don’t wanna make ya’ nervous or nothin’…not after what happened with me and back at Fort Chestnut…but we got a couple folks over in our corps who got the same funny circles that I had and you got on your hand. Now…” He held his hands up in a stopping gesture. “I know you might think they’re all bad…and I certainly can’t blame you after what I did…but I’m thinkin’ that maybe you oughtta give them a bit of a chance, ‘cause they’re really-”
“Braeburn! It is you!”
Applejack’s cousin found himself cut off and looked up. By now, the rest of the Apple family had noticed his arrival and had rapidly rose again to greet him, complete with Pinkie Pie also cheerfully waving at the new face. His eyes spotted Apple Split’s hand as he waved, soon noticing the sigil on it. He nearly said something until he noticed the same on Apple Brown Betty, Candy Apples, and Big Macintosh as well as the ones on Pinkie Pie and Applejack.
He ended up staring a bit open-mouthed at the sight. Applejack herself gave a bit of a weak smile. “Um…I think we may have already figured that part out, Braeburn.”
“Then after things with south in Deadwood, we all packed up and headed here as fast as we could get…and looks like we made it. That’s about it.”
The Apple family, along with anyone else from the respective units their members had been with, stared in open-mouthed astonishment at the conclusion of Applejack’s tale. By now, the family had fully reunited with their respective members before meeting in between the two companies. They were unfortunately running too low on supplies to have any sort of family meal this time, but simply seeing each other again alive and well was occasion enough.
“Hold up now,” one of the family spoke up. “You actually tellin’ us that you and your friends were the ones who made it stop bein’ night all the time up north? I know you don’t tell whoppers, missy, but that’s one helluva lot to swallow.”
“Oh no, it’s all true!” Pinkie immediately chirped. “I was there the whole time! We fought Nightmare Moon…and a big raging she-demon…and then we got blown up all over Greater Everfree! I landed in Mount Aris’ royal palace conveniently near a jail cell!”
“I know it sure is a lot to believe, but I swear it’s all the truth,” Applejack went on. She held up her hand. “When I first got this, I figured I was gonna start actin’ up at the drop of a hat. It’s really bailed me out more’n once now, though.”
“Well shoot, coz…” Braeburn spoke up somewhat dismally. “Here I thought we had the bigger yarn to spin. It’s been nothin’ but one thing after another since we saw you last. We had to fight off two more of them Nighttouched attacks at Fort Chestnut ‘fore they quit. Good thing neither of them were as big as the one you and Twilight helped out on, or we’d have been sunk. Even after it quit, though, they were organizin’ us. Told us to be on the lookout for more Nighttouched or those Trottingham bastards makin’ a move. When the night broke, that only got everyone more in a tizzy. Since then they’ve been drillin’ us and then sendin’ us out to war.”
“And it ain’t been goin’ too well,” Another Apple spoke up frowning. “Ain’t ever had to fight big goons like the ones Trottingham’s got now. And they keep seemin’ ta’ hit us wherever we ain’t ready for ‘em. Don’t know how our luck’s been holdin’ out so far. Sure hasn’t for a lot of other folks…”
“I know how,” a younger Apple spoke up, grinning as she held up her own hand. It had a Promethian Sigil across it. “Some of us have had these pop up overnight. At first we were scared of ‘em, but after remembering what you and that city slicker girl did we thought they might help us fight. And sure enough, those of us who got ‘em seem to be bigger and tougher than usual.”
“Of course,” another family member threw in, “we’re nothin’ like you, Applejack. We can’t make ourselves change with any magic words or whatnot.”
Braeburn’s head sank. “I know you said I acted all crazy when I got mine, cousin…but I sure wish I still had it now. I’d be able to be out there swingin’ with the rest of the folks.”
“Well, that’s all well and good, but it ain’t been enough to keep back these Trottingham skunks,” the frowning Apple spoke up again. “They’re been whoopin’ us good. It takes three or four of us to take down one of them big ones, and that’s when they ain’t shovin’ tanks or airships down our necks.” She frowned a little more as she looked Applejack in the eye. “I’m sorry, girl. We tried to hold out as long as we could but they made us pull back when the lines collapsed. We had to move off Sweet Apple Acres.”
Applejack’s jaw dropped in horror. “Wait…what?”
“It was no good, cousin,” another spoke up ruefully. “None of the old folks wanted to do it, and we held out as long as we could, but they were gonna be comin’ right through that part of the country next. The only thing we could do was move everyone south so they’d leave it alone.”
Applejack’s jaw clenched. Her eyes blazed, and soon she was staring down the family in fury. “Well that ain’t no excuse! Don’t you know the whole reason Braeburn and I and the rest joined up with the army in the first place? It was so we could keep that land! It was the only thing we could do! Then y’all turn tail and run the first chance ya’ get? Damnit, I counted on y’all to keep it while I was…I was…”
She slowed as she said this. Her fist tightened, but she couldn’t choke out any more. She looked over the members of her family, but they couldn’t respond. Several of them looked away so they could avoid her gaze. Others tightened their faces; their throats clearly choking up. Braeburn himself reached up and slowly pulled off his hat before he let his face fall.
Applejack continued to steam a moment, but she looked back to those with her. Big Macintosh said nothing. He merely sat there with a hollow look. Candy Apples took up her bandanna and began to dab at her eyes a little. The others looked just as dour. Pinkie Pie alone looked up at Applejack, reaching out and putting a hand on her shoulder.
She let it sit there a moment, and as she did she slowly calmed down. Her own face fell as she let out a long sigh, then turned back to the others.
“It weren’t none of your faults. None of you,” she spoke quietly. “I know Sweet Apple Acres means as much to you as it does to me. Things just…went bad. If I oughtta be mad at anybody, it should be me. I should’ve been there.”
“Now don’t be like that, coz,” Braeburn spoke up soon afterward. “After everything you told us? You did more to save the farm and the rest of Appleloosa than anyone else.”
“Eeyup,” Big Macintosh added.
She didn’t answer. She only continued to stare for a few moments before she was finally able to give her relatives a weak smile. She inhaled and exhaled soon after. “Where’s the rest of the family now?”
“Don’t need to worry ‘bout them,” another relative spoke up. “Granny Smith, Apple Strudel, Goldie Delicious, and a bunch of the other old folks got the youngin’s together and moved on from here to town. Granny didn’t want to go, but we made her and the relatives move her on. They’re a helluva lot safer than we are now.”
Applejack hesitated for a moment, thinking that over. “I oughta go find them. Let ‘em know we’re alright…”
Another cousin shook his head with a frown. “It’ll be like tryin’ to find a needle in a haystack at this point, Applejack. There’s thousands of folks pourin’ into the nearest city that this fort’s shelterin’. ‘Sides…they ain’t gonna let any of us out. They need everyone they got to stand up to Trottingham. We don’t push ‘em back with this next fight and we ain’t gonna push ‘em back at all.”
Applejack tensed up at that, clearly upset not only at the grim proclamation but the fact that she couldn’t leave to go see the others. Pinkie Pie seemed to notice, along with the somber attitudes of everyone else. Wincing a little, she risked leaning in and smiling.
“Buuuut…we got the whole Apple family together now, so we’ll win for sure, won’t we? The more the merrier!”
“I hope yer right about that…” Applejack muttered back as she slumped in her own spot. “Anybody know how we’re doin’ right now?”
“They’re lettin’ the civilian corps mostly hang around for right now. They got their hands full tryin’ to wrangle all the normal soldiers,” Braeburn answered. “We got plenty of manpower but it looks like we ain’t got too many big guns. They’re puttin’ folks to work digging in all the ones they can get. Looks like they’re plannin’ on holdin’ this place out ‘til the end.”
“They’re starin’ to call up some of the civilian folk to dig trenches,” another family member added. “Reckon we’ll all be put to work pretty soon.”
Applejack frowned. “We ain’t gonna kick Trottingham outta Appleloosa just holin’ up here. Not unless we got anyone else comin’ for-”
“Sgt. Applejack! Sgt. Applejack!”
The farmer went quiet in mid-speech as soon as she heard her name and new title being called. Both she and the rest of the family looked up and around for the source of the voice. It took a moment with all of the crowds still gathered about and moving, but they managed to spot a lone officer slowly making his way through the lines. He had a piece of paper in his hands, apparently what had Applejack’s name on it, and was looking around and shouting. “Sgt. Applejack!”
The woman was a bit puzzled, glancing back at her family and the others. Pinkie Pie, however, grinned and held up her hand waving. “Oh! Oh! We’ve got Sgt. Applejack right here!”
Applejack glanced to her with a slight frown, but the deed had been done. The officer turned his head, easily catching Pinkie out of the rest of the crowd and soon finding her pointing at Applejack with her other hand. Immediately, he began to rush over. Seeing it happening, Applejack sighed and resigned herself to it.
As soon as the officer arrived, she looked up. “Yeah, that’s me, what’s up?”
“The colonel is looking for you. Third floor of the fort. He wants to see you immediately, along with your friend. He says give your name to the guards and they’ll let you in.”
The farmer crooked an eyebrow. She nearly opened her mouth to ask what this was about, but the officer didn’t pause long. As soon as he had given his message, he turned and immediately went off to run other business. Applejack and her family were left sitting there dumbfounded.
“Yipee!” Pinkie cheered, bouncing to her feet. “I get to come too!”
“What would they want with you, cousin?” Braeburn asked. “And why would they want you to bring that pink-haired girl?”
Applejack continued to stare after the officer as she shook her head. “I ain’t got the foggiest idea.” After a moment, she began to push up from where she was seated. “But I aim to find out. Rest of y’all sit tight ‘til we get back. Don’t go runnin’ nowhere if they come out and try an’ assign ya’. Come on, Pinkie.”
“Right behind you!” She chirped, practically bouncing along behind the farmer as she finished standing and began to make her way through the crowds.
Fort Appleloosa might have been much larger and more impressive than Fort Chestnut, but in the end it was still a fort. On finally making her way through the throng gathered around the main building proper, Applejack and Pinkie Pie presented themselves to the garrison posted at the entrances and, sure enough, were promptly let right in and saw it was just as austere and bare bones as the palisade one Applejack had left behind weeks ago. Nothing but crude bunks and rations in terms of food and comforts for those stationed there. Most of the interior was devoted to creating spaces for storing weapons and ammunition, or maintaining the many different cannons that were placed inside behind the iron fortifications. There were plenty of windows at least, but most of them were spots either for riflemen to shoot out from or had artillery barrels shoved through them. It was just about as crowded on the inside as the outside, only this time with uniformed soldiers going every which way armed to the teeth and gearing up for the coming conflict. The whole place smelled like gunpowder, and on top of that was cramped and poorly lit.
Eventually, the two of them managed to squeeze themselves by enough to find a set of stairs going up to the next level. Unfortunately, once up there they had to shove their way through another crowd of soldiers and guns in order to find the stairs that led up to the third level. There, things finally thinned out enough where they could walk with soldiers merely flanking them on every side rather than needing to shove them out of the way to get anywhere. There were also a few rooms with doors on them, finally installing some measure of privacy. By that point, Applejack was practically limping along from how cramped this was making her bad leg.
“We were any more jam packed in here, I’d say this fort was a pickle barrel…” Applejack complained as they kept moving.
“Tee hee! That’s one of those fun things to say!” Pinkie laughed. “Pickle barrel, pickle barrel, pickle bar…oh!” She cut herself off, as her enthusiasm for chanting the phrase had led her to start bouncing again, and with the low-ceiling of the fort interior that was quite impossible.
Applejack merely rolled her eyes, but before she could take a step closer herself one of the soldiers flanking the rooms with the doors suddenly stepped out in her path, putting a hand up. “Commissioned officers only past this point. Turn around.”
The farmer frowned back. “Hold yer horses for a minute. Y’all are the ones who called the two of us up here to begin with.”
“We’re looking for a colonel…colonel…hmm,” Pinkie mused aloud. “We didn’t get his or her last name, did we?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the guard began to retort, “but there’s no…” Suddenly, he trailed off. “Wait. You don’t happen to be Sgt. Applejack, do you?”
“Yeah, that’s me. Do you happen to know who keeps asking?”
The soldier responded by stepping to one side. “Third door on the right.”
She frowned back, but didn’t bother getting into an argument over it. Not when the person who apparently gave the order was that close. She simply walked right by with Pinkie following doing the best “half-skips” that she could muster. They only had to go a bit further before they reached the third door. Applejack, not really one to observe so much military decorum as to give a proper knock, simply seized the handle, gave it a turn, and walked right in with Pinkie trailing.
The room wasn’t much better than the rest of the fort. Aside from a table used for planning, including various maps of the area and figures to represent who was positioned where, there was little to be found other than a few chairs and a makeshift desk in the back. The most outstanding part of the room was the fact that the rear wall was against the fort’s side, such that there were windows that allowed one to look out and over the area around the fort to the east side. There were four individuals gathered in there at the moment. Three were lesser-ranking officers, and they were conversing with the colonel as he pointed out various spots on the map on the table. However, their impromptu entrance broke up the conversation and caused them all to look up together.
No sooner had Applejack met the colonel’s gaze when she registered surprise. “Burnt Oak?”
The older man looked pleased to see her. He actually smiled a little. “So it was you after all. I was hoping it was when I heard the news.”
As Applejack was halfway in the door frame when she stopped, Pinkie had to push her way around and in from behind her. As soon as she was in the room, she smiled at her. “Oh, it’s someone you know, Applejack?”
She hadn’t stopped staring at him, still looking amazed, but half-heartedly answered. “Y…yeah, yeah… It’s the lt. colonel from Fort Chestnut.”
“It’s colonel now,” he answered with a slight shrug. “Field promotions are bein’ handed out like penny candy lately. Of course, you probably already know about that, sergeant.” Losing his somewhat informal tone, he straightened and looked to the officers around him. “Alright, you have your orders. Carry them out and report your status. You have two hours. Dismissed.”
The officers, who paid some attention to this conversation until now, broke and gave a salute. After Burnt Oak dismissed them, they all turned and began to file out. Applejack, at that point, finally snapped out of it enough to move to one side and let them leave. When the last one departed, the door was left to swing shut and click behind them. Only when that happened did Burnt Oak give a long exhale and ease up again, smiling once more.
“I must say, you are a sight for sore eyes. It was bad enough in the wake of that airship attack from Trottingham, but ever since then I didn’t know what to think could have happened to you or that Twilight Sparkle.” He glanced over to Pinkie Pie, seeming to really see her for the first time, and his look became somewhat confused. “I kind of expected she’d still be with you.”
Applejack sighed as she stepped into the room further. “It’s a long story…real long…and I just got through tellin’ it once so try’n bear with me for right now, could you?”
“And…who’s this?”
“I’m Pinkie Pie!” she immediately greeted, cheerfully waving her hand. “Nice to meet you!”
Burnt Oak was taken a bit aback by her enthusiasm, but his eyes also looked and spotted the symbol on her hand. Applejack picked up on this and sighed again. “I know she’s a bit rambunctious, but trust me when I say she’s someone we’re glad to have on our side. She may not be able to do as much as Twilight or me but she’s a big help.”
He looked at her again, only to get another smile and another wave, and back at Applejack soon afterward. “Well, if you vouch for her, then I’m glad she’s here too. Fact of the matter is right now we could use all the help we can get. I’m sure you’ve noticed, but we’re not exactly doing too well in this war.”
She frowned. “Don’t I know it. I thought we had Deadwood licked but they ended up wipin’ out the counterattack. I know I ain’t never been in a war proper before, but I thought for sure that plan was gonna drive ‘em back.”
He frowned and shook his head, turning away to look back out the window. “All of the plans we thought for sure were gonna beat Trottingham have gone wrong. That guy who’s taken over the government…the one who calls himself the ‘Storm King’…he’s been fighting the Dragonlands for close to five years now. Him and all his commanders. Especially that new commodore who’s running the airship fleets. Until now, all of their best military officers always went to Trottingham’s eastern front. Now that the Dragonlands signed that treaty with ‘em, nothing’s stopping Trottingham from throwing everything they got at us. And that was before they changed things up on us.”
“You mean with those big palookas we ran into on the field?”
“Every story I hear about them is wilder than the last. I heard one managed to kill three soldiers after his throat was cut open and he was bleeding out. Another got off six more shots from his own rifle after a bullet went through his heart. I used to think nothing was tougher than Appleloosans. That’s the one edge we always had on Trottingham: infantry. Now we’re fallin’ apart, and they keep hitting us where it hurts.” He looked away from the window and back to them. “I didn’t ask for this promotion. The truth is the real colonels are getting hard to find. Most of them aren’t making it off of their battlefields.”
Applejack winced to hear that news. She grimaced uncomfortably. “So…what’s the plan?”
The colonel crossed his arms and bowed his head. “Right now, we’ve got no way of hitting them back. We might be able to knuckle up against the new infantry, but we can’t fight them with their artillery and airships backing them up. My guess is the higher ups in the government will hate it, but we’ve got to get help from either Manehattan or Fillydelphia. Both, if we can get them. Of course…” He twisted his lips. “Help seems like it’s a hard thing to come by nowadays. I hear that summit didn’t go too well. Though maybe the fact that Trottingham supposedly said it was coming for half of Greater Everfree during it might make a difference… Until they we have to hole up here. I’m in not in command…not yet at least…but the higher officers are giving the order to dig in on all sides. We’ll do our best to keep the airships back and we have to let the trenches and artillery keep back their infantry.”
She frowned back. “We can’t just sit here and wait for other people to come bail us out! We’re Appleloosans, for cryin’ out loud! Ain’t there any way we can beat ‘em?”
Burnt Oak was quiet for a few moments. He seemed to be musing over something. Pinkie looked at him a bit hopefully as Applejack stewed and stared.
Finally he looked up. “Only one thing I can think of.”
“What is it?”
“We need more folks like you two. And I ain’t just talking about those circles. There’s more of them showin’ up every day. We need folks who have those little emblems on them.”
Applejack looked a little taken aback. Pinkie just looked confused on her part. However, the colonel uncrossed his arms and continued. “I hate to say it, but that seems like the only shot we have now. I’ve been gun shy about folks with those emblems ever since that one woman lost her mind back at Fort Chestnut, but that doesn’t change the fact that if it wasn’t for you and your other friend we would have been done on the first night. Some of the best men and women we still have are because they have those symbols on their hands. The problem is it ain’t enough. But if we had a hundred folks like you two out there…even fifty…then we might have a shot.” He paused to glance between the two of them.
“I don’t suppose either of you can tell us how you managed to get those emblems, can you? Right now, they look like damn near our only hope.”
Applejack stood there quietly for a moment. A bit of hesitation was on her face, but mostly regret. She eventually shook her head as well. “I’m sorry. The way I got mine…I don’t reckon too many other folks’ll be able to do the same thing.” She paused momentarily, then looked up and over to her side. “Pinkie? I don’t suppose you got any ideas, do ya’? Come to think of it, how’d you end up gettin’ yours?”
She put a hand to her chin and turned her eyes skyward. “Hmm…y’know, that’s a really good question! I don’t really remember myself. Let’s see… I think I got it after that one night. Maud and I were heading into town after dark and-”
Her story was abruptly cut off to the sound of a tremendous calamity from the open windows. It sounded like an explosion. At once, both the colonel and Applejack spun to it, and moments later they both ran to the window to look out. Even before they got there they began to hear shouting. Some of it was cries of alarm but it was soon joined by cries of pain. More shouts and raucous noise began to join them as they looked outside.
Applejack almost let out a gasp at what she saw. Clouds of dust were rising up on the perimeter of the fort. Two of them, to be exact…corresponding to the two walls that were constructed around it. To her shock, some terrific force had quite easily, and very quickly, punched a massive breach between both of them. It had happened so soon that people were still dodging the falling rubble from either structure. Not only that, but all of the trenches and gun emplacements between the two had been dashed apart like leaves in a breeze. Those left behind were standing in awe of what had happened.
The source of the destruction was now in the grounds where the soldiers and civilian corps were stationed. From this high up, in the shadow of the late afternoon sun, it wasn’t possible to see clearly. However, cries of pain and of struggling were ringing out, along with the sounds of people being struck. Soon after, gunshots began to echo out along with it, but the cries only intensified. Seconds afterward, a new sound, one that was like cutting through the air, joined it. Even louder cries resulted.
Pinkie had just gotten to the side and looked out, her face going agape on seeing the destruction, when Applejack pulled herself back. Her expression tightening up, she spun around and began to run for the door to the office. “Come on, Pinkie!”
The Gaitian looked up in a little confusion, but began to go after her. Burnt Oak looked up even more puzzled. “Where are you going?”
“My family’s down there!” Applejack shouted back before running over the threshold.
Applejack only waited until she was clear of the room before donning her Anima Viri. Not making sure that Pinkie was keeping up, she took off back the way she came; practically bowling over officers in the crowded halls as she raced back through the corridors and down the three flights of stairs. Her leg still hurt even with the Anima Viri reequipped, but she no longer noticed the pain and toughed through it. Hardly anyone took notice of her changed appearance and her aura until she was on them. By that point, the entire fort was transfixed on what had happened outside, and a siren began to blare for an attack on the base. Applejack cared for none of that. She only kept running downstairs until she finally made it to the bottom, then practically knocked aside the two guards posted as she burst out into the grounds beyond.
The sounds of rubble and debris settling mingled in the air with more cries and gunshots, although it wasn’t clear if it was from the first attack or if it was fresh damage. Applejack charged for the front of the fort, already hefting her hammer and almost fully ignoring her injured leg, and looked out. It only took a moment to spot it.
A crowd of people were already parting from it, most of them staggering back or fleeing. A few of them had guns and kept shooting into the midst, but looked frightened and panicked at obvious ineffectivity. As they split away, however, it revealed not a weapon, tank, or any sort of explosive device. Instead, it revealed only a single individual.
She was fully armored from head to toe, not exposing a single patch of bare skin anywhere. Nevertheless, the armor was so close fitting that it exposed the curves of the individual—revealing a feminine shape. The armor was unlike any suit that Applejack or anyone had ever seen. It was made of so many interlocking plates and so sleek and form fitting that it almost looked like a shell or even skin in places. The helmet itself was fashioned into a human face with a sloping crest and back over the rear and side portions. However, there were no places for eye openings. Rather the eyes had some sort of gleaming green lenses over them—so bright that they were piercing even from the distance away that Applejack stood. Aside from that, the only detail on the figure were a series of emblem-like characters written across its armor in some language neither she nor anyone else present could read.
However, Applejack really wasn’t that focused on the symbols at the moment. She was too busy focusing on the fact that her older brother had one of her metal-coated hands wrapped around his throat. He was futilely trying to punch her in the side to free himself, but she didn’t even react as she extended her other hand over his one bearing his Promethian Sigil. A light was coming out from it and seeming to streak over it.
Applejack didn’t know what that was for and frankly didn’t care. Her face filled with fury as she took off for her. “Let him go!”
The figure didn’t even look up, continuing to do whatever it was doing with Big Macintosh. It didn’t stop Applejack either way. Whipping her hammer behind her, she grit her teeth, dashed straight for the two, and lunged at the armored figure with her hammer swinging out for the side of her head.
It connected solidly, letting out a clang that echoed throughout the entire yard of the fort.
The figure’s head shifted about a millimeter.
In spite of Applejack’s fury, she froze on the spot and let her jaw fall. The blow she had just swung would have been enough to tear the head off of a Nighttouched bull. The armored figure didn’t even seem to notice it had happened. She continued to shine the light over Big Macintosh’s hand.
A second later, she grit her teeth, put both hands on the hammer, and redoubled her fury as she swung her hammer back and smashed it into the other side of her head. This time it actually turned a little and moved a few centimeters, but that was all. She smashed it again back and forth, putting more effort into it each time. Again, the head shifted a little, but the figure never registered any pain, and never stopped throttling her brother.
Letting out a swear, Applejack whipped her arms back and got ready for her strongest blow yet. While she was preparing, however, the light went off that was shining over Big Macintosh’s hand. Immediately the throttling grip released, letting him fall to the ground. As Applejack brought the hammer around, the head of the figure snapped to aim its glowing eyes right at her while simultaneously raising her arm and extending her palm.
The head of the hammer swung around and connected with it…and aside from a slight bending of the elbow held perfectly.
Applejack was shocked yet again. The figure easily held her back without quivering with a single arm. However, her shock ended up costing her soon after as the figure formed a fist and snapped forward like a crack of a whip to embed it in her gut.
If possible, Applejack’s eyes bulged even larger, although it wasn’t entirely from surprise alone this time. The air went rushing out of her lungs before her powerful body was easily taken off of its feet and sent flying backward. It didn’t stop until it hit the side of the fort, letting out an even louder resounding clang as she smashed into the walls and fell to the ground. Once there, she instantly sprawled out, dropping her hammer. She began to gasp for air, almost heedless of the fact that blood was dripping from her mouth. While still trying to catch her breath she looked back up to the armored figure.
She didn’t advance. Rather, she extended a single finger toward her. Had Applejack a few more wits, she probably would have registered more surprise as the metal finger split apart completely—not exposing any flesh or bone beneath but rather some sort of focused barrel. A ringing sound went through the air for a moment and the tip gleamed bright red.
Applejack didn’t know what that was but she didn’t wait to find out. While still trying to recover, she reached out, seized her hammer, and went into a forward roll. Moments later, a beam of red light streaked out from the opened finger and sliced where her legs had been. She didn’t turn around to look, but the ground and even the heavy iron plating surrounding the fortress was sliced into like it had just come out of a furnace; opening a gleaming fissure that began to leak molten slag before bursting into flame. Applejack found herself forced to dodge to the side a moment later as the figure sliced out again, this time horizontally for her arms. While she managed to sidestep it, a second swath, much larger than the first, was cut across the first floor of the fortress. People cried out in alarm and panic as they fled in its wake.
Gritting her teeth again, Applejack answered by snapping her arm forward and flinging her hammer right at her extended finger in a swinging arc. It connected solidly before the figure could fire a third time, knocking it ajar. She seized the moment and got both her feet under her, again toughing through the growing pain, as she went into a charge.
“All y’all get back!” she cried out her with as much wind as she could get. Even as she did, she continued to charge forward and moments later extended her arms and laced them around the middle of the armored figure. She meant to wrestle her to the ground and grapple from there.
Instead, the figure’s heels dug back possibly two inches before she held perfectly steady. In spite of Applejack’s grip and her attempt to yank her to the ground for all that she was worth, not to mention the fact she looked larger than her, it was impossible. It felt like wrestling a piece of solid iron.
For several seconds, the figure allowed her to try, before she raised both of her hands, linked them together in a fist, and brought them down. A sickening smack went out before Applejack instantly went flaccid. Her legs gave way and went to her knees, and it was only because she was clutching to the figure that she kept from going down all together. That was probably not for the best, because the figure immediately unlaced her fingers and delivered two more blows to her back—one fist after the other. She buckled a bit more on the second, and on the third she gave a cry of pain before losing her grip all together and sprawling to the ground.
Without missing a beat, the figure brought back one foot and delivered a powerful kick to her side. Applejack’s cry was more like a choked gag as the iron toe dug deep and nearly pierced her ribs. Once again, her body was sent sailing; this time out into the surrounding crowds of people. They quickly scattered out of the way, but her body still connected with the ground so powerfully that her tumbling form smashed into and through two makeshift tents that had been being erected before she came to a stop.
She lay there for a few seconds before letting out an angry fume, snapping herself over, and pushing herself back to her feet. She rose even faster than last time, but as soon as she was up she winced in agony and put a hand on her side. She also wobbled a bit before shifting more weight onto her good leg, and despite her best efforts her body was hunched over in pain. This didn’t matter to the armored figure, who stared at her for a moment before hunching over herself, as if about to go into a dash.
However, she didn’t break into a run. Rather, her armor suddenly split apart behind her legs and along her back, opening up like a series of metal doors. Again, no flesh or bone was exposed, but rather several small nozzles. A moment later each one of them began to make a rushing sound before plumes of energy burst from them. In response the armored figure’s body suddenly sailed across the grounds like a rocket, causing many other bystanders to cry out in alarm and panic. Applejack herself barely managed to look up before, much to her shock, she saw the armored figure come to a halt right in front of her.
Instantly, she went with her instincts. Giving another yell, she tightened her hand into a fist and belted her across the face. She followed up with a hook from her other arm soon after. The figure, on her part, stood there and took it as she calmly waited for her armor to close up behind her again. Her head barely budged from either blow, but Applejack’s face tightened in more agony as the knuckles on both of her hands were split open from striking her. She tried to hit her a third time, but before she could the arm of the figure snapped up and deflected the hit away.
An instant later, Applejack was stunned with pain again as the figure drove her own metal hand into her face in a palm gesture, snapping her head back and leaving her dazzled. In a flash, the armored figure followed up by striking her in the gut three more times, making sure two of them hit where she had been kicked before. Each blow seemed to suck the strength out of Applejack and leave her more dazzled and in pain for the next. After landing the third strike, she again formed a palm and slapped the farmer against either side of the head. While it looked like a small enough gesture, it was worse than being beaten with an iron bat. Applejack’s upper body flung violently to either side as blood streaks were left painted across the ground with each blow.
Finally, the armored figure raised a leg, took a moment to orientate it correctly, and then swung out like it was a primed catapult. An echo went across the yard from the sound of it connecting with Applejack’s head, and again she was sent flying. This time she sailed like a missile right into the nearest intact gun emplacement. At the speed she was going, she smashed right through the barricade being built around it and into the gun itself, breaking the barrel off the carriage before collapsing on top of it in a grand heap.
She lay there a few moments, panting and gasping, before gritting her teeth and throwing herself back up and to her feet…or at least one foot. This time, she didn’t have nearly as much spring in her step, and she was clearly weaker about putting her hands up. She once again glared at her opponent, but no sooner had she laid eyes on her than she saw she was aiming her finger at her again, and once more it was open and gleaming red. Moments later, she fired.
As the deadly red light ripped across through the remains of the cannon and into the border wall beyond, slicing both apart in its wake and making both burst into flame, Applejack again evaded by getting enough of a second wind to rush forward and under it. Her first target wasn’t the armored figure this time, but rather her discarded hammer. She made a hobbling beeline straight for it. The armored figure, noticing her move, quickly changed positions and fired again, but Applejack answered by going into a lunge and jumping for it at the last second. The beam again narrowly missed her, and as she came forward she snagged the hammer off the ground before going into a dive roll. As soon as her feet were back underneath her, she sprung off as best as she could with her injured leg back for the figure. Her hammer again came back and readied itself for another smash…
Once again, the armored figure responded by extending her palm and catching the head of the hammer with her hand. Applejack immediately planted her feet, digging in and putting more power into the blow. With all the fury her beaten, bloodied face still had, she tried to level her weight against it to overpower the figure. Yet for all of her force and strength, her opponent merely flexed her arm a bit more and showed nothing else. Her green glowing eyes stared right at her without wavering or hesitation.
For a few fateful seconds, the crowd watched as the two collided. Sweat burst on Applejack’s face, mingling with her blood, and she never stopped struggling for even one moment.
Then, the armored figure simply flipped her wrist grabbing the hammer head downward.
With that one gesture, she snapped the hammer completely off of its handle like it was a dried twig.
Applejack’s fury gave way to utter shock. The sudden loss of force would have caused her to spill forward, if not for the fact that the armored figure’s other hand, the one bearing the exposed finger, was still free. At that moment, she fired again…putting a ray of light right through the existing bullet injury on the Warrior’s leg. Her pupils shrank into pinpricks, and a moment later she collapsed to one knee, crying in pain as blood erupted from the rear of her leg…
Her cries didn’t last long. The figure let the broken hammer fall to the ground, formed palms with both hands, and proceeded to box the sides of Applejack’s head. Her cry was aborted from the fresh pain, but she had no further chance to react to it as her opponent followed it up by retracting her finger, forming a fist, and smashing her across the face. That was too much for her. Her eyes finally glazed over as another streak of blood painted the ground, and the rest of her fell to the ground in an unconscious heap.
The crowd didn’t dare breathe a word. Many of them had seen Applejack in battle at this point, and now they could only gape in horror as they watched the aura around her die down and her clothing return to normal. No one dared make a move on the armored figure as she towered over her. As for the figure herself, she hesitated only momentarily, seeming to verify that the farmer was down, before she crouched down. Without a sound, she reached out and grasped Applejack’s limp hand that bore the Promethian Sigil. She extended her opposite palm over it, shining out the same light she had shone over Big Macintosh’s and holding for a few seconds.
“I’m coming, Applejack!”
The green lenses of the armored figure looked up as she turned her head around. She spotted Pinkie Pie, fully in the Rogue form, dashing right for her. An instant later, she cut off the light and dropped Applejack’s hand, and in one movement turned and faced the newcomer. Her finger split apart again and an instant later she traced the red light out right in Pinkie’s path.
She answered by giving a giggle and doing a nimble forward hop. In her wake, the ground lit aflame, but Pinkie herself continued to run forward unabated. The figure didn’t react save to shift her aim and fire again, this time lashing out to once again tag the side of the fort and send people running in panic. Once again, Pinkie simply leapt to one side. She tried to fire a third time, but had much the same result.
By now, she was nearly on the armored figure, and it quickly collapsed its finger weapon and readied its fists. Pinkie continued to run straight at her, and as soon as she got close enough she swung out one of her arms for her head. However, the Rogue nimbly planted her feet, arched her back, and slid right under the fist and below the outstretched arm of the armored figure, dodging the blow. She soon was on her other side and sprung up again, just as the armored figure extended her other arm and swept it around her as she spun around—trying to catch her off guard. Yet with a nimble twist, turn, and duck, Pinkie once more slid underneath her.
“Hmm,” she remarked as she popped up on the other side, right before hopping back three steps to avoid another swing of the armored figure’s arm. “You’re hard to take from. That armor is reeeeeally tough.”
The figure didn’t respond, save by raising it fingers and pointing at her again. It streaked out with two more beams of light, again slicing up Pinkie’s way and leaving fire in her wake, but again she responded by simply nimbly backflipping. It increased the distance between the two, but she failed to tag the pink-haired woman even once.
As Pinkie touched down for a landing, however, the armored figure collapsed her finger again. Instead, the tops of her shoulders opened up next. What emerged from inside along both of her shoulder blades was an array of conical-shaped cylinders. Pinkie spotted it as they came out and lit up. “Ooo! What do those do?”
The figure didn’t answer or even move. A second later, a hissing sound like a series of lit fireworks came from her shoulders, before each of the conical cylinders erupted from the end—revealing themselves to be miniature rockets. None of them traveled in a straight path. Each one spun or swirled in its own way, before angling themselves inward and sailing straight for Pinkie. As the nearest arrived, she quickly sidestepped once again.
Unfortunately for her, as the first one connected with where she had been, it did worse than a cutting slice and flames. It erupted with a force of an artillery shell, casting fire and dirt everywhere and knocking the nearest bystanders off their feet completely. Pinkie’s smile actually turned into a nervous grimace as she was nearly bowled off balance, and she spotted the rest of the rockets immediately arching for her. She tried to step back, but another rocket soon swiveled down where she had been and landed on the ground even closer than before. It erupted just as strongly as the previous one, this time blowing up enough smoke and dust to envelop her completely.
Soon the rest of the rockets were peppering the area with similar explosions, chasing after her in spite of the smoke and dirt. What few people were still watching turned and bolted for it if they could, as the rockets filled the yard with one gaping hole after another. They even stretched back all the way to the wall, proceeding to blast further holes into it, while one stray one went all the way to the side of the fort. In spite of the iron plating, it blasted through and flayed jagged pieces of metal like a rind from an orange. The impact tremors alone shook many of the surrounding people to the ground, and further cries and screams went out in the wake of the barrage.
At last, the final rocket had detonated. Half of the east yard was covered in smoke and settling dust, and filled with craters stretching for forty meters. The armored figure’s shoulder areas again slowly collapsed and closed, but she didn’t move. She continued to stare at the area and look for an aftermath of her attack. For a few moments, all that presented itself was billowing smoke and falling dirt.
“Got something!”
The armored figure indicated the first slight hint of surprise as her head raised on hearing the voice behind her. She saw Pinkie standing and smiling. More than that, however, she was holding up something in her hand—a small strip of metal emblazoned with the same symbols as the figure wore.
The figure stared at her for a moment before turning fully around. She looked at her shoulder and, sure enough, one of the coverings was missing.
“Taking off the rest should be much easier now that I figured it out!” Pinkie grinned.
She didn’t answer. For a moment, she stood like a statue staring at the cheerful woman.
Another hiss went out from her, this time from her helmet. Abruptly, a vertical line formed across the mouthpiece, where the armored lips of the facemask were. It soon widened so that the helmet opened its “mouth” completely. Once again, nothing was exposed underneath but emptiness. However, scarcely had it opened to full size before its next attack happened.
Blaring as loud as a siren, a “musical” sound suddenly erupted from the head of the figure. “Musical”, however, was being more than kind. It was definitely some sort of melodious sound, but it was nothing like a symphony, a band, or any other instrument or voice ever heard before, and it produced a song unlike anything anyone had ever heard. It was bizarre, flat, convoluted, and even, if one could call it, grotesque. The fact that it was blared so loud that everyone could hear it clearly for a quarter mile in every direction only made it worse.
Pinkie, standing right in front of her, lost her smile. Her hands fell to her sides, and soon after her knees began to buckle. A second later, she fell to the ground as her face started to twist, barely keeping herself up on all fours. Her eyes began to cross as her neck tightened.
“I think…those rations…aren’t setting well with me…”
An instant later, she retched and began to vomit. She wasn’t alone. Everyone in the yard was falling to their knees as well and doing much the same. The music was so unworldly and unnatural that not only could their minds not process it but their bodies seemed to be seizing and reacting to it as if it was something nauseating or disgusting. All strength fled out of their limbs. Everyone felt mixtures of dizziness, weakness, and, most of all, sickness. People continued to empty their stomachs before falling completely to the ground. Others gagged, wretched, or even screamed at the unbearable quality of the sound. After only ten seconds of it, not one soldier in the quarter-mile radius was still standing. After fifteen, Pinkie finally gave one final moan before collapsing to the ground as well—her aura instantly vanishing.
With a mechanical noise, the mouthpiece of the figure closed once again. Not that there was anyone left to notice. Everyone was in a heap moaning and struggling to regain their equilibrium. Unopposed, the armored figure walked right up to Pinkie. She tried to look up to her, but that was all she could do. She couldn’t even squirm that well as the figure reached her side, knelt down, took up her hand bearing the Promethian Sigil, and proceeded to shine the same light over it as she had for Applejack.
In moments, it was over. The figure let Pinkie’s hand fall to the ground and rose to full height. No longer paying anyone in the area any mind, she simply began to walk around the central fort complex. While everyone was still on the ground she reached the west side. After that, her back and legs split open to reveal the jet nozzles again, and with another eruption of speed she took off. Seconds later, two more holes were punched through the walls surrounding the fort as the figure smashed her way out into the field. Soon after, she was gone.
It wasn’t for three more minutes that Applejack finally let out a small moan. She leaned up soon after, but instantly tightened her face in pain. Her hand reached out and seized her leg, which caused her to grit her teeth in more pain and agony. She looked down at it and saw it was in horrible shape. The last attack had seared her wound closed to keep her from bleeding out, but it was burnt badly and smoking. She soon pushed herself up into a seated position and tried to stand, but that only made her cry out even more on putting any weight on the leg. Nevertheless, as she continued to regain consciousness, she grit her teeth through her pain, bruises, and blood and forced her good leg underneath her. With some struggling, she managed to push herself up on that one.
She took a moment to look around. The last of the dust had settled, but the area was in shambles. People were only now getting up on all fours. The only other person who was close to recovered with Pinkie, who by now was in a seated position. “I haven’t felt that sick since I made those cupcakes with the expired sour cream…”
With a creak and a slow sway, the door to the base of the fort opened again. Moments later, half-staggering and grabbing their middles, Burnt Oak and several other officers came out. The former was breathing a bit deeply, wiping at his mouth and clearly trying to keep his own nausea down, but apparently those inside weren’t as badly impacted as those outside. Nevertheless, he only got a few steps before he and the others with him halted. They glanced around the yard, seeing the widespread destruction and trauma both to the defenses as well as to the soldiers stationed there.
Finally, he looked back at Applejack. “What the hell just happened out here? Who was that?”
Applejack couldn’t answer, and not just due to her pain. She looked back down at herself. Her clothing was back to normal and covered with dirt. Her arms and legs, along with most of the rest of her, were banged up from the violence of the fighting. Her jaw clamped shut and she began to stare intensely at her sorry state. The thought of how helpless she had been just now…how with all her strength she was so easily smashed aside…ran through her brain and slowly began to make her quiver. Yet she had no more anger to give. She merely stood there and stewed.
“It was…it was them things…on your hands…”
Braeburn’s voice caused everyone to look up, not just Applejack. She ended up looking to one side of the yard, where Big Macintosh was lying along with other members of her family struggling to rise again. Yet at a distance, pushing himself up from where he had been stricken with nausea, Braeburn arose and looked at her.
“That woman…she was lookin’ for those things on your hands. She went to all the family…everyone that has one…and anyone else around…and she started grabbin’ their hands and holding that light over it.” He grimaced a little. “She…she looked right at me…even took a step toward me…but then just looked away.”
“That’s right, Applejack!” Pinkie called out, causing her to turn to her next. “She was looking at your hand when I ran in, and then she grabbed mine after I fell down!”
Applejack’s anger and self-loathing momentarily abated. She looked up in puzzlement instead. She glanced back at her own hand. The symbol was the same as it had always been since that night in Fort Chestnut. No difference or change whatsoever.
Before she could study it any longer, a siren began to blare. Both she and the others, as well as the rapidly recovering soldiers, all looked up into the air.
“What in tarnation is it now?” she muttered aloud.
Burnt Oak’s pupils shrank. He stared at the sky blankly for a moment, but then clenched his jaw and let out a curse. “Aw hell…”
Applejack turned to him. “What is it?”
He looked down and at her grimly. “The warning siren.”
“Look!”
One of the sentries had shouted that from the first level’s wall. Applejack turned to him, only to see him pointing out to the eastern horizon. She turned in the same direction soon after.
Evening was on them now and the sun was rapidly heading down, and there were still clouds from the overcast day that had been hanging over Appleloosa before. Yet in the fading light, far in the distance, they could see objects emerging from the clouds. Once that were far “sharper” and man made relative to the clouds. It didn’t take long to make out the appearance of propellers on them, as well as the fact that they were arranged in a flying V formation that stretched across the sky. There had to be at least fourteen separate ones, and in the next few moments she was able to distinguish the shapes.
Trottingham airships.
Applejack’s jaw hung loose. She looked back to the ground…seeing soldiers still recovering from nausea and imbalance, a defensive line breached both to the east and to the west, a field ruined with fire and devastation, and even a central defensive fort that was now damaged from the weapons of the armored figure. Disorganized, damaged, and with a gaping wound running clean through it.
Pinkie seemed to notice the same thing, because for once her smile and cheerfulness was forced and weak. “I…don’t suppose there’s a Gaitian shrine around here, is there? Because I really, really, really think I need to pray right now.”
Rainbow Dash was left dumbfounded for a few more seconds, leaving Twilight and Sunset to glance between the two sides and wonder if this was a good or a poor development. Both of them took note of the fact that the faces of Gilda’s companions didn’t seem to change, and the fact that some of them had command of Anima Viris only made them more uncomfortable. The staircase up to the next level was in the back of the ruined chamber, but no one looked to it or made a move toward it.
Finally Dash spoke up. “Gilda? What are you doing here?”
She smiled a bit wider. “Heh, like what you see? I’ve moved up a bit in the world from bounty hunting.” She jabbed a thumb behind her at the crowd. “You’re looking at Griffonstone’s newest elite unit. Pretty sweet, ain’t it? They started rounding us up with offers to work for the government for a load of cash after what happened in Griffham City. Each and every one of us in the group has one of these on our hands. Some of us have a little extra too.” She flashed her teeth as she brandished her own, showing off her emblem on her sigil.
“Took us a while to figure how to get these to work right, but someone up in the government told us…I dunno…the ‘magic word’s or whatever. All we had to do from there was figure out the right names and titles to use with it, and we’re good to go. Check us out, Dash. Pretty sweet?”
Twilight and Sunset were practically dumbfounded to hear that last bit of news. After a moment, Twilight spun to her. “You didn’t let that out, did you?”
“Wha…me?” Sunset retorted. “I was trying to get rid of anyone with a Promethian Sigil! Why in the world would I have told anyone how to use the Anima Viris? So I could have more people being a pain in my neck? You and your friends must have said it too loud where they could hear you when you were in Griffham City!”
“There wasn’t anyone around us! And if there was, how would they have known?”
“Well I didn’t do it!”
“Neither did I!”
“Someone had to have!”
“Anyway, to your first question,” Gilda continued, looking slightly annoyed at having been interrupted. “It’s obvious, ain’t it? We’re taking Fillydelphia down a piece at a time, starting with this fort of theirs.”
Dash looked stunned. “Say what?”
She crossed her arms. “Come on, Dash. You can tell, can’t you? It’s not like we’ve got much of a choice. Ever since Trottingham had that Fire Witch go ballistic and start attacking Manehattan, that mess went down with the Nighttouched in Griffham City, and the night broke over Equestria, it’s obvious that the next top dog in the world is going to be whoever gets ahold of this new power. Everyone else is going to be running when they say go. We’re making sure Griffonstone isn’t left behind in the dust. In fact, that’s why the bigwigs have been pushing for getting into Equestria. We’re going to be the first to find out all the secrets they’ve been hiding. So far, it’s paid off pretty well.” She gestured again behind her, this time to the ones in her group who were glowing. “Each of them is as good as us, Dash. Well…almost as good.”
The three paused momentarily, before Dash smiled. “Well, heh…great catching up with you again, Gilda. I knew you’d make it out of those tunnels. And I’d hate to get in your way in your new line of work, so…” She reached out and began to motion to Twilight and Sunset. After a moment, they slowly began to start walking for the back of the chamber. “Have fun and I’ll catch you later.” She turned and took a step toward the stairs herself.
“’Fraid it’s not that simple, Dash.”
Several gun clicks echoed at the same time.
Sunset turned a shade pale. Twilight gulped. Dash herself maintained her composure, but one look in her eyes showed she wasn’t feeling nearly as comfortable as she had been a moment ago. The three slowly turned back around. Gilda hadn’t moved, but those with her that had guns now had them up and aimed at her.
“You see…you happen to have the Fire Witch with you right here, right now,” Gilda continued, gesturing over to Sunset. “I’d recognize her anywhere from all the wanted posters Trottingham has thrown up. She’s a wanted criminal in most of Greater Everfree…and yet, here she is, running around inside an actual Fillydelphian prison. And with you, no less.”
None of the three liked how she said the last part. And given their position, it took only a few moments of silence for the three to realize what kind of stew they were in and how carefully they needed to choose their next words.
“I know Fillydelphia seems to want to stick with gunpowder and iron for how they wage their wars,” Gilda went on, “but if that’s the case, what are you three doing here?” She pointed to Twilight. “That one’s got a symbol too just like us, Dash. This isn’t the first time we would have been hired for different jobs on either side of a paycheck, would it?”
“Now wait up just a moment,” Dash retorted, holding up her hands defensively, “we’re just passing through. They nabbed us when we tried to get through Fillydelphia.”
“Through Fillydelphia? And going where? Or, more appropriately, where with her?” Her head nodded toward Sunset, who was beginning to look very uneasy. “Trottingham’s best authority on these symbols and how to use them? I don’t suppose you’d be going to Griffonstone, would you? Because if you aren’t, we have a problem here.”
Twilight began to inch back a little. Her hand bearing her symbol began to lift slightly, but at once two of the Griffonstone soldiers aimed their guns squarely at her. She stopped soon after.
Dash seemed to be picking up on the rapid change in mood quickly too. She forced a smile. “Look…yeah, I know that Huntsmen can end up on opposite sides of a paycheck, but once in a while we can look the other way too, right?”
“Just not your day for luck, is it, Dash?” Gilda said with a faux head shake of sympathy. “You see, we’ve got some intelligence you don’t, courtesy of the same source that helped us use these Promethian Sigils. They said that there’s a weapon running around out there. It makes anyone who gets one of these symbols on their hands go ballistic. Start attacking their own friends and soldiers. And no way to stop them except to kill them. Pretty neat weapon to counter folks like us, huh? We don’t know how it exactly works or what it looks like, but apparently the tip we got is that there’s someone running around with a symbol on their hands that can set it off.”
Both Twilight and Sunset reacted as one. “What?”
“Oh yeah. And I’m afraid that means that we can’t let anyone with these sigils who isn’t one of us just run around willy-nilly then.”
Twilight stared open-mouthed at what Gilda had just said, not quite grasping the second part. Sunset likewise looked confused a moment, but soon focused more on the pressing matter at hand. Dash began to perspire, in spite of trying to maintain a bold face. However, it was rapidly starting to break in view of the stares of the other Griffonstone people. They weren’t nearly as friendly or casual as Gilda.
“I’ll cut you a break, Dash, for old time’s sake. I’ll let the three of you head back to Griffonstone with us, but that’s the best I can do.”
The three didn’t move. Sunset glanced between Twilight and Dash, but neither of them clearly had any idea what to do next. They couldn’t even equip their Anima Viris right now without tipping the Griffonstone soldiers off. In spite of the sound of distant fighting, the area went deathly silent.
Finally, someone did make a move…albeit an unexpected one.
One of the Griffonstone soldiers carrying a gun aimed at Twilight slowly began to lower it, although his eyes stayed forward and stared at her intensely. As he did, his comrade nearby noticed. She raised an eyebrow. “Gabe, what are you doing? Slacking off on the job?”
He didn’t answer. He continued to stare at Twilight, his expression unchanging. A few of the other soldiers glanced in his direction. Twilight herself stared at him. For a moment, she continued to look worried and a bit confused.
Then a stroke of realization hit her.
“Oh no…”
“Gabe. Gabe!” the comrade shouted to him. However, he didn’t react. He let the gun fall the rest of the way. His jaw began to tighten. His teeth slowly started to poke out from his lips.
Sunset turned to Twilight, noticing her stare. “What’s wrong?” She turned back to the Griffonstone soldier and she realized the same. “Oh hell…not now…”
Finally, the soldier lowered her own weapon and moved forward, standing in front of ‘Gabe’. “Hey! I’m talking to you! What’re you-”
She got out no more. Raising his gun, he swung it forward and clubbed her along the side of her head with the butt of the weapon. The soldier cried out as she was nearly flung to one side, and Gabe immediately began to move forward…eyes still locked on Twilight.
However, his attack spurred the others into action. Two of the nearby soldiers lowered their own weapons and immediately rushed on him, seizing him from behind by either arm. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Stand down now! That’s an order!”
He didn’t answer, only gnashed his teeth and began to struggle violently in their grip. Both of their looks became amazed as he viciously tore at them; clearly shocked that they were barely able to hold him back. They grit their own teeth and tightened their muscles, but barely managed to keep him from only slowly inching forward.
“Gracie!” one of them shouted, turning his head and yelling. “Help us out here!”
The soldier being shouted at didn’t move. She kept her own gun forward, aiming steady and keeping her eyes firmly on the three in front of them.
“Gracie!”
The soldier hesitated a second longer, and then her own face turned into an enraged scowl. She suddenly began to fire at the three. Twilight would have been hit, had not Dash noticed the change coming over her. Just in time, she darted forward, grabbed her by the arm, and practically tackled her to one side as several rifle shots impacted where she had been.
Another soldier immediately seized her rifle barrel and pushed it to one side. “What the hell are you-”
With an almost animal-like yell, she wrenched the gun out of his hand, then snapped her other arm up and smashed him across the face. This blow was even stronger than her companion, who was still wrestling with his own comrades, had done. A bloody tooth went out of his mouth as he fell to the ground. She immediately raised the gun again and struggled to aim at Dash and Twilight, only for another soldier to quickly leap into the fray and tackle her from behind. She went to the ground and he quickly shifted to try and pin her, yet to his shock she began to writhe and thrash about so violently she was beginning to break free in seconds.
One of the Warriors took a step toward them. “What has gotten into you-”
She too was cut off as something ran into her. It was another one of the soldiers, fuming, glaring, and charging right for the three. The Warrior managed to hold up a bit better, being shoved before turning fully around and bracing herself against her comrade, but she still had to reach out and seize her by the wrists and restrain her, and the struggle wasn’t an easy one.
By this point, everyone in the Griffonstone group was looking around in confusion. Gilda was no different as she glanced about her at her revolting comrades, growing increasingly incensed at the sight. “What the hell is happening around here? What are you all doing?”
“Damnit, I can’t hold him!” one of the soldiers grappling with the first said through strained teeth.
“Settle down, man!” another shouted as he wrapped his arm around that one’s throat, struggling to put him into a sleeper hold. It didn’t seem to be too effective. “Talk to me! Snap out of it!”
The one attempting to pin down the second cried out as she was flung off. ‘Gracie’ attempted to quickly scramble to her feet to go after Twilight’s group, before another soldier leapt on top of her and took her back to the ground. She immediately clubbed her in the back of the head with her own weapon, but it did little good. She barely seemed phased as she tried to get out from underneath her as well. “They’re not stopping! I’m hitting her and it’s doing nothing!”
Gilda grit her own teeth. “Well what the…”
She trailed off at that moment. Her eyes widened in realization. A moment later, she snapped around and stared at the three of them but particularly at Dash and Twilight who were still to one side. Sunset began to look far more uncomfortable than she had under any of the glares of the Griffonstone soldiers now going ballistic.
“You… It’s you doing it, isn’t it?”
Twilight looked panicked. “N-N-Now wait a second…”
“Gilda,” Dash began to respond, her own tone realizing what was coming. “It’s not what you think…”
“So you did have a weapon after all,” she muttered aloud, “and you did give it to Fillydelphia…”
“No!” Twilight insisted. “That’s not how it works! I mean…no, I…”
Dash didn’t stay down any longer. Her own body starting to tense up, she quickly got back to her feet and squared herself against her. “Gilda, listen… We’re not the ones doing this. Don’t do anything that’s going to make me-”
It was too late. Her own face igniting in fury, she pointed at the three. “Take them down! Hurry before anyone else gets affected!”
Unfortunately for her, the soldiers were either indisposed with their comrades or distracted by what was going on. None of them was in the position to immediately start firing or attacking them anymore. That gave Dash the split second she needed, and she quickly held her hand in the air. “Member of my house, I command you to come to me! Leader of the Wonderbolts—Captain Spitfire!”
Her own aura erupted, further distracting those in the room. As for Twilight, she continued to lay on the floor momentarily, tensing up at the increasingly degenerating situation. However, it lasted only a second before Sunset ran up to her and clapped her hand on her shoulder. She was jolted into awareness and spun to her.
“What are you waiting for? Bring out Starswirl!”
“What? But…but I can’t! It’s…it’s…”
“You think these people are going to listen to reason now? The only thing we can do is fight out of here!”
Twilight hesitated, but then she gave a resigned sight before she raised her own hand into the air. “Member of my house, I command you to come to me! Master of Sorcery—Starswirl the Bearded!”
Moments later, her own aura erupted as the role of the Caster began to be donned on her. Yet while she was still preparing her own Anima Viri, Dash was already emerging from her own transformation in the garb of the Disciple. She didn’t waste a second, but quickly ran toward one of the fallen Trottingham soldiers. By that time, two of the soldiers had finally gotten enough of their bearings to raise their arms and fire, but her speed allowed her to dodge them easily. As soon as she reached the fallen soldier she ducked down, snatched something off of him, and then quickly rose again and darted backward.
The Griffonstone soldiers nearly fired again, but stopped when they saw Dash fling something toward their entire group. It struck the ground in front of them, and they realized it was a grenade. Those in the Griffonstone group who were gaining their bearings quickly recognized the same, and moments later they were thrown into disarray, for they couldn’t simply back up and flee from it as they were also struggling to hold back their three allies. Soon it was a mad scramble to try and get back while also pulling the rioting soldiers with them.
Moments later the grenade went off, sending an echoing boom through the room and causing another eruption of dust and smoke between the two sides. Some cries were heard out from the Griffonstone soldiers, but not nearly all of them. At that moment, Twilight had finished her own transformation. She pushed herself up, grabbing a piece of wooden debris as she did in order to make a new wand for herself, and then promptly traced a symbol in the air. On executing it, the chamber was filled with a roaring, fierce gale that whipped forth from the area right in front of the three and the Griffonstone group. The dust and dirt cloud was blown away, only to be blasted right into their eyes and faces, causing them to recoil and shield themselves.
“Let’s go!” Sunset shouted as soon as the spell was executed, already starting to run up the stairs.
Twilight and Dash quickly followed suit. The staircase that loomed ahead of them was rather tall and broad, looking more suited to a palace than a fort, but there were a large set of iron reinforced double doors at the top. Doors clearly designed to protect and fortify what was inside.
In spite of the length, Twilight and Dash ascended the stairs with no problem at all, skipping two at a time. Sunset kept up as best as she could, but Dash easily reached the top first. Kicking back a fist, she formed a palm and readied herself to lunge forward and smash it open.
At the bottom of the stairs, a voice shouted.
“Member of my house, I command you to come to me! Final Monarch—King Guto!”
The sound of an aura erupting behind the three of them went out. It echoed for only a brief moment, as Dash, not hesitating, reached striking range of the door. As her fist began to come forward, Sunset suddenly felt a sharp gale race by her left side…so strong that it swept her forward and made her fall against the stairs on all fours. Moments later, a resounding “bam” resonated from above her.
She looked up and was shocked. However, her own alarm was nothing compared to Rainbow Dash’s.
Gilda, now gleaming with her own aura, and dressed in the form of a Disciple, was standing in front of the door blocking Dash’s own punch with one hand.
Dash only had a moment to react in surprise before Gilda’s other fist came forward, smashing her in the face. She snapped backward, and Twilight and Sunset were both forced to dart to one side as she tumbled down several stairs before catching herself below them, lest she bowl them both over. On halting herself, she turned her head back up to the Griffonstone Hunstman.
“You aren’t going anywhere, Dash!” Gilda yelled. “Not until you tell me what you did to my unit and how to stop it!”
“I don’t know because we didn’t do it!” Dash shouted back. “There’s nothing to tell you!”
“Want to do things the hard way? Fine, ‘Sonic Rainboom’! Just hope you realize you aren’t the best Huntsman anymore! Let me show you why!”
In a snap, Gilda had vaulted off of her current stair and let the natural incline send her sailing down to Rainbow Dash, reaching back with one fist and driving it against her as she came. Dash was forced to cross both arms in front of herself to block against the hit and not lose her footing, but even then the power resounded almost as loud as a gunshot and she was nearly tipped back. Gilda didn’t let up. As soon as she was done hitting she touched down on the upper stairway and used her height advantage to rear back and swing out her leg in a kicking move for Dash’s face. She was able to block the first kick, but the angle of a second follow-up was too much for her. The blow managed to connect with the side of her head hard enough to snap her neck back and send her falling again.
This time, however, she was ready, doing a nimble cartwheel backward before planting her feet, then launching off of that back up the stairs…just in time to get in Gilda’s face as she was rushing in for another blow. Instead, she countered with an uppercut of her own. Unfortunately, even with her choice of a move, Gilda still had the height disadvantage. She was able to sidestepped it and immediately bring her own fist down for another blow of her own, and then press her advantage with two more punches and a palm strike that Dash had to struggle to deflect. Even so, she was being driven further down the stairs, being forced to take another step down and toward the wide room below where Gilda’s allies awaited.
On Gilda’s fourth strike, however, Dash quickly swung her head out of the way to evade the fist all together, and using the timing quickly countered Gilda’s follow up strike with a swinging block that knocked her arm away and left her open. Rearing her free hand back, Dash got ready to bury it in her gut…
Only to notice that rather than look surprised, Gilda was almost smirking and looking behind her.
Dash’s eyes widened, and quickly she twisted around and shifted her body to one side. In spite of that, she still gave a mild cry as a blade that was aimed for her back thinly sliced against her side instead. She spun around only to see one of the Warrior soldiers behind her, having drawn her combat knife which had turned into a sword. However, no sooner had she evaded the thrust when she saw the Warrior not only pull her blade back for another strike, but her partner was rushing up and leaping for a slice for her head.
Quickly, Dash snapped her head down to avoid the blade as it slashed for her neck, and twisted and pivoted again to narrowly miss the second thrust. She readied herself to counterattack…only for a roundhouse kick to come from behind her and bury its heel into the side of her head, taking her off of her feet again and flinging her aside into the stair corridor wall. The impact resounded rather hard, prompting Gilda, still having her foot out from the strike, to grin and chuckle a bit. The Warriors, however, wasted little time, and quickly turned and ran for her as fast as they could to follow up. As for Dash, she slid off the wall, groaning a bit from pain, but quickly got to her feet just in time to evade the next blade thrusts.
Seeing all of this taking place, Twilight hesitated momentarily, needing a second to think up a proper spell. When one came to mind, she raised her hand and began to chant the appropriate script…
“Watch out!”
The warning from Sunset cut her off, however, and a good thing too. Breaking her focus, she noticed that the Caster and the Magician were both racing up the stairs as well. However, what truly shocked her was that the Caster was finishing drawing a symbol of her own and executing it. As soon as she did, the air cooled and shards of razor-sharp ice flashed through the air straight for her. She managed to see it in enough time to dodge to one side, but no sooner had she done so than the Magician followed up with a true fire sigil as well. She barely had time to recognize the incoming attack, especially due to her surprise, in time to throw up an ice sigil to counter it. Even then, by the time she managed to get off the counter-spell of her own, the fireball was nearly on her, and on striking the ice symbol the burst caused droplets of burning hot liquid to splash on her, making her wince as she pulled backward.
The two didn’t give her any breathing room. While the Caster held back and began to cast another spell, the Magician ran forward, drawing her own combat knife and causing it to morph into a saber as she neared. The latter of the two was going to land far sooner, and Twilight had barely regained her footing when she saw the incoming thrust eminent. Having no time to think of anything better, she quickly drew the ice sigil again and executed it just as the Magician reached striking range. With a sharp crackle, ice quickly formed out of mid air and condensed around the new blade, increasing its weight and suddenly pulling the Magician’s arm down to deflect her strike. Twilight quickly began to generate another sigil in hopes of following up…
It was no good. The Caster finished first and executed a green sigil. Moments later, Twilight cried out in alarm as the stone pavement of several of the stairs, including the ones she was on, rapidly gave way beneath her. Her concentration was immediately broken and it was all she could do to leap clear to one side before the stone flooring gave way all together and dropped down to the previous level far below. She raised her wand to try and fight back again, but once more was thwarted. The Magician used the moment to raise her own ice-coated sword and, rather than try to free it, used it to generate a blazing yellow sigil. Moments later, lightning erupted from the end of the blade, simultaneously shattering the ice and slamming into Twilight. More cries resounded as she was flung backward and up several stairs, beating into several of them before halting. When it was done, she looked anguished and sore, but had little time to recover as the Magician rapidly rushed in to try and finish the job.
Sunset watched her long enough to see Twilight manage to get back to her feet and retreat just in time to avoid another slice, before she heard another loud noise from Dash. She turned to her and saw her forced back again from another blow from Gilda. She quickly stopped herself by planting her feet and sprung back with an attempt at a counter, readying another kick. Yet just as she shifted weight onto one leg, the two Warriors sprang in her path with blades drawn. She was forced to abort and spring back on her bad leg to evade one swing of the blade, but she was so unbalanced that she nearly stagged back to avoid another swing. The two continued to come at her, swinging again and again with strikes strong enough to cleave the stone of the stairwell whenever they missed. She continued to back away from them for a time, before finally one of them thrust toward her.
Quickly, she darted to one side, hooked her arm around, and intercepted the incoming attack by the wrist. With her opponent now halted, she quickly cocked back a fist to drive it into his head. Yet once again before the blow could land, Gilda vaulted forward, leapt over the shoulder of her comrade, and swung her foot against the side of Dash’s head. Not only that, but she followed up with a second kick while still in midair that struck her square in the face.
Once again Dash went down against the stairs, tumbling a bit more before stopping herself. Gilda had already landed and was rushing up to her, and no sooner had she halted than she was at her side and readying an axe kick to bring down on her head. Eyes widening in alarm, she quickly arched her back and sprang up, narrowly missing the kick as it came down and fractured another stair. With one quick gesture, she managed to get back on her feet, but Gilda was already coming at her with another sweeping kick. She pulled back to evade it and quickly put her arms up to block and deflect a series of strikes she followed up with. When Gilda finished with a hook, she didn’t try to block but ducked under it, letting the fist swing harmlessly overhead and letting her become wide open. She nearly drove her fist into her midsection…
Only for one of the Warriors to kick one of the fractured pieces of stairway off of the foundations and directly into her side, just beneath the ribs. The stone made an audible collision on hitting her, aborting her attack again as she grit her teeth in pain and wrenched to one side. Gilda quickly retreated, allowing the second warrior to come in with weapon drawn and aimed to pierce her chest.
Exhaling in exasperation, Dash quickly threw her arms up and slapped her palms against the blade as it was incoming. They closed and held tight, catching the blade. The Warrior immediately shoved in for all she was worth, trying to overpower her, and causing Dash’s muscles to tighten and her teeth to grit even harder. For a few moments, the two struggled with both quivering but neither side backing down.
After only a few moments, however, the other Warrior quickly moved in from the side, meaning to strike her while she was exposed. Her eyes darted out and spotted the incoming attacker nearing. Having no other choice, she let out a loud grunt and, just as the Warrior began to come in, she wrenched her arms to one side and forced the blade of her opponent away from her and to the ground; nearly driving the tip into the foot of her partner. The other Warrior immediately halted while the one who had attempted to stab her was stunned.
Dash sprung back to her feet, cocked back her leg, and got ready to deliver a follow-up blow to hopefully take at least one of the two out. Yet again it never had the chance to come across. Even as she lifted her leg to strike, Gilda came at her from the opposite side in a near blaze and belted her across the face, hard enough to knock her up several stairs before letting her fall to the ground again.
The sound of a pair of eruptions nearby distracted Sunset, causing her to spin back to Twilight. Robe tattered and partially singed, she was fleeing the wake of two plumes of black smoke that were the result of a pair of fireball spells. She began to chant a spell for water, but was again cut off as the Magician lunged forward with a thrust, and her arcane words turned into a cry of alarm as she wheeled back. The Magician continued to pursue her with several more thrusts, just long enough for the Caster to generate a wind spell, and then quickly darted to one side to let her execute. A moment later, and wind like razor blades lashed out and pelted Twilight, forcing her to shield her face to avoid having her eyes stung by it. Even so, scrapes and slashes appeared on her arms as her clothing was ripped.
Once more she attempted to generate another spell, a faster one this time, but had no opportunity as the Magician moved in again as soon as the spell died down. She was forced to flee alongside the broken staircase and getting pushed closer to the edge of the hall all the time. What more, she was looking tired and strained from the physical toll she was having to spend to keep evading them.
Sunset hesitated, tensing up as she glanced between the two and realizing the current situation. She looked farther below and saw that the others were still occupied with their rioting comrades, but seemed to finally be getting the upper hand on restraining them. Finally, she turned and looked behind her at the iron doors. There was no way she could open them on her own, especially as she knew what had to be behind them…
Fear gripped her for a moment, and she was petrified as she had been in times when she had been on her own before. Yet after that moment, a light entered her eye. The spark of an idea.
Suddenly, she turned and began to charge up the stairs straight for the metal doors.
Somehow, in the midst of the beating she was getting, Dash managed to glance at her doing it. Even in the chaos of the fight she sneered. “Ha! I knew you’d bail the first chance you got!”
The yell, however, served to alert the individuals from Griffonstone. Both Warriors, the Caster, the Magician, and even Gilda looked up and spotted Sunset run to nearly the top of the stairs. Yet rather than make a move on the doors, she paused momentarily, composing herself and trying to think back to her more confident days, and then spun around. When she did, she forced the most smug, egotistical, superior look she could muster, put a hand on her hip, and grinned down at them.
“I think I’ve let you all play long enough,” she smirked. “Time to burn.”
Immediately, she held up her other hand and began to trace a sigil as she chanted.
Of course, not the slightest bit of mana came out, and her gesture did nothing but trace along the air. However, those from Griffonstone knew well of the “Fire Witch”’s reputation, and her merely beginning to look like she was casting a spell was more than enough for them. Gilda forgot about Dash in an instant as her eyes bulged, before her brow creased and her own teeth grit in determination. Leaving her opponent behind, she charged up three of the stairs at superhuman speed before launching off of them and aiming a flying kick at Sunset’s head.
However, the woman had been anticipating this even before Gilda began to move. Immediately losing her egotistical look, she abandoned her fake chanting and dropped herself to the ground as quickly as she could. Gilda’s foot just barely scraped a few of her hairs before the Disciple kept shooting straight past her until she made contact with the heavy metal doors. In spite of their reinforcement, the power of her blow snapped whatever locks or bolts were holding them and caused both doors to swing inward and expose the room beyond.
Gilda’s own eyes went wide with surprise an instant before a storm of gunfire erupted from within, mindlessly blasting away at whatever was trying to come in. It would have torn her apart if it wasn’t so wild, spraying the angled doors as much as the opening she had made in it. As for her, her body was partially shielded behind one of the iron portals she smashed in before she dropped to the ground, and as soon as she landed she immediately rolled to one side before the soldiers on the other end could draw a bead on her.
Everyone else instantly went down as streaks of bullets sailed over their head, pressing themselves into the rubble and the dirt. Sunset was already on the ground, going rigid as she heard the hot lead sail over her head for several moments, but somehow she closed her eyes, swallowed, and began to crawl down the broken stairs again. She kept her head down, not looking up and spotting the other Griffonstone warriors rapidly doing the same, and didn’t look up until she was several steps below the door.
Nearby, Twilight had already flattened herself to the stairs as the Magician and Caster she had been fighting struggled to descend further to regroup with their allies. Dash was further away, but her own attackers had given up the fight and she was making her way to Twilight as quickly as she could. Seeing that, Sunset bit down, concentrated, and forced herself to keep moving. She finally reached Twilight just as Dash finally managed to catch up to her.
In spite of the roaring gunfire, Dash looked at her with a half frown. “Alright…that was kind of cool.”
“Too bad I didn’t really have a plan past that,” Sunset grimaced. “This isn’t going to keep them down long and we still need to get up there. Now what?”
Twilight winced as she shrank down for a bullet that came too close, nearly taking off her hat, before being able to speak. “I’m going to have to do it.”
Sunset turned to her. “You?”
She shrugged. “I can teleport in there.”
“But you don’t know where you’ll land. Or how many people are in there already.”
Twilight grimaced, but in the end shrugged. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained… There’s no other way we’ll get in there.”
Sunset let out a sigh. Dash merely grinned back. “Alright. We’re counting on you.”
Twilight nodded, but paused again to take a deep breath and steady herself. She looked back at the two. “The moment you hear the gunfire stop, run upstairs. You both have to get in before I can try and seal the door.”
“But what if they’re stopping to reload?” Sunset interjected.
If Twilight heard, she didn’t answer. The moment that she was done saying her piece she immediately held out her hand, drew the magic sigil, spoke the proper incantation, and in a flash of lavender light disappeared. Sunset sighed.
“She’ll be fine,” Dash reassured. “She took you out, didn’t she?”
She didn’t respond. She only listened closely to the gunfire behind them. It didn’t stop, but she tried to pick up on if there were any interruptions indicating surprise or the changing of a target. She heard neither. She glanced back down the stairs. At the moment, they had the advantage of being the highest up save for Gilda, who was so close to the top that she couldn’t use the natural curve of the stairs for protection and was forced to stay flat. Below, however, it looked like they were trying to regroup. Some began to shout to those farther below, obviously coming up with some sort of plan.
Before anything could come to fruition, however, Sunset was deafened once again and slammed herself even more against the floor as an explosion much louder than the previous one that had signaled the Griffonstone soldiers’ arrival rang out. Her heart skipped a beat as another cloud of smoke and debris, this time far larger and more potent, rolled in from the entrance they had made for themselves. The Griffonstone soldiers were much the same, wheeling around in surprise just in time to see their comrades that were pinning down their crazed members getting blown off their feet and across the floor by the resulting chaos.
The cloud didn’t last long this time. Soon, the roar of waters as well as turbine engines began to resound through the entire stairwell from the room below. The reason became clear as the dust billowed out. The skybridge that had connected the opening to the main tower was now fractured in two. Nothing but an empty chasm stretching over a fatal drop now spanned outside, before the broken, half-crumbled remains of the pieces of the skybridge that were still intact hung loosely on the opposite side. There was now a gaping opening into nothingness just outside the tower. Sunset was left as in awe of it as the Griffonstone soldiers.
The surprise didn’t last long. The dust abruptly was swept away like it was no more than a curtain, and the shadow of one of the Steam Wings came up in its wake. Its large gun was out and immediately it sprayed the interior with a hailfire of large caliber bullets. The sound the gun made was practically deafening in the small space and more of the chamber was ripped to pieces by the burst. The Griffonstone soldiers were driven into panic, quickly trying to pull back and away from the opening while they could. However, while the first Steam Wing only strafed the area before moving away, it was quickly joined by a second coming from the opposite direction, which put another burst into the area. This time, one of the soldiers cried out in agony before collapsing and going still, while the others struggled to drag themselves and their mad companions to the safety of the stairwell.
Sunset couldn’t help but half-smirk. “Guess we got a bit of luck on our side, huh?”
“Idiots!”
Hearing Dash’s sharp retort, Sunset looked at her only to see her frowning at the whole sight.
“They blew up the whole skyway and cut off one of the only ways for their comrades to get out just for a few pot shots? What kind of jerk is running that wing?”
“What has that got to…” However, Sunset trailed off in the middle of her response as she noticed that she was audible enough to be heard. She raised her head and looked back, realizing in an instant that the gunfire from up above had stopped. Immediately, she began to push up. “Now!”
Dash looked up, soon realizing the same thing. Before Sunset could protest, Dash was on her feet, seizing her by one arm, and half-dragging her up the stairs fast and strong enough to nearly pull her off her feet. In an instant, the two ascended the stairs the rest of the way and came face to face with the smoking, bullet-riddled, yet open doors. The movement was so fast that Sunset barely had time to recognize anything except Twilight running forward, beckoning them on desperately. In moments they had crossed the threshold.
“Shut it!” she yelled. “Quick!”
Sunset found herself nearly dumped on the ground as Dash released her, pivoting around and quickly pushing against one of the heavy metal doors for all she was worth. In a moment, she had managed to shove it closed again. Soon she did the other. Moments before it could close, Sunset heard one of the Griffonstone soldiers yell up to them. However, it was cut off by the metal clang of the door into place.
“Stand back!”
Sunset quickly got her feet underneath her and ran to one side as Dash went to the other. As for Twilight, she quickly brought more of her power to bare and risked a much longer and more complicated icy blue sigil. When she executed the spell, the temperature in the room plunged considerably to the tune of massive pieces of solid ice, over three feet thick in some places, materializing over the entire door frame and sealing it shut. After a resounding crackle, the three were left in the room with a practical iceberg between them and the Griffonstone soldiers.
Dash managed a smirk. “Alright. That’ll hold ‘em.”
“Considering they have two Warriors, a Disciple, a Magician, and a Caster?” Twilight panted, still winded from the spell as well as the earlier attacks. “I don’t think so.”
Sunset took the moment to spin to her. “How the hell did they know how to execute proper spells? Or even use the Anima Viris?”
“Don’t look at me! I have no idea!”
“They weren’t more of Celestia’s students, were they?”
“No! I’ve never seen any of them!”
“Forget where they learned it!” Dash interjected, pounding one fist into her hand. “Let’s just focus on taking them out when they bust in! Man, do I owe Gilda for those cheap shots…”
“Are you nuts?” Sunset practically cried. “There’s too many of them and we’re still trying to bust out of here!”
“She’s right. I couldn’t even get a spell off between two of them, and they have five with Anima Viris equipped. Let’s just find a ship in here and get out while we can,” Twilight immediately added.
Dash frowned and muttered a bit, but turned away and began to look about.
Sunset soon did the same, at last pausing to get a look at the new area. It was quite large and spacious, arranged in a giant circle. In the center of the room, lying in an unconscious pile, were a mixture of Fillydelphia soldiers and tech crew. It was clear Twilight must have gotten them all from behind with a sleep spell. Around the room’s periphery, however, there was a series of enclaves. Each one was lined with tools, hoses, smaller generators, tanks for fuel, and, to top it all off, a large door hatch that obviously provided a way for entrance and exit. It soon became clear that the area functioned as some sort of docking bay for the smaller aircraft. On the sides of the chamber were metal staircases leading up to the next level, apparently for docking the larger ships. None of them looked that way, knowing it no doubt led to more soldiers, save to glanceoccasionally to see if any were coming.
Dash went to the side of the chamber while Twilight and Sunset picked a side and began to move around the circular edge. However, they soon found there was nothing there. All of the bays had already been emptied, leaving only tools and supplies behind. It only took them a few seconds to walk the circuit, at which point they both turned to each other with uncomfortable looks.
“I think we’re a bit too late… I think all that was housed here was those Steam Wings, and they all must be out right now.”
Twilight grimaced. “Even if there’s a larger ship upstairs for us to take, I don’t know if we can man it with just three of us. Especially since Rainbow Dash is the only one who knows how to fly them properly…”
“You’ve got to be kidding me…”
Both Twilight and Sunset turned and looked at Dash when she muttered that aloud. They saw her to one side of the chamber near the entrance, at a small straight corridor entryway. Two sets of huge, heavy metal doors flanked either side of it. One was hanging slightly ajar, just large enough for someone to walk through, and Dash was currently staring through the threshold. She said no more, just stared a bit longer before she stepped inside.
Twilight and Sunset glanced at one another, but neither of them gave any protest. They turned back to the doors and soon rushed over to them. Soon they were passing inside as well.
There was a smaller subchamber within, also a circular room. It lacked the hatch openings of the main room, and the only illumination was from a few thin windows letting in gray, cloudy sunlight. Combined with the open doors, there was ample illumination to see inside. And after taking only a few steps into the chamber, both Twilight and Sunset hesitated and marveled at it.
The room was packed with Steam Wings, but they were unlike the kinds that the two had seen before. These ones were considerably older, which was clearly evidenced by some of them. They didn’t look so much dismantled or under repairs as falling apart. A few even showed signs of unrepaired damage. All of them had spots of rust around the bolts and gaskets. That being said, it was clear that when they were fully operational they were sleeker and smoother, with wings that were designed to imitate the natural world far better. They were made of interlocking metal pinions rather than more sleek and broad planes like the wings they had seen, and the turbines were smaller and embedded within them to make them look almost like they could fly of their own accord—like metal birds.
Dash stood a bit in front of them, marveling at them all. Especially the one in the center. That one alone was hooked up to a steam generator and seemed to be in reasonably complete condition, suspended by special cables and chains.
“I don’t believe it…” she half-muttered. “They’re all here…”
Twilight turned to her. “What is?”
“The Wonderbolts,” she answered, almost exhaling it in reverence. She took a step closer as she said it. “Their Steam Wings… They’re here.”
Twilight looked confused. She glanced around the room again before looking back at Dash. “That’s…that’s not possible, right? I mean…the Wonderbolts, they…they…” She trailed off, not wanting to say it in front of Dash. “I mean…didn’t they fly these into that last battle?”
Dash hesitated, before almost absent-mindedly shaking her head. “They never had the chance to get to them…” she nearly whispered, almost too soft for the two women to hear as she stepped in closer to the machine in the center. “I thought they got ruined too when Cloudsdale fell. That they got left to rust or fall apart. But they’re here…”
Sunset stepped in a bit further, glancing up and down the surrounding machines. She reached out to the nearest and touched one of the metallic feathers. “If I had to guess, I’d say Fillydelphia must have brought them here as spoils of war. They’ve been researching them ever since. Trying to reverse engineer them to make those Steam Wings they’re using now.”
Dash moved up to the side of the wing in the center. Slowly, she stepped around until she was across from the cockpit area. She stared at it a moment, seeing the places where the legs would insert and lock into place, and then looking over the padded backside and the arm controls. She stared at them for a few moments, and then took another step forward. Her hand reached out and put it on the left control arm.
Slowly, her fingertips traced over the individual buttons and controls, but eventually it moved the entire arm to one side, exposing the inner portion.
Etched into the metal was a lightning bolt with wings.
She stared at it a moment, almost unconsciously beginning to smile. “This was Soarin’s…”
Twilight looked around the craft a little more, and finally back to Dash. “Can you fly us out on this?”
Dash didn’t answer. She kept staring at the emblem. She ran her finger along the etching.
“Rainbow Dash?” she called a bit louder.
She still didn’t answer. Her smile slowly faded as she kept staring.
A loud noise came from the reinforced doors. Like a blow had hit them. Sunset, stiffening, turned and looked out the entrance to the side chamber and winced. Twilight began to grow uneasy as well. “Rainbow Dash!”
Finally, she snapped out of it and looked to her.
“Can you fly us out on this?”
“Huh?” The question almost seemed to leave her paralyzed for a moment. She stared back blankly. An odd hollow look came over her for a moment…one that neither Twilight or Sunset had seen before. She looked at the Steam Wing a moment, still in that daze. Then she blinked and began to look around it a bit more normally, in particular what it was hooked up to.
“They kept it fueled…reasonably serviced… I…I guess so…”
Sunset frowned. “Can you or can’t you?”
She blinked. “Yeah…” After a pause, she spoke more forcefully and readily. “Yeah…yeah, I think we can. It looks a little old, but these things were built to last. It’s going to be one hell of a bumpy ride though.”
Another blow, louder this time, rang out against the door. Sunset grimaced. “I don’t think we have much choice. If we don’t get out of here soon, we won’t get out at all.”
“What do we do to get it ready?” Twilight asked.
Dash paused a moment, looking around, old memories coming back. She moistened her lips and pointed. “Right… Start disconnecting the gaskets to knock off these hoses. Nevermind the cables. We’re going to have to start from a drop. Then get over here and start fastening yourselves into the passenger attachments. Let’s hope they didn’t let this thing get too cold…”
After saying that, she stepped forward to the main harness. Twilight noticed that she paused again, and actually shrank her hand away for a moment, but then swallowed and began to go about opening the various restraints. Once they were undone, she quickly climbed in and began to lock her legs into the foot controls.
Sunset, fortunately, seemed to know about the gaskets better than Twilight. She ran over to them and began to undo the flanges. As soon as the first was off, it gave a burst of steam and nearly exploded off of the Steam Wing, causing her to recoil in alarm, but as soon as it was on the ground and slowly thrashing about she left it and went for the next. Twilight soon helped her. As they worked, more blows were heard along with the sounds of breaking ice. Not only that, but loud voices began to come from upstairs. And all while explosions and gunfire continued to echo from the whole facility.
Once inside the harness, Dash began to rapidly fasten herself in. “Looks like they must have run a test or something on this recently. Otherwise it would have taken us an hour to get it ready for takeoff…”
Twilight and Sunset didn’t answer, just finished detaching the final hose before moving up to the sides of the Steam Wing. It took them a moment of looking around, but eventually Dash, in the middle of beginning to throw switches, gestured to a collapsible compartment on either side of the main body that had doors that screwed in on special hatches. Both of them grabbed one, rapidly undid them, and threw open the metal doors. Smaller, simpler harnesses came out as a result.
Both of them grimaced a little on seeing them, but hearing more ice break in the other room quickly got them to go to work fastening themselves in. There was a waist belt that came between the legs, a regular belt buckle, and a shoulder harness. They quickly donned all three.
However, on finishing, Dash motioned to them. “Tighten those up as much as you can and then lock the buckles into the flanges. Then grab the rods and lock your feet into those mounts down there. Trust me…you’re going to want to be really fastened in.”
Twilight let out a small whimper while Sunset grimaced, but both of them quickly did as they were told to tighten themselves up along the body of the Steam Wing as much as possible. Once their feet were locked in and they grasped the handles, another break was heard from the door. However, far more concerning was a smaller noise rushing in with it—the sound of footsteps running down the stairs from the upper floor.
“Rainbow Dash…” Twilight began to say.
“I know, I know! Don’t rush me! It’s been years!” She let out a tired sigh, and then looked over the controls again. “Ok…primed…set…safeties released… Let’s fire it up. Switching the wing turbines on now.”
Moving her thumbs over either control, she threw a master set of switches on either arm. The sound of steam beginning to rush through the inner workings of the Steam Wing went off, and soon after mechanical noises followed as the steam turbines came to life within the metal pinions. Each one was soon igniting and producing small jets of vapor.
“Alright…” Dash said with a half smile. “Powering it up…”
Shifting her hands to a dial on either arm, she gave both a turn. The jetting sound increased as the turbines picked up speed. As the sound of footsteps became closer, both Twilight and Sunset gave a short yelp as they suddenly lifted up on the cables and chains supporting them. In moments, they realized they were hovering. Sunset swallowed while Twilight clutched the handle harder.
Seeing this, Dash nearly whistled. “Don’t freak out just yet. The wildest part is still to come. Hang on… I’m throwing the cable release!”
She threw another switch, and loud poppings followed by metallic twanging sounds rang out overhead. Twilight let out another yelp as the entire Steam Wing began to fall to the ground a little, but Dash quickly increased the turbines and soon they leveled out and the aircraft was left hovering. A moment later, she moistened her lips and began to adjust the wings slightly, flexing them ever so gently. In response, the entire Steam Wing began to slowly hover forward just a foot above the ground.
Yet as they advanced, the doors suddenly pulled open the rest of the way. Fillydelphian soldiers burst through, each one armed and at the ready. They paused only a moment to gape in surprise on seeing the Steam Wing active and advancing. Moments later, they snapped out of it and began to raise their weapons to fire, which made both Twilight and Sunset panic as they were exposed.
Dash, however, responded by shifting both of her arms, and in response the hovering Steam Wing suddenly spread out its metal wings as well as it could in the enclosed chamber before giving a mighty flap forward. The turbines surged when it did, sending a blast of concentrated pressure forward and through the chamber. The soldiers cried out as they were swept off of their feet, some of them losing their weapons in the process, before the force flung open the doorway and cast them threw it back out into the hall beyond.
“Ok! We’re clear!” Dash shouted. “Let’s get out of here!”
Sunset winced again. “You sure that doorway is big enough for us?”
“Little late to worry about that now, ain’t it?”
Sunset let out a whimper of her own and pressed herself in as tightly as she could as the Steam Wing picked up speed, headed straight for the opening. Twilight pressed herself in as well and both women shut their eyes. Moments later it made contact, and both of them felt a chill down their spines as they heard a slight scraping noise from the folded wings as they pushed through. However, aside from hearing a few bits of door frame come loose, the aircraft made it. They were now out in the main chamber.
Sunset and Twilight opened their eyes and saw the area was now filled with multiple Fillydelphian soldiers. Several of them tried to raise their arms again, but now Dash had even more room and she held out her wings to flap twice. It caused them to sink to the floor a little each time, but the powerful gusts of the engines were too much for the people to withstand. Each one was blown back and away with several of them being thrown into enclaves. She increased the thrust afterward, and more steam and winds were blasted into the chamber. It soon enveloped everything in a tempest that started to throw about tools and parts as well as soldiers, and all while the Steam Wing moved faster.
Nevertheless, neither of the passengers relaxed too much. As the Steam Wing spun away from the main doors to the chamber and toward the circle of hatches, Twilight caught a glimpse of the rear door as a huge slab of ice broke off of it, completely freeing one of them. “We need to get out of here!”
“I know that! So get busy casting a spell!”
Twilight blinked in alarm, and looked up to her. “Ex-excuse me?”
Dash motioned her head forward with an impatient look. “I can’t open those hatches from in here! Blow us a way out already!”
Twilight’s jaw dropped. She looked forward and saw they had already crossed half the chamber and were headed straight for an unoccupied enclave. The hatch was still sealed, however, in spite of the fact Dash was picking up speed.
“We haven’t got all day! Get it open! I don’t have any guns on this thing to do it myself!”
The Caster swallowed. Very slowly and reluctantly, she removed her hand from the handle. Shaking, quivering, and still nervous about being strapped to the Steam Wing, she held it out. She tentatively began to draw a sigil, but she messed it up in moments. She tried again soon after, chanting a bit this time, but she fumbled over the syllables, and soon had to correct herself once more.
By now, they were only twenty feet from entering the enclave. “Twilight! Now, please!”
“I’m trying!” she cried back. However, the yell was enough to jar her to focus. Closing her eyes, she rapidly focused out the spell and the sigil. Moments later, a fireball erupted from her hand and sailed forward. While it was a bit close, and all three women winced from the heat and blast when it went off, the resulting explosion did the work. It blasted the hatch doors clean off of their moorings and out into the world beyond. In moments, the resulting smoke was blown away by the powerful gusts of the sea outside, and a gray sky beyond was exposed.
“Oh yeah! Here we go!” Dash yelled. Pushing the throttle forward, the Steam Wing rapidly advanced and went to the now-open hatch. Moments later, it crossed over and came outside.
Neither Sunset nor Twilight had much presence of mind of what happened next. Both were too busy screaming in terror. The moments the Steam Wing cleared the threshold, it arched over and went into free fall, and soon all three of them were shooting down for the razor sharp rocks and sea below them. They hardly noticed the other Steam Wings and ships in the air or the sounds of the gunfire as their stomachs rose to their necks and death seemed imminent. However, Dash rapidly extended the wings and held them rigid, and after falling for only a second or two enough lift was generated from the airflow along with the turbines to catch them, and instead of crashing the Steam Wing sailed out in a graceful arc before leveling off and then rising into the air. The steam turbines went up to full power, and their stomachs went into their feet instead as the world rapidly fell down below them and the prison rapidly shrank around them until they could see all of the complex at once…while hanging upside down from the bottom of the aircraft.
Dash gave a yell as the winds blasted by them. “The ol’ girl’s still got it!”
Between the roar of the engines and the wind, Twilight could barely hear a word of that and merely clutched the handles even more tightly. As they picked up speed, she continued to do that for several seconds along with Sunset, struggling to not be nauseous or terrified as the prison continued to get smaller and the sea began to stretch out far below them.
However, it didn’t last. As they continued to shoot away, both Sunset and Twilight were able to eventually see two plumes of steam arch around and orientate themselves behind them. Soon after, they spotted a pair of Steam Wings, these ones Fillydelphian made, both aimed toward them and not getting any smaller. In fact, after a few moments, it looked like they were getting bigger.
Sunset’s eyes widened, and she managed enough bravery to remove one hand from the handle and tap Dash’s leg. She shouted as loud as she could. “We have company!”
“I know!” she yelled back over the roar, glancing toward what looked like a mirror built into the harness. She immediately gunned the engine a bit harder, squeezing a little more speed out of it and making Sunset rapidly hold on once again.
Unfortunately it didn’t seem to make much difference. The two shapes continued to get closer, until Twilight and Sunset could just make out the outline of their pilots. Soon after that, both of them heard faint noises that were scarcely audible over everything else. However, what they saw was unmistakable. Yellow periodic streaks of light shot out from either wing, and trails of the same light whizzed past Rainbow Dash’s steam wing on either side. They were only in a short burst, but a second later both wings pitched inward and fired again. The streaks were much closer the second time.
“They’re shooting at us!” Twilight shouted.
It was unclear if Dash heard that or not, but in any event she cracked a grin. “Time to see if I still got it… Hold on tight!”
Twilight and Sunset barely had a chance to tighten their grips before Dash launched into a half spin and veered sharply to the left, just in time to evade the third burst of gunfire from the steam wings behind her. Undeterred, the two pilots immediately reorientated themselves as they continued to close in and fired their second burst, but just as quickly Dash veered the other way, pitching the wings to shoot across the other way and evade the next set of streams.
The pilots responded by both fanning out on either side of her, meaning to catch her from both directions at once. They closed even nearer before erupting in a fresh blast. Twilight and Sunset both sweat a bit on seeing Dash grin, before the Steam Wing launched into a barrel roll. Both of them felt like their stomachs were being pumped as she nimbly spun between the two steams of bullet fire, evading them too.
“Aw yeah!” Dash cheered as she leveled off again, right before veering again to one side to avoid another burst. “I still got the moves!”
“You’re going to kill us before they have a chance to!” Sunset cried back in between retching. “Just outrun them!”
“Too late for that!” Dash shouted back. “I try and outrun them, I’m going to burn off all our steam when we’re still over the sea!”
“Then we have to lose them!”
“Lose ‘em? Hello! We’re over a sea!”
“Then we have to fight back!” Twilight shouted.
“Fight back with what? We don’t have weapons!”
Twilight opened her mouth to respond, but instead retched herself as Dash was forced to drive the Steam Wing into another drop to avoid another burst of gunfire. After taking a moment to swallow she shouted again. “Can we outlast them?”
“They’re still closing on us! We don’t have time!” Sunset yelled back.
Dash paused momentarily, looking at her harness mirror and quickly making some judgements. She finally cracked her neck a little. “Well…I think I still got a couple tricks yet we can try. But if you thought that ride was rough until now, you’re gonna need to really hold on this time.”
Neither woman liked the sound of that, but answered by shutting their eyes and holding on tighter.
Gritting her teeth and almost grinning, Dash dropped the Steam Wing again to evade the next burst of gunfire. The two pursuing aircraft immediately went into a partial dive, letting gravity help them maintain speed, and fired again. Dash dropped even more to evade that burst of fire, this time continuing to let her altitude drop. The two Steam Wings cut off the gunfire again and fell in hot behind.
Finally, at about a hundred feet from sea level, Dash leveled the Steam Wing out. The two bogies, hot in pursuit, immediately fell in behind and fired again. However, she didn’t drop any further this time or try to ascend. Instead, she rapidly pitched and spun in a circle to avoid the gunfire burst. It was much narrower this time, as her pursuers were much closer. It took them no time at all to right themselves and fire again, but she countered by once again spinning and strafing. They continued to close, now getting quite near. Twilight and Sunset opened their eyes again only to see that they were close enough to start making out details on their uniform. The next gunfire burst prompted such a strong and abrupt reaction from Dash that the two felt like they were nearly ripped out of their harnesses when she spun. Even so, Twilight actually felt the heat of one of the bullets from how close it came.
“Rainbow Dash!”
“Not yet! Just a little more!”
The two bogies cut off again, and this time stayed off as they got closer yet. By now, they were drawing into point blank range and dodging would be nearly impossible even for Dash. There simply wouldn’t be enough reaction time. Nevertheless, she kept presenting an easy target. She held the Steam Wing steady even as both ships fell in behind her and leveled themselves out for a straight shot. Twilight and Sunset uneasily waited for the next burst of gunfire to come at any moment…
Suddenly, the wing dropped from the sky. Dash put it into another short dive, headed straight for the sea. The two enemy wings followed in hot pursuit, desperate to maintain their target. This time, however, they got too zealous. They followed Dash right as she neared the water, seemingly about to plunge inside of it. Yet just when she reached the surface, she leveled out again and angled the tips of her wings downward. That close to the sea the combination of the turbulence on the wingtips along with the power of the turbines immediately kicked up a torrent of spray right behind her…and right into the incoming Steam Wings.
One of them quickly veered up and just barely managed to clear it as it came in. The other, however, more stupidly flew right into it. And for about a hundred yards, they were able to keep with it. That was when their own wing gave a massive sputter and shudder, right before the turbines gave a choking sound and cut out. The Steam Wing wobbled a bit in the air, then pitched down and crashed right into the briny water below.
“Ha!” Dash laughed as she pulled up again. “Haven’t worked out the pilot light being insulated in those things yet, have you?”
“That only took out one of them!” Sunset shouted back. “The other one’s still after us!”
Her warning hardly seemed necessary. A moment later, the other Steam Wing gunned its own turbines and soon was on Dash’s tail again, firing away with a fresh bout of gunfire. The Disciple stopped cheering just in time to quickly swerve the wing up and away, causing Sunset to gulp and clutch for dear life again, but this time evasion wasn’t so easy. The bogie quickly maintained speed and closed the distance until it was right on her tail. When the next gunfire burst came, everyone could hear the bullets just scrape the edge of the wingtips, and Dash barely got it aside in time. Soon things got even worse as she was forced to start twisting and spinning vigorously to avoid being tagged by the point blank shots. The enemy never gave up. It stuck to her like glue in between each burst.
“I…can’t…take…this…!” Sunset managed to choke out.
“Maybe you’d like to ask them to stop shooting at us then!” Dash yelled back as she went into another barrel roll to evade the latest gunfire. “Twilight, feel free to shoot back at them whenever you want!”
“I…can’t…!” she managed to cry out. “I could barely…concentrate back…back in the prison! They’re…moving…moving around too much…!”
Dash grit her teeth as she quickly evaded another stream of gunfire. This time, one of the metal pinions got hit, sending out a loud metal clang that caused Twilight and Sunset to look up. Soon after, they heard a whistling over the aircraft from the increased drag and could tell they weren’t as maneuverable.
Dash spotted this and thought for a moment, then looked back at Twilight. “Forget trying to hit them! Can you just shoot a spell straight in front of us when I say so?”
Twilight looked confused. “Well…yeah, but-”
“Then get ready!” Dash shouted back as she swerved to avoid the latest gunfire burst. Twilight was thrown for a loop along with Sunset, but she didn’t explain any more. As soon as she was clear, she immediately dove back for the sea once again.
The bogie picked up on this, and quickly began to fall back so they would have enough time to get clear of any sea spray that Dash kicked up while still maintaining a target lock. Yet in spite of what seemed to be a move already destined for failure, Dash kept going for the sea. And by leveling out, Twilight was able to open her eyes again. Although she looked sick and could barely lift her hand over the roaring of the turbines and wind, she slowly extended it just enough to start tracing a sigil.
Dash reached the sea and curled her wings again, meaning to move in and spray. The bogie remained in pursuit at a distance, falling in behind her and lining up a clean shot. However, it didn’t open fire this time. It was waiting for Dash to try and spray it with water vapor again first. Then it would be clear to move in above her and shoot. It was content to wait as it saw Dash nearly make the move…
At that point, the Disciple shouted. “Hold on as tight as you can!”
With that, she swung the control arms forward, and the metal wings angled down to create a stall.
Sunset and Twilight both felt like they were going to be flung away from the steam wing like a catapult. The former finally did throw up as she was nearly bent over her own harness, and Twilight’s wand went flying as she bent over her sigil from the deacceleration. However, their own shock was matched only by the pilot of the Fillydelphian steam wing, who soon found her target coming right at it. With nothing else for it, the pilot made a panic move and quickly ascended to get out of the way, breaking target lock and letting the opposing steam wing shoot right under it…
Dash waited until the precise moment that the Steam Wing was passing underneath the craft before angling the body of it upward, right as the enemy passed overhead…
“Now!”
Somehow, though the stall, Twilight managed to maintain control of the sigil. Without even thinking of what she was doing she executed it.
A bolt of lightning snaked out from the body of Dash’s Steam Wing and made contact with the opposing aircraft. While it missed the turbine, half of one wing was immediately snapped clean off from the rest of the fuselage. An instant later, it sharply angled downward and veered to one side. The pilot struggled to regain control, but there wasn’t sufficient time as close as they were to the sea. As Dash pulled out of the stall and began to level off again, her opponent sank straight for the water and connected with sufficient force to snap off both wings completely.
The Steam Wing leveled off soon after, reorientated itself, and then rose back into the air. Soon, the speed dropped to a cruise and evened out completely. When that happened, both Twilight and Sunset finally opened their eyes again and let out sighs of relief.
Dash, on the other hand, was still grinning. “Now that was awesome! I forgot how great flying one of these things could be! Feels like you’re a bird that can go anywhere and do anything! It was just like…”
She paused.
“Like…”
Her smile ebbed a bit. The light in her eyes faded a little.
“Like…old times.”
Sunset didn’t react too much to that, although Twilight noticed the change in her facial expression. Hearing her was a bit hard for both, as the rush of the engines and wind still made that nearly impossible. Finally, Sunset looked up to both of them. “So what now?”
“We need to go as far as we can in this!” Twilight answered. She looked up at Dash and tapped her again, getting her to look in her direction to read her lips as well as listen to her. “Can we get back to Manehattan?”
She shook her head. “Not a chance! These wings can’t run that long! We’ll end up getting as far as Griffonstone or Fillydelphia again! We could try for Mount Aris, but I think we’ll land in the mountains if we do that!”
Sunset saw their faces and frowned. “Griffonstone and Fillydelphia both want us dead!”
Sunset looked at her. “That gets us even farther away from Manehattan!”
“We can’t help it! I don’t like it either but it’s that or being stuck in Mount Aris! We can at least move around in Appleloosa!”
She sighed but didn’t protest any more.
Dash shrugged. “Alright, Appleloosa it is! Let’s hope we got enough juice to clear the sea at least, because if we crash in the water I don’t think we can swim to shore!”
Both women looked down and around and saw, at this point, they were totally surrounded by water. Both of them gave an uneasy look as they tightened their grip on the handles, preparing for a rather long trip. As for Dash, she looked forward, adjusted herself a bit in the harness, and continued their long flight.
She failed to notice a shimmer of light run down the control arm to the hand bearing her sigil.
The older refugee hesitated, but then made her way over to the bench. She very slowly began to lower herself, but before she could get that far Fluttershy already went to work taking up one of the empty food packages, spreading her outer shirt over it, and fashioning it into a crude pillow for her.
“I’m sorry I can’t do more than that. The next place we stop, I’ll see if I can find anything for more bedding.”
“Oh, don’t trouble yourself with that, dear,” the refugee answered. “But you’ve been up and standing for some time. I can just sit here and let you sit beside me.”
“Oh no, I’m fine,” she answered with a small smile. “You just worry about yourself for right now. Everyone needs to get as much sleep as they can when they can. If something comes up, we all have to be ready to move. Now you’re not still hurting anywhere, are you?”
“Thanks to you and Shining Armor? Not at all. My knees feel fine,” she answered as she finally lay back to put her whole length on the bench. She nearly put her head down before leaning up again. “Now are you sure you don’t want to sit? Just for an hour or so?”
She nodded back. “I’ll be fine.”
The older woman hesitated a bit longer, but then finally leaned back and put her head on the makeshift pillow. “You’re such a nice woman, Ms. Fluttershy. I don’t think I would want to go through the past few weeks again for anything in the world, but the one bright spot is I’m glad I met you and your friends.”
“Oh…that’s very sweet of you to say, but we’re just trying to do what we can. And we don’t mind at all.” She looked down to her bag hanging at her side. “Do we, Angel?”
Naturally, the rabbit looked about as opposed to the whole idea as possible, having clearly wanted to have a chance to sit down and stretch out on the bench for hours now. Instead, he gave an angry sound before slumping back in the bag and stretching as much as he could.
“He’s just a little grumpy because I haven’t been able to give him carrots.”
The woman smiled back before leaning down, and Fluttershy turned away and looked to the rest of the cramped, crowded inner compartment. Everyone was resting in shifts now, with two-thirds of the people standing or squatting and the remaining third using what little bench and floor space there was to rest on. Nevertheless, no one was complaining. Most were trying to do whatever they could to pass the time or occupy themselves.
Fluttershy, however, moved over to another person reclining. “How’s the shoulder doing?”
He opened his eyes and smiled back. “Feels good as new at this point.”
“Wonderful!” she moved on a bit further to the next person lying down. “How’s the bullet wound?”
She smirked back. “Are you kidding? There’s barely even a scar. You and Shining Armor are miracle workers.”
“Oh…that’s very nice of you to say. Just take it easy just in case, alright?”
She leaned up afterward and did a quick once over of the inner chamber. Seeming to realize she had hit all individuals, she paused for a moment to relax. As she did she spotted Rarity coming up from the back. She greeted her with a smile as she walked up, weaving her way through the crowd until she was right next to her.
“You really are a godsend, Fluttershy. And I’m so glad you’re opening up to this. I know how hard it is for you.”
Fluttershy blushed a little, but not entirely out of embarrassment. “Well…I was a bit nervous at first…but I think I’m getting used to being around all these people now.”
Rarity paused a moment, then looked hopeful. “In that case, I don’t suppose I could persuade you to take another look at the children in the back? Shining Armor has done a wonderful job but, frankly, you have more experience than either of us.”
Fluttershy’s face blanched on hearing that suggestion. “Oh…” Her head bowed, and her eyes turned to one side. “Oh, I’m…I’m afraid not, Rarity. Getting used to adults is one thing, but…but I just can’t handle children. I…I wouldn’t know what to do or what to say…”
“Oh, pish-posh, darling. Just talk to them how you would everyone else and you’d do fine.”
Her only response was to bow her head a bit more.
Rarity sighed. “Well, I tried, but it doesn’t really matter. None of them have anything life threatening.” She looked to one side, growing troubled. “The real problem is going to be finding food and water for everyone. Starlight really wasn’t planning on having these many passengers. And all of them could use a decent place to rest and stretch out on top of that. Not to mention a quiet place to sit and take in everything that happened…”
Fluttershy looked up again when she said all this. In spite of Rarity beginning to fret, she smiled at her.
The woman soon noticed. “Oh? Did I say something amusing?”
“Oh no…it’s just what you’re saying,” she answered while still smiling. “You’re the one who’s really caring, Rarity. You’re always thinking of others. Just like with Carousel Couture.”
Rarity was quiet for a moment, her smile ebbing a little, before she waved her hand at her. “Oh, that’s nothing, dear…”
Fluttershy looked at her more intently. “It means everything to the people from your hometown, Rarity. And all your employees. After everything you went through to get them that contract? That was wonderful. You’re really selfless.”
Rarity bowed her own head slightly, inhaling deeply and exhaling. “Well…I suppose I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t sacrifice a great deal for that business, but I can’t say I’m entirely selfless. I’ve had an opportunity to enjoy the fruits of my labor the same as everyone else who works for me. Even if I was helping Ponyville, the bottom line is I was helping family and friends, so in a way I was still benefiting myself.” She looked up again with a more wistful smile. “I think the first time I ever did anything truly selfless was when I went with all of you into Equestria to stop Nightmare Moon.”
Fluttershy smiled a little more, bowing her head again. “I don’t know about you, but I’d say that was definitely true for me. You know…I was really scared then, and I’m not sure I’d be brave enough to do it again if I had to, but…” She raised her head. “I’m glad I did.”
Rarity smiled a little back. However, before she could say anything else, a voice came from the cockpit area.
“Something’s coming up ahead.”
This caused not only the two women but several others in the steam car to look up. Among them was Starlight Glimmer. She had been rather uncomfortably squashed into a corner on a bench between two other people, leaning against the metal walls and struggling to get some sleep, after switching off with Double Diamond at the last stop. Now, however, she snorted, stiffened, and cracked open her eyes and looked up and around. Soon after, she became fully awake and stood up, stretching herself out as best as she could in such cramped corners, before beginning to walk to the cockpit area.
She wasn’t alone. Shining Armor, who hadn’t slept since he fell in with them, rose up from the back where he had been entertaining the children who were still awake, and soon he began to push his way to the front. Rarity and Fluttershy likewise stepped forward.
Starlight reached first, however. “What is it? Are we out of the forest?”
“Uh…not yet.”
“Is the road clearing up?”
“Er…no.”
“Is it the Appleloosan Army?”
“Nope.”
She paused. “Is it some abandoned food? Because we could really use some right now.”
“I…don’t think so.”
“How about something we can cannibalize for coal, oil, or parts?”
“Uh…possibly?”
Starlight’s face sank. “I’m sick of playing twenty questions. What is it, then?”
“Well, I always said I wanted to see the circus someday…” Starlight frowned as she leveled her shoulder at an overturned wagon and began to heave and push. “Too bad it’s the only circus that uses horses and steam carriages instead of a locomotive to get around, and they happened to abandon all of their stuff right in the middle of the only road into Appleloosa eight years ago…”
“Watch yourself,” Shining Armor spoke up nearby as he leveled himself against the same object, along with two other refugees. “There’s a lot of jagged metal here. Last thing we need is tetanus on top of everything else…”
Starlight merely sighed. “Ok, one, two, three…”
The group all began to push and slowly started to shift a large, overturned, wagon/pen off of the road. The rest of the group from the steam car was fanned out over the area, which consisted of a long stretch of road jammed up and down with the remains of a circus caravan. It was made up of several larger steam engines that had functioned as locomotives, as well as many smaller wagons or wheeled carts that had been pulled along behind them. Most of the wagons on the road were still erect and on their wheels, but several of them had been knocked over. All of them, however, had to be cleared for them to be able to proceed. The surroundings had long gotten too overgrown for them to simply drive around.
It wasn’t terribly pleasant work for any of them. Many of the wagons were so heavy that it took half of them just to budge them a little, and all of them were running on little sleep and even less food and water. They were all beginning to look rather grimy and dirty for it to say nothing of mottled with a few rust spots from pushing.
As another group grunted and managed to shove another wagon off the side of the road, Double Diamond, letting out a tired exhale, came up from around the bend up ahead and began to walk to Starlight’s group. By the time they managed to shove the latest wagon off the road, and most of the group split up to tiredly go to the next one, she was able to look up to him.
“So…any parts?”
He shook his head sourly. “The steam engines here all predate interchangeable part design. None of the gears will work on ours. There’s a bit of coal but that’s about it. Oil dried up years ago.”
“Terrific… What about food?”
“It all rotted or spoiled a long time ago. I think some of the old potatoes may have sprouted, though…”
Starlight let out a groan and ran a hand through her hair. “This trip just keeps getting better, doesn’t it? And we’re not even to the country yet where we could get killed in crossfire… Just get what we can from their engines and then help me think of a way to push them aside. At this rate, we might have to cut down trees to get the car through…”
Double Diamond grimaced at the thought, but nodded before turning to get back to work. Meanwhile, Starlight wiped her brow and moved to the next wagon.
Further up the chain, several of the folks from the steam engine were poking around a considerable pile of old pen wagons cluttered about the road, trying to find the best way to get by them. Among them was Rarity. Naturally, she had only been tenderly and gently placing her own fingertips on the wagons and then only very reluctantly giving small pushes. The way she moved around she was doing her best to avoid touching any of the rusty or greasy spots.
Fluttershy was also nearby, along with Angel still taking a nap in his satchel. He seemed to be a little cross with her moving around so much, but he didn’t cause any further fuss. A good thing too, because she wasn’t pushing at the moment. While the others were trying to find a way to get the wagons out with the smallest amount of effort, she was fixated on the empty cages themselves. She moved slowly between each one of them, looking them over and studying what was left of their contents, before moving on to the next.
“This is where they kept the animals…” she muttered aloud after a time.
Rarity glanced over the collection. “Quite a few of them too, I would say.” She moved over to one overturned pen on the side, in particular to the bars on one part of it. She looked over at where the door was. It lay ajar, with the heavy padlock still rusting on the ground where it had been undone years ago. She walked in a bit closer before turning and looking to the surrounding pens. Most of them were the same.
“It seems their handlers thought to free them before they ran for it themselves,” she mentioned aloud. She winced soon after as she looked around. “I hope if any of them became Nighttouched that they’re not still in the environs…”
Fluttershy stepped a bit further, continuing to look around, before her head turned forward and stopped. Soon after, she let out a small gasp and held her hands to her mouth.
The area was quiet enough for Rarity to catch the gasp. She spotted Fluttershy rooted on the spot, looking in horror up ahead at one of the pens that had overturned. Seeing her reaction, she began to walk over to her. On reaching her side, she nearly spoke before looking ahead to see what had caught her eye.
The pen was a bit larger and more elaborate than the others. It had signs on the side with what had once been brightly painted lettering and designs of a fierce lion, although most of it had worn away and faded by now. Yet through the grime and age Rarity could still make out what was on the side.
The Amazing Melvin, King of the Ring.
She looked down at the cage and soon saw what Fluttershy had spotted.
The door to that pen was still securely padlocked. The barred pen was overlain with a mesh metal cage for additional reinforcement. Around somewhat twisted bars and a section of the mesh that had been fully pried loose through tremendous strength was wedged the skeleton of a lion with an iron collar still about his neck. One leg was still extended reaching out, clawing at the ground and trying to get freedom. Based on the way the skeleton was situated, it looked as if the creature had been so reduced to skin and bones that he just might have been able to push himself free. The iron collar, however, was firmly stuck in the bars. There was no chance of getting away.
Rarity immediately understood. As Fluttershy slowly walked forward, her own face fell. “I…don’t suppose they could have risked letting him out when they fled…” she spoke quietly. She didn’t bother stating the obvious after that: the fact that they had left the lion to die, either from being torn apart by Nighttouched or starvation or dehydration. She also didn’t point out the fact that the mesh ironically probably saved the lion from the first wave of Nighttouched, only to leave him to die slowly later.
All of these things Fluttershy had to have known. As she reached the edge of the cage and looked inside over the bones, the sadness on her face and the look in her eyes, almost tearing up at the sight of the poor animal, made it clear that she knew. She stared at the bones for several moments, before she reached out and put her hand on the animal’s skull. She let it rest there as if she could somehow reassure it even now, or at least give some measure of peace to its ghost.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly, almost too quiet for Rarity to hear. “You must have been so scared…so desperate…so confused as to why they left you. You shouldn’t have died here. Not like this… I’m so sorry…”
Rarity said nothing. However, the gravity of the way Fluttershy said that, combined with the look on her face, made her look more regretfully at her. Fluttershy kept standing there for several moments of silence. The designer caught one tear coming out of her eye. Eventually, her hand moved over to where the collar was. Although the bones of the spine had long since fallen apart around it, it was still about where the lion’s neck had been and stuck in the bars.
She gripped the collar and, with some effort, pried it loose and let the bones be free. She moved to set it to one side, perhaps intending to do something about the rest of the skeleton before the wagon would have to be moved.
Instead, however, she let out a small gasp and dropped the collar right on the ground. Rarity herself gave a start and reared back.
Fluttershy had only been touching the collar for a second or two when a ripple of light went through it. The shock had been what had caused her to drop it as well as to cause Rarity’s reaction. Both of them were left staring silently at the object for a few moments.
“What…what was that?” Fluttershy remarked.
“I-I-I’m not sure…” Rarity half-muttered in response. “Is it just me, or…or did I see that collar glow?”
Fluttershy didn’t answer. She only began to look a bit fearfully at the collar. Both stared at it for several moments. However, it didn’t change. Finally, Rarity drew herself up a little and walked over to it. A bit hesitantly, she bent down to Fluttershy’s side, reached out her hand, paused for several moments (both due to anxiety as well as rust), and finally reached out and touched it. Nothing happened. It remained a simple collar.
After a moment, she shrugged and withdrew her hand. “Seems fine now…”
Fluttershy herself paused, looking uncertain, but then reached out and touched it. For a moment, nothing happened, and she nearly became at ease as well.
Then the ripple happened again. This time, Fluttershy let out a yelp and recoiled, while Rarity let out a cry of exclamation. “Good gracious!”
“Is something wrong?”
Both women looked up, rather startled. However, their own cries and exclamations had gained the attention of most of the others in the area, including Shining Armor and Starlight Glimmer. The former of the two was rushing over while the latter was bringing up the rear a bit slower.
The two were taken aback for a moment, before Rarity stammered. “It…it… That is…” She paused, then turned and pointed. “This collar. It…it was just…just…”
Fluttershy swallowed. She looked down at the collar, which had again become dull once she had leaned away from it. However, after a moment, she spoke up quietly. “Well…”
She slowly reached out toward it again, only very slowly extending her hand toward it. It did nothing the entire way that she brought it close, but the moment she reluctantly touched it with the tips of her fingers it let out a ripple of light. Once again, she yelped and recoiled, although she seemed to be growing more accustomed to it by now.
This time, however, everyone who had been alerted by the cry gave a bit of a start on spotting it. Shining Armor stopped in his tracks, and Starlight nearly exclaimed herself. For a moment, everyone in the area was still. They stared at her and the collar, forgetting about the work on the area.
Starlight finally broke the silence, about the same moment a look of realization came over her.
“Fluttershy?”
The woman meekly looked upward.
“Could you bring that back to the steam car for a moment?”
About two minutes later, most of the refugees were gathered around the open side of the steam vehicle while Starlight Glimmer rummaged around inside. Almost everyone was either staring or trying not to stare at Fluttershy, especially since she was very nervously standing there holding the collar in both hands. Since she had picked it up, it had not stopped rippling light periodically. On the plus side, the few children who were around thought it was some sort of new toy and looked amazed. Everyone else simply stood there uneasily, including Rarity and Shining Armor.
“Are you…feeling alright, Fluttershy?” Rarity asked after a while, still eying the object. “Your hands aren’t…I don’t know…tingling or anything, are they dear?”
“Um…no…” she exhaled quietly. “…They shouldn’t be, should they? I mean, if I was holding onto something like this…?”
“I’m sure it’s fine,” Shining Armor interjected, not sounding entirely sure of himself. “I mean…if it was harmful, it would have done something by now, wouldn’t it have?”
That only made Fluttershy tremble again.
“I got it!”
Everyone turned back to the side hatch of the steam engine. Shortly afterward, Starlight Glimmer came running out clutching a fistful of handwritten notes eagerly. She was still reading over them as she began to speak. “I knew it! This is exactly the same situation that I got out of Twilight Sparkle about what happened with her and Applejack back in Fort Chestnut!”
“You mean when Applejack got her Anima Viri?” Rarity asked. “But I don’t understand. I don’t remember her mentioning anything glowing…”
“She didn’t, but I pressed her for more details while you all were training one day,” Starlight answered as she flipped a page. “That’s when I got the full story.”
“So what does that mean?” Shining Armor asked.
“Alright…Fluttershy,” she spoke up, finally looking up from her notes to gaze straight at her. “Do exactly what I say. This should work…”
Now in addition to being frightened, the woman began to look confused. “Ex…excuse me…?”
“Hold that collar in the air, and say in a loud, commanding voice: ‘Valiant spirit, my household opens its doors to you’.”
This resulted in numerous puzzled looks all around. Not the least of which from Fluttershy. “Um…come again?”
Starlight sighed. “Just do it. Hold it up and say: ‘Valiant spirit, my household opens its doors to you’.”
Fluttershy blinked. Finally, she held up the collar slightly. “Um…valiant spirit, my household opens its doors to you.”
Rarity was closest to Fluttershy, and even she barely heard her say that. Starlight immediately frowned, but recovered from it quickly. “Could you say that a bit more forcefully?”
Fluttershy swallowed, then tried again. “Valiant spirit, my household opens its doors to you.” If one listened extremely closely, they could just make out her sounding louder.
Starlight’s eyebrows lowered. “Seriously? That’s how you sound forceful?”
She cringed slightly. “I’m, um…not a very forceful person.”
Starlight sighed. “Well, this doesn’t work unless you speak up.”
Fluttershy looked uncertain again for a moment, before speaking just a modicum louder. “Valiant spirit, my household opens its doors to you.”
Still nothing. Starlight’s jaw began to clench while everyone else began to look a little uneasy. Angel poked his head out of her satchel, only to give the closest expression the rabbit could muster to looking annoyed. Rarity cleared her throat and quickly stepped forward.
“Fluttershy, darling…” she spoke up with a bit of a forced smile. “Could you do me a favor? Try closing your eyes for a moment.”
The woman hesitated for a second or two, but then nodded. She closed her eyes soon after.
“Now then…” she spoke more softly. “Do you remember when you came up to that cage just a little while ago? When you saw the remains of that lion inside?”
Fluttershy stiffened a little. Her face began to look hurt again just at the memory.
“Now keep your eyes closed. I want you to visualize something. I want you to imagine you’re back here on that night when the circus abandoned these carts and ran. Imagine that you’re right there, right next to the cage with the lion.”
Fluttershy’s face eased a little, but her brows creased, showing she was concentrating.
“Imagine that lion is right there. He’s locked inside. He has no food and no water, and he can’t get out through the bars. Everyone else is leaving him behind. All the rest of the animals are being let out but he’s still there, all alone, left to die.”
Her face creased more at this. Her hands began to clench along the collar. Her lip started to quiver.
“Now…” Rarity’s voice began to rise. “I want you to see something. Far up the road, running away, is the animal handler. He has the keys still in his hands and you can see them, but he’s fleeing. All around him are people full of panic and fright. They’re yelling one thing and another, crashing into one another, and creating a huge commotion. You need to get that handler’s attention, but he’s too far off and it’s too loud. He’ll be out of earshot in moments. Your only chance of rescuing that lion is if you can shout to him. You need to make him hear you. You need to call out as loud as you can or the lion will die. Do you understand?”
As she kept talking, Fluttershy’s hands clenched more. Her anxiety gradually ebbed. Very slowly but surely, it became replaced with a look of determination. Perhaps even just a hint of force.
“Alright, now…open your eyes, hold up that collar, and shout to him!”
Fluttershy’s eyes opened. She held the collar high.
“Valiant spirit, my household opens its doors to you!”
It wasn’t the loudest in the world, but for Fluttershy is was definitely more forceful and direct. And it had the intended effect. Everyone gasped as the collar instantly lit up completely and began to shimmer radiantly. Fluttershy’s boldness evaporated as she looked down and nearly gasped at what was gleaming in her hands, but now she was too nervous to release it. Everyone else was transfixed in open-mouthed awe.
A moment later, everyone got a second surprise as, to their astonishment, a powerful, radiant, and resounding lion’s roar came from the collar. It was as if the beast that had worn it was right there in front of them, only invisible. The nearest people even shrank back. Shining Armor actually extended his arms as if the collar would attack them, and Rarity yelped and stepped back. Angel slipped back into the satchel and hid. Even Starlight Glimmer was momentarily stunned before composing herself. Fluttershy alone was left staring at the collar, unable to move but quivering all over.
Starlight finally blinked. She looked back down to the paper and read it over, then looked back up. “I…I think that was the spirit responding… Obviously, a lion can’t use words…but maybe that title on the side of the wagon means something…”
Rarity, still astonished, snapped out of it long enough to look at her in confusion. “Excuse me?”
She read a bit longer, then looked up. “Alright, now say this. ‘The binding is done; may our souls be as one.’”
Fluttershy didn’t answer. She stammered and stared at the collar.
“Fluttershy!”
She blinked once…twice…then half-mumbled it out. “Th-th-the b-b-binding is d-d-done…may our s-s-souls b-b-be as one…”
She cried out in alarm a second later as the light from the collar immediately swept over her. Now everyone staggered back in alarm and surprise, most of them shielding themselves as the light momentarily became blinding. Even Angel hopped out of the satchel and ran for cover. As all of them watched in amazement, beams of light pink in shade streaked through the air, etching out a figure. In moments, they saw that it was the lion: completely in his prime and looking regal and fierce. He bared his teeth, opened his jaw, and let out another bellowing roar that sounded even louder than the previous one. All before he burst into fragments of light. A wind picked up and immediately swept the particles over Fluttershy.
The wind took up Fluttershy’s hair, tied it in a long tail, and swept it behind her before fabric appeared out of nowhere and tied the top of her head back in a bandanna. Her clothing immediately shifted as well, with her longer dress splitting and becoming a pair of loose fitting pants over worn boots. Her shirt lost its sleeves and separated to become a second scarf-like bandanna around her neck. Her satchel turned into a belt and pouch while parts of it broke off to form fingerless gloves around her hands.
Soon it was over, and most of the light vanished. Fluttershy was left standing there still cringing and emanating a soft glow. After a moment, she slowly straightened up and began to look herself over. She eased slightly, but only to grow more confused.
“Oh dear…”
Starlight, on the other hand, put her notes aside and smiled. “It worked! I knew it!”
Shining Armor turned to her. “Knew what? What worked?”
Rarity, on the other hand, began to blink in amazement. “Fluttershy…” she spoke softly.
The woman looked over herself a bit longer, only growing more confused. “That…that was like putting on an Anima Viri, but…” She glanced around a bit more, twisting her head and shoulders to look behind her. “But…I’m not dressed like a Healer… This looks more like what Pinkie Pie wears…”
“Fluttershy…”
The second time Rarity spoke, the woman heard her. She looked up curiously, and saw Rarity staring at her still looking amazed. Angel Bunny was nearby, also looking up and astonished. Slowly, the former of the two raised her finger and pointed.
“Rarity? What’s wrong?”
“Your hand…”
Fluttershy paused, but then held up her hand bearing the Promethian Sigil. She let out a little gasp of her own.
There were two symbols on it now, with only one of them glowing.
“Honestly, I wasn’t really sure if it would work, but I thought it was worth a shot. I’m just amazed it was that simple. Just speak that incantation and…I don’t know…you form a ‘contract’ or something.”
Rarity grimaced a little bit at the way that Starlight referred to the incident, as it sounded and awful lot like an experiment when she put it on that footing. Fluttershy, on the other hand, was still reacting much the same way she had when she first gained the new Anima Viri. By now it had long since worn off and Angel had resumed his place in her satchel, leaving her to stare at her hand with the two symbols on it. Though at this point most of the refugees had gotten at least somewhat accustomed to seeing Anima Viris, they still were left staring at her from the confined space in the vehicle. It had been some time since they cleared the road and were able to move on again, but what they had witnessed was still on everyone’s mind.
“That was a lion though, not a human,” Rarity finally responded. She held up her own hand, staring at her own symbol for a moment and remembering how she had obtained it. “I thought that these were spirits from people…”
“Um…actually…” Fluttershy spoke up quietly, finally lowering her hand. “My first symbol came from a bird named Philomena…”
Starlight shrugged. “Apparently, there are some pets or at least somewhat domesticated animals that form such a bond with their owners that they’re capable of being passed on too. At least when they’re in contact with the right person. You said that it didn’t react when you touched it, right Rarity?”
“Well…no, but I’m still surprised at all of this. I’ve never actually seen that sort of thing happen before. My symbol just appeared after…” She trailed off, growing uneasy. “After…well…Ms. Cheerilee passed.”
“The same thing with me,” Shining Armor spoke up from nearby, rather grim in his tone. “I wish I had asked Twily about these more when she was still here… We could really use her help right now.”
“I mean, I know that there are six points on this symbol,” Rarity spoke up, holding her hand up and gesturing to it. “But I didn’t really think it was possible to get more than one.”
“Why not?” Starlight shrugged. “That fire witch from Trottingham… Sunset Shimmer? She had five. I don’t see why the rest of you wouldn’t be able to get that many. I’m guessing you all have enough room for six.”
“But…I didn’t become a Healer when I put it on…” Fluttershy spoke up quietly. “I couldn’t even think of any healing magic…”
“To be honest, you resembled Pinkie Pie’s ‘Rogue’ outfit, dear,” Rarity threw in. “It seemed to have your own spin on the style. Softer colors and fabric. It was unmistakably the same pattern though.”
Starlight thought about that for a moment, before she raised an eyebrow. “Maybe it was the Rogue role.”
All three turned and looked at her. “Excuse me?”
She shrugged. “This is just a theory, but if these spirits have to interact with whoever has them, there’s no reason to believe that each one is going to give you the same role. A different spirit might give a different one. In fact…”
Her face began to look intrigued, before she turned to Rarity.
“Didn’t you tell me that when you all were fighting Sunset Shimmer that she was able to combine spirits to make new roles? First she combined two to get an Archer role? Then three to get a Gambler role and so on?”
Rarity nodded back. “Well, yes, that’s true. But…” She trailed off as well, her own eyes widening when she made the realization. “Goodness me… Fluttershy, do you know what that means?”
She began to shrink a little anxiously. “Um…no?”
Starlight smiled at her. “That means you might be able to do the same thing! If you combine your Anima Viris, you might be able to make a new role even stronger than any of the six that we know about!”
“Oh…ok…” she quietly answered, shrinking in a bit more.
Starlight paused. “I don’t suppose you could try it out right now, could you? I’m kind of interested in seeing what kind of role comes out…”
“Oh…oh please no, darling. Not in the steam carriage,” Rarity immediately interjected, holding her hand up.
“It’s a bit cramped in here already,” Shining Armor added. “Not to mention everyone is already pretty startled.”
Starlight’s face fell, looking a bit disappointed, but she resigned to it. “Alright, I guess you have a point there. You probably want to try it out as soon as you can, though. You could start using the practice with it the way things are going.”
Fluttershy’s eyes widened on hearing that. “Um…”
Rarity looked likewise uncomfortable. “Er…no offense, darling, but I believe I speak for both Fluttershy and myself when I say that we were both hoping that our, shall we say, more ‘physically active’ roles in these sorts of things were coming to a close. I mean, after all, we already faced off against a dark lunar goddess and a grotesque demon of fire. I think that’s enough to merit something of an early retirement.”
Starlight grimaced. “Well, I wish I could say it was, but things really don’t look that way right now. Even if everyone wasn’t bracing for war and Trottingham wasn’t getting more aggressive, there’s still that new surge of Nighttouched coming out in broad daylight that we ran into.”
“She’s right,” Shining Armor ruefully added. “There’s whatever that shadow was up north too. If it keeps working its way to the south, then we’ve got much bigger problems than just the Nighttouched. We might even have a bigger problem than that shadow that was over Equestria.”
Fluttershy cringed, but Rarity slumped and let out a tired sigh. “I suppose you’re right… You can’t blame me for wishful thinking, however…”
“Everyone! Look, look! We’re here!”
The four looked up at that, turning to Double Diamond in the cockpit. His shouting had alerted the others crammed in there, and they looked up as well and saw him pointing through the windshield. Starlight immediately went up to him, but the others drew close enough to see through the window as well.
They were just in time to see the road curve up ahead. As it did, the trees broke and fell away. Beyond it stretched open grasslands just now coming into view. What more, the road itself was much more traveled and maintained, and the sun finally began to come down at last.
“We made it!” Diamond went on. “We’re in Appleloosa at last!”
This immediately caused a number of sighs of relief along with cheering from everyone else. The refugees broke into smiles at finally being out of Equestria and back into sunny skies and surroundings, and Rarity had to dab her brow with her sleeve as she sighed in relief at finally being clear of the Nightouched-infested parts of the world. Starlight herself smiled and clapped the back of the driver’s seat.
“Your dad’s car really got us this far. Great work. How much farther to you think we can get?”
Diamond’s own enthused look faded at that. “Well…hard to say. If I want to get technical, I’ve already pushed it way past the breaking point. I’ve never taken it this far on one trip. The engine’s been making some weird noises and they’re only getting louder… Even if we somehow get to Fort Appleloosa, I don’t think it’s going to make it back.”
Starlight sighed on hearing the news, before she shrugged. “Well…we’ll just have to cross that bridge when we get there, I guess.”
After saying this, however, she blinked. Her eyes narrowed.
“What’s that?”
Diamond looked up, and soon others began to as well. They were still coming around the bend, but as they did and saw the fields spreading out in front of them they spotted a plume of smoke rising up from only about a half a mile away. It wasn’t enough to be a roaring inferno or blaze, but it was definitely sizeable enough to catch their attention.
Shining Armor leaned in a bit closer and looked out. “Did the fighting spread all the way up here?”
Starlight shook her head. “I doubt it. There’s nothing around out here to fight or take over… Look right there.”
She pointed, and Rarity and Fluttershy both leaned in as she indicated the source of the smoke. There was an object partially ground into the dirt not far from the road they were on. Driving a bit closer, they began to make out that it was some sort of vehicle, but they were still too far to make out much more than that.
Starlight twisted her lips and then looked down, beginning to fish around for the binoculars. Rarity, meanwhile, grew a bit uncomfortable. “Perhaps we should go around…”
“I don’t think we can. That’s the only road out of here,” Diamond answered. “And I’m not sure the axle will hold together if we go off it again…”
Starlight leaned up a moment later, having found the binoculars, and immediately put them to use as they continued forward. “Looks like a steam wing…” she said after a moment. “That’s funny… I didn’t think that Trottingham or Appleloosa had any of those. And if they did why aren’t they in the middle of a battlefield?”
“Steam wing?” Fluttershy asked meekly.
“It’s a form of combat aircraft,” Shining Armor quickly explained while keeping his own eyes forward. “Can you make out the model?”
“Not really, but…wait. People are coming out of it. They must have crash landed. They don’t look like normal pilots, though. They look like…”
She trailed off. Her expression turned to one of amazement.
Rarity turned to her. “What is it, Starlight?”
“I don’t believe it… Huh… I guess if so much bad luck hits you, you’re bound to run into good luck eventually…”
The others turned to her as well. “What is it?”
Beginning to smile, she removed her binoculars and passed them to Rarity. “Look for yourself!”
The designer was a bit confused, but she accepted them and looked out. She stared for a moment. “I see a woman with lavender hair looking like she’s arguing with a woman with rainbow hair and…” Her own eyes widened. “Oh my goodness! It’s Twilight Sparkle and Rainbow Dash!”
“What?” Shining Armor exclaimed. “Let me see!”
She passed the binoculars over, and he barely restrained himself from snatching them from her. He looked up and out as well, and his own face lit up. “It is Twily! She’s here!”
Fluttershy began to perk. “Really? It’s really them?” She paused a moment. “What in the world are they doing out here…?”
“I don’t know, but I’m not about to look a gift horse in the mouth,” Starlight answered, leaning down to Diamond. “Let’s get over there!”
He nodded and accelerated the engine a bit more. The road was fairly straight and, aside from a few small hills in the landscape, was a clean shot to the wreckage. It soon became clear they hadn’t landed more than ten yards from the road, so it wouldn’t be any problem reaching them. Naturally, it wasn’t long after they had started on their way that they were noticed by the two. The engine was far too loud, bulky, and the only piece of machinery for miles in any direction. Even while still a long way off, the group in the cockpit noticed that both of them had stopped arguing and were now staring at them as they came in. Both of them looked rather tense, and Rainbow Dash looked ready for a fight as their car slowly lumbered up to them. However, neither made a move or tried to run when the steam engine finally pulled to a halt on the road alongside of them.
Moments later, Starlight opened the hatch wide and immediately ran out with Rarity, Fluttershy, and Shining Armor in tow straight behind. The apprehension of Twilight and Dash lasted only long enough for them to recognize them, and then they instantly lit up.
“Starlight!” Twilight exclaimed. “Rarity! Fluttershy!” A pause, followed by a rather bewildered look. “…Shining Armor? You’re all here?”
He grinned back at her. “I could say the same thing about you, little sis!”
“Oh, I’m so glad to see you!” Fluttershy called as she began to step out to them. Rarity and the others quickly followed suit. “We were all so worried about what happened to everyone else after what happened in Equestria!”
“Thank heavens you’re alright!” Rarity added. “Between what happened in that castle and everything else that’s gone on since then, we were starting to fear the worst…”
Dash, getting over her own initial surprise, took the moment to flash a grin and plant her hands on her hips. “Heh, think a little thing like that was going to do us in? Not a chance. Sure, we ran into a few hiccups along the way, but nothing we couldn’t handle.”
Fluttershy looked over the wreckage, seeming to only really drr it for the first time. When she did, her eyes widened a bit and she cupped a hand to her mouth. Starlight looked at it as well, and also slowed in her step. This close, they noticed it was a lot worse than before. One wing was snapped loose and the main body was almost bent in half and on fire. “Um…just out of curiosity, did you just crash land this thing?”
Dash blanched, rubbing the back of her head. “Uh…heh…it wasn’t my nicest landing, but no problem. Nothing to worry about. We’re all fine.”
Twilight’s own smile ebbed and her eyes lowered before she shot a sideways glare to her. “I’m not so sure about the ‘all fine’ part… This could have gone a lot smoother if you had waited until after we landed to do that binding incantation…”
She frowned and looked back at her. “Hey, you’re the one who told me to do it.”
“I meant once you landed!”
“That glow was distracting me!”
“Y’know…” a tired third voice came up from the wreckage. “Just…just go ahead and settle your argument… I’ll get myself out of this… No need to worry about me burning to death or anything…”
The four stopped, looking back to the wreckage. A moment later, they heard a popping of a cable, before a body fell down to the ground nearby. After a small groan, she began to sorely pick herself up, crawled a few feet, and then started to push up.
However, she only made it to all fours before she turned her head up, revealing her face to everyone and, in turn, seeing everyone else’s faces. At once, she became fully aware and turned pale.
Rarity, Fluttershy, and Shining Armor’s eyes widened.
“You!” Rarity cried, exclaiming in shock.
“You!” Shining Armor shouted, far more angrily as his fists began to tighten.
Fluttershy said nothing, just cringed and pulled back behind Rarity.
A moment later, both Rarity and Shining Armor raised their hands, clearly intending to release their Anima Viris. Twilight noticed this, however, and quickly held up her hands.
“Wait, wait! It’s not what you think!” she turned her head slightly while still watching them. “Rainbow Dash, back me up!”
She crossed her arms dully with a half-smirk. “Sure you don’t want to wait for this to play out first?”
“Rainbow Dash!”
She sighed. “Fine, fine…” She reluctantly held up her own hands. “Everyone cool it for a moment.”
Rarity and Shining Armor still looked on the brink of calling out, and Fluttershy let out a panicked whine. Starlight Glimmer herself took a closer look at the woman’s face, and realization painted her own expression. “Uh…Twilight? Forgive me if I’m wrong, but isn’t that…uh…Sunset Shimmer?”
Sunset merely stayed frozen in one spot, not daring to move on seeing the look in the eyes of those across from her. As for Twilight, she let out a sigh before taking in a deep breath.
Applejack’s strength was failing, even with her Anima Viri equipped, when she managed to smash the end of her hammer into the attacking Trottingham grunt’s skull. The impact was enough to crush it part of the way in, but she had overdone it that time. The pain in her leg became unbearable and her footing gave out beneath her. With a cry she fell onto her back. She seemed to be easy prey for the grunt behind the one she had just struck down, who quickly shoved his dying comrade away. He lunged forward for her, reaching his hand out and seizing her by the shirt. He began to bring her forward…
Unfortunately for him, he had discarded his empty weapon as it had no bayonet and tried to attack her with his bare hands. As a result, as she was seized and yanked toward him, she answered by swiveling her claw hammer around and burying the teeth in his chest right over the heart. Even gritting her teeth and staring him in the face she knew she had hit the mark when she felt warm fluid gushing out onto her hands and arms. The grunt let out a gag and faltered, slumping forward and going back to the ground. She hit first and his bulk landed on top of her, but, in spite of the mortal wound, he wasn’t done. With his last bit of life, he struggled to raise his hand for her neck to finish the job while her weapon was still immobilized in his own chest…
He never got the chance. Three gunshots fired off at such close range that it nearly deafened Applejack. The bullets struck him in the head, blasting what little sense he had able to keep moving, and leaving him stunned long enough to bleed out. He fully collapsed soon after and, fortunately for her, fell to one side and off of her when she did.
Nevertheless, Applejack let out a cry at that point as her arms were wrenched from his falling body pulling itself off of her hammer. That, coupled with the growing trauma from her leg, was too much for her to bear. She couldn’t spring back to her feet, and, through her own agony and pain, she watched as her glow dimmed once again. That had been the third time since she had started fighting that it had happened, and only a mere 10 minutes since she had last been able to put it back on. Somewhere in her tired brain she managed to process this, but at the moment she was too stricken and exhausted to do much more than that.
It wasn’t until she felt someone reach under her armpits and call out to her that she became fully aware again. “Ally-oop!”
With a strong movement Applejack found herself yanked back to her feet. The person who had pulled her up held her, however, knowing full well she couldn’t put her full weight on her bad leg anymore. Even so, it took a moment of dizziness and incoherence for her to manage balance. In that moment, she surveyed the sight before her.
All but one trench was taken, and the remaining one had been breached in multiple places by now. There had been two gun emplacements there when she first got to this point ten minutes ago, but both of them were gone. One had been overrun by the enemy and its crew killed. The other had been blown away by the last bombing run of the airships. Where before there had been a hundred people in that last trench, now there were only three and two of them were trying to yank the bloody body of the third out of there. The others were gutted with fire or totally abandoned, all palisades and barbed wire ripped down and gone.
Weakly, she turned her head and looked around. To either side of her guns and cannons were firing, but less and less of them were sounding like Appleloosan ones, and less tell-tale plumes of fire and smoke were coming from their side. Instead, black smoke from fires and bomb blasts was dotting the area. Cries of pain and misery were echoing from all around, but not many of them were coming from the Trottingham grunts. The sun had just set, but it looked like a late afternoon with all of the fires reflecting off of the clouds of smoke.
Finally, she got enough of her wits to put her leg down. As she stabilized herself, the one behind her let her go. She turned and spotted Pinkie still in her Rogue role smiling back.
“Thanks, Pinkie.”
“No problem!”
Applejack stared on at her a moment. Slowly, her eyes looked past her and behind. A few members of her family and what was left of the group from the Civilian Corps 39th that had accompanied her were there, but they weren’t looking nearly as good as her. Most of them were dirty with mud and gunpowder remains, to say nothing of their share of injuries. They were tired and sagging. Their eyes were half-lidded and worn out from the fighting and death they had all been forced to go through. Even thought they hadn’t lost yet, they already looked more defeated than they had ever appeared to her. Even Big Macintosh looked barely able to keep holding onto his rifle.
Remarkably enough, only Pinkie looked not only totally uninjured but not even tired. It might have concerned her under normal circumstances. As it was, she was more worried about the sad state of her family. Yet looking a bit longer, she soon noticed something was missing.
“Where’s Candy Apples and Apple Brown Betty?”
The group paused. Several of them looked up, becoming slightly more coherent, and started glancing around. Applejack did the same, but didn’t see any sign of them…neither among the living or the dead that had mounded around them during the last assault.
Applejack’s anxiety started to rise and she struggled to start limping around to look for them. However, the others, far more able bodied, fanned out first. And after only less than a minute, one of them, perched on a mound of dirt that had been formed by a bomb blast hours ago, turned to her and shouted. “Over here!”
The farmer spun to the spot, seeing her family member waving toward her. She began to hobble over there as fast as she could and, in spite of her injury (which had only grown worse looking and more debilitating with time), she managed to outstrip several of those around her in getting there first. They passed the mount of dirt and looked into the crater that was left behind.
What she saw made her blood run cold.
Apple Brown Betty looked well enough. At least, as well as any of them. However, Candy Apples’ head was cradled on her lap, and her face was agonized. Looking down just a little, one could see why. Her abdomen was mottled with fresh blood and what looked like at least three gunshot wounds.
For a moment, she couldn’t even move. Her breath and sound caught in her throat as she stared, forgetting about her own pain, the fighting, the battle, and all of the chaos that was all around them.
Apple Brown Betty was still holding her, trying to comfort her it looked like, but unable to do anything else. She was paralyzed just like her. Slowly, she turned her head up toward Applejack. Her face was stricken with panic and fear. She opened and closed her mouth several times, but she couldn’t form any words. Finally, she started making some sounds.
“They…they came over…and…and they were shooting… She was…she was…standing right here when…”
Applejack remained frozen several more moments before she managed to blink and look around. The rest of her family was frozen and staring with the same panicked, terrified looks on their faces. They had seen many people dying on either side of the conflict. Many of them had been people in their own respective units. It wasn’t until now that they had seen one of their own family members fallen. It shattered the illusion that all of them had embraced since they started this, that somehow so long as they all worked together as a family that they’d all be invincible in the face of this war. And now, any guise or semblance they had of being true soldiers was fading. They were just a family of civilians seeing one of their own dying.
Somehow, this forced her to tighten up and push it aside. Swallowing, she made her face firm and shouted loud enough to sound over the gunfire.
“What’re y’all doin’?!”
This caused all of them to look up and back to her, and she forced herself to keep looking bold…keep looking in control.
“Don’t just stand there! We gotta pull her out! And we still got a fight ta’ win too! Come on! Help ‘em out and let’s get movin’ back to the fort!”
There were a few moments of hesitation. However, Big Macintosh understood. He swallowed, took a second or two to compose himself, and then nodded back. “Eeyup.” Without another word, he quickly began to shoulder his rifle, and he started to climb down the hole as best as he could. Soon after, other family members started to comply as well, putting aside their own weapons and climbing in to help him. The others began to snap out of it soon after, and within half a minute everyone was moving again.
Applejack, on her part, wiped her forehead and took several deep breaths. She tried her best to steady herself and the growing queasy, cold feeling in her stomach. She barely even noticed when the others managed to rig up some runners from one of the destroyed cannons as a crude stretcher to put Candy Apples on, but once she was there and got up, she forced herself to nod to them and started to limp back to the fort, leading the way.
Focusing on moving got Applejack to keep her mind off of what had just happened to her relative, but she didn’t see many more encouraging sights as they walked. The sounds of gunfire and bombs exploding were still echoing around them even with the latest assault on that part of the trenches halted. Troops that were tired, dirty, and covered with blood were running to and fro everywhere. More cries still echoed out, but as Applejack led the way she saw that not all of them were coming from the injured or combatants. Several members of the various civilian corps were hunkered down in the remains of barricades or gun emplacements, mumbling incoherently or holding their heads with their eyes wide. Another that was screaming hysterically ran by their own group as they kept pulling back. Every so often an order was yelled and another group of soldiers would run by, but none of them looked as clean or as organized when they started. They were also in much fewer numbers.
When they cleared enough of the smoke to start seeing the fort, Applejack felt her stomach sink a little. It had taken multiple bomb hits and its thick armor only weathered most of them. A large section of the upper floor was caved in while five of the gun emplacements had been blown away. Large armor plating sections were dented or blasted off on other portions, and all around the base of it were a mixture of craters and ash.
Worst of all, there was a sizeable crowd also bearing the wounded surrounding the area already, flooding the dozen or so field medics near the base of the fort and practically trampling them. Some were on real stretchers or makeshift ones. Others were being supported between two of their comrades. But many of them, much to Applejack’s unease on arrival, seemed already beyond help. They had pieces of shrapnel piercing their torsos, or were missing one, two, or even three limbs. One of them seemed to be missing part of her face…
Her unease only grew when she was forced to mingle with these people. There were far too many crowds already there, and although the field medics were pushing them along as fast as they could, they were still forced to stand there being crowded on all sides by the injured. Applejack tried to focus forward, but all she could see was, over the heads of the crowds, one of the medics was trying to help a soldier who had his skull cracked in such a way one of his eyeballs was hanging out of his socket. She tried looking to one side, but that was only another soldier trying to help her comrade cover a wound on her throat from bleeding out or choking. She glanced the other way, but she felt herself only wince and grow sick and cold on seeing two other soldiers trying to shove the entrails of their still-living comrade back inside their body…
“Applejack.”
The voice was quiet but somehow sounded over the crowd. Applejack, however, didn’t respond to it. She was trying to focus on Candy Apples and moving forward.
“Applejack.”
It was a bit closer this time, and this time she looked up.
On the side of the crowd around the medics, a large troop of soldiers was quickly rushing by, obviously in a hurry to get somewhere. Yet standing in front of them was Braeburn.
His hat was gone and he was stained with blood, although it didn’t seem to be his. He had no weapon, and he was staring at her oddly. His eyes were glazed over, like he was in a daze. When she saw him, he began to walk forward.
“Applejack…”
She let out a long groan. “Braeburn, what’re ya’ doin’ here? Stick with the rest of the family!”
“Applejack…” he said again as he stepped closer.
“All those who aren’t tending to any wounded!” a voice shouted from the passing crowd, sounding like the authority and force of an officer. “Move to the north side! The enemy’s pushing in through there now! It needs reinforcements!”
Applejack rolled her eyes and groaned, even as their group advanced closer to the medics. “Ya’ hear that, Braeburn? Get back to the others and get over there! We need everyone who can still fight!”
“Applejack, I…” he began to say as he finally got close enough to reach out to her. “I…I got to…I…”
“Next!”
The woman wheeled around, not realizing that she had been so distracted that they were already up next. One of the field nurses was frantically motioning them. “Come on! We’ve got a lot more wounded to get through!”
The rest of the family began to carry Candy Apples forward. Applejack, meanwhile, wheeled back to Braeburn. “Ya’ hear what I said? Get back to the family! Go on now! We’re busy!”
“Applejack… They’re gone.”
She frowned. “Damnit, you ain’t makin’ sense! Who’s gone? Spit it out!”
“They’re…blown up. It happened in front of me. One of them bombs…”
She paused, starting to look confused. “What?”
“Cousin Half-Baked and cousin Apple Tart.”
She paused again…longer this time. The anger in her face started to fade. “…What about ‘em?”
He stared into her eyes with a hollow look.
“They’re dead.”
Applejack went silent. All color and emotion drained from her expression, and even Candy Apples was momentarily forgotten. The field nurse yelling at her to come forward and the officer shouting orders seemed to have gone mute. She only focused on Braeburn and the look on his face.
“No…no.” Her voice was quieter than it had ever been. “You’re wrong. You must not’ve seen right…”
“They’re dead, coz.”
“No…no, they ain’t. They ain’t. Half-Baked may not have the best head on his shoulders but Tart would always bail him out-”
“Coz…it happened in front of me… Right there… Right…”
“Braeburn,” she spoke up, her voice growing in intensity again, “you’re just shakin’ up, ya’ hear me? You ain’t thinking right. You ain’t-”
“Pieces of ‘em hit me, coz!”
The sudden wild, hysterical, emotion-laced scream not only made Applejack go still but alerted the rest of the Apple family members as well as several people surrounding them. Braeburn, however, was breaking down entirely. His face tightened and tears began to gush out of his eyes. He practically hyperventilated as his quivering, shaking hands lifted up. One of them slowly raised to his shoulder, where a bloodstain had marked his clothes.
“I…I brushed a piece of one of ‘em off…right here! I didn’t even know it was there right away! I didn’t…I didn’t…!”
He could say no more. He cupped his hands to his face and began to wail loudly.
Applejack knew she should have tried to comfort him, but she couldn’t think of that right now. She could only stand there with a hollow look of her own on her face. Her mind raced to yesterday when she had been eating a meal with Half-Baked Apple and Apple Tart. She remembered how well they looked after all the battles they had coming there. And she thought back to before they met Twilight, when the two of them had been working with her to set up camp every night in their caravan. And she remembered before that, when the fact they had managed to hold onto their one plot of land made them all think they were invincible…that they’d always be together so long as they held together as Apples…
She slowly looked over to the others. One of them was Apple Tart’s sister, and on overhearing the news she was on the verge of breaking down. The others didn’t look much better. What had happened to Candy Apples had left them shaken. This broke whatever thoughts they had left that had deluded them into thinking they were somehow immune or at least more protected against the madness of war. That they were any more than the rest of the poor souls caught in this fortress fighting no longer just for their country but for their own lives. That the bullets, bayonets, and bombs had any less care for ending them as it had ended so many already. That their lives would ever go back to normal after this.
The uncaring bombs continued to erupt around them. The unfeeling bullets continued to be fired. The multitudes of screams continued to resound, louder and closer than before. And Applejack could only stand there with her eyes wide-open, seeing things as they were for the first time.
“Applejack?”
It was the voice of Pinkie that alerted her. Not just because she said something, but because it was in a voice she had never heard her use before.
For the first time, it wasn’t the least bit carefree or happy.
Applejack turned and looked at her. She may have not had a scratch on her, but aside from that she was looking as morose as the others. More so, perhaps. Her face was that of a child who had just learned a very cruel reality about life. And it affected her so much that had Applejack more of her own wits she would have sworn that her hair actually somehow became flatter as a result.
She looked at her with large, almost tearful eyes.
“I’m…I’m worried about my family…and I don’t want to be here anymore.”
What Pinkie had said set off a switch in her mind. Her awareness slowly came back. A light returned to her eyes, and after a few moments something became clear to her. When that happened, her face firmed up and her body stopped shaking. Resolve filled her features.
She turned back to the nurse, who was done with the initial assessment and leading the family carrying Candy Apples onward. The other family members still stood there paralyzed, unsure of whether or not to go after her or to stand their ground.
“Big Mac.”
The bigger family member looked up at that, and hearing the force in Applejack’s voice snapped him out of it a little as well. “Ee…eeyup?”
“Get the rest of the kinfolk together.”
Saying that caused several of the others to turn to her. She gestured around.
“All of ya’…lend a hand. Get everyone together and get ready to go with Candy Apples back to town. You get there…you find everyone else and then you get ready to get the hell outta here.”
Several of the family members looked at her in surprise. “Ya’ mean…desert?”
“We enlisted and everythin’, Applejack,” another immediately added. “We can’t just up and walk away now.”
“They shoot folks fer doin’ that!” another put it far more bluntly.
“Way I see it, we get shot pretty soon if we don’t,” she retorted. “We either die on this mound o’ mud or we live to see tomorrow. But either way, we ain’t gettin’ back Sweet Apple Acres stickin’ around here tonight. We got to live to fight another day.”
The family members hesitated, not only from the audacity of Applejack’s suggestion but also from their own natural inclination toward patriotism for their homeland. It didn’t last, however. They had seen enough of reality and the situation as it was to realize the sense in Applejack’s words.
“An’ I only said ‘get ready’. Don’t actually run for it yet. Just make sure you’re all together if worse comes to worse.”
“What about you?”
The farmer paused momentarily. She glanced over to Pinkie, whose expression hadn’t changed much. Now, however, she looked hopefully at her.
She looked back to her relative. “I ain’t leavin’ yet. I still got work to do in Trottingham.”
Now several of the family members really did look shocked.
“That’s crazy!”
“Ya’ can’t do that!”
“What’re ya’ thinkin’?!”
“You outta yer mind?” Apple Brown Betty shouted. “You wanna run toward all the fightin’? That’s suicide!”
“Eeyup!” Big Macintosh immediately added.
Her face only firmed up. “There’s still another family who needs my help! So quit worryin’ ‘bout me and see to our family!” With that, she turned away. “C’mon, Pinkie! We’ve stayed ‘round here long enough!”
Without another word, Applejack turned on her heel and began to run right for the fort. The others hesitated, taken off guard by her last statement, but Pinkie spun around and headed after her. Even when she was more “seriously” running, she continued to seem to almost skip along, but Applejack didn’t worry about that. Heedless of any soldiers who might try to stop her, she went straight for the entrance.
As it turned out, there wasn’t anyone left there to bar her way, and the doors were already open. She immediately showed herself in, but had scarcely taken a few steps inside when she began to cough and covered her mouth. Much of the interior had a smoky haze, and the scent of fire hung heavily on the air. She only got a few more steps before she was forced to move to one side as several soldiers rushed out, carrying comrades who were covered with soot and, in some cases, burns with them. She tried moving on after they passed, but most of the lighting inside the fort was out now, and combined with the smoke that made it almost impossible to see. Nevertheless, as soon as she was sure Pinkie was behind her, she pressed on and, through memory, tried to make her way to the top.
The going didn’t get easier. At one point, she passed one collapsed gun emplacement. Most of the iron and wooden palisades were collapsed, and three soldiers were struggling to drag what was left of a still-alive soldier out from underneath a large portion of it. On the second floor, one of the corridors was gone while a second one was on fire. As they crossed to the stairs, a large portion of the fort gave a loud groan, right before the ceiling and support timbers were rattled by the thunder of one of the remaining cannons. It was clear the place didn’t have long, and that made Applejack rush a bit faster as she realized the third floor might not be standing much longer.
Things got even worse when they finally reached the third floor. More soldiers came rushing by, but these ones weren’t carrying the wounded. Applejack was able to spot that several of them were officers even in the darkness. No sooner had they run by than the sound of more bombs dropping rang out, with explosions severe enough to give the fort another rattling. Hearing that quickly pushed the two of them to run the rest of the way to the room where they had met Burnt Oak.
The door was swung fully open and as soon as the two were close enough they looked inside. A second later, they had to back up again as a minor officer rushed out with arms full of papers. They looked back in, moving in this time while they could, and saw the colonel and two other officers rushing around grabbing maps, charts, and papers and shoving them as fast as they could into a large metal wastebasket. A fire was going in it, but they didn’t seem to mind. Smoke was billowing out, but with the window blasted out in the office it helped with some ventiliation.
Seeing this made Applejack confused. “Colonel Oak?”
The officer looked up at that, clearly incensed but also puzzled to hear the voice. He calmed soon after on spotting her. “Sergeant?”
“What’s goin’ on up here?”
His jaw clenched as his eyes fell. He looked away and grabbed another load of papers to throw on the fire. “Last bombing run hit too close to home. Took out the general with it. Lieutenant general is in command now and he gave the final order.” He threw his own papers in the barrel. The other two officers were about to do more, but he held out a hand to them. “Wait for it to catch a moment. Don’t smother it.” He then began to reach for more. “Higher officers like me already got the command to start clearing out. Any minute now they’re gonna put out the call to everyone else. Hopefully sooner while we still can.”
“What do ya’ mean? What final order?”
He glanced at her a moment, as if wondering how she couldn’t know already. “Guess you haven’t heard from that front. The whole north side is collapsing. Trottingham’s pushing in. This time they ain’t gonna stop until they’ve pinched us off from the city all together. When that happens, there won’t even be an evacuation route. We’re making one final counterattack as we speak. We’re hoping to bluff them long enough.”
“Long enough for what?”
Burnt Oak squared himself with her. “For everyone to get their asses to town and then get out while they can.”
Applejack stood somewhat stunned on hearing that, pausing for a moment. “But…where y’all fallin’ back to? Where we gettin’ together at?”
He let out a weak chuckle. “Getting together? Sgt. Applejack, take a good look outside. In two weeks half the army’s gone under. We’re fightin’ seasoned veterans with better weapons and combat vehicles with draftees who’ve never even seen a machine gun. They all pledged to die for their country and, frankly, that’s mostly what they’ve been doing since then. A third of our rail systems are gutted. Half of the cable lines are cut. We lost most of our artillery and what’s left is scattered in the rest of the country. Anywhere we could have mounted a defense has already been overrun. We don’t even have the infrastructure, let alone the manpower, to retake what we’ve lost of Appleloosa. We held out here out of a mixture of a fool’s hope that another nation would come save us and stubborn pride that we’d never lose Appleloosa to Trottingham or anyone else. If we had any sense, we would have started the evacuation yesterday. We may have had time then to lay some seed for what could have been a counteroffensive one day. Now even if the capitol orders us to retreat we’ll never hear it. So we’re gonna do them the favor.”
Applejack was left staring with her jaw hanging loose. She was only able to stand there and process what she just heard for a few moments as the three continued to burn documents. After only a few more loads, Burnt Oak waved at the officers. “Alright, that’s enough. Anything else they still have maps on isn’t worth stealing. Get yourselves out of here while you can.”
One of the officers needed no encouragement, immediately turning and running for it. The other held a little longer, looking back at the colonel, before finally resigning herself and pushing past Applejack and Pinkie Pie to follow. As for himself, he quickly went to the shelf to get his own sidearm.
As he was strapping it on, Applejack finally spoke. “So that’s it? We’re really just…just givin’ up like that?”
“It ain’t like I care for this any more than you, or anyone else,” he answered as he threaded the buckle. “When I was your age, I might’ve head out there and gone down trying to bring down one of their airships with a pistol. I figured I’d rather go down being a pain in their neck if nothing else. I know better now.”
Finishing tightening his belt, he moved to head out as well, but stopped. He saw Applejack standing there. Her own head was bowed to the ground now. Her eyes were wide open and she stared at a spot on it. The full realization was clearly coming upon her.
He frowned before exhaling. “I’d be lying if I said I knew what was going to come next. I’d be lying if I said I even knew for sure this was the right thing to do. I just know this is all I can do now.”
She kept her head bowed, not answering.
“Applejack.”
The way he said this, far more firmly, was enough to make her look up and meet eyes with him again.
“All that matters right now is we give whoever’s left a fightin’ chance. There may be another day yet, but there ain’t one if we stay here.”
She eventually swallowed and nodded. “I know that. It’s just…it don’t make it any easier.”
“It ain’t supposed to. It’s just supposed to let you know it’s what’s gotta happen.”
It took her a moment, but she nodded back at that.
He weakly smiled. “I really wish I could’ve talked to you more about Bright. Especially when I found out your brother was here too. Maybe we’ll see each other again yet. For right now, get yourself and your family outta here.”
He nearly moved past them. However, this snapped Applejack fully out of it. She stepped in his way and held up a hand.
“Actually…that ain’t why we came up here. We need your help.”
He looked back at her curiously. “My help? For what?”
Applejack took a moment to look behind her back to Pinkie, but she merely looked hopefully back and waited. Taking a deep breath, she turned back to him. “The two of us need to get into Trottingham.”
His look went from curiosity to questioning Applejack’s sanity. “Trottingham? What are you talkin’ about?”
“My friend’s family is holed up in Trottingham. They’re…they’re…” She hesitated a moment before spitting it out. “They’re Gaitians. They’re roundin’ ‘em all up right now and no one knows where. We got to go in and try and bail ‘em out.”
“You out of your mind?” he answered rather bluntly. “You’re gonna try and break through the enemy to go right into their own territory. Even if you make it, how do you plan to get out again? If it was that easy those Gaitians would have gotten themselves out by now.”
“We’ve still gotta try. Pinkie here helped me with my family. Even if she didn’t…I gotta do this. I can’t turn my back on it. If I have to, I’ll do it on foot, but we’re goin’ one way or another.”
Burnt Oak looked back in her eyes for a few moments, but her resolve didn’t waver. On the contrary, it became more focused and determined than it had been when she entered the room.
Realizing that, he finally softened up as well. “Get to the east side of the fort on the first floor, fast as you can. They’re about to cut the warhorses loose. You might still be able to get some. Right now, that’s the only thing that’ll get you east fast.”
“Alright.” A small smile formed on her lips. “Thanks, colonel.”
“Just make sure you get in and back alive, sergeant. Both of you and that family of yours.”
Getting to the stables wasn’t nearly as hard as getting up to the third floor. The word was beginning to spread fast, and everyone who was left in the fortress was going out the same way they were. On reaching the ground level, the two quickly rounded it for the east side, but before they even got there the alarm started to blare with the signal to evacuate. Applejack stiffened on hearing it, knowing they had little time left.
It was only when the doors to the stable were coming into view that she heard Pinkie speak again. “Sorry, Applejack…”
The farmer paused long enough to glance behind her, seeing Pinkie, once again, looking unusually downcast for her normal self. “Sorry? Sorry ‘bout what?”
“I wanted to pray that your family would be safe before the battle started, but I didn’t. I didn’t take any time out to build a shrine or anything. If I had…that wouldn’t have happened.”
Applejack twisted her lips a bit. She paused momentarily, more at the memory than anything else, before turning around and continuing. “Don’t worry none ‘bout that. Ain’t yer fault.”
“But I should have said something. I should have-”
“Nevermind all that hogwa…I mean, nevermind any of that,” she retorted, getting a bit sharper and more impatient-sounding. As a result, she took a moment to calm herself before speaking again. “Like I said, it ain’t yer fault. It’s these damn folks from Trottingham comin’ in and blowin’ stuff up where they ain’t wanted. Get mad at them. I sure am. And at any rate, don’t worry none ‘bout that.”
She glanced back, forcing herself to smile a little.
“We’re gonna get your kin folk and we’re gonna get them two hundred miles away from here. That’s all that matters now, so you just keep thinkin’ ‘bout that, ya’ hear?”
Pinkie finally smiled a little on hearing Applejack’s own encouraging words. “Alright. I will.”
She turned around again, but heard Pinkie “hop” a bit more in her step as she followed behind. In spite of everything that had happened, Applejack smirked more genuinely at that as she rounded the corner and headed into the stables.
The chamber was a long row of simple iron stalls, no doubt meant to accommodate a considerable number of horses at maximum capacity. Hay looked like it had been in short supply, not to mention that the stalls hadn’t been properly cleaned in a few days based on the stink that hit her nostrils. However, the gaslighting was still working and the area was well illuminated. Three soldiers were inside, no doubt some form of cavalry men and women. One of them was leading a trio of horses to one side, likely what they intended to ride out on once they were done. However, the other two were readily stripping down one of the horses. No sooner had they finished with him than they gave him a smack on the rear in the right direction, and with a snort he ran out through the open doors. By now, there were only about a dozen of them left, and the two quickly ran for another one.
As they seized the bridle, Applejack held up a hand. “Hold it right there!”
The two turned to her. Based on their faces, to say nothing of the anxiety and tension on them, it was clear they were still fairly raw recruits who knew mostly tending the horses rather than battlefield experience.
“We need some of them horses! We’re takin’ ‘em out!”
The two paused momentarily as Applejack began to approach. “Take them out? We just got the evacuation order. We’re turning them loose…”
“Nevermind none of that,” she answered as she reached them, immediately pushing in and taking the bridle from their hands, much to their surprise. “This here’s a special last mission. Got it from Colonel Burnt Oak himself. You can go ahead and turn these other ones loose, but after you find one for my comrade right here.”
“You need to find a few more than that.”
Applejack gave a start on hearing the voice from the entrance. Immediately she spun around, and got another surprise.
Eight members of the Apple Family were standing there, including Apple Split and Apple Brown Betty, with none other than Big Macintosh in the lead. However, they stood only a moment for Applejack to spot them. After that, they began to file inside. Without waiting for prompting or for permission from the soldiers, they headed straight for the remaining occupied stalls to pick out horses of their own. All save Big Macintosh, who began to walk inside but kept his eyes on Applejack.
Applejack’s surprise turned to shock, tinted with just a hint of anger. As she glanced about at the family running in, she snapped. “What in tarnation you all think you’re doin’ here? Ain’t you heard the siren? You got to get out with the family!”
“Family’s all taken care of, cousin,” Apple Split answered as he began to open his own stall. “Caramel Apple took charge of the whole lot. They’re getting Candy out of here then they’re gonna get the others and head out.”
“Then why the hell ain’t you headin’ out with ‘em?”
“Can’t head out with ‘em ‘cause we’re headin’ out with you, cousin,” Apple Brown Betty answered as she took the bridle of her own horse. “We talked it over already, and since Big Mac insisted, so did we.”
“Eeyup,” the big man quietly answered.
This prompted Applejack to wheel to him, making her even angrier. “You outta yer apple-pickin’ mind? Don’t you know what we’re up to? Where we’re headed?”
He came to a stop in front of her, but remained standing calm and tall. “Eeyup.”
She advanced, almost getting in his face. “Then you should have the sense to stay outta it! This is somethin’ me an’ Pinkie need to do! And I ain’t draggin’ any more of the family along with me to get anyone else hurt or killed! Now get the rest of the family and get out of here!”
He simply shook his head. “Nope.”
Applejack flushed redder. “You stubborn mule! I said I ain’t gettin’ anyone else in the family killed! Think about granny! How do you think she’s gonna feel if none of us come back? How do you think she’s gonna feel if she loses all of her grandkids without even havin’ a chance to see ‘em ‘fore they left?”
Big Mac looked her straight in the eye.
“And how do ya’ think I’m gonna feel tellin’ her she lost her other granddaughter and I didn’t even try to keep her safe?”
A stillness went through the room as all of the members of the Apple family paused, looking up and over to Big Mac on hearing him speak beyond his normal one-word replies. Applejack’s own anger abated, but not just at him responding to her. After a moment, her own face began to look uneasy before she looked at the floor.
“Applejack,” Big Mac went on, “I ain’t gonna try and talk you outta this even if I don’t want you to go. But after what happened to Apple Bloom, you can’t ask me to stay behind neither. Either it’s too dangerous for you an’ me both to ride outta here and we both head back to granny, or we both go out together. ‘Cause lettin’ you go would be me lettin’ you get killed.”
Applejack stood there silently for several seconds. The rest of the family waited, while the remaining soldiers hesitated; not sure what to do next. Outside the sirens continued to blare. Gunfire started up again, but it was distant for the moment.
Finally she looked back up and frowned again. It was more wistful this time, however. “If I had time to spare, I’d whip every last one of your butts to get y’all to stay put. I ain’t got time for that now, though.”
In spite of her saying this, however, the look in her eyes betrayed her true feelings. Enough to where Big Mac smiled a little in spite of it. And, as a result, she began to smile too. A moment later, she turned and shouted. “So you all better make damn sure you don’t get yourselves shot out there! Ain’t nobody else in this family dyin’ today!”
With that, she turned to her horse. Taking the pommel, she promptly stepped up into a stirrup and pulled herself inside. Once in, she quickly straddled the saddle and took the reins. As for Big Mac, he wasted no more time and quickly went to get his own mount. In moments, all of them were saddling up and leading their horses out. Seeing the change, the soldiers didn’t argue anymore. They quickly went to one of the remaining untaken horses and started to strip her down so they could get out themselves.
It wasn’t long after getting into the saddle herself and leading her horse to the doors of the stable that Applejack looked back to see how the others were doing, and spotted that Pinkie had gotten a horse of her own but was having a bit of trouble getting up and into it. While she was enthusiastic enough about the entire situation, it nevertheless took her three tries to pull herself up onto the horse’s saddle, and then she over pulled and nearly went off the other side. “Whoops!” she shouted, before quickly pulling herself back.
Applejack looked at her uneasily. “Uh, Pinkie? You ever rode a horse?”
“Sure! My granny Pie took me on a pony ride when I was little!”
Applejack’s face made it clear that wasn’t the answer she was looking for, but one of her family members quickly pulled her horse alongside her. “I’ll help her, cousin. I was ‘round these horses the other day. They know how to mind.”
She nodded back. “Thanks, Apple Bumpkin.” She turned to the rest of the room. “Y’all ready? This is gonna be one hell of a bumpy ride!”
The rest of the family quickly pulled their horses out of their stalls and up behind Applejack. The soldiers, loosing the last untaken horse, turned and quickly got onto their own mounts. Another cannon shell went off, this one much closer than before. The enemy was nearly to the fort.
“Alright then! Let’s ride! Yee-ha!”
She gave a kick to the flanks of her own horse, and the steed immediately took off. She urged it on afterward, not stopping until it was at a full running gallop. An instant later, she crossed under the threshold of the stable and was once again out onto the battlefield.
Until she left the stable, she was able to hear a chorus of hoofbeats behind her from the others following her. Once outside, however, it was quickly drowned out by the sounds of war. All of the gunshots, bomb blasts, and cannon fire was still going off, to say nothing of the sirens to evacuate and the periodic shouts from the hurt or injured. She didn’t get very far before she was already running among the broken down trenches and remains of gun batteries and barbed wire. At that point, she no longer had the luxury of checking behind her to make sure her family was following suit. She just had to move on and hope they could keep up with her. With that in mind, she lowered herself on the horse’s back and focused entire on the ride.
The trenches had already been bridged to allow the cavalry the opportunity to ride out if need be. As a result, she was able to cross the first and second without difficulty. By the time she reached the third, however, lights began to along the battlefield. Moments later, she heard whizzing around her from what had to be gunfire. Keeping her head low and hoping the rest of the family could keep up, she turned the horse to the side and rode perpendicular along the ground between trenches for a short while, trying to let her attackers exhaust their shots and pause to reload. As soon as there was a break again, she pitched forward and crossed the third and fourth trenches.
By the time she reached the fifth, the bullets started again. One of them almost made her horse spook, and she quickly turned it to one side and rode along again. This time, the bullets only lessened. They didn’t stop, and another shot nearly hit her even as a moving target. This forced her to turn her mount forward and try to push through as best as she could. The uneven terrain provided for a natural serpentine, giving her some advantages, but she felt herself beginning to tense up more with each bullet she heard whizz by, wondering how many there would be before one got lucky.
She finally reached the sixth and final trench, and by that time the fog of war was starting to roll over the area even after the fighting from earlier had leveled off, while the bullets were becoming too intensive. Not wasting any more time, she made the horse go straight for the crossing point and bolted across. On the other side was the open battlefield, and once she hit the ground she nearly kicked the horse into a gallop…
Her ears were nearly split as an eruption of flame and dirt went off right in front of her. The horse came to a halt and bucked up on two legs, and combined with the shock of the sudden explosion she was forced to hold on tight as she was nearly thrown off. Her eyes widened and she began to gasp. An artillery unit had been posted to nail the first thing that came over that last trench crossing. The only reason she hadn’t been blown up was because it had misfired, being aimed too much to one side. As the horse lowered itself, bits of dirt and debris came raining down on her, and genuine fear sank into her heart. It wasn’t for two seconds that she realized she was gasping. Yet she snapped out of it soon after. Using that tension to drive herself, she got control of her mount again, steered it forward, and then kicked the flanks again to get it back into full gallop.
After that, things became a blur. It was only moments before another artillery shell went off. This one wasn’t as close, fortunately, and it didn’t stop the horse again, but it was still near enough to feel the heat and force. She only made her horse gallop harder, forgetting about anything else except riding as hard and as fast as she could to clear the thinner enemy lines. In spite of the fog, bullets and artillery shells continued to ring out around her. She saw the lights from powder dotting the landscape continuously even as the lights of the fort were left behind. The very ground beneath her shuddered and shook as they continued to fire away. For all of the firing, she only focused on the horizon and blocked out all thoughts of eminent death surrounding her.
She didn’t know how long she rode through that hell. It seemed to get darker as she rode with the closing evening, but she really couldn’t tell through the smoke and haze. She could only hope that the constant artillery fire was missing the rest of the family behind her. Slowly, the sounds of bombs dropping began to grow quieter. The screams from earlier vanished or, rather, were swallowed up by the new sounds of gunpowder igniting. From time to time, in the thick fog, she could see herself riding past enemy artillery emplacements or even entire groups of them lined up, clearing out of the way of her horse’s charge. She didn’t even notice when the artillery shells finally began to thin out, and the shots seemed to be coming from the sides rather than in front of her, and eventually from behind her…
The fog finally began to clear, and there was still enough light from the set sun to see the landscape ahead of her. Only at that point did Applejack realize that the gunfire and artillery shells were still coming, but were now coming from behind. In spite of the fact that they hadn’t fully leveled off yet, hope surged inside her on realizing she made it through Not only that, but as she continued to gallop forward and the fog kept clearing, she began to make out a flat curve in the area ahead—one of the main roads. She headed straight for it, hoping to use the level surface to truly leave the enemy army behind.
At that point, she had enough clarity to think of the family again. She finally risked a look behind her.
It was dark but she saw the outline of riders, silhouetted by dots of light and smoke lining the horizon. They were scattered and fanned out, and she struggled to do a tally of them…
Abruptly, her vision cut off as her eardrums were pounded once again, this time by an artillery shell right behind her. In an instant, her senses were overloaded and the world went to black, and all she could remember was violence and noise.
Somehow, through a series of disconnection, as if she was experiencing it from outside of her body, she became conscious of her body taken off the back of the horse and flung through the air before landing violently against the ground. She went for a tumble like she was a rag doll flung by a child, and kept right on rolling until she landed in a ditch dug alongside the road. From there, she went flat and still for a few moments.
Her senses began to come back to her soon after, and with them came nothing but pain. Her already injured leg now hurt to the point of crippling agony, but the rest of her body felt bruised and beaten as if she had been held down by ten of those goons for an hour. Her brain was throbbing along with her ringing ears from the explosion, and heat from shrapnel burns was radiating around her body from several places. She couldn’t move for the pain and, in all honesty, began to realize she might have been too injured to move even if the pain wasn’t there. Her mind hastily patched together that she had nearly been hit by another artillery shell. This one had blown her off of her horse and flung her into the ditch. That was all she was able to conclude before her thoughts were drowned out by feelings of agony. A moment later, she screamed.
She had to yell out her agony for several seconds before she began to adjust and grew able to think again in spite of fresh pain over her body. Her eyes looked out and she was able to see a horse ride up to her, although it was too dark and she was too dazzled to make out who. The rider practically threw themselves off of the horse’s back to dismount and then began to run over to her. Other horses began to ride up as well, and her vision cleared up enough to see two of them were a pair together, and one had curly hair.
At that point, the first rider reached her. Through her dazzled wits, she made out it was Big Macintosh.
She grit her teeth. She tried to yell at him and tell him to keep going, but after her scream she had no breath left. She couldn’t do much as he began to put his arms around her to pick her up. As he did and she weakly tried to struggle to move herself, more horses arrived and several of the others began to get off as well.
She got enough strength to wave a hand and croak. “Go.. Keep…goin’…”
“Nope!” Big Mac shouted back as he managed to heave her off the ground. It looked as if he planned to carry her the rest of the way himself without going back to his horse. The gunshots continued to go off around them. They began to pick up in intensity too, now that they were in one spot and weren’t moving. One of the horses suddenly let out a panicked whine. Applejack looked up, and saw one of the family members cry out as their horse suddenly collapsed under them. It had clearly just been hit. The other animals began to prance about, eager to flee, and their riders only barely managed to keep them under control. Apple Bumpkin had the worst as she had to control hers and Pinkie’s at the same time.
She nearly yelled at them again to go while they could, but she cut herself off and the others looked up in alarm a moment later. They heard a new sound mixing over the noise of the battle. The sound of a large, loud steam engine…
Applejack forced herself to look up more even as Big Macintosh held her. It was coming from the road, and no sooner had she looked that way than a large, lumbering steam car, making all sorts of loud, groaning, grinding noises and looking battered, beaten, and even blood stained cut around the curve so sharp that the edge of its frame dug a rift into the dirt and gravel. For a moment, the family panicked as it turned so sharply that it nearly flipped itself over on top of them. Somehow it stabilized and leveled itself out, and moments later the brakes gave such a loud whine that it sounded like they were nearly broken off as the vehicle stopped.
It sat there for a second, whistling and screeching from what had to be numerous steam leaks and grinding of gears, but then it gave off another hiss as the side hatch opened up. In the darkness and flashes of gunpowder, Applejack vaguely made out the outline of a dozen people. However, one of them was gleaming with an aura. A person with a long cloak, a wide-brimmed hat, and a wand. She ran out and, at once, Applejack recognized her.
She wasn’t alone.
“Twilight!” Pinkie exclaimed for joy.
Her own expression wasn’t as happy. More like panicked. “Get in! Hurry!”
A few of the family members recognized Twilight from before, but, fortunately, due to being familiar with Applejack and Pinkie’s own transformations, they didn’t hesitate for more than half a second. Big Macintosh took off in a run for the open hatch as Twilight quickly moved out and to the rear. As soon as she was there, she began to chant and draw an elaborate rune. Applejack only saw it for a moment before she was tilted to one side so that her brother could get inside along with her. Behind her, the rest of the family quickly began to dismount and follow suit.
No sooner had Applejack been carried into the confines of the vehicle when she soon found there was more than a dozen inside, and that most of them were standing. She was soon being squished into a crowd of four, and squished even more as Red Delicious and Florina Tart shoved in behind them.
She grit her teeth as her bad leg was jarred. “It’s a mite snug in-”
She was cut off, however, as the engine gave a roar and began to grind again. The whole engine started to lurch forward.
“H-hey wait a minute!” she shouted. “Folks are still comin’ in!”
“This engine’s on it’s last legs!” a voice shouted from the front. “We don’t get it moving soon it’s going to die for the last time and we’ll be stuck here!”
Tensing up, Applejack turned back to the entrance. Two more members of her family managed to rush in and push themselves inside while it was still barely rolling, but soon it increased its speed. As the rest of the people inside struggled to make room, two more family members came up. Another individual came forward and reached out, pulling them in one after another. As they did, Applejack heard the sound of a rune being executed, and suddenly a massive fiery glow lit up the night outside and illuminated everyone. She nearly exclaimed in surprise, knowing that had been Twilight’s doing, but that she had to have generated a massive fire behind them to create that sort of blaze. Nevertheless, it seemed to work. The gunshots halted soon after.
However, the steam engine was picking up speed, and both she, Pinkie Pie, and Apple Split weren’t in yet. And as it continued to accelerate, easily reaching a running gait, Applejack felt herself start to grow nervous. She realized she never counted the horses back there, or saw what became of the family member who fell off their own mount when the horse was shot. That anxiety began to give way to fear…
Before it could get any worse, however, huffing and puffing all the way, barely able to keep up, Apple Split ran up alongside the side of the steam engine. He was sweating, panting, bruised, and looked barely able to keep going, but he also had his hand behind him. As he got nearer, it turned out he had taken Twilight’s hand and was yanking her onward, for she seemed to be doing no better than him in spite of her transformation. The two of them managed to get close enough to grab outstretched hands and get pulled inside. As they were crossing the threshold, she finally caught a glimpse of Pinkie’s bouncy hair as she came half-skipping to the side of the steam engine. Applejack’s hat, which she didn’t even realize she lost, was in one hand. With barely any room left to spare, she hopped inside easily soon after.
The engine roar grew so loud that, with the grinding of the gears and cracks in the boiler, it was impossible to hear anything but the noise around her. Applejack tried to look outside to see what they were doing or what was happening, but soon after the side hatch closed and she and everyone else was plunged into the darkness of the unlit cabin. There she remained as they slowly rolled out into the night.
Day had broken again and the sun was fully up. Still the steam car had failed to encounter anyone along the long, winding dirt road. That seemed even less likely now since they had entered a new forest long before daybreak, and ever since then had seen nothing other than occasional wildlife. As the steam engine continued to make more laborious noises and the pressure gauge continued its slow descent, they nevertheless pushed it on farther and farther.
Sleep was impossible for almost anyone in the trackless engine, for by now they were so full that only the injured were able to lie down. Most of the people who were standing looked like zombies, after having been awake for at least two days. The cockpit area was no better. Both Double Diamond and Starlight Glimmer were crammed inside, both looking ready to nod off, with Twilight Sparkle and Sunset Shimmer nearly crushed in over their shoulders.
Starlight looked at the pressure gauge again. She reached out and tapped it a few times, but when it didn’t change she sighed. “I think we have maybe 15 more minutes before we lose pressure all together. We’ve been on red for three hours now.” She turned to Diamond. “Get us in as deep as you can. We want to be off the beaten path as much as possible.”
“Relax,” Sunset answered tiredly. “You don’t think I would have used this road if Trottinghamites knew about it, do you? I rode it for years. It was an easy way in and out of the country.”
Starlight looked up at her briefly, still giving her an uncomfortable stare, before turning back. “Well, not like we have much choice. We certainly weren’t getting out of here going west.”
Twilight, looking uncomfortable herself, nervously looked up to Sunset when she saw her hold a cloth to the side of her face. “Uh…how’s your eye doing?”
Sunset frowned, turning to face Twilight and revealing a black eye with considerable swelling around it. “Not as bad as my eye socket…which I hope isn’t broken…”
“Yeah…sorry about that. I should have told Applejack faster. As bad as she looked, I really didn’t think she had the strength.”
Sunset sighed and looked forward again. “I think I’m just going to have to get used to people punching me in the face at first glance from now on…”
“You know…my brother could probably heal that up.”
“After what I did to him and his parents? I doubt that.”
Twilight raised an eyebrow. “Wait…what?”
Sunset blanched. “…Nothing. Forget it.”
Twilight eyed her a moment more before deciding to drop it. She heard a shifting through the crowd behind her soon after, though, prompting her to turn and look around.
Behind her, all five girls were now gathered. Applejack was the one heading forward, her leg now heavily bandaged but with only a slight limp. The rest of her injuries from when she got the artillery blast had long since been healed by magic. Fluttershy was nearby, still with her own Anima Viri equipped but looking a little winded none the less. Pinkie Pie was on the other side, grinning from ear to ear, as she had been as soon as she realized she was back with the rest of the ladies. Rainbow Dash was already up front, leaning against the side of the cockpit entrance. Finally, Rarity, giving a bit of a “lady-like” yawn herself, joined on the opposite side. Everyone looked to Twilight with a mixture of expressions, but all of them had at least a slight smile.
She smiled back after a moment. “I wasn’t sure if it would ever happen that night in the Castle of the Two Sisters…but we’re finally all back together again.”
“Yeah, all of us Twilight!” Pinkie chirped. “Even Sunset Shimmer!”
This caused the smiles to vanish rather quickly. Rainbow Dash let out a mutter. Applejack cast a glare to the cockpit, her dominant fist tightening for another blow. Fluttershy began to play with her hair and look at the ground. Rarity turned her nose up slightly with a rather critical glance to the front.
As for Twilight, she grimaced slightly but ignored the comment. “I just wish we all could have gotten back together under better circumstances. I was hoping that everything would be over with by now, but it looks like we’re not quite out of the woods yet…”
“I’ll say,” Applejack grunted, “We gotta do something about Trottingham overrunnin’ Greater Everfree.”
Rarity turned to her in puzzlement. “Trottingham? I dare say that Trottingham is nothing compared to what Shining Armor told us about. The Nighttouched have grown a hundred times worse, in my opinion.”
“Forget about Nighttouched for right now,” Rainbow Dash spoke up, “We’ve got bigger fish to fry. Griffonstone figured out how to use Anima Viris too. They’re the biggest bad news out there.”
“Um…” Fluttershy spoke up mildly, “I don’t suppose before that we could do something about that armored person who…um…attacked Rarity and me?”
“Could we maybe wait until after we’re done saving my family, so long as we’re in Trottingham?” Pinkie asked.
Twilight was left staring dumb-founded. She uneasily looked to one side. “I…was going to mention those things in the sea south of Greater Everfree, but it kind of sounds like we got a lot on our plate already…”
“Oh, you don’t know the half of it, darling,” Rarity answered with an eye roll. “And just wait until Starlight Glimmer tells you about what she found in the forest north of Manehattan.”
Twilight grimaced, taking a moment to close her eyes, rub the bridge of her nose, and exhale. “Ok…let’s try to sit down and start from the top. It sounds like we got a lot to sort out.”
“Let’s keep an eye on everyone else while we’re at it,” Dash added with a grimace as she looked over the contents of the car. “I don’t know if you noticed yet, but we’ve got quite a few people with Promethian Sigils on their hands in one spot. Last time that happened to us it didn’t go too well…”
Twilight’s pupils shrank a little on the realization, before she slumped and sighed again. “I better keep the Sealing incantation on standby…”
An hour later, the steam car was halted in what seemed to be a fairly desolate and isolated section of forest. The last bit of power was used to take it off road and into the woods to a point where it was as obscured as possible. After that, everyone dismounted from the interior and fanned out in the forest, mostly to stretch, lay down, or find a bit of water to drink. Those who were more able bodied set themselves up as sentries, but with no sign of Trottingham for over a day now they seemed to be in the clear.
Starlight Glimmer was the last to leave, and as soon as she did she headed for the front of the engine. A very dirty and sooty Double Diamond was looking at the open engine compartment and shaking his head. Clouds of smoke were still rising from it in spite of having stopped over twenty minutes ago.
She sighed. “What’s the damage?”
“Every piston is cracked, the boiler is leaking, one axle is snapped in half, another is misaligned, three valves aren’t working, and we’re out of coal.”
A loud clanging sound suddenly rang out from the engine, the result of something large and metal dropping to the ground.
He frowned. “I think that was the journal box.”
“Any chance we can fix it?”
He looked up to her with an aghast expression. “At this point I don’t think we can sell it for parts.” He groaned, running a hand through his hair. “Dad’s going to kill me…”
“Just hang in there. One day, we’ll get used to all this bad stuff constantly happening to us.” She sighed and turned away. “At least, I keep telling myself that…” she added before walking away.
She began to approach one side, where the six ladies had drawn away from the others. They had all taken positions in a circle and were talking to each other about everything they had experienced over the past few months. Standing a bit to one side and leaning against a tree with her arms crossed stood Sunset Shimmer, who for the most part was trying to avoid everyone while sticking close to Twilight in a relative sense.
As she stood there, she saw the radiance of an Anima Viri’s glow fall over her. She looked up at that, and gave a start and recoiled on seeing Shining Armor standing right next to her. His look wasn’t terribly friendly, but it wasn’t hostile either.
He stared at her a moment before he held up a hand in her face. “Here. Twilight showed me a spell on the way here.”
She cringed even more, expecting some sort of attack. However, one didn’t come. He simply closed his eyes and cast a healing incantation. Much to her surprise, in moments the swelling and pain around her eye began to diminish, and her vision cleared. After a few seconds he cut off, but her face was looking far better than before.
Without a word, he turned to walk away. Sunset was left open-mouthed and speechless for a second before she was able to call out.
“Wait.”
He halted, looking back at her.
“Why did you do that? After…after I…”
“You may like seeing people in pain, but I’ve seen enough of that to last a lifetime.” Without another word, he turned and walked off back to the others.
Sunset was left still staring. After a time, her mouth closed. She looked down and was uncomfortable again, but this time it didn’t seem for quite the same reasons. After a few seconds she looked back to the six women.
“…Then she just up and shot away like a bullet,” Applejack finished, frowning at the conclusion. “Right after that, Trottingham attacked. We probably could’ve held ‘em back a bit longer if she hadn’t smashed a hole through the trenches…”
“Let me get this straight…” Rainbow Dash interjected. “You’re saying even you couldn’t knock this person out when you were using your Anima Viri? And they did all that?” She hesitated, looking a bit uncertain, before grinning weakly. “Uh, heh…not bad…but…I’m sure I could pull it off…”
“I don’t think any of us could have pulled that off,” Twilight retorted, looking far more concerned. “Not only was whoever did that incredibly powerful, but obviously she knew something about Promethian Sigils. She wouldn’t have been looking over your hands if she didn’t. The question is…what?”
Dash frowned a little, inclining her head. “Yo Sunset. I don’t suppose whoever was in the armor was just like that tin can who used to run around with you, was she? Another one of your toadies?”
Sunset stiffened on hearing mention of the ‘tin can’ and hesitated. Finally, she frowned and shook her head. “He was the only one who had an advanced set of armor. And this doesn’t sound anything like whatever I came up with.”
“I think she’s right, everyone,” Rarity spoke up. “This person sounds just like the one who attacked Fluttershy and I, and that armor most certainly wasn’t as…shall we say…crude.”
Sunset looked slightly insulted at that, but looked away and said no more.
“You don’t think it was the same person, do you?” Fluttershy ventured.
Rarity touched a hand to her chin. “Well, they did both have symbols all over their armor suits, although some of the details Applejack related seem inconsistent with the one who attacked us. And the weaponry was definitely different… That reminds me, Twilight. The symbols on the suit of armor. They reminded me of some of the Promethian Sigils. I was wondering if you knew what they could mean.”
She shrugged. “Well, I’d be happy to give it a shot, but we don’t have it.”
Rarity smirked as she reached down for a stick. “Oh, pish-posh, darling. I remember it perfectly.” She tipped the end to a patch of ground and began to etch. “Let’s see here…”
“Oh, oh!” Pinkie spoke up excitedly. “And I got a piece of her armor that had a symbol on it too! Hang on…” With that, she began to reach into her own curly hair and fish around inside. As unusual as the gesture was, it was even more unusual a moment later when she produced a scrap of metal. She passed it over to Twilight, who accepted it and immediately began to study it.
After a few more moments, Rarity finished drawing her own symbol and leaned back. “There we are.”
Twilight looked at the emblem in her hands a little longer, then looked down to the ground. After glancing at that a while, she looked back to the metal again, and then back to the symbol on the ground. Her brow gradually began to furrow and she started to look troubled. Sunset gradually leaned her head up again, noticing the reaction, while the others leaned in and stared at her.
“This…this can’t be… Is it a coincidence?”
“Is what a coincidence?” Applejack spoke up.
“It…it doesn’t seem right, but…but these symbols look like the older character script from Headmistress Celestia’s books. The ones in her personal and private collections.”
This got Sunset to straighten up and off the tree again, piquing her curiosity.
“It could just be someone duplicating a similar pattern. I never learned every character, but…but these look very similar…”
After a moment, she looked back to Sunset again. Anticipating the question, she frowned and shook her head. “I didn’t go to any trouble teaching anyone else what few characters I knew. What good would that have done?”
She frowned a little, turning back to the symbols. “This doesn’t make sense… No one else knew about these who wasn’t in Equestria… So how did…?”
Fluttershy looked between the metal and the ground. “They’re definitely different…so maybe that means there was two of them…” she muttered aloud. “Can you make out what they say?”
Twilight only shook her head. “I can read the sounds, but…Celestia only taught me how to read some of the characters. The language they’re in is something else. I only learned a few words of that, and neither of these sounds like anything I remember.”
“What do they say?” Dash asked.
Twilight looked at the metal in her hand a bit longer. “This one reads…what sounds like…Dulcis Machina.” She looked at the one on the ground. “That one…says Malus Pumila.”
“Maybe those were their names?” Rarity suggested.
“If they were, that’s not terribly informative. All this really does is confirm there’s two of them, assuming it’s not one person changing their armor.”
“Nah, I think it’s two, Twilight,” Applejack spoke up darkly. “The one Rarity and Fluttershy talked about seemed like someone in a suit…but the one who came after me an’ Pinkie Pie?” She shook her head. “It was real funny… Like there weren’t nothin’ in there but gears and such. The armor kept openin’ up and all there was inside was more gizmos and doodads. Like it was nothin’ more than a big wind-up doll…”
“Sounds like something I might be able to weigh in on.”
Everyone looked up at that, and spotted Starlight Glimmer finally taking the moment to advance into the group. She inserted herself somewhat hesitantly in the circle, not knowing what else to do and feeling awkward just standing there. However, as soon as she was seated she turned to Twilight.
“I’ve been waiting for a chance to tell you about all of this, and now seems like a good time.”
“Oh yes, Twilight,” Rarity spoke up immediately. “In all the confusion I almost forgot, but I think you’ll find this very interesting.”
“And…maybe just a little spooky…” Fluttershy added quietly.
Her interest clearly stoked, she turned fully to Starlight. Before she had a chance to say anything, however, she was already getting into it.
“Alright, where to start… After the night vanished over Equestria, Manehattan started contracting people to head into the interior to do work on clearing the roads. So I got the idea that the Lunar Discovery Society would, um…well…” She did some hand waving. “Sort of ‘sublet’ itself out as one of those hired companies. I figured it would be the best way to get into Equestria to look for you and more information on what was going on. Not to mention earn some money on the side. So we got to work in the area northeast of Manehattan and started to work our way in that direction toward Canterlot. In the meantime, I brought that book that Sunburst had given me and, using your translation from it, I tried working out if I could decipher any more of it. Learn the symbology, you know? Maybe use it as a cryptographic key?”
She took a deep breath as she began to reach for a stick of her own.
“Well, long story short, for over a month we didn’t really get anywhere except a lot of sore backs and damaged machinery moving underbrush, logs, rocks, and wreckage out of the way. That was until about two weeks ago. Sugar Belle and Party Favor had half of our group doing a branch road while we were working on the main one. They come to us saying that, on a hunch, they took a side branch and followed it all the way to its end, even though it was looking as if it was never a main road to begin with. They ended up finding a barely navigable path through a rocky ravine that ended up in an area with a rock face. And there, they found this.”
Using the stick, she began to etch a symbol of her own on the ground. It took her some time to fully fill it out, but when she was done most of the women looked at it in surprise. By now, they had seen enough of the Equestrian symbology to recognize it when they saw it. However, Twilight’s expression was much different. It was wide-eyed and her mouth loosened a little.
None of them were paying attention to her, but Sunset looked over it as well. When she saw it her face made the same expression.
“It was covering a slab of rock. Looking over it for a while, Party Favor figured out it wasn’t natural. He had Sugar Belle call me over. Once I got there I studied it for three full days before I finally found a special switch on the side. When I hit it, the slab slid aside like it was a door. Now…here’s where things get weird. We tried walking inside, and lights came on. All on their own. They weren’t candles and they weren’t gaslights either. They were just…I don’t know…glass tubes that started radiating light. I looked at one of them and it seemed like small little strips of metal were glowing brightly. I don’t know how or why. All I know is I heard some sort of humming in there. Maybe it was magic or something, but…it only got weirder from there.
“The whole interior was covered with a metal alloy I’ve never seen before. Something very shiny, though. Not dirty or grimy with soot or smoke from a boiler at all. It was some sort of building or structure built into the rock mountain, but it was an architecture I’d never seen before. Air rushed out through these gratings and vents everywhere. More of those lights lit up on their own as we walked through it. There were doors without handles or hinges everywhere, and they just opened up as we got near.
“Then we saw the real weird stuff. There were places at what looked like desks or shelves, only they didn’t have writing tools or paper or books or anything. Instead…and I swear I’m telling the truth…the writing was just hovering there over these special pads. Like they were being drawn with light. It was all more of those symbols and I could only decipher a word here and there, but I think they somehow managed to write down their words with light. That had to be some sort of magic at work. And finally, we made it into the inner chambers.”
She shifted weight, looking even more serious.
“There were machines in there that I can’t even describe. I won’t even pretend to know what they could all do, but it looked like some sort of science lab. The biggest thing, though, was that there were at least a dozen big glass tubes in the room, and I could tell there were even more in the back in other rooms. Most of them were empty, but what was in some of them was pretty freaky. They looked like…well…like animals but only…not.” She sighed. “I don’t know how to explain it. It seemed like some of them were…well…how do I say it… It was like you could tell some of them were trying to be other animals, but they…they were somehow coming up short. There was one thing that really caught my eye, though. It was kind of hard to miss.”
She leaned in closer.
“As soon as we started moving into the room, we saw something jump up and start going wild in one of the tubes. I have no idea how long it’s been in there or what’s keeping it alive, but there was no mistaking it. The darkened fur, the glowing eyes…it was a Nighttouched.”
The area went still. The women stared back at Starlight in wide-eyed amazement for several seconds.
“A Nighttouched?” Applejack echoed.
“Why in the world would there be a Nighttouched in there?” Rarity asked. “Wait…do you mean to tell me that someone actually captured one? And was studying it?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea, but that’s certainly what it looked like,” Starlight answered. “I can’t tell for sure because I really don’t know what those machines were for. But they were highly advanced, and they had marks of the same symbology style all over them that was in my book. It couldn’t be a coincidence. Now I heard you all say that you ran into people with armor that, from my perspective, sounds like extremely advanced technology. I’m guessing it’s the same kind as what I saw. That can’t be a coincidence either.”
Twilight hadn’t changed. Fluttershy turned to her, seeing her still staring at the symbol. “Are…you alright?”
“You recognize that or something, Twilight?” Dash asked.
She was quiet a moment more.
“That’s…the symbol of the inner palace of Canterlot… What Celestia kept on all of the private rooms…”
The group went still again, not exactly sure what that meant—only that it unsettled Twilight and Sunset alike. That much was obvious from the look on her own face. After a time, she finally blinked and swallowed. She looked back up to Starlight afterward. “I’d like to see this place, if you don’t mind. As soon as we can.”
“Yeah, ‘bout that…” Applejack spoke up with a grimace. “Might be a little hard right now, as that’s way over in Equestria on the other side of Greater Everfree and here we are.”
Twilight winced, seeming to remember their current situation. “Er…right. How do we look right now?”
Starlight let out a sigh. “Let’s see… No food, no water, no transportation, we’re stuck behind enemy lines in the home territory of a hostile nation, and seeing as this is a forest we could accidentally run into hiding Nighttouched at any moment. Offhand, I’d say pretty bad. Plus we probably shouldn’t stay in one place for too long.”
Twilight groaned, rubbing her hand along her face. “Right… Ok, first things first. We can’t stay here. We have to find some place where everyone can stay that’s reasonably safe and then take care of everyone’s immediate needs. After that, we can plan our next move.”
“Good luck finding those in Trottingham…” Dash muttered.
“Oh, oh, I know!” Pinkie Pie spoke up, waving her hand excitedly.
Twilight turned to her momentarily, realized she was treating this like it was a “classroom” with her hand up, and then pointed. “Um…yes, Pinkie?”
“My family’s quarry isn’t that far from here! Only about eight miles!”
Both Twilight and Starlight looked up. “Really?”
“Sure! I recognize these woods! I used to go through them all the time when I was younger!”
That caused a round of puzzled expressions from everyone, including Sunset. “Isn’t that…a bit…d-d-dangerous?” Fluttershy asked quietly.
“Well yeah,” Pinkie Pie nearly giggled, “but it’s no big deal for me because-” She paused, suddenly cutting herself off. “Oops!” Her voice dropped into a whisper. “That’s a se-cret.”
Twilight thought about that reaction for a second before shrugging. “Alright, well, I don’t have any better ideas. If no one else does either, I’d say we go for it.”
“I think eight miles through forest is a bit of a stretch for some of us,” Starlight answered, “but I think we can make it.”
“Alright then. Let’s get up and get everyone ready to move.”
Pinkie Pie let out an excited squeal before popping up and merrily bouncing off to everyone else, while the rest of the group more slowly picked themselves up and began to follow afterward. As she stood, Rarity’s face looked somewhat unsure and hesitant. Applejack noticed as she rose and glanced back to her.
“Somethin’ wrong, sugarcube?”
“It just occurs to me that considering how Pinkie is, I’m rather puzzled as to what sort of…ahem…fine people make up the rest of her family.”
Applejack’s mouth swished. “Yeah…I reckon we’re in for a right sight.”
With Pinkie leading the way, the group took only enough time to hide the remains of the steam engine as best as they could, cover their tracks as best as possible, and then set out into the forest. They only traveled about a half mile before she led them to a pathway that she had obviously used many times before, and after that they wormed their way through the woods for the next eight miles. In spite of Pinkie’s cheery demeanor, everyone was on edge not only for fear of Nighttouched but fear of any Trottinghamites. Fortunately, they ran into neither in the rather rough country, and in spite of being a little tiring on the eldest and youngest individuals, they eventually made it through.
Near the end of the trip the forest opened up dramatically, revealing a bare rocky chasm. Getting a little closer, they realized it wasn’t entirely natural but was actually a quarry, although it was in rather poor repair. Most of the tools and carts lying around were rotting or rusting away, and many of the cutting sites were weathered or overgrown with whatever scraggily weeds had managed to find purchase in the soil. Nevertheless, there were still natural ramps descending to three separate tiers into the quarry, and it winded and turned up ahead to provide a rather spacious and sprawling site.
No sooner had they reached the forest periphery and the ground turned to gravel when Pinkie made her call, bouncing forward and sounding out. It made Starlight wince. “Should we really be shouting loud enough for everyone to know we’re here when we don’t exactly know who all might be around?”
Pinkie turned back around, giggling and waving her hand at her. “Oh, silly! No one but the family ever comes to the quarry! And no one’s at the quarry this time of day except Maud! She spends all her time here! Come on! I’ll introduce you to her! She’s always over here!”
With that, she turned around and began to skip away down the nearest rock ramp. Twilight opened her mouth and nearly reached out to her, but then sighed and lowered it again on seeing her rapidly descending out of sight. She turned back to the others.
“I don’t know what kind of people Pinkie’s family are, but if we all come in at once we might overwhelm them. Plus if what she overheard at Mount Eris is true, there might be Trottinghamites nearby already and we don’t want them cornering half these people. I think for starters it’s best if just the five of us go see her family and explain the situation.”
Shining Armor frowned a little. “I don’t really like the sound of you going by yourselves, but…” He sighed. “Who am I kidding? The six of you would be able to handle anything better than the rest of us put together. I’m not going to help much by healing sprains…”
Twilight gave him an encouraging smile, reaching out and patting him on the shoulder.
“I don’t really like hanging out here much myself,” Starlight added, “but I can see your point. Just be back soon, will you? We don’t want to be out here when the shadows in the woods start getting longer…”
“Don’t worry. We’ll be back as soon as we can.” She turned to the others. “Applejack, Rarity, Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy…you ready?”
They all nodded and began to step forward. However, they had barely parted from the others before Sunset Shimmer suddenly picked up the pace and emerged with them. “Hold on a second. I’m coming too.”
Applejack gave her the stink eye while Rainbow Dash rolled hers. “Well who says I want ya’ comin’ along with us? The less I see of your face, the better.”
Twilight was gentler, but still in the same vein. “It’s probably better if you just stay back here with the others, Sunset.”
“Yes,” Rarity spoke a bit brusquely, before muttering slightly. “I can’t imagine the Pies seeing a Trottingham like yourself in our company will instill much confidence in our party…”
“I’m coming anyway,” she retorted. “People like this wouldn’t know my face. Even if they did, I’d still prefer to stick with you than hang out back here.”
Twilight began to open her mouth to protest again, but she shut it soon after. She glanced back at the group behind Sunset, and saw that none of them were looking at her too warmly. Especially the Appleloosans they had recently picked up. Glancing back at Sunset, one could tell from her expression there was a trace of fear in her eyes.
Understanding, she let out a small exhale. “Alright, fine.” This prompted some of the others to look back at her, but she ignored it, turned, and motioned ahead. “Let’s catch up with Pinkie before she gets too far.”
With that, she took off in a jog after Pinkie Pie. The others didn’t hesitate long before resigning themselves to the matter and running after her, with Sunset quickly bringing up the rear. They soon left the others to pull back into the woods while they themselves descended the first rock ramp.
Fortunately, it didn’t take long to catch up to Pinkie, especially since her skipping and pink, poofy hair easily made her stand out from the rather gray and bland rock landscape. Once they fell in behind, they were able to keep up with her at a much more reduced pace as she led them around through the quarry. Although the entire area was essentially one contiguous cavity in the ground, all of the various twists and turns and edges that had been carved into it created a more irregular landscape with rock faces and cliffs rising all around them at every turn. It actually didn’t take too long to obscure the path back to the others, and not long after that Twilight actually had a hard time figuring out where they had come from.
“Maud! Oh Maud!”
As Pinkie called out again, she took them around another bend. This one led into one end of the quarry, where there was an old shack on the lowest level and a much larger rock ramp leading out. This one had to have been where wagons had done most of the hauling of the cut and dressed stones, especially since it seemed to lead up to a proper road through the country.
Seated on the second tier near a pile of rocks and some of the foliage that had managed to grow in the barren ground, head bowed, and slowly chipping away at one boulder with a rock hammer, sat a woman with gray hair and hard set green eyes focused entirely on her task. She hadn’t even seemed to hear Pinkie at first, in spite of the fact she was now cheering and waving at her. The more exuberant woman began to approach her regardless and the others followed suit.
While still a ways off, the woman finally looked up from her work. Twilight and the others immediately wondered if this was, in fact, the “Maud” that Pinkie kept referring to considering the fact she looked almost indifferent to see her and was about as cheerful and boisterous in appearance as the rocks around her. She kept staring all the way as Pinkie bounded up to her.
“Pinkie,” she stated when she was finally in earshot, in a quiet, emotionless monotone. “Is that really you? You’re back?”
“Oh Maud!” Pinkie shouted as she immediately ran up to her, wrapped her arms around her, and gave her a hug that pulled her completely off the ground. The woman (Maud, apparently) simply stared forward with an unchanging expression until she was put down and released. “It’s so great to be home! I missed you and the family so much! You have no idea where I’ve been and what I’ve done! It’s been so, so, so incredible! I don’t even know where to start!”
Meanwhile, the others came to a stop at a short distance away. Once there, they stood and watched the exchange between the two for a few moments, but it didn’t take long for them to start looking rather puzzled at the contrast between the two.
“It hasn’t been the same here without you,” Maud continued in her emotionless monotone. “I knew it would be hard to get letters from you, but when we didn’t hear from you in two months and heard about everything that’s been happening around Greater Everfree, we were all worried sick.”
“Really?”
“I found some diabase while I was digging just last week, but I was thinking about you so much that I just didn’t care.”
Pinkie’s jaw dropped. “Whoooooa! I had no idea it was that bad! Aw!” She leaned in and gave her a smaller hug around the shoulders, again which caused no reaction. “You should have known I’d be ok! I had Gaia Everfree looking out for me everywhere I went, and I remembered everything you told me!”
The others stared on a bit more, looking more confused all the time.
“Uh…I don’t know if it’s a ‘Gaitian’ thing,” Dash spoke up at last, “but I thought Pinkie’s older sister would be a little happier to see her.”
“She does seem to be a tad…blasé,” Rarity added.
Pinkie let go of Maud again and looked at the group in surprise. “Are you kidding?” She immediately spun around to go behind Maud, put her hands on her cheeks, and held her face up. “I’ve never seen her look this worked up before! Oh, oh! That reminds me!”
She released, spun back around in front of the woman, and then gestured behind her. “Maud, I want you to meet some people! These are all the new friends I met after I left home! There’s Twilight Sparkle, Rarity, Rainbow Dash, Applejack, and Fluttershy! Oh, also there’s Sunset Shimmer, but she’s not so much a ‘friend’ as former-enemy-hanging-around-with-us-now.”
Sunset groaned, crossing her arms and half-hiding her face behind one hand.
As for Twilight, she looked a little uncertain, but ventured a smile and waved. “Hi Maud. Pinkie’s told us a lot about you. It’s nice to finally meet you.”
“Um…hello,” Fluttershy added, smiling slightly.
“Howdy, ma’am,” Applejack added with a hat tip.
“What’s up?” Dash threw in.
“Ahem…charmed, dear,” Rarity finished.
Their greetings, friendly as they seemed, prompted a strange reaction. Maud actually stared back at them expressionless for several seconds of silence. Enough to where it began to get just a little awkward.
When she did respond, she raised one eyebrow, as if confused. It was the first facial expression she had shown since they arrived.
“The five of you…see me?”
This caused mutual looks of puzzlement from everyone. They all looked to each other, then back to her. “Um…yes, yes we do,” Twilight answered.
“And you can hear me too?”
Twilight and the others looked even more perplexed. “Uh…yes…?”
Maud said no more. She stared back at them without changing for several moments. However, it was broken when Pinkie Pie suddenly burst out into a laugh.
“Ha-ha-ha! Good one, Maud!” she exclaimed, before looking at the others. “Maud’s always been the clown in the family! You should’ve heard some of the jokes she told me growing up! Oh, oh! Maud, tell me the one you used on Marble’s birthday!”
Maud was quiet for a single second.
“What do you call a deposit of epsomite crossed with a sheep?”
Twilight and the others looked completely perplexed, but Pinkie grinned ear to ear and stifled a snicker for several moments.
“…‘Baa’-salt.”
At once, Pinkie burst out into a laugh and fell to the ground, holding her sides and kicking her feet in the air as she rolled. Rainbow Dash and Applejack both raised their eyebrows and looked to each other. Fluttershy seemed like she didn’t know whether to be nervous or confused. Rarity tried to force a laugh out of politeness but seemed too baffled to know how. Even Sunset looked bewildered.
After a moment, Twilight moistened her lips. “Um…heh-heh…great joke! But, um…Pinkie? Shouldn’t we tell Maud about…why we’re here?”
“Oh, oh! Right!” Instantly, she stopped laughing and rolling and nimbly sprung back up to her feet. “I’d love to catch up more, Maud, but we really need to talk to mom and dad. It’s reeeally important.”
“They’re with Limestone and Marble loading up the next shipment of cut stones,” Maud dully answered. “They should be coming to pick them up within an hour.”
“Oh yeah!” Pinkie wheeled to Twilight, putting a hand to one side of her mouth like she was sharing a secret, but whispering more than loud enough for all to hear. “I may not have mentioned this before, but the Trottingham government has my family mining the quarry for them. Even though we’re really good at that, it hasn’t been much fun since they started paying us in canned food and thin clothes.”
Twilight grimaced slightly. “On that note…” She turned to the older sister. “Um, Maud…I don’t suppose that anyone from the Trottingham government has come by lately, have they? I mean…anyone unusual? Discussing anything?”
“If anyone from the Trottingham government comes by with any news, it’s always a surprise. They don’t give any warning. Why do you ask?”
She caught herself for a moment, looking increasingly uneasy. She looked over to Pinkie, expecting her to give the news. She actually stared back cluelessly for a moment before her memory registered. “Oh, right! Maud, don’t ask me how I know this because it’s a really, really, really long story, but, in short, the Trottingham government could come to the quarry at any moment and relocate us and any other Gaitians living in the area to the middle of the country, and I really don’t think it’s because they’re wanting us to dig in a new quarry.”
Maud blinked once, which the others could only assume was an expression of her surprise. “What?” she said in a scarcely perceptible higher volume.
“I know you ain’t got no reason to trust me, ma’am,” Applejack spoke up, “but she’s tellin’ the truth. She fought her way through the entire Trottingham army in Appleloosa to get here and tell y’all.”
“And considering our past experiences with Trottingham,” Rarity added, “I would advise you that staying here and waiting to see what the government has in mind for you is highly unwise.”
“And the truth is, on top of all that, we could really use your family’s help right now,” Twilight finished. “There’s a lot more than that and it’s going to take a long time to tell, so it would be better if we got all of your family together first. Hopefully before that next pick up happens, because then it might be too late.”
Maud stared back at the group silently. She blinked again. Afterward, she turned to her sister.
“Pinkie, why don’t you run on ahead and tell the family that we have guests. I need to talk to your friends for a moment.”
“Oh, good idea, Maud!” she chirped back, before waving to the others. “I’ll be just up ahead! See you at the house!”
With that, she turned and began to merrily skip along the rock trail down to where Maud had indicated. The others watched her go only until she turned the corner, and then looked back to her older sister. A period of silence followed, during which the group looked rather uncomfortable. Maud herself continued to stare at them as the sounds of Pinkie’s giggles and hopping slowly faded in the distance.
When it was nearly silent again, Twilight looked to one side and cleared her throat. “So, um…actually-”
“Are you really Pinkie’s friends?”
Twilight’s face fell, and she and the others gave a start at Maud’s sudden cut in. However, she simply continued to stare at them with her expressionless face.
“Well…yeah, of course,” Dash finally spoke up. “She’s a little, well…on the odd side. No offense. But she’s helped us out loads of times.”
“We certainly have been though a lot together…” Fluttershy spoke more mildly. “But she’s always been there for us and she’s always cheered us up. And prayed for us as well.”
Maud was quiet for a moment.
“Later tonight, after Pinkie has fallen asleep, come back here. I’ll answer all of your questions.”
With that, she turned to a nearby rock hammer, picked it up, and began to work on the nearby boulder again.
This left the group even more puzzled. They exchanged glances for a moment, then looked back at her. “Um…we don’t really have many questions…”
“You will.”
She said no more as she kept tapping away at the boulder.
After the awkward closing to their meeting with Maud, the ladies eventually made their way after Pinkie Pie. As it turned out, they didn’t have to go much farther than out of earshot of Maud when they saw another crude shack, barely capable of being called a storage shed let alone a home, and a wagon laden down with cut stones. In front of it was a small gathering of people, of which Pinkie was standing in front and talking to them. In spite of having only gotten a little ways ahead of them, she seemed to have been fast enough to already have been chatting for a while.
As the group descended the rock path and approached, Pinkie seemed to wrap up what she was saying and turned around to excitedly hop back over to them. “Come on! Come on! I want you to meet the rest of the family!”
The other individuals didn’t seem quite so exuberant. They simply stood there and waited as Pinkie merrily led Twilight and the others right up to them. Much as they had with Maud, they halted at a short distance away, at which point Pinkie excitedly ran back to the other side.
“Everyone…meet my family!” She began by rushing over to an older couple in the group. The man had long, bushy, gray sideburns, a wide-brimmed black hat, a collared shirt, and a stern face hardened from many days out in the sun. The woman was considerably shorter with her hair tied back in a tight bun and a pair of glasses, although one of the lenses was cracked and apparently was left in a state of disrepair. “This is my mom and dad!”
“I am Igneous Rock Pie, son of Feldspar and Granite Pie,” the older man spoke, his tone gruff and his face remaining stern the entire time. “Welcome and good tidings to thee.”
“I am Cloudy Quartz,” the older woman added, bowing her head in greetings. “Blessings be upon thee for returning Pinkie unto us.”
Twilight blinked twice. “Oh…um…think nothing of it.”
“Oh boy,” Dash muttered under her breath. “These kinds of Gaitians… Guess we can rule out indoor toilets…”
“And here’s my second older sister!” Pinkie chirped, indicating to a woman only a little older than her, but with much flatter hair cut short in the back and a rather aggressive and unfriendly look in her eye. “Li-”
“Limestone Pie,” she cut off, leaning her head in and glaring at the group so hard that Twilight grimaced and nearly took a step back. “So you followed my sister through a war zone all the way home, huh? Even knowing she was a Gaitian? Well, aren’t you helpful. I got my eye on all of you, so don’t try anything funny. Unlike my sister, I can smell out a Trottingham agent a mile away.”
She punctuated this by glancing at Sunset, giving her an especially hard look. At once, she grimaced and tried to look to one side. Fluttershy cringed at Limestone’s “greeting” and let out a smile whine, to which Angel rolled his eyes and smacked his paw over his own face.
Pinkie moved to the last, who had much longer hair hanging over half of her face, and immediately blushed and cringed—looking even more socially inept than Fluttershy. “And here’s my little sister, Marble!” she exclaimed, punctuating by putting her hands on Marble’s shoulders…which only made her shrink down a bit more. “I’m not much older than her, but she’s still my beloved little baby sister! She’s a little quiet, but she’s still the hardest worker in the quarry!” She grasped her by the cheeks and turned her so that she was almost facing her. “Aren’t you, Marble?”
She blushed a little before looking to one side. “Mmmhmm…”
Pinkie sprung off and gestured to the others. “And this here is Applejack, who really helped me break through enemy lines in a hail of bullets and explosions to get here; Rarity, who let me try out all sorts of baking at her house when we weren’t stopping people who went nutty from breaking in; Fluttershy, who’s an amazingly nice person who has her own animal shelter in a hole in the ground to hide from bloodthirsty monsters; Rainbow Dash, who’s a really super cool mercenary who drinks just a teeny, tiny bit too much; Sunset Shimmer, who tried to kill me a couple times but that’s a loooong story; and Twilight Sparkle, who knows all about the special rune thingees that we all have in our hands!”
By the time Pinkie was finished with her “introduction”, everyone was looking rather uneasy or grimacing. Twilight and Sunset most of all, who nervously looked at the Pie family and expected them to yell at them to get off their land any second afterward. And truth be told, they did look a little alarmed on hearing Pinkie’s super-fast recap of their relationships. Limestone’s eyes narrowed a bit more while Marble took an uncertain step backward. However, before things could get any worse, Twilight cleared her throat.
“That’s, uh…kind of the short version about how we met her, but there’s a lot more than that. Mr. and Mrs. Pie, I’m afraid we don’t have a whole lot of time. There’s a lot to tell you and it’s extremely important. We really need to get this settled before anyone from Trottingham comes to take your next load. Could we please come in and speak with you?”
The family hesitated. They did seem to relax slightly…at least, all but Limestone…and they looked to each other for a moment or so as if silently considering the option. Eventually, however, Igneous looked up. He nodded to her, before both he and Cloudy stepped to one side.
“Very well. We bid thee enter and state thy peace.”
“…And so, there we are. Really, based on what Pinkie said, it’s not safe for you or any other Gaitian in Trottingham any longer. But in all honesty, right now we have nothing, and we have a lot of people with us who need to stay here at least long enough for us to come up with a plan to move everyone out. Could you please help us?”
“Please?” Pinkie immediately added for support, clasping her hands together and leaning in. “Pretty please?”
The gathering inside the house was a bit awkward to say the least. For one thing, there was no furniture, and only a single, wooden, uninsulated room that seemed to function also as the kitchen. The group had all taken seats on the floor across from the Pies as they told their tale. Now each one of them had a dented, misshapen tin that seemed to have been once used as common surplus for water for whatever miners had worked in the quarry and sat there silently waiting for an answer from their inadvertent hosts. Fortunately, none of them looked that anxious anymore, although Limestone’s mood never seemed to improve much, but there were a few moments of uneasy silence between the two when all was concluded.
Eventually, Igneous, without showing much change in his own expression, rose from his spot on the floor. Cloudy did much the same. After that, both of them turned and walked toward the back entrance to the house, which didn’t even have a door but rather a canvas cloth, and brushed it aside to step outside.
Twilight looked a little nervous as Limestone and Marble began to rise next. “Um, is that a ‘no thanks’?”
“Mom and dad never make a decision this big without saying a prayer over it first,” Limestone gruffly explained as she stood. “And after that, we’re going to need to sort this out in a family meeting. Come on, Pinkie. That includes you.”
“You bet!” she answered, merrily hopping to her feet. “Be right back, everyone!”
Moments later, she followed behind her sisters as they also brushed past the canvas and headed outside. After a few moments of hearing footsteps (and hops) crunching against the gravel ground, all became quiet again. The six ladies were left sitting on the floor in silence.
Fluttershy looked at her own cup for a moment, before raising it and taking a sip. Instantly, her face scrunched as she made a twisted face. “That…certainly is interesting…um…tea?”
Rarity was studying her own cup, turning it around a little. “Is that…a rock?”
Dash frowned at her own cup before setting it aside. “Her family might be kind of what I expected out of Gaitians, but…” She hesitated. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I thought Pinkie’s family would be a little, uh…well…”
“More like her?” Fluttershy suggested.
“They do seem to be far more…shall we say…balanced?” Rarity offered as she put her own cup aside. “I don’t want to sound rude or anything, but you don’t suppose she might have been adopted, do you?”
“Would make sense,” Applejack spoke quietly with a frown as she sipped her own cup, seemingly oblivious to the flavor. “Gaitians…ain’t exactly had it easy. In Appleloosa, there were a lot of ‘em runnin’ ‘round missing family members. From rumors I heard of Trottingham, here it was only worse.”
Twilight hesitated after hearing that before turning to Sunset, who was staying to one side and staring at her own cup. She seemed to be aware she was being watched but didn’t look up.
“Um, Sunset? I don’t suppose you-”
She cut Twilight off with a sigh. “Gaitians never interested me. That was just basic xenophobia on the part of the government. Everyone in Trottingham and Appleloosa flipped out when Mareland fell and all of the Gaitians ran into their countries. There’s a lot of followers of Harmonium in Trottingham so they really didn’t take it that well. When that mess in Cloudsdale happened it just made everything worse.”
“But why is Trottingham interested in relocating them now? They’ve been using them as second-class citizens for years…”
“Beats me. The government I knew isn’t in power anymore. Now everything’s run by that Storm King and…” She slowed a moment, clearly growing more uncomfortable. “…and…her.”
The way she said this got the attention of the others. “Her who?” Applejack asked. “You talkin’ ‘bout that commodore?”
“Tempest Shadow, right?” Dash threw in. “That’s the name she’s got in the papers.”
Sunset winced a little on hearing the name but said no more. However, that reaction already spoke volumes to Twilight.
“You knew her, didn’t you?”
Sunset pulled her legs up, leaned on them, crossed her arms, and glanced to one side. “We…had a run in before I got kicked out of the Trottingham government, yeah. You could say that. I honestly thought she’d be dead by now…”
“Don’t s’pose you know what she’d want with Appleloosa, would ya’?” Applejack asked, crossing her own arms.
“I haven’t got a clue, but if I had to guess it’s because it’s what the Storm King wants. And I’m sure what he wants is just to take over all of Greater Everfree like every other little dictator that ever sprung up in that part of the world.”
“That actually puzzles me.”
The group, Sunset included, looked up and to Twilight. Her face had grown concerned.
“Sunset…based on what you told me, even if the Storm King hadn’t come to power, the Trottingham government knew about your power and your ability to make magical weapons using what you learned from Canterlot, right?”
She paused but then nodded. “Yeah, so?”
Twilight looked to the ground, growing thoughtful. “Somehow, Griffonstone learned about that too. They had to have. That’s why they’re so eager to get into Equestria and to find more Anima Viris. I don’t know how they learned it, but the important thing is they did. Manehattan knows about it too. That’s why they hired companies like Starlight’s to try to get in and learn all they could from Equestria. And even if Fillydelphia doesn’t know about completely, they know enough to know that’s a source of new power. Everyone’s scrambling for Equestria wanting to be the first person to discover the secrets to the Promethian Sigils and Anima Viris, or at least the power that Nightmare Moon had. Because they know if they do that, they’ll have an advantage over every other country.”
“Yes, darling, that seemed to be the way that Fancy Pants thought the world was heading,” Rarity answered. “And I dare say it’s come true so far. Aside from the more obvious reasons…why is that troubling you?”
“Why would the Storm King try to dispose so quickly of its only individual who knew about Equestria and its secrets? And why not even bother with reclaiming any of Equestria? Why ignore it completely?”
The group was silent. That was a good point, and one that Sunset herself hadn’t considered until now. It left them all thinking for a moment to themselves about why and what that meant.
They were still thinking when the canvas flap went to one side. They looked up just in time to see a cheerful-looking Pinkie Pie happily bounce back into the room, looking rather enthusiastic. The rest of the Pies followed suit fairly quickly behind, one after the other. When they came in, they all remained standing. Seeing that, the others quickly rose to their feet as well and faced them.
“Great news, everybody!” Pinkie grinned. “The whole family’s going to help! We’ve got our own base of operations now!”
The group looked to the Pies. Igneous and Cloudy both gave short, solemn nods to show their approval. Marble offered a weak smile. Limestone, on her part, let out a groaning sigh but was resigned and, perhaps, just a slight bit friendlier.
Twilight smiled back. “Really? You will? Thank you so much!”
“Not like we could have stuck around here much longer anyway…” Limestone grumbled. “Here’s what’s going to happen. We’re going to carry on as usual until they come to pick up the load from the quarry. If they’re just here for the load, great. If not, Pinkie tells me you and your friends can handle it, but hopefully they’ll just pick up the load. That’ll buy us a couple days to do whatever you have in mind. We’ll move the rest of the people with you down here first and get them situated.”
“Yippee! This’ll be great!” Pinkie squealed excitedly. “Mom and dad, you can start getting one of the empty shafts ready for everyone to hide in! Limestone and Marble, you can finish up with the load and get those people from Trottingham to think everything is okie-dokie! I’ll go tell Maud everything that happened and then we’ll tell everyone else the good news and bring them down once the coast is clear!”
In spite of their more agreeable states, all of the Pies looked a bit more uneasy at Pinkie’s last statement. However, none of them hesitated. Igneous and Cloudy once again nodded to the group before turning around and heading out the way they came. Pinkie spun back to Twilight and the others and gave them a wink and a nod. “You gals just sit tight right here and be ready for anything! I know you’ve got this! Whee! I haven’t been this excited since we were in the Castle of the Two Sisters!”
A moment later, she began to happily skip past them for the front door. As soon as she passed through and began to hop back up the trail, she called out. “Maud! Oh Maud! Great news!”
Everyone left behind continued to hear her echo for a bit before it finally died out. The ladies were left standing in the room across from Limestone and Marble. However, the two remaining Pies were hesitating. Marble was looking to the ground with a regretful expression and rubbed one of her arms. Limestone had her arms crossed and was frowning at a spot on the ground.
Eventually, Twilight moistened her lips and cleared her throat. “So…your sisters Pinkie and Maud are really close, aren’t they?”
Limestone’s lips curled. Marble bit her lip.
Seeing that reaction made Twilight more uneasy. “I…actually want to ask her something when she gets back, although maybe you know. I don’t suppose Maud has any…well…you know…special abilities like Pinkie, does she?”
Marble let out a small noise. Limestone’s teeth began to bare.
“Uh, ok! Ok! Nevermind! I’ll just ask her when she gets here!”
At this, Limestone closed her eyes and let out a long, tired sigh. “Maud’s not coming. She’s not here.” Her voice was quieter now; sounding weary.
Everyone looked confused. “Say what now?” Applejack asked.
“What do you mean, darling?” Rarity added. “Pinkie just ran off to fetch her.”
Marble grasped her arm more tightly. Limestone looked up at them squarely.
“Maud died almost six years ago.”
At once the expressions on everyone’s faces went blank. Several mouths began to hang open. The group was so silent that they thought they could hear Pinkie again for just a moment.
Limestone rolled her eyes and continued. “You probably noticed my sister isn’t…‘all there’. We tried telling her several times, but she always laughs it off and tells us she talks to Maud every day. We eventually just let it go since it’s not bothering anyone. It’s best that you all just roll with it too. Anyway, we’re going to finish up that load now. Come on, Marble.”
With that, both sisters walked past the group for the front door and headed outside as well. Twilight was left standing there silently, eyes still wide and mouth slightly ajar. She turned and looked at the others, but they only shared the same expressions.
The Trottingham government personnel did come by soon after but, fortunately, they didn’t try to relocate anyone. They simply picked up the load and moved out with hardly a word. Shortly thereafter, with the coast clear, Pinkie came hopping back along with the others following behind.
At that point, Twilight and the others approached her and mentioned what Limestone had said to them. However, she simply giggled and waved her hand at them.
“Oh, Twilight… I just talked to Maud when I went to get everyone! She said she’s glad the family is helping but told me to go on ahead. You wouldn’t believe how she gets whenever she’s found an interesting rock. It’s like all she can think of. She almost always skips family meals now for them!”
Twilight looked back at the others. Even Sunset was looking uneasy at this point, but the others far more so. “Um…Pinkie-”
“Oh, one other thing!” she cut off. “Maud said to remember what she told you when you all were talking! I guess it’s a secret because she wouldn’t tell me about it. Oh!” She nearly got into Twilight’s face. “You’d tell me if it was a surprise party, wouldn’t you? Is it a surprise party? Wait, if you tell me, then it won’t be a surprise!”
“It’s, uh…kind of a surprise…” Twilight finally managed to uncertainly mutter.
When Pinkie finally rushed off to help her parents set up, Twilight readily approached the group and, in particular, Starlight Glimmer and Shining Armor. Both of them gave the news that not much had happened other than some of the kids got hungry and bored, and that everyone was getting eager to take a load off. On hearing the news about the Pies agreeing to help, they were quite pleased.
“Great to hear,” Starlight answered before sighing. “Now we just need to come up with some kind of plan that can get all of us plus the Gaitians out of here…”
“By the way,” Twilight interjected, “I don’t suppose, on the way up here, any of you saw Pinkie’s sister, did you? Or anyone alongside the path who was chipping away at a big boulder?”
Starlight shook her head. “I assumed her whole family was already down here. Why?”
“…No reason.”
Once everyone was gathered around, the ladies quieted down about the matter; especially seeing that most of those with them were still very tense about their current dangerous situation and the problems they still had to face. The truth was they needed to concentrate on their next plan of action. Nevertheless, none of them could think that much as they ended up being shown to where they would be staying. Aside from a tool shed, there were no other “houses” to stay in save for the broken down shack that the family lived in, and, frankly, it didn’t look like it would support everyone’s weight. Hence, they would be staying in an older shaft that had been dug out and covered with tarp to keep the interior dry. On verifying the interior was clear of any potential hiding Nighttouched, it was the best they could do. The Pies gathered everything they could use for bedding and set up spaces for everyone, even though it did get a little cramped and on the sparse side.
After that, they went about getting everyone fed before the sun set. Several of the refugees and Apple family members stepped in to assist with getting everyone something to eat, but as the Pies only had enough victuals normally for themselves it was a bit of a stretch to manage even a bad tasting thin stew for everyone. Nevertheless, they also helped with the serving and clean up afterward, and offered to head into the forest to hunt for something better the next day. Although time was of the essence, it was soon mutually agreed upon by everyone that little could be done that night. In the end, Starlight and Twilight settled for starting to gather information about the area, in particular where the other Gaitian families were located, how regularly Trottingham officials and police made the rounds, how good their mobility was, and where the nearest towns were and what sort of amenities were available to them.
All of that lasted until after sundown, and since Trottingham apparently only gave the Pie family enough kerosene to work they were forced to turn in soon after. Considering how excited Pinkie was to be home and with her sisters, the group was initially fearful that she would stay up late. However, the rest of the Pie family seemed to obey a tradition of lying down with the sun and rising with the dawn, and she followed suit. Better yet, she stayed in the main house with her family, so that there was little chance of disturbing her later.
Once she had laid down for an hour, Twilight finally looked up from her own spot in the mine tunnel. Since they were the strongest, she and the others had been put near the front along with Sunset Shimmer, who insisted on sticking close to Twilight rather than being separated from her and surrounded by the refugees. No sooner had she pulled off the strip of tarp that the Pies had given her for a covering when, in the moonlight streaming into the mine, she saw the others readily lean up as well.
“You’re all up?” she whispered.
“I’ve been growing accustomed to lodging on a variety of surfaces, but it will be some time before I can sleep on rocks…” Rarity grumbled.
“And…I’ve been thinking about what Limestone said about Maud…” Fluttershy answered quietly.
“We all have,” Applejack muttered. “And I’ve been waitin’ all day for a chance to get the truth.”
“Frankly, so have I,” Twilight murmured, before beginning to rise up. She almost went for her shoes, when she paused. She noticed that Sunset was getting up as well.
Dash noticed too as she began to rise and frowned. “Y’know, you can probably sit this one out. I don’t think everyone’s pretending to be asleep on the off chance they can kill you in yours.”
“Maybe…but I’m not wanting to take that chance,” she responded quietly. “Besides…I’m honestly curious about this too. Maud is supposed to be Pinkie’s Anima Viri, right? Well, it would make sense that she’s dead then. If that’s the case, though, who were we talking to today?”
“I’m thinking that’s the kind of question that Maud was thinking we would ask…or whoever that person was…” Twilight answered as she put her shoes on.
As everyone slept in their clothes, it didn’t take long for everyone to get ready. After that they made their way out. It was a bit slow going at first as it was impossible not to make noise on the rocky, gravel ground, but they managed to make their way back to the trails around the quarry without waking up anyone in the house or in the mine. Once they were a good distance away, they picked up the pace. It was a clear night with a mostly full moon, so once their eyes adjusted the going was easy.
It didn’t take long to find their way back to the wide pathway where loads went in and out. And from there, it was simply a matter of rounding a corner and looking back the way they had come before.
Seated right there by the same boulder, tapping it with her hammer, examining it for a moment, and then tapping again, was Maud. She looked as if she hadn’t moved the entire time they were gone.
Swallowing, Twilight looked back at the others, exchanging glances for a moment, but then they all began their approach. Maud didn’t seem to notice them at first, but when they got near she put her hammer to one side. When they stopped in front of her, she had her hands down and was looking up at them.
She said nothing and it was silent again. In spite of being the warmer time of year, the quarry was silent. Even the more distant insects in the woods seemed quiet.
“We met with your family,” Twilight finally said.
Maud didn’t change, other than blinking once.
“Your sister…Limestone…she said you died six years ago.”
Still no change.
“Why would she say that if you’re here?”
Maud answered by turning her head and looking down on the ground. The six followed her gaze and saw a pick axe lying there.
“Watch carefully,” she said as she reached down and picked it up. Turning around, she looked at the boulder, hoisted the pick axe high, and swung it down against it.
With a loud crack, a shard of rock snapped right off of the boulder and went flying in the direction of the group; in particular toward Fluttershy. She immediately yelped, cringed, and covered her face as she expected it to hit her. Dash nearly moved forward to get in the way, but it was already too late as it connected…
Yet the moment it reached Fluttershy, the piece of rock seemed to sink into her and oblivion. The others immediately looked confused. It had clearly been headed for the woman, only it didn’t strike her. Neither did it clatter to the ground afterward. Fluttershy, after a moment, lowered her arms, blinked, and looked around, but saw nothing. And as she and the others glanced about, they saw no sign of the rock on the ground either. They eventually looked back to Maud.
The boulder was completely intact. The pick axe was lying on the ground, having not moved in the slightest. Maud sat there staring at them.
Now the group started to look at little nervous. Fluttershy quivered and whimpered a bit, while Rarity cupped her hand to her mouth. Applejack swallowed. “You…you really are…”
“Aside from Pinkie, you’re the first people who have seen me or heard me in a very long time,” Maud cut off. “Six years ago, Pinkie and I took a trip to Cloudsdale. It was the only place where we could still buy tools for rock cutting and the rest of the family was busy working on an order. When we got there, things went wrong. Very wrong. And by the end of it, I was dead.”
She reached down and took up her rock hammer. However, she didn’t start chipping again. She studied it as she continued.
“I don’t really remember much of it, which I suppose makes sense as I didn’t have a brain anymore to remember things. All I know is I remember that I was supposed to go somewhere. I didn’t, though… Someone called me back out of the place where I was. And as I left there, I realized it was Pinkie’s voice. The next thing I knew I was standing next to Pinkie. Even then, I realized I wasn’t alive anymore, but when she saw me she treated me like I had just wandered off for a while and then come back.”
She set the hammer down.
“After talking with her, I realized she didn’t remember anything about what happened the night before. My guess is she didn’t want to remember it, and so she simply made herself forget about it. I didn’t know what to say or do at first so when she started going home I just followed her. No one else could see me or hear me, and I would walk right over pits or through objects if I didn’t watch myself, but I learned soon enough that Pinkie could assume or expect stuff out of me and then her mind or senses would ‘fill in the gaps’, so she never noticed anything I did that was impossible. I tried telling her what had happened to me, but she wouldn’t believe it because she didn’t remember what happened that night. And since she could hear me and see me, she thought I was just playing a joke. So…eventually I stopped trying.”
“So why didn’t you tell her what did happen that night?”
Twilight and the others looked back at Sunset at that. They had hardly expected her to chime in, but she looked genuinely intrigued.
As for Maud, she was quiet again for a moment. Her eyes lowered. “Maybe I should have, but the truth is I don’t want her to remember that night. If my death was the only thing that happened that would have been one thing, but it wasn’t.”
“So…you’re a ghost?” Dash finally asked.
“My faith doesn’t believe in ghosts. To be honest, I think I’m something more than that. I don’t know what exactly.” Her eyes raised again. “But I have a feeling the six of you do. Five of you have the same symbol that my sister has on her hand, after all.”
The six hesitated. Twilight herself raised her hand, looking down to her sigil and her two runes on it. She swished her mouth slightly and looked up again. “I suppose you’re right. Still…she has to know someday. No matter how painful it is for her.”
Maud’s eyes fell again. “I know that, but I’d be lying to myself if I said the only reason I’m keeping this a secret is because I’m trying to spare her feelings. My sister isn’t like other people.”
Twilight grimaced. “I know all about that… Things haven’t exactly been ‘normal’ for us either. Having a Promethian Sigil kind of makes everything more complicated. And things have only gotten weirder for all of us as time has gone by…”
“No.”
The single flat word from Maud was enough to regain everyone’s attention again. She looked up and leveled her gaze at Twilight, looking her straight in the eye.
“You don’t understand.” For the first time, her voice showed the slightest hint of emotion as she spoke very slowly…even grimly.
The girl looked away from the small, boulder-shaped rock in her hand and to her father. She remained expressionless, as she often did, as she placed the rock in her pocket and walked over to his side. Once she stood next to him, he turned his head forward.
“Look yonder.”
The girl did as she was told. The old, scraggily, and thick woods that they had spent the past two hours traveling through on a thin, mountain-bound trail in their rickety wagon had given way at last to a clearing of sorts. From where they stood, they were standing on an overlook of the valley below.
As young as the girl was, she had seen several quarries by now. This one, however, was totally different. The surrounding terrain made it look like a ravine rather than a proper dig site, and the parts that were exposed clearly hadn’t been worked for many years. Trees that were almost mature were growing in places, and some of the rocks were so weathered and beaten it was hard to tell that they had ever been cut. It was dark around here as well. The trees had grown over the ravine so thick that it cast a perpetual shadow over the quarry. Enough to where it would be pitch black only shortly before sundown.
“Thou hast come of age, Maudileena,” her father explained. “Now thou must work thy keep the same as thy kin. Mark well this valley. This is where we shall dwell for the next three seasons. A new church is being decreed in town, and we hath been tasked with providing the foundations. Right here, from the community’s own stone. From the same quarry that sunk the stone of their previous church a hundred years prior.”
Maud nodded in response.
His hand extended and began to move over the landscape. “All of the quarry from north coming down to the west to the south and rising back up again to the east shall serve as our place of work. All of the stone there shall provide our needs. Should any stone be lacking or not suffice, we shall dig as necessary to uncover more rock from those places.”
He squatted down to be shoulder level with the girl after this, extending his hand outward again. This time, she could see exactly where he pointed. To one portion of the ravine, the ground didn’t look like worn away soil but worn away slabs of rock, forming a jagged and irregular cliff that framed one side of the steepest drop off, rising up to a place where the ground was clearer—as if it had become overgrown at the same point the rest of the quarry had. Semi-irregular stones were arranged on that flat expanse of ground in rows.
The girl was old enough to recognize them as crude tombstones.
“But mark ye well…stay far from the northeast. Cut no stone there and never touch it with spade.”
“What’s over there?” It was the first time the girl had ever recalled not simply taking her father’s word for something but asking more about it. As a result, he hesitated for a moment, looking back down at her and seeing her staring inquisitively back. However, he simply inhaled through his nose and looked forward again.
“Tis an unholy place where unholy people did unholy things, Maudileena. That’s all ye need know. Stay far from it, doesth thou understand?”
The girl only paused a fraction of a second before nodding. “I will, father.”
Being too weak to cut the larger pieces of stone in block sizes sufficient for construction, the girl spent most of her time off to one side at an area her mother and father had cleared off. There, hoisting a stone axe almost too big for her, she progressively worked on each freshly cut block that was handed to her; dressing it to the proper sizes and shapes that were required. Nearby, etched out on a piece of leather, was a diagram of each stone they needed and how much, and a second piece of leather that the stone was perched on served as a stencil as she slowly worked it over.
Nearby, set on a slab of rock embedded in the ground, was her small boulder. It seemed to have been set as if to watch her as she spent the long hours chipping away at the blocks. In spite of the fact that they were almost always in shade and shadow every day from the overhanging trees, and that the work was long, she stuck with it faithfully. By now it had been several weeks since they had moved into the area, and she had become as hard a worker as anyone else in their family.
She worked away at one edge for a few more strokes, tapping away a particularly hard piece, before setting the axe down a moment. Her hands were throbbing a little from repeated work, and the sweat was starting to run into her eyes. She took a moment to wipe her brow as the tapping and ringing of stone cutting tools from her father echoed up from further down the quarry. In all the weeks she had been there, she had never taken a breather at the same time as he had. His hammer was always ringing out whenever her axe stopped, and vice versa.
Today, however, was a bit different. She had scarcely begun to wipe at her head when her father’s tool stopped as well. It was for nothing special; just taking a break. Yet for the first time in weeks, a silence hung over the quarry. The wind was still, most of the local wildlife had cleared off from the sounds of work, and everything was eerily quiet. The girl actually stopped to look to the sky, noticing just how still the valley was for the first time. How abandoned. How desolate…
A noise came from behind her. Instinctively, she turned around, and before she knew it she realized she was facing the irregular slabs of rock that made up the northeast of the quarry. She hadn’t so much as glanced in their direction for more than a passing gaze since her father had given her the warning when they moved there, but now she found herself facing it and staring.
In particular, she saw a few tiny pebbles at the base of the rock face roll to a stop.
The girl stared at them as they halted. She looked up afterward, back to the rock face. She had never stared at it before, and so it was impossible to tell if it had been altered and if the stones had come from it. Yet there had been no tremor in the ground just now. No rough impact that would have shaken it. Both she and her father had stopped working and all was still. And yet…
The sound of her father’s tools began to ring out again. Hearing that, the girl snapped out of it. She took up her own axe again and turned to get back to work.
Before starting again, she glanced at the rock face one more time, and then away.
The girl had never seen her sisters look so miserable. Both of them were shivering and shaking seemingly uncontrollably in spite of being wrapped in blankets. They were almost as pale and ashen as the granite she cut into every day. It was honestly a little hard to watch as her mother somehow summoned the strength to carry them both and up into the back of the wagon.
As she struggled to get them situated and comfortable as best as she could, the girl’s father finished tying the horses. He headed back in order to get in the wagon himself, but before jumping in he looked down at Maud. He crouched soon after so that he was eye level again.
“We’ll return as soon as we can, Maudileena, but twill still be five days from now to a week. The stones for the foundation will not tarry that long, or I would take thee with us. The dressing has to be done and the stones passed on to the masons three days hence from now. Dost thou understand?”
The girl nodded. “Yes, father.”
“Tis a crime that I must leave thee alone here while still so young, but I and thy sisters need thy mother more than thee. I must ask of thee to remain here by thyself. Dost thou believe thy can do this?”
She nodded again. “Yes, father.”
He looked at her momentarily, as if evaluating her, before he reached out and placed his hands on his shoulders. “Thou art a good child, Maudileena, with thy head level and wise beyond thy years. Thou wilt do well. Gaia Everfree will watch over thee. I am sure of it.”
Giving her one last look of approval, he rose from the girl and turned back to the wagon. Soon he loaded up into the coach portion, took up the reins, and gave them a snap. The horse began to move soon after, and pulled the wagon along with him. As it slowly began to roll down the trail, the girl caught a glimpse of her mother in the back with both of her sisters resting their heads on her lap. She looked out to her and gave a nod of approval, and met her eyes all the way down the trail until they turned a corner and vanished from sight.
The girl looked on at the empty trail for a short while, even after the wagon had long since departed. After that, she turned back to the house. The Pies hadn’t been able to afford a home of their own for this job. Rather, one of the locals who they were working for had leased an old house on the edge of the mountain path leading to the quarry to them so long as they worked there. Until now, Maud had thought of it as a nice place. As nice as their own home was.
Now, with all the candles and lamps out and the fire extinguished, surrounded by encroaching woods, and with a hollow breeze blowing by, it looked very empty. Very isolated. Dark. Unwelcoming. In the silence of the afternoon, the girl, for the first time, looked into the open doorway leading into the dark interior…and felt a hint of fear.
Reaching into her pocket, she grasped her fist-sized boulder and walked forward and into the house.
The first day her parents and sisters were gone went by easily enough. The girl had some trouble getting to sleep that night. All of the normal sounds were louder than usual, it seemed. The shadows were a bit longer and emptier now that she knew she was the only person in the house when she got into bed that night, and she had said more prayers than she did normally both when in bed and when kneeling at her bedside with the warm, welcoming light of her candle before she got in. Yet with the morning sun came a banishment of the darkness and solitude, and once she was awake and fire was crackling in the stove to the tune of birds singing outside, it was almost enough to make believe that everyone was still there.
She was in a much better mood when she made the two-hour walk to the quarry. Her parents had told her that committing herself to her work would banish idle thoughts that might trouble her, and she believed it that day when she got back to the stones and started to dress them. Her father, thanks to years and the strength that came with maturity, had already cut the next load of stones needed for the temple foundation. She had only to finish dressing them, and in two days time they would be claimed by the local masons. However, that meant she had to finish the dressing soon, and the thought of the need for urgency made her focus on the task at hand and banish all other thoughts.
It was around noon when wind began to blow through the trees overhead. An hour later, it had gotten strong enough to produce a rustle. An hour after that, and she looked up from her task to occasionally see a leaf or two land next to her in spite of autumn being weeks away. At that point, she stopped work long enough to temporarily ascend half of the steep path up the side of the ravine, just enough to look up and out to the sky.
Half of it was filled with clouds, and not thin ones or light ones either. The larger, puffier variety. They were still white for right now, but the girl had seen them enough times to know what it meant.
In the end, she descended back into the quarry and resumed work. There were still many stones left, and it was already starting to look like having them complete in two more days would be a stretch. She needed to do as much as possible.
Another hour passed, and at the point the entire sky had clouded over. She continued to work, but slowed for other reasons. The quarry had gotten much darker as a result of the overcast sky. Many of the animals dwelling in it had quieted down or gone silent. Another hour passed after that, and things grew stiller yet. Only an occasional distant bird could be heard at all, and those calls happened fewer and farther between the more time went on. The sky grew darker, both with the setting sun as well as from growing more ominous and gray. Finally, the sounds of thunder began to rumble.
At that point, the girl stopped again. She looked to the sky and at her surroundings. Very still, very quiet, and growing darker all the time. Another distant sound of thunder rolled, and at this point she knew that even if she left now there was small chance of her getting back before it began to pour. Yet the thought of the walk back, how long it would be, how dark, and how it would be the first without her father made her hesitate…
She finally shook her head to snap out of it, but when she did so her cutting tool jerked. Before she could catch herself, the end swung out and smacked the small fist-sized rock she had set up next to her. At once, she looked out and to it, realizing her mistake, but it was too late. The rock went flying away and landed on the ground, tumbling along until it came to a stop.
Right alongside the northeast rock face.
The girl turned to it, but did not move. She stared at her rock now lying in front of that ugly, disjointed face. The same face she had purposely tried to avoid looking at ever since that one day. Now that she was staring at it again, however, in spite of the fact that it had been so long since she looked at it, she realized it had changed. She wasn’t sure when, although a part of her said it had to have happened last night. That she would have seen it even with a passing glance. Some of the rock that made up the tall, irregular slabs had broken loose and fallen into the quarry. Chunks of it now lay there, providing a surface that her own rock had stopped against.
She wasn’t sure how long she sat there staring at it, but it was a long time where she didn’t move and didn’t look away. Finally she took in a deep breath. She spoke aloud a prayer to Gaia Everfree. It was meant to instill confidence in her, but the sound of her voice being the only one resounding through the quarry ended up unsettling her. When she finished, she rose from where she stood and began to walk to claim her rock.
Even her walk seemed to take forever. It was as if the distance had somehow grown, or that something in her was making her walk slower than usual. She finally reached the broken pieces on the ground, and her rock was at her feet. When she looked down on it, she began to notice just how dark it had truly gotten outside, for even from that close she was beginning to have a hard time making it out. The thunder rumbled again.
She finally bent over. Her hand reached out to grasp the stone.
“Hello…?”
The girl didn’t know when was the last time she had jumped. Things simply never alarmed her. However, she gave a start at that. In an instant her hand had recoiled and she was standing and looking at the rock face in front of her. The voice sounded like it had come from there.
“Is somebody out there?”
She stiffened. The voice had definitely come from there. It was muffled, but it had unmistakably come from the rock wall.
“Hello? Anybody?”
Her eyes traced over the rock face for a moment. By now, it was so dark that shadows were beginning to cast along it, making it look like a totally different surface from what she was used to. Yet after a few moments, her eyes focused on one spot.
There was an indentation in the rock that was horizontal as opposed to the vertical slabs. It was gray from being covered with old, dry dirt and rock, but it was also smooth and flat. At a glance, one might have thought it was another stretch of rock face. Yet a closer look revealed it was too flat for that.
“Anybody out there? Hel-lo-o!”
The girl nearly recoiled again. The voice had definitely come from that spot. And for a moment, she was left frozen where she stood. What her father told her came back to her. However, she was a child who kept her mind on Gaia Everfree and her tasks, like most of her family did. She hadn’t really thought too many dark or horrifying possibilities about what he said until now, like many other children would. Instead, she began to realize what the voice sounded like.
A child. A girl, in fact.
“Are we playing the quiet game? I’d rather not play that game… It’s been quiet in here too long…”
Still the girl did not move. Since she was not like most children, she hadn’t heard scary stories before. Stories where an unsuspecting man or woman would be lured into a river or a dark forest by a voice that sounded like it was human only to be made by some dark monstrosity. Nor had thoughts that there might be evil or monstrous things in the world which could take on the likeness or mannerisms of people to lure victims into traps. She did remember her father’s words…about how there were unholy things in that place…however. And it kept her silent for some time. Yet in the end, the more practical side of her, or perhaps the more innocent, that heard only a girl won out.
“…Hello?”
A pause, then the voice suddenly sounded more excited. “Oh! There is someone out there! Yay!” Soon after, however, the voice quieted again. “Mr. or Mrs. Someone, could you please let me out? I’ve been stuck in this box for a really, really, really long time…and it’s been really boring and lonely in here.”
The girl stared on silently. In spite of the dim light, she took a step closer toward where the rock slab was missing and looked again. From this distance, she could make out that she wasn’t looking at rock at all but what looked like wood. She stepped closer yet, albeit much more hesitantly and slowly, like someone approaching a bees’ nest.
It was definitely wood, in the shape of a long box. Like a coffin. Something was hastily scratched along the side of it. It was in crude lettering, and the girl could barely read it in the dim light, but she just managed to make out a word.
PINKAMENA.
“Please?” the voice called again, more insistent and pleading this time. “I don’t want to be in here anymore… It’s been so long since I’ve heard anyone else… It’s…it’s scary thinking of how long I’ll be in here before someone else comes. Please let me out! Pretty please?”
The girl stared on at the box, hearing the girl’s voice inside continuing to plead with her. The wind rushed and another thunder rumble rang out. The leaves clattered against the rock ground behind her.
Over time, a voice came in her head. A voice telling her how, young as she was, it seemed impossible that anyone could survive being buried alive for who knew how many months or years. And that if they were, they wouldn’t have the voice of an innocent child speaking so sweetly and kindly. That this…this entire situation…was wrong. Very wrong. What more, she was alone and with no one else for miles. No one to call to for help and no adults to ask for assistance. The voice told her to turn and run. To get away from there as fast as she could. To forget she ever saw or heard anything in that rock slab…
Yet the more she dwelt on that, the more another voice spoke to her. Asking her where her faith was in Gaia Everfree if she was so easily growing scared of fantasies. Surely no one could have been buried alive in that spot. Anyone speaking like this or talking like this had to have been placed there by someone. What if a kidnapper had seized a child from the local village, put her in a box, and practically buried her alive in the rock wall? That would certainly be a reason why the rock slab had been missing, wouldn’t it? Far more than it would just happen to crumble and reveal an old coffin or box? And if so, how long would she last in there? Would she starve or die of thirst? And all because she was too frightened to help someone begging for it?
The first voice responded that she knew this was wrong. She could tell it was from everything around her. Her father had told her this was unholy ground. The wooden planks within the stone slab might be all that was protecting her from something bad…something even evil. She would be disobeying her father, and she might regret it forever…if she lived to regret it at all.
The second voice responded that this was someone who needed her help and she was the only one who could provide it. That if she turned around now and went home and left someone imprisoned in that dark box in a forgotten hole, then she would regret it forever. She’d hear that voice pleading for help in her nightmares for the rest of her life.
In the end, she could do only one thing.
She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and lowered herself to her knees. She began to pray soon after.
“Um…hello?” the voice finally asked. “Are you still there? You…you didn’t leave, did you?”
The girl didn’t answer. She remained in that position for five full minutes, praying silently. At last, however, she opened her eyes. Although her face remained expressionless, she had a new resolve.
“Get to one side of the box.”
“Oh! You’re still here!” the voice answered. Soon after, there was a rustling from within. “Alright! I’m at one side!”
Still riding on the resolve, the girl turned around and walked back to the stones. She took up her stone axe and turned back to the wall. She walked up to it, reaching striking distance, and paused. She held the tool up in both hands but moved no more.
Another rumble went out. Soon after, the girl felt a touch of cold wetness as the first raindrop fell from the sky and hit her. A few more joined it before the clouds up above rippled with their first shimmer of lightning, followed by a second rumble. Her hands shook.
Yet before she could break any further, she hoisted the axe up with both hands and brought it forward into the side of the box.
The wood that made up the box was the strongest that the girl had every encountered. The first strike barely dented it. Yet she struck again and again afterward with strength and stamina that had already been honed beyond her years. She kept working at it and eventually the wood started to splinter. While she began to sweat and the rain began to pick up, she kept beating away at it. Soon fragments of splinters started to come out.
The thunder rumbled again as she kept beating away, yanking out chips with each strike. The light continued to diminish, and as it did it got harder to see what she was doing. Still she kept striking, and as her hands began to feel raw, finally one of the planks that made up the side of the box began to bend inward. As she kept striking, she heard a crackling from it. It was the sound of part of the side giving away. She kept striking, and eventually the axe head began to dip in with the plank, such that when she ripped it out she started to twist the other boards in her wake.
At long last, as the shadows lumbered over the site and the darkness gathered, one swing of her axe resulted in a resounding snap. A section of plank about as long as a man’s palm broke off and was sent flying into the open cavity of the box.
The girl was breathing hard at this point, and let her arms fall and the axe fall out of them. Realizing she had sent a piece of wood flying into the box, she wondered if she had struck whoever was within, and so she stepped forward and looked into the cavity.
She heard nothing and saw only blackness in the dim light.
“Hello?” she called inside.
The lightning flashed…and the girl saw it.
It was only for half of a second at most, but the last lightning bolt cast a gleam into the dark recesses of the box. When it did, she saw six separate eyes staring back at her…irregular, each one different from the other, and each one focusing and moving independently. Aside from that, all she made out was a mouth full of sharp, irregular, curved teeth.
Before the thunderclap came, the girl had already turned and broken into run. And as the rain broke in full fury and began to come down in pouring sheets, for once the otherwise stoic and conserved child expressed nothing but raw terror.
As it grew darker yet and the thunderstorm raged over her head, the girl only ran. She ran harder, faster, and longer than she ever thought was possible; learning that night what it truly meant to run for her life. She didn’t even get a mile down the trail before it was already growing too dark to see save for lightning flashes, but she didn’t slow or stop. Above all, she never looked behind her. She didn’t dare. Each time the lightning flashed, she struggled not to shut her eyes. Her mind kept imagining seeing that horrific thing that had been in the box standing in front of her, looking at her with its six eyes and grinning with a mouthful of teeth…
She kept thinking she could hear its footsteps in the water and mud behind her; right on her heels. She almost swore she could hear its voice behind every thunderclap. Long before she reached home she went into a constant stream of prayers for protection and deliverance, and she didn’t stop. She couldn’t. Doing so would let her mind conjure up more horrible fantasies of that thing behind her, or, worse yet, what it would do to her when it caught her. She had no one to turn to for help now. No one to go to. It was just her and that thing she left behind…which she began to pray ever more fiercely couldn’t get out of that box.
At last, her home came into view in one of the lightning strikes. She ran straight for the door, tore it open, and ran inside. As frantically and quickly as she could, she barricaded the door, covered and shut all the windows, and finally fetched her father’s rifle. Only then, still praying all the way, she went up to the front door and, mustering all the strength and courage she could, she looked out the small keyhole which happened to be aimed directly toward the path leading to the quarry.
She sat there staring in that keyhole for the next two hours, terrified with each passing moment that the next lightning flash would reveal the horror coming up the trail…or, worse yet, looking right back at her through the keyhole. For half of that time, the only company other than her prayers and thunderclaps was the sound of her labored breathing and heartbeat. Yet as time passed and the storm kept raging, nothing appeared. The trail remained empty. The only sounds in the night was the rain and thunder.
As time kept passing, her heartbeat finally slowed along with her breathing. She again began to tell herself that she had only knocked a small hole in the box. Nothing that whatever was in could get out from. As time passed after that, she began to reason even more calmly. She had to have imagined it. There was no sort of creature with teeth like that or eyes like that. It had been a trick of the lightning. Nevertheless, her grip remained on the gun, and when she began to tell herself that she must have seen nothing and that it had to have just been a normal person inside, she responded that the person could now wait inside that box until her parents were back. She wouldn’t be going back there again alone. Not even to dress the stones. Her father might be angry at her for it, but she wouldn’t even get in earshot of the quarry.
As the third hour passed, she eventually moved away from the front door and back to the room that she and her sisters shared. After barricading that door as well, she went to her bed in the corner. She got in, making sure to set the rifle next to it, and then slipped under the quilt.
She reached in her pocket, but on feeling inside she felt only empty space. Her eyes widened. She felt around more frantically for a moment before her memory connected. She had left the rock back in the quarry… Feeling more nervous than ever, she ignored it and folded her arms.
Telling herself again that she had to have imagined it, she gradually eased down onto the mattress. As the thunderstorm kept blowing outside and lighting up the windows while pelting them with rain, she finally leaned back on the pillow. As time went on, she finally shut her eyes. She told herself to try and sleep and forget the whole thing happened. At least until daylight.
The storm continued to rage outside, but gradually it melded together, and only a continuous dripping with periodic thunder registered in the girl’s memory.
Lightning flashed. Her eyes cracked open slightly, but she saw nothing but the inside of her dark room. Rain pelted the glass of her window. All was still and quiet in the house. Her eyes slowly shut again.
Lightning flashed again. Her eyes once again opened, and there was nothing there. All was still. All was quiet. The rain continued to tap against the glass. Her heart eased just a little more as she closed her eyes again.
Lightning flashed again. She cracked open her eyes. The room was empty and still. Nothing out of the ordinary or unusual. Nothing except the shadow on the floor moving…
Shadow? Moving?
Her eyes opened just a bit wider, and flicked to the window.
A hand with multi-jointed fingers twice as long as they should have been was pressed against it like a giant bug.
The girl let out a gasp and did what any frightened child would have done. She sank into the bed, threw the quilt over her face, and became as still as a statue. She held her breath but the sound of her heart racing seemed so loud that it resonated through the room. In the middle of her panic, she remembered the gun…but she didn’t dare go for it. Not now. Not when whatever was at the window could risk seeing her go for it. Instead, she lay there still as a statue.
A thought crossed her mind. Maybe it was her imagination. Or at least it hadn’t seen her.
Both thoughts were consumed by raw terror when she heard the window shutters creak open.
The girl kept holding her breath. She shut her eyes and struggled not to tremble. She kept telling herself she was imagining this. That it was just a dream. She wasn’t really hearing the window swing open wide. She wasn’t really hearing the floorboards crack as something stepped through it and into her room. She wasn’t really hearing it come to the foot of her bed.
She wasn’t feeling weight on her mattress from something putting its limb on it.
She wasn’t feeling water from rain drip and drop over her body as it leaned over her.
She wasn’t hearing it breathe right over her face.
There she lay, immobile. Eventually, she had to breathe and she stole one before swallowing. But when she did, she could still feel the weight on top of her. Water was soaking into her covers. Another thunderclap rang out, much clearer now that her window was open. A part of her told her to stay there. Wait until it was gone. It didn’t move, however, even when she waited several minutes.
Finally, she told herself to open her eyes and pull the quilt off of her face. To prove that she was imagining it. That this was just a dream. That none of it could be real. That she could just end the terror she was feeling right now. With that, she took in a deep breath. She whispered another prayer to Gaia Everfree. Bracing herself for whatever her mind would come up with, she opened her eyes and used her fingertips to pull back the quilt.
The multi-eyed, toothed face from the box was hovering two inches from her own.
All illusions and optimism vanished. She knew it was real…and it was here. Hunched over her bed. Looking her dead in the face. It was over. She was going to die. The last thing she would ever see was it opening its jaws and biting her face off. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t speak. She just lay there looking at it.
The six eyes continued to move independently, although one remained focused on her at all times. The girl kept looking at them and the teeth, not daring to look at the rest of its body.
The mouth suddenly spread open wide. Bits of drool started to leak from the corners of its mouth. The girl thought this was it. It was moving to bite…
“Hi there!”
The girl was so petrified with fear that her mind didn’t even register what she had heard, nor the fact that it was in the exact same innocent girl voice she had heard before. She focused too much on the thing’s monstrous lips moving over its jagged, irregular teeth and its eyes continuing to shift around in weird ways.
“You let me out, didn’t you?” the thing’s out-of-place voice asked. “You ran away before I had a chance to say thank you, silly! Well…thank you!”
The girl didn’t move. She thought the thing was warming up to kill her still. That it was playing with her a little first with this talk.
“Soooo…what’s your name?”
No answer.
“Is this where you live? It’s nice and dry!”
Still no answer.
“Is this what you sleep on? It’s super-comfy! Much better than a box!”
Still no answer, but the girl began to become aware that the thing wasn’t making a move on her either. Nor did it look inclined too. Eventually, she gained enough bravery to swallow and exhale some of the breath she had been holding. The thing didn’t react, other than to continue to spread its mouth open wide.
Was it…a smile?
“You don’t like to talk much, do you? I love to talk! And this is great because I haven’t had anybody to talk to for so long that…well…I can’t remember the last person I talked too! Tee-hee!” It finally pulled its head back slightly. “Say, you know? You don’t look too much like me…or I don’t look too much like you.”
The voice was so innocent-sounding, so child-like, and so simple that the girl found herself involuntarily glancing down and looking at the body perched over her. It filled her with more dread. The thing had ten limbs in all, each one too long, gangly, and bony. They weren’t adjusted regularly either like one might find on an insect. More like something jumbled together.
The thing’s head looked away and down at its own body, seeming to compare it to the girl’s under the cover. “Yeah, I think I’ve got a few more parts than you do. But do you want to know a secret?” The thing lowered its voice into a childish whisper. “They kind of get in the way. Along with all of these teeth. See?”
Its lips peeled back, exposing part of its misshapen skull underneath, so it could bare its mouth full of teeth at the girl all at once. She couldn’t help it; she shrank and let out a small start when it did that.
At once the thing froze. The girl held her breath again. She thought that had done it. That this would be what pushed it over the edge into killing her.
However, a moment later, all of the thing’s eyes widened together. “Ooooh…I get it… You’re nervous ‘cause I don’t look like you! I remember that! People used to not like me because I didn’t look like them!” The face spread into a smile again. “But I learned a trick to fix that ever since I got put in the box! Just a second!”
With that, the gangly limbs all shifted together and scrambled off of the girl and her bed. She let out an exhale again as the weight was removed, even if the thing was still in her room. Out of sheer fear, she sat bolt upright in bed and pushed herself backward. She thought again of the gun, but didn’t dare reach for it or move any more.
She was now fully facing the thing as it stood on the floor of her room, seeing it in all of its disjointed “glory”. The irregular eyes looked over its own body for a moment. “Hmm…let’s see…where to start… How ‘bout…this one!”
One of the thing’s gangly arms reached up, extended its spidery fingers, and grasped another arm where it joined to the thing’s body. It tightened it grip, and then began to twist. After a moment, the girl began to hear a squelching sound coming from it. Like the skin and muscle was being pulled and rotated more than it should have been. Crackling and popping came soon after, now sounding like bone.
Then, all of the sudden, with a sickening noise, it ripped it own arm clean off.
The girl’s cheeks bulged. She nearly gagged as she watched the flesh where it connected immediately become gel-like and ooze back together like bread dough or custard. Even worse was that the severed limb kept moving even apart from the thing’s body. Nevertheless, it let it fall to the floor like dead weight. Humming a bit to itself, it reached for another limb and soon did the same thing.
The girl was soon forced to watch a rather grotesque process as the thing ripped off one limb after another until it was left with only four. After that, it gouged open its own remaining appendages and pulled out sections of bone until they were a more human-like length, before breaking off the tips of its fingers and toes until they were also proportional. Then it reached into its own back and ripped it open, yanking out sections of vertebrae and ribs next. Each piece was discarded in a growing pile on the ground.
After that, she went into her mouth. Seizing a tooth, she ripped it clean out of her head. The girl couldn’t watch anymore then. She managed to close her eyes, but kept hearing teeth come out one after the other. When it was finally over, she risked opening her eyes again after a moment of silence.
Bad move. She was just in time to see the thing yank out one of its own eyeballs.
She immediately shut her own eyes again and winced as she heard the others come out. When it was finally over, she risked cracking them open a second time.
On the floor was a pile of bloodless body parts of all shapes and sizes. Yet standing nearby it was the thing, although one would hardly know that by now. The body was the same size and shape of a normal human girl a little younger than herself. The only difference was one of its limbs. On the back of its hand was a strange circular symbol seemingly embedded in its skin. Only now did she notice the thing had hair. Pink, but also straight and flat and hanging down around her head; still wet from the rain. Its back was still to the girl at first, but it turned around once it was finished.
For a moment, she saw the two remaining eyes in the thing’s head, now in the same position as regular human eyes. They continued to swivel independently and in different directions, however, until the thing took its child-like hand and smacked itself against the side of the head twice. After the second blow, both eyes now moved together and blinked in unison. It smiled afterward from a normal child’s mouth.
“There we go!” it cheered. “Now I look just like you!”
The girl was dumbfounded. She didn’t know what to say or how to react to that. Instead, she grimaced at the pile on the floor…especially since each of the parts were still moving independently.
“Hmm?” the thing asked, and then looked down. “Oops! I really made a mess, didn’t I? Don’t worry! I’ll clean it all up! And I’ve got just the perfect place for all of this!”
With that, she bent over and began to pick up her body parts. It was quite a bit, but what made the process much easier was the severed limbs independently picked things up as well so that she gathered all the parts together in no time. Soon she had an armful of them and was rising again.
“Be right back!”
She went straight back to the window, dumped her load outside of it, climbed out, and then went off into the night. The girl could hear her singing to herself as she slowly vanished into the storm.
It was a good ten minutes before the girl finally risked going for the gun. As soon as she had it, and failed to see the thing pop back up in the window, she went straight for her mother’s shrine to Gaia Everfree, got on her knees, and began to pray harder than she ever had in her life. She realized she had to have been at it for hours when something finally changed again.
She was in the middle of finishing one prayer when she heard the thing letting out a childish giggle out front. Immediately, she snapped her head around, half-expecting it to come popping in and lunging at her, but she saw nothing and only heard the same laugh again. Taking up the gun and bracing herself, she very slowly rose and made her way back to her room at the front of the house. The laughter got louder there, and she saw something moving outside.
Steeling herself and her courage, she managed to reach out and open the door again. She nearly raised the gun to take aim at whatever was out there, but stopped soon after.
The thing was indeed out there, but it didn’t look like it wanted in. Rather, like a playful child, it was running around jumping in mud puddles, laughing and skipping, holding its head up into the sky and sticking out a human tongue to catch raindrops, and generally having a blast.
“Yippee!” it shouted between giggles. “It’s so great to be out in all this cool stuff! There’s squishy stuff between my toes and wet, cold stuff running through my hair and big noisy stuff coming from the black puffy stuff! This is so much more fun than the box!”
The girl stood there motionless. She wasn’t sure how long, but for as long as she stood there the thing kept playing in the rain, often singing to itself and spinning and skipping around. The thought occurred to her to shoot it now while it was unaware, but this time fear of the fact that the bullet would do nothing was only part of the reason why she paused. The carefree, innocent look on the thing’s face that seemed like just a normal girl was part of it now.
Eventually, the girl stepped away from the window and back into her room. She kept ahold of the rifle but let it fall to one side. She stared at the floor, her own fear lessening for the first time. It didn’t disappear, but it did give way to a few moments of thought and consideration.
A very large lightning bolt, the kind that could have only come from striking near the house, flashed through the window. A moment later, the girl winced and cringed from the roaring thunderclap that resulted. It was so loud and shook the house so much that the thing outside was forgotten briefly, and she pulled back out of fear that the building had been struck.
However, the thunder diminished and slowly faded with a resounding echo. She heard a wet squelching again. Much slower this time, and also approaching the window. She turned to it, and for a moment a bit of the fear came back.
Moments later, the thing leaned in just enough to poke its head inside. It had a rather dazed look on its face, and its hair, which had previously been flat, was now curled to the point of being poofy and balanced on top of its head. The girl almost thought she saw a wisp of smoke coming from it.
“Those bright parts that burn and itch when they hit you aren’t so much fun…” it moaned, before it slumped forward headfirst. Gravity yanked it back in through the window until it pulled the rest of itself through to slump onto the floor. After that, it went still.
The girl didn’t move again, and was left staring at the motionless thing. After a time, she realized that it was breathing just like a normal child would but not moving. It actually seemed to be unconscious. The lightning had to have struck it and left it this way.
She again thought of the rifle. This time, she actually grasped it and began to pull it up. This was the best shot she would get. Point blank range and while it was unable to react. She might never get another shot of any kind. She grasped the stock and nearly aimed it.
Then she stopped.
The thing was breathing so gently and normally. The way its little body was slumped against the floor was just like how Limestone would be whenever she rolled out of bed and fell asleep on the rug. Even knowing what she had seen, it looked so much like just a normal child. Even mottled with mud from playing around in the rain like a normal child. Its laughter and giggling sounding so much like a normal child.
Slowly, the girl found herself releasing her grip on the stock of the rifle. She let it lower to her side again. She kept staring at it for a few more minutes before she turned and moved for her mother’s room again.
The storm broke at last not long after that incident. The rain tapered off and, following it, the sun finally began to rise. Yet even when it was fully in the sky the girl was still at the shrine in her mother’s room, continuing to pray. She was still scared, but found herself not as scared as before. The thing in her room never made a sound. At least…not at first. Eventually she began to hear a noise coming from the room, but on closer inspection she realized it was the thing snoring. She hadn’t checked again since then. By now, the rifle was to one side and well out of arm’s length.
The girl finished the Prayer of Protection and made her customary sign to signify the end. She bowed her head to the ground and touched it, then rose again. She nearly started another one.
“What’cha doin’?”
She gave a violent start and spun around, in spite of how simple and innocent the voice was. There was the thing, seated on the floor near the doorway. Her hair was still poofy, but her eyes, still completely normal, were wide-open and curious. She had taken the girl’s quilt off of her bed and wrapped her naked body in it.
Seeing her freeze, the thing seemed to think it was due to what she had on. “I’m sorry I took it without asking, but it was just so soft and warm I wanted to wrap up in it! Can I please wear it?”
The question was again innocent, and it looked imploringly at the girl. The girl stared back and saw it wait for an answer. At that moment, the truth finally clicked with her: the thing wasn’t going to hurt her. Realizing that allowed her to calm somewhat.
“…I don’t mind.”
The thing grinned again…the normal grin of an excited child with normal teeth. “Yay! Thank you! Oh! I almost forgot! I wanted to give you something!”
Immediately, it scrambled into the room, scooting on its rear end right up to the girl. She recoiled a bit, especially with how fast she came, but the thing was on her in no time. Soon it was seated right next to her and holding up its hand. On seeing what was in it the girl was caught yet again.
A fist-sized, boulder-shaped rock.
“When I was looking through the cracks of the box, I saw you try to get this. I thought it was yours, so I picked it up when I dropped my things off back in the box and brought it back to you. Is this yours?”
The girl took a moment to answer. “…Yes. It’s…it’s Boulder.”
“Boulder?”
A pause. “My pet rock.”
“Ooo! What’s a pet?”
Absent-mindedly, the girl responded. “It’s…it’s something that…keeps you company. That you can love.”
“Oh! Then it must be really important! Here you go!”
The girl didn’t move. She stared at it for several seconds more. Finally, she swallowed. Slowly and trembling, she raised her hand. Watching the thing the whole time, she reached up and over to its outstretched hand. Swallowing a second time, she forced herself to reach out and take it, barely avoiding snatching it.
The thing never made a move. It merely smiled back. The girl, on her part, looked down at the rock. She stared at it for a while and felt it in her hand, enjoying the familiar feeling and sensation. It made her feel more at ease and comfortable again…
“Look at that!”
The girl looked up again. The thing was grinning at her.
“You just had the corners of your mouth turn up! Just a teeny…tiny…bit…but that’s the first time I’ve seen them! What’s that?”
The girl blinked. “A…smile?”
“A smile?” the thing echoed back, before giggling. “You look like a different person with a smile! I like seeing it! Can you do it again?”
The girl blinked again, not realizing that the fear inside her was fading further as she put Boulder down at her side. “I’m…not a big smiler.”
“Aw…” the thing answered, sounding disappointed. “But you smiled just now, didn’t you? When I gave you Boulder? Oh, oh! Can I have him back and I’ll give him to you again, so then you’ll smile again?”
“It…it doesn’t work that way.”
“Aw! Why not?”
“You smile only when you’re happy…and I was happy for just that moment.”
“Oh, that’s no fun…” the thing frowned, pouting a bit as it…as she sank under the quilt. She looked up again soon after. “But what were you doing?”
The girl hesitated. She looked back to the shrine and then back to the thing. “I was just…praying.”
“Ooo! Praying! What’s that?”
The girl paused yet again. However, the thing continued to look innocent and curiously child-like. It put her more at ease. “It’s where you speak with Gaia Everfree.”
“Who’s Gaia Everfree?”
“She’s the god of the world. She created it and everyone on it, and she gave us the tenets by which we should live in order to ascend one day.”
“Oh!” The thing immediately spread herself on the ground, lying on her belly, and propped her head up on her hands just like a fascinated little girl would. “What does that mean? ‘Ascend’?”
The girl noted her behavior in silence for a moment, before she found herself turning to face the thing. “It means that when you die, your soul ascends to be with Gaia Everfree in paradise forever.”
“My soul?”
The girl opened her mouth to correct the thing, meaning to say she had been using “you” in the general sense. Yet after a short pause, she found herself continuing. “Yes. Everyone has a soul. That’s the part that gives life to the rest of you, and that’s what continues after you die. Gaia Everfree made everyone’s soul. And she wants everyone to be with her in the heavens.”
“What are they like? The heavens?”
“It’s a place where no one gets hungry or thirsty. Where no one gets sick or hurt. Where no one is sad or has to watch people die anymore. They live in peace and happiness forever.”
The thing looked more excited. “Do they get to have fun all the time too?”
The girl paused, but then nodded back.
She sprung up a bit. “And they get to always be happy?”
She nodded.
“And no one ever puts them in boxes and buries them and forgets about them?”
A longer pause, but a nod.
The thing let out an excited squeal. “I want to ascend!”
The girl blinked. “…Excuse me?”
“I want to go be with Gaia Everfree! Can you show me the way? What do I have to do?”
The girl was struck silent and motionless again. However, the thing only continued to look at her happily and eagerly. The girl remembered her father telling her in grim tones that what was evil and profane couldn’t abide the name or presence of Gaia Everfree. It would shrink away and wither like grass in wildfire. Yet this thing embraced both things eagerly, without the slightest fear or trepidation.
Seeing that made the last of her fear melt away.
“Wait here just a minute.”
The thing…the unusual girl…sat there grinning and eagerly squirming, while the girl rose up and went to her parents’ bedside. After searching a little, she found her copy of the Gaitian scripture that she had read to them many times before. She brought it back in front of the shrine and opened it up. The unusual girl scooted up to her side and looked at it, but soon only looked confused. “There’s a lot of funny looking things in this thing…”
“Those are letters and words,” the girl answered as she turned to one particular page.
“What are letters and words?”
“They’re things you read that tell you other things. It’s like being able to look at something and see someone talking to you.”
“Oh, neat! What’s that part say?”
She pointed. “This part right here is the 12 Tenets of Gaia. They’re the most important commands you have to follow.”
“Okie-dokie-lokie! What are they?”
“The first one is that you can never intentionally kill another person. Killing is a horrible sin against Gaia Everfree. You have to treat all people as if they are your family. That’s why Gaitians never kill. Not even in a time of war.”
“I got it! I’ll never kill anyone! What’s next?”
“Well, for the second…”
It was well past noon when the girl had finished her “crash course” in the religion of Gaia. They had only covered the high points in the book, but she shut it just the same. The whole time, the unusual girl had never stopped listening with rapt attention and wonder. Only toward the end did she quiet down, all of the new thoughts seeming to run through her head.
When it was finally done, the girl turned to her. “Do you understand?”
“Hmm…” the unusual girl answered. “So…the biggest and best thing that Gaia Everfree wants us to do is to treat everyone the way we want them to treat us?”
The girl nodded.
The unusual girl stuck her tongue out of her mouth in a thoughtful expression and stared at the ceiling. She pondered this for several moments. Suddenly, her eyes widened as if she had a realization. “Oh, oh! What I want everyone to do is to make me smile and have fun with me so that I can be happy! So that means that I should make everyone else smile and have fun so that they can be happy, right?”
The girl thought about this reasoning for a moment. “I suppose so.”
The unusual girl grinned widely again. “Yay! That sounds like lots of fun! Alright…that’s what I’ll do!”
The girl blinked. “Excuse me?”
“I’m going to serve Gaia Everfree by making everyone smile, have fun, and be happy! And I want to start with you!”
The girl blinked again, a little taken aback. “Me?”
“Sure! You were nice enough to get me out of the box and let me wear your warm, soft thing and teach me everything about Gaia Everfree! And you looked so nice when you smiled! I want to make you smile more! Oh!” She suddenly sprang to her feet. “Are there other people around that I can do that for?” She began to glance about. “Do more people live here? Where are they at? Can I make them happy too?”
She began to prance about the room, looking about excitedly. The girl began to rise up after her on seeing her getting worked up. She reached out a hand for her, nearly telling her to stop.
However, before she could, the unusual girl stopped on her own. She was staring at something. The girl approached her and followed her gaze.
She looked at a tiny frame on the wall of the room. Inside it was a black-and-white photograph of the girl and her family.
“Are those the other people who live here?” she asked, far more calmly.
The girl again hesitated, but then nodded. “Yes.”
The unusual girl stepped toward the picture. “Who are they?”
The girl swallowed once, but then stepped forward and pointed. “That’s my father. That’s my mother. And those are my two sisters.”
“They look like me too. What’s a sister?”
The girl was caught. She looked at the unusual girl for a moment, who was still staring at the picture, before she was able to speak.
“A sister is a member of your family. You came from the same set of parents, and you live under the same house as them and do chores along with them-”
“Do they sleep in the same room as you?”
“…My sisters do, but that’s only because we can’t-”
“Do you get to have fun with them?”
“Sometimes, after you’re done with work for the day. Then you can go out and-”
“Do they make you happy?”
A longer pause. “…Yes, yes they do.”
“How? Do they give you things that make you smile or do nice things for you?”
“Yes, but…but that’s not why they make you happy.”
“Why do they make you happy?”
Another pause. “Because…they care about you. They love you.”
“They love you…like Gaia Everfree loves everyone?”
“Sort of. Only…you can feel it.”
“Feel it?”
“It’s a warm feeling you get in your chest. It makes you feel light. Like everything will be fine. Like they’re always with you even when they’re away. And it makes you want to be with them and remember them always. Even when you’re cold or alone or scared, none of that matters as much so long as you know they love you. It makes you want to do anything for them. It makes you happy to be alive because you get to be with them.”
This last part got the unusual girl to look at her. Her eyes widened in wonder at this last part. She stared at the girl for a long time.
“Could…” Her voice was the quietest it had been so far. “Could…I be your sister?”
Out of all of the unexpected shocks and surprises the girl had gotten since the previous evening, this was the greatest. She was left standing there speechless, staring at the innocent eyes and expression of the unusual girl as she looked back at her hopefully and imploringly.
Only now, however, did she realize she felt no more fear or even anxiety around her. She had never seen a girl like her before. How everything in the world seemed so fresh and wonderful and new, so much so that she was happy just simply being there talking to someone while wearing only a quilt. The girl herself was normally quiet and reserved. Limestone and Marble, while her sisters, usually didn’t see the world in too happy or bright of a light and talked little. She had probably talked more to the unusual girl in one day than she had to them in half a year.
But she couldn’t help it. She realized now the way the unusual girl doted on her, hung around her, listened to her every word…it was more than just cute and innocent. It made the girl feel wanted as well. Important, even. Worth being concerned over. And seeing her playfulness and youth, it actually made her feel different.
It actually made her…happier.
“Mom, dad.”
The Pies had scarcely finished pulling the wagon up to the front of the house when they both looked up. In the back of the wagon, Limestone and Marble, still pale but much healthier than when they left, looked up as well. It wasn’t just from the fact the girl was calling, but the fact that she was speaking at all. She never called out to them for any reason.
They found her standing in the open doorway with her rock in one hand. She remained there a moment, but then stood to one side. Skipping out from within the house, dressed in some of Maud’s own clothing although it was too big for her, waving eagerly and grinning, was a boisterous, happy little girl with a head of pink, poofy hair.
The Pies were surprised to see her to say the least, but the girl spoke up again.
“She followed me home soon after you left. She doesn’t have a home or family of her own to go to.”
When the unusual girl was brought out of the creek by the minister, her hair remained flat only for a fraction of a second before spontaneously popping back up into its normal poofy style. As for the girl herself, she gave a bit of a shake from the water now dripping off of her, but was beaming for joy that her baptism was complete. She turned and grinned at the Pie family.
Most of them were as stoic as always, as they had been for the baptisms of the rest of their children, but the girl gave her just a hint of a smile. Just wide enough for her to see.
The minister proclaimed the words over her.
“You are now a child of Gaia Everfree, Pinkamena Diane Pie.”
The group was as still as a set of statues. Their eyes were widened so much it looked as if they would fall out of their heads on hearing the story. They themselves seemed to have ceased to breathe in the wake of it, as the realization of who…and what…Pinkie was fully dawned on them.
Maud herself was quiet for a short time to let it sink in and then continued. “I never told my family the truth. I’m the only one who knew what really happened that night. To them, Pinkie was just a homeless orphan that we took in. They thought the symbol on her hand was just a scar of some kind. They were standoffish at first, but that didn’t last long. She loved being in our family and she loved making us happy. She loved making everyone happy.”
“Here mom! I found a whole patch of your favorite flowers just for you!”
“Open wide, Marble! I made you your favorite soup! Nom, nom, nom!”
“Look everyone! It’s my first cherry upside down cake! Eat up!”
“I’ll get the axe, dad! You just rest that back of yours!”
“Surprise, everyone! It’s a party!”
“She was so innocent, so sweet, and so eager that I started to forget about that night. I thought I had to have imagined it, because Pinkie didn’t have a mean or evil bone in her body. To prove it to myself, I eventually did go back to that rock face on the last day before we had to move back to our town. I wanted to find the box and see that there was nothing in it. That I just dreamed everything horrible that was on that night. I never found it, though. It wasn’t there, but that just made me think that I really had dreamed it all. I actually began to believe what I had told my parents. That she was just a girl who came to us in the night and my imagination just went wild.”
She bowed her head.
“Then, about two years later, we were both down by the creek when we saw a cottonmouth. Mother had warned us to look out for them. She told us how deadly they were. How one of her own sisters lost a foot to one of them before dying of infection. Pinkie was wary about them after that. She told me not to worry; that she’d protect me if one came out. Well…one came out near me. That’s when I realized I hadn’t imagined that night.”
Maud was expressionless as always, but inside her heart was racing as much as it had that night.
Two things now lay in front of her. One was the bloody skeleton of the cottonmouth. The other was the fleshy remains of the rest of it, still twitching as the last bit of life left its body. The only sound was the wet fleshy sounds it was making as it slowly stopped moving.
Maud swallowed once and looked up. Pinkie had learned how to read her expressionless face well in the past two years. As a result, she knew she had upset her. And it made her cringe even as her bloodstained hands continued to drip against the ground.
“I didn’t scare you, did I, Maud? I’m sorry! I just wanted to make sure the snake didn’t bite you! I just saw it and moved and something inside me told me what to do and… I’m sorry!”
In spite of telling herself to calm down and ease up, Maud was scared. And it was some time before she swallowed and nodded. “It’s alright, Pinkie. Let’s…go home.”
Still shrinking, she nodded as she fell in next to Maud again. They began to walk, and as they did Maud quivered a little as she stepped over the remains of the snake. She forced her head forward and walked normally. Pinkie tried to skip next to her, but it was halfhearted and hesitant.
Maud took her straight to the spring first before heading home, telling her to wash her hands off. Fortunately, none of the blood stained her clothes. After that, they walked on for about another half mile before Maud calmed enough to speak.
“Pinkie?”
“Yes, Maud?”
“I want to tell you two things about that. First, I don’t want you to ever do anything like that in front of anyone other than me ever again. You’ll probably scare people.”
“Sure thing, Maud. Whatever you say. I promise.”
“Second.” She had to stop again to steady herself. “I don’t want you to ever even think about doing that to another person.”
“Oh no, Maud!” Pinkie immediately cried. “I’d never, ever, ever do that to another person! That would be a sin against Gaia Everfree! You told me that!”
“Alright then. In that case, I don’t think we need to tell mom, dad, Limestone, or Marble about this.”
“Okay…”
Maud turned her eyes to Pinkie. Her sister was still looking downcast and worried, like she wasn’t sure that everything was ‘back to normal’ even after hearing that, and that she was still afraid she had upset her. Maud looked forward afterward.
“Why don’t you stop by the bakery on the way home?”
Pinkie looked upright, beginning to smile again. “Really?” She paused afterward, smile fading again. “But…are you sure? I thought mom wanted us to beat out the rugs?”
“I’ll do that. Just make sure to be back before dark.”
The girl smiled again at that, before leaning over and wrapping her arms around Maud’s shoulders and giving her a hug. “I know you get tired of hearing this, but you’re the best sister ever, Maud!”
In spite of herself, Maud smiled slightly back.
Maud looked up afterward and back to the group. “That was the last I saw of it. And for years, our family was poor but happy. Then, like I said, came the trip to Cloudsdale. Yet as it turned out, I could still be there for Pinkie even after that happened. There were certain advantages to my new…condition. Somehow, I knew certain things about myself. I knew now what that symbol on my sister’s hand meant. And I knew what I had to teach her so that I could be at her side whenever she needed me from now on…”
“Pinkie.”
“Yeah, Maud?”
“I want to teach you a new prayer today. It’s a very special prayer. It’s one you only have to say once, but after you say it I’ll be able to come help you whenever you call for me.”
“Really? Wow! That sounds great! What do I do?”
“Here, face me.”
“Ok!”
“Now…repeat after me… Valiant spirit, my household opens its doors to you.”
“Valiant spirit, my household opens its doors to you!”
“I, Maudileena Daisy Pie, the Sage Geologist, pledge myself to the House of Pinkamena Diane Pie.”
“I, Maudileena-”
“You don’t repeat that part, Pinkie. Say this instead… The binding is done; may our souls be as one.”
“The binding is done; may our souls be as one!”
“…And the rest is history.”
The group continued to stand in stunned silence, no one knowing what to say. Fluttershy began to quiver after a time and shrink down. Applejack looked too astonished to even think. Sunset held a hand to her mouth for a time, then lowered it.
“So…the reason we can see you and talk to you even though you’re an Anima Viri…?”
“I’m assuming it has something to do with Pinkie. Wherever she came from, she’s definitely not like other people. I could tell after speaking with you the first time that she wasn’t even like the rest of you. Though even now I’m not entirely sure that’s the whole reason…”
“You said you never even told your parents about Pinkie,” Twilight asked next. “So why are you telling us?”
Maud blinked once. She paused for a long time. “You told me you were her friends. Even after everything I just told you, are you still her friends?”
Twilight looked caught. She turned back to the others. Discomfort went across each of their faces. Airs of unease and uncertainty. What they had just heard couldn’t be simply ignored or dismissed after all. Yet slowly their own faces eased as they remembered all of their own times with Pinkie, her innocence, her joy, and the times she had tried to make them happy as well. They finally looked back at Twilight with more resolve. As a result, she turned back to Maud. After a second longer, she nodded. “Yes…yes, we are.”
“Then telling you was the right thing to do. You deserved to know the truth. Pinkie deserved you knowing the truth. She deserves people accepting her in spite of where she came from.”
Maud rolled her head back, looking up to the night sky. She stared at it as she continued.
“It’s been over ten years since I broke open that box in the quarry. If I wanted to be completely honest, up until the day I died I wondered sometimes if that was the right thing to do. I want to believe it was. I want to believe that Gaia Everfree wanted me to make this world a better place by opening it, but I honestly don’t know. I only know that the purpose of my life was to open that box, whether it ends up leading to something good or something bad. I was created to be Pinkie’s sister. And I came back because she still needs me to be her sister.”
She lowered her head again.
“Maybe now that she has all of you, I won’t need to be here much longer.”
“So what will you all do now?”
The group halted on the rock trail, turning and looking behind them. They had left Maud…or at least what was left of her…behind a while ago now and were making their way back to the Pies’ shack. Just around the corner the roof would come into view, but before they could reach that point they heard Sunset call out as she brought up the rear.
She faced them all with a critical look. “Is that really it? You’re just going to go back up to that…that thing and act like nothing happened? You don’t even know what it is.”
Applejack frowned back. “She ain’t an ‘it’. She’s my friend.”
“Mine as well,” Rarity spoke up. She bowed her head and gave a shudder. “While…I’m not sure I needed to hear everything back there, she saved my life in the mines outside of Griffonstone.”
“She saved all of our lives, and maybe those of Greater Everfree, when we went against Nightmare Moon and you,” Twilight Sparkle added a bit more forcefully. “She’s earned our trust.”
Sunset frowned back at them, but sighed and pressed the issue no further. “Alright. Let’s try a different question, then. What in the world is she and who put her in that box? For all we know, she was buried alive in there for years.”
“Igneous said that was an unholy place for unholy things…” Fluttershy spoke meekly, scaring herself with what she was saying. “You don’t think she’s…she’s a…a demon, do you?”
Dash snorted. “There’s no such thing as demons, Fluttershy.”
“Yes, but, um…I’m pretty sure there’s no such thing as people who can take off their arms and pull out their own bones too...”
“You heard what Maud said, right? She never found that box. Maybe she imagined that part.”
Fluttershy gulped. “Unless…someone took it…”
“Well, that’s just plumb crazy,” Applejack cut in, even as she began to look a little uneasy herself to be talking about this. “Who in their right mind would…would go around stealin’ a box full o’…o’ b-b-body parts?”
Twilight’s own look grew thoughtful. “What I keep thinking about is when Maud found her. Pinkie has a Promethian Sigil like the rest of us. But even Celestia never showed me that she could make the Anima Viris…come out like that. Not to where you could actually talk and interact with them.” She began to rub her chin, her eyes glancing down to the two symbols on her own hand. “What if…”
“I hate to break in,” Rarity suddenly spoke up, interrupting everyone’s train of thought, “but as things stand I would say we have quite enough ‘on our plate’ as it is. I’m not so sure we should spend time worrying about anything new.”
“I think she’s got a point there,” Dash added. “We’re going to be worried enough as it is trying to get all these Gaia Everfree nuts out of here. Maybe this is a problem that can wait?”
Twilight held, glancing back to the symbols on her hand, but eventually frowned. “Rainbow Dash has a point. We don’t really have the luxury of time to wonder about this. Trottingham could make their move at any time, so bright and early tomorrow we need to be making a plan. Let’s head back and get in some sleep while we can.”
The others hesitated momentarily, but eventually all nodded in agreement. Sunset looked a bit irritated at the issue being brushed aside, but simply sighed and said no more.
“Right,” Twilight added, beginning to turn to head on.
The moment she did, she winced in surprise and recoiled. The others were soon alarmed as well. Maud was standing right in their way on the path ahead. She looked as emotionless as always, but the mere fact she was suddenly there was enough to shock them all.
“Sorry,” she apologized quietly. “It’s just that I remembered one other important thing that I meant to tell all of you before you left. You know how I told you my sister’s hair used to be straight and flat, but then after she was struck by lightning it became curly and poofy?”
Twilight took a second to compose herself, but then nodded back.
“Remember this. If there ever comes a time where you see her hair go completely flat…run.”
With a bounce in her step, Pinkie carried the old pot and ladle up to the ladies seated around the broad, slab-like rock just outside the Pies’ household. They weren’t alone. The rest of the crowd that was with them had spread out in the area as well. The children and older members were sitting around like them, but everyone else was either tending to their friends and relatives or making themselves useful as best as they could. Twilight’s group, however, had gathered with Starlight bright and early; the latter of the two having claimed some paper from the old steam engine and had been jotting notes since last night.
Pinkie began to serve the women from the pot into their small, simple, hand-carved rock bowls. She didn’t seem to notice Sunset grimace when she got near and scoot a short distance away from her, or the fact that everyone else’s smiles were just a tiny bit forced that morning. When Dash got her own bowl served, she tipped it up to drink, only to pause and stare at it.
“Uh…just out of curiosity, what are we having?”
“My family’s famous rock soup!”
Twilight, in the middle of sipping from her own bowl, suddenly went wide eyed as her face contorted.
Applejack gave Pinkie an odd look. “You actually make soup outta nothin’ but rocks?”
She giggled as she finished serving. “No, silly! We just use them for flavoring! It’s way cheaper than salt and pepper!”
Twilight very slowly swallowed what was in her mouth. As for Starlight, she grinned weakly at Pinkie before tipping her own bowl to her mouth…letting it roll out and onto the ground just shy of touching her lips…before making a yummy face.
“If I ever get back to Manehattan, I will never take a brioche for granted again…” Rarity muttered.
“You don’t like it?” Limestone’s voice piped up from an outdoor fire nearby, which was serving as the “KP” area. “Feel free to throw any spare meat or vegetables you got into it! Or just starve!”
Fluttershy cringed on hearing her angry retort, shrinking a little before turning to the others. “I’m not sure Limestone likes us being here very much.”
“Well, we did come bringing bad news,” Twilight answered after she was able to regain her composure and set her bowl aside. “Maybe the Apples can help with the flavoring?”
“I don’t reckon there’s much we can do about rocks as a main ingredient,” Applejack answered, before eyeing the same KP area with a bit of a frown. “Though it don’t look like it’s stoppin’ that big brother of mine from tryin’…”
Sure enough, Big Mac along with several of the other Apples were milling about trying to help with feeding everyone, although he seemed to be sticking toward the front with the main pot. At the moment, it wasn’t clear if he was really devoting much attention to that so much as constantly eyeing Marble, who herself seemed to be glancing back at him every time she picked up or set down a stone bowl.
Starlight let her own bowl set as she looked over her papers. “I hate to get us off the topic of genuine Trottingham cuisine…but I think we need to focus on pulling off this mass exodus.”
Twilight stifled herself one more time before nodding. “Right, right… Ok…first things first, we need to keep our eyes on a concrete goal. Pinkie Pie says that Princess Skystar is willing to take in the Gaitians as refugees, so we need to get her family and the other Gaitians in the area out of Trottingham, across Appleloosa, and to Mount Aris. Next we need to define every liability that could keep us from achieving that goal.”
Starlight grimaced as she looked over her papers. “Well…for starters, there’s the fact that Trottingham likely anticipated that the Gaitians might try something like this from the moment they relocated them. That would explain why none of the Pies know exactly how many Gaitians are in the area and exactly where they are. It’s also likely all the main roads in and out of every place the Gaitians have been relocated are being watched. They’ve also probably gone to great lengths to make sure that they can’t communicate with each other. What that all means is even if we did plan a mass emigration from Trottingham, there’d be no way to coordinate it or even risk getting the message out without alerting the local authorities.”
Twilight winced, along with the others. “Ok…that’s a pretty big liability…”
“And it gets better,” Starlight continued. “We lost our only transportation, which means we either expose ourselves trying to get an alternate transportation or we try to get out on foot. If we go on foot, we have to force multiple families to march across the whole of Appleloosa, which is Trottingham-occupied now, I might add, without adequate food, water, or supplies. Needless to say, we’ll have to worry about Nighttouched along with the Trottingham army. On the other hand, even if we do get a source of transportation for everyone, we’ll expose ourselves multiple times going around and rounding everyone up and then being forced to take occupied roads out to Mount Aris.”
Rarity began to look uneasy. “…Is that all?”
She exhaled. “Well, there’s also the fact that we don’t know when Trottingham will make the move, so ideally any plan would be to get us all out at a moment’s notice.”
Twilight let out a sigh. “Great…” She bowed her head, rubbing her temples for a moment, and then looked up. “Alright, the first order of business is finding out where the rest of the Gaitians are.”
“Well, that won’t be easy,” Starlight grimaced. “Any time any of us wander off this quarry we’re going to be taking a chance, and the Pies can’t go that far either. And whoever is out is going to spend their time wandering around trying to find people.”
“Oh, oh!” Pinkie suddenly piped up, just as she sat down with the rest of the group. “I know how to find everyone! We’ll just ask the Cakes for help!”
The group turned to her. “The Cakes?”
“Yup! They run the bakery in town! The Trottingham government has them bake bread for all the Gaitians in the distinct! They delivered the bread themselves when they started! That’s how I met them! They let me learn how to make desserts at their bakery before I had to stop!”
Starlight’s eyes raised. “Really?”
Twilight looked pleasantly surprised. “Well…that’s good news. I didn’t know we’d have anyone in Trottingham who was on our side. If we have sympathizers, then that might make this job even easier. We’d have someone who could locate everyone for us and pass them messages to get ready.”
“Well, hold on just a second…” Starlight cut in again, turning to Pinkie. “You said you were learning how to make desserts before you ‘had to stop’? Why was that?”
“Oh…” Pinkie sank a little, looking disappointed. “It turns out the government found out I was working for them, and they get pretty upset when a Gaitian doesn’t have a work permit. I would have gone to city hall to get one, but Gaitians aren’t allowed in that part of town and usually they get mixed up anyway when you go ask for a work permit and end up accidentally arresting you instead.”
Starlight’s face slumped. “That’s what I thought.” She turned back to the others. “They could be watching that bakery for anything funny going on. If they start writing a bunch of notes and passing them around, it’s going to look suspicious.”
Twilight thought about that for a moment, before she rubbed her chin.
“Maybe there’s a way around that… Pinkie, do you think you could sneak over to the Cakes just to deliver one message to them?”
“Sure thing, Twilight! What do I say?”
“So here’s the thing… We need you to do a super-duper special order for us. We need you to bake a list of all of the Gaitians that you normally bake bread for and deliver it in the next loaf that comes out to us…then we need you to bake a message into each one of the loaves that you send out to all the other Gaitian families that the Trottingham government is going to try and relocate them soon so we need them all to get ready to move tomorrow night and that when we come to get them we’ll need all of them to pack up and head out to a place where we’ll tell them to go so that they can all load up and we can all move them out to Mount Aris all together!”
Pinkie let out a gasp as soon as she finished this, taking a moment to catch her breath. The Cakes, on their part, stared back dumbfounded on the other side of the counter at the information just dumped upon them. As Pinkie kept catching her breath, Mrs. Cake finally cleared her throat.
“That’s…that’s quite a lot for a message, Pinkie. I…don’t suppose you could repeat it, could you?”
She giggled. “Tee-hee, of course not, Mrs. Cake! That’s waaay too much to remember.” She reached into her poofy hair, fished around for a moment, and came out with a scrap of paper that she promptly put on the counter. “That’s why I had Twilight write me this note!”
Starlight exhaled, making a jot down on her piece of paper. “Ok, so we let Pinkie pass on the message to the Cakes and they get it out to the Gaitians and let us know where all of them are. That settles the problem of how we’ll initially get in touch with them…but how do we send them the message of when it’s time to move? They could be spread out miles apart. If we cause a signal large enough for all of them to see or hear, it’s going to attract the attention of other people.”
“Right…” Twilight answered, tapping her fingers against the ground. “So we’re going to need another way to alert them all when it’s time.”
“Not just that,” Applejack spoke up. “Pinkie might know her way ‘round these parts in the back country, but no tellin’ if those other folks do. Reckon they can’t just mosey on down the road without gettin’ caught.”
Fluttershy turned to Pinkie. “I don’t suppose you know anyone else we could talk to for help, do you Pinkie?”
She stuck her tongue out and looked skyward, thinking for a moment. “Hmm… Let’s see… Um…” She concentrated for a few moments, thinking hard, before finally looking up again. “Oh! There’s Carrot and Pound Cake! They like me too!”
“Who are they?”
“The Cakes’ baby twins!”
“Oh…”
Dash sat with arms crossed for a moment longer before she cracked a smirk. “I think I got this one covered.”
Twilight and Starlight turned to her. “You do?”
“Need a bunch of people moved out and around in secret at a moment’s notice? That sounds right up the alley of the Huntsman’s Guild.”
Twilight didn’t look terribly relieved at the suggestion. “I’m not so sure about that… I mean, I’m not an expert on the Huntsman’s Guild, but I’m pretty sure that they normally can’t do things that are illegal. And even if they would, we’d have to let them in on what we’re doing and come up with money to pay them.”
“Which we don’t have,” Starlight grimly added.
Dash kept grinning and waved at them. “Don’t sweat it. You just leave it all to me.”
“So that’s the proposition. You in?”
To say that the Huntsmen that Dash was addressing at the moment looked somewhat disinterested with her offer would be an understatement. The various guild members, some of which were rougher, burlier, or more scarred than others, gave her a flat, dismissive look. No more so than the one seated across from Dash at the guild table, an older, rougher woman with wild, voluminous hair kept down under a bandanna and a large hoop earring in one ear.
“Let me see if I get this straight. You want us to break at least four different Trottingham travel and trafficking statues, potentially ruining not only our licenses with the guild but getting us jail time, to coordinate moving out twenty different families worth of people to a hijacked transport, which you plan on stealing, which will mean we’ll never work in Trottingham again once it gets tied to us, and all…for free?” She snorted, leaning back as she took up her beerstein. “Now I see why you’re always drunk and broke…”
“Aw, come on, Celano…” Dash answered, smirking as she leaned over the table to make the conversation a bit more private. “Or do you like your old title a little better? Captain Celano?”
The woman had been in the middle of taking another swig when she paused. Her eyes darkened a bit before she lowered it. “Really think you want to start dragging up people’s pasts, Sonic Rainboom?”
“Hey, I’m used to it by now. Just making an observation. Lots of folks around the world have had to make do with how fast things were changing. A lot of people turned to being Huntsmen when nothing else could pay the bills.” She lowered his voice a bit more. “Nationalizing the airship industry in Trottingham sure didn’t help the case for a certain career hijacker and her merry band,” She paused to gesture to the group around her. “Did it?”
Now the others began to tense up as well. Celano herself put her stein down a bit too hard and leveled her eyes at her. “If you’re thinking of blackmailing me into this…”
Dash snorted and leaned back. “Who, me? Heh…I’ve got enough problems of my own with the authorities without getting ex-pirates on my back too.”
“Then what’s your point?”
“You’re wanting to make a new start, aren’t you? Maybe get a new ship and try things out elsewhere? Stick it to Trottingham and its new monarch while you’re at it? But you’re not going to do it for Huntsman pay. And you’re not going to get it in Trottingham either. Nah, you and your crew has to lie low and not make much of a fuss so that no one starts trying to ID you.”
She leaned in again.
“So picture this… You get a golden opportunity to not only get out of Trottingham without that annoying cross-country living stuff and border hopping while at the same time giving them a national embarrassment by smuggling out a bunch of state wards right in the middle of Trottingham trying to make themselves look like this unstoppable steamroller; all while being able to rob them blind right under their nose and smuggle the whole load out. The biggest comeback in history. And the beauty part? They’ll never pin it on you. Even if everything goes wrong, you can blame it all on Mount Aris agents and their human trafficking. Now you tell me…who else is going to give you this good of a shot?”
Celano sat there silently. The rest of the men around her calmed considerably, but looked at her and waited. As for her, she crossed her arms and tapped her fingers against them for several seconds. Eventually her eyes looked up and glanced around the room, making sure they were the only ones in earshot of all that. Finally, she looked back at Dash.
“Alright. What did you have in mind?”
“Don’t worry. I know the right buttons to push.”
“I’m perfectly fine with letting Ms. Dash handle matters involving other Huntsmen…” Rarity spoke up, “but we still have one very large problem to deal with: how to move everyone out of Trottingham, across Appleloosa, and into Mount Aris without calling down the entire Trottingham army on us. I’m sad to say such a thing likely isn’t possible.”
Now it was Applejack’s turn to look thoughtful. “Hmm…maybe…maybe not. I reckon part of the reason Trottingham took out Appleloosa so quick was back to what Burnt Oak was talkin’ ‘bout. They done cut all the telegraph wires on their way in so that nobody could talk to each other over a long distance.”
“So if we were on a transport that could clear Appleloosa fast enough,” Twilight responded, “and we manage to make it go on a non-stop trip, we might be able to make it to Mount Aris before they knew what we were doing?”
“That kind of limits our options…” Starlight muttered. “Horses and wagons are out of the question. So is a boat. We’d never get down a river or along the coast fast enough before they’d know to come after us.”
Dash shrugged. “How about hijacking another airship? That worked out pretty good last time.”
Rarity raised an eyebrow at her. “I think you might be selectively remembering certain individual’s reactions to trying to fly an airship with an inexperienced crew, dear…”
“Don’t even bother,” Sunset spoke up. “You might have pulled it off at an abandoned airfield, but not in the middle of Trottingham. Especially not if they’ve upped military security since then.”
“Oh, thank goodness…” Applejack remarked.
Several of the ladies looked at her.
“I mean, uh…shucks! How ‘bout a train?”
Rarity blanched, cupping her hand to her chest. “Merciful heavens…” she half-whispered.
“That might be a no-go too,” Twilight ruefully answered. “I’ve been around Greater Everfree enough to know a thing or two about procedures when traveling. Even if we manage to break into a station and hijack a train right before departure, and have the time to load everyone on board, Trottingham has a few in place.”
“Like what?” Starlight asked.
She took in a deep breath. “Well…for one, I’m sure they have established systems, logs, and clearances to allow trains to come and go at all times for purely safety purposes, let alone coordination and national security purposes. If we were going to try and make off with a train and plan it out, it could take weeks to forge all the appropriate paperwork, deal with the real engineer and train crew, get around all the proper authorities…”
Dash groaned. “We don’t have time for all that!”
“…Exactly, which means we would have to break in and steal one right as it was about to depart. Well, each railyard has its standard compliment of normal security personnel and alarm systems, and that probably goes doubly-so for railyards on the border in a time of war. By now they probably have military police and maybe even soldiers there, to say nothing of any military units that are posted there waiting to be outbound into Appleloosa. So somehow we have to sneak a bunch of people around all of that and onto a train and then take control of that train without anyone noticing. So how would we do that?”
“That’s easy,” Dash grinned. “We go in there and distract everyone by being awesome.”
“Ahem…don’t you mean create a diversion?” Rarity answered.
Dash shrugged. “Eh…tomato, tomahto.”
“It probably wouldn’t be that hard to get some sort of layout of the railyard itself,” Starlight offered. “Once we have it, we can probably identify where the major track junctions are. If we could somehow sabotage engines at the right place at the right time, not only would we get that diversion drawing the attention of most of the local authorities, but we might be able to block off other engines to keep them from pursuing us or cutting off our own escape. That problem is, once again, how?”
Dash snickered. “You kidding? Take a look at us! Between everyone we got who has Anima Viris and Promethian Sigils, it’ll be a snap!”
“I’m afraid I have to beg to differ,” Rarity answered. “If Trottingham ends up bringing out any of those brutes that Applejack and Pinkie Pie talked about, then some of us will have a rather hard time dealing with them. Even if they don’t, we can’t very well be spread out all over the railyard causing diversions and be on the train at the same time that it’s departing.”
Dash slumped after that. “Oh yeah…good point. Anyone else got any ideas?”
“Oh, oh!” Pinkie excitedly answered. “We could always go with what worked so well last time!”
There was a pause, before Applejack, Rarity, Rainbow Dash, and Pinkie Pie all turned as one to Fluttershy. The woman looked up a little wide-eyed, before shrinking down in embarrassment. “Oh my…”
“Come on, Fluttershy!” Pinkie cheerfully answered. “Just like you did with the bats! You can tell a bunch of animals to come cause our distraction for us!”
“B-B-But…” she protested, “we were in the country last time, and there were a lot of bats in the area. The railyard will be in a big city. I don’t know if there are a lot of animals there that I can ask to help us…”
“Well, if you can’t ask bats,” Twilight answered, “what other kind of animals might be around that there are a lot of?”
Fluttershy continued to stare at the pavement and, in particular, something on it that most people would have tried to ignore or shy away from when they were in the bad parts of town: a large rat. As she expressionlessly continued to stare into its beady black eyes, Rainbow Dash stood at a short distance nearby and continuously looked around—not only for any potential Trottingham authorities but for any random passerby who might wonder what in the world a woman was doing on an old street staring down the local vermin.
“You done yet? I’m starting to feel kind of like an idiot…”
Fluttershy slumped a moment later, breathing a bit hard and reaching up to rub the bridge of her nose. The rat, on its part, turned and ran off soon afterward. She took a moment to recover before looking up. “I’ve never tried to have an animal do something so specific before…but I think I managed to get the message across.”
“Awesome. So he passes on the message to the rest of the rats and we’re good to go?”
“What? Oh…oh no. I don’t think I’m talented enough for something complicated like that… We’re going to have to find them ourselves.”
“Are you kidding me?!” Dash shouted, causing Fluttershy to wince a little. “It took us two hours to find that rat! Now we’ve got to wander around town risking getting caught to find more rats? Someone’s going to spot us!”
“Oh…that’s a good point… But I’m just not sure how else to do this.”
Dash opened her mouth to respond, but was cut off by an angry chittering noise. She glanced down at Fluttershy’s satchel, seeing Angel looking progressively more irritated…at least as much as a rabbit could express. Without warning, he suddenly hopped out of the satchel and landed on the pavement.
Fluttershy spotted him and reached out. “Angel? Wait, where are you-”
It was too late. The rabbit only took a moment to glance around before spotting the nearest gutter with a sewer grating. Instantly, he bolted off for it and ducked down inside. Fluttershy began to get up to go after him, but he was already wriggling out of site before she could get very far.
There was a momentary pause, before a squeaking noise was heard from the grating. It was soon joined by others, which swiftly grew into a multitudes. Moments later, both Dash and Fluttershy recoiled as rats began to rise up from the gutter; not just from that one sewer access but all of them simultaneously. Even the manhole covers began to get pushed open as rats squeezed their way out. Masses of the wet, dirty things were soon beginning to crowd the street.
Both women pulled back toward each other as the small street filled, and Dash formed a look of revulsion. “Uh…ok…I guess that’s one way to do it… Ugh, they stink…”
“Oh dear…we better hurry,” Fluttershy added as she looked around at the surrounding vermin. “There’s no way Angel will let me go through with this tonight before I give him a long hot bath.”
“I…suppose that could work…” Fluttershy suggested.
“Not a bad idea,” Starlight added. “Small, inconspicuous, and easily able to get out of view. At best the authorities will be left running around on wild goose chases, and at worst they’ll suspect it’s another Nighttouched surge. That might work out even better.”
“Well, the railyard authorities are only part of the problem,” Twilight continued. “There’s going to be a switching station on the way out. Even if we manage to commandeer a train engine, someone would still have to be there to switch the tracks in the right way to let us out. That’s going to be doubly hard if we have everyone distracted and try to slip out while they’re occupied.”
“We can’t do it ourselves?” Rarity asked. “I mean, between everyone we have here, surely someone could run out, switch the tracks, and then run back aboard.”
“You’re going to want the train to accelerate up to maximum speed pretty fast if you’re trying to get out of there before anyone can stop you or chase you down,” Starlight answered. “I’m not sure if you want to keep it slow enough for anyone to catch up.”
“Heh, no problem,” Dash grinned, “As fast as I am? I’ll handle it easy.”
Starlight gave her a look. “Right…well there’s also the fact that since we don’t know exactly what engine we’ll be taking, we won’t know exactly what levers to pull without observing the switching beacons on the track. Are you fast enough to run out to check, run to the switches, and then run back multiple times while the train is going at full speed?”
Dash’s look blanched a little. “Uh…maybe?”
“Hold on now,” Applejack spoke up, “how far are these here switches from the track anyway?”
Twilight shrugged. “I don’t know…in my experience, anywhere from ten to twenty meters?”
Applejack thought about that a moment, seeming to do some calculating. “Uh-huh…and do you reckon if you were on the front of that train while it was movin’ out, you could call it out?”
Twilight looked a little confused. “Well, yes but…why?”
“Switches 1, 3, and 6! Go!”
Applejack, clad in her full Anima Viri and smirking, immediately snapped up her rope with her hammer tied to the end and began to whip it around over her head like a lasso. In spite of the fact the mine cart that both she and Twilight were perched on was in constant motion and was rapidly approaching a bend in the track, she easily zeroed in on an old, rusty, switching station with six separate levers…a good twenty-five meters away from them.
In a flash, she snapped out the hammer, hooked the first one, gave it a quick tug to snap it forward, then whipped her lasso once to disengage it before yanking it back. She quickly re-aimed and flung it again, this time hooking the third lever and yanking it back as well. She drew the rope back yet again and eyed the final one. This one was already pulled, but that didn’t bother her at all. Still smirking, she snapped the hammer out again. This time, the head of it smacked the end of the lever hard enough to knock it back forward. The move was made just in time, and as the last switch engaged, the mine cart tracks switched and took them on a branching path that went forward instead.
Soon after, the cart slowed down to a halt, as Applejack pulled her rope back and gave a whistle. “Whoo-hoo! Still got it! How you like them apples, Twilight?”
The mage took a moment to make sure the cart wasn’t moving anymore before she poked her head up, but immediately smiled. “That worked out great! Looks like so long as your Anima Viri is giving you a boost, we should be able to pull the switching off! What do you say we do one more test run with three switches, though? Just to make sure.”
“Uh…”
The moan came from behind the cart. Twilight and Applejack looked up and behind them, seeing a rather wiped-out Shining Armor and Apple Brown Betty, both looking rather winded and tired.
“Can we take a fifteen minute break first? We’ve been pushing this for a couple hours now…”
Twilight grinned sheepishly. “Er…right.”
“Well, if we can manage that, that would get rid of the switching problem. Even then, though, we’ve got one last hurdle. These are Trottingham trains, which means that they’re all going to operate with keys.”
“Keys?”
“It’s a security precaution,” Sunset spoke up. “The train’s main workings won’t engage unless you have a special key in the engine compartment. Otherwise the best you can do is stoke the boiler. Not only that, but obviously all of the other cars will have locks of their own to prevent stowaways.”
Twilight thought about that. “Whoever is working the train will likely have the right keys on them, but it’ll take time to disable them, grab them, and then use them to get the engine moving as well as to let all the refugees get loaded in. If speed is what we’re after, it’d be better if we could hijack a train that was getting ready to leave but wasn’t loaded yet.”
“Well, we’d have to have specific keys for that,” Sunset answered. “Which would mean picking out a single train and making the rounds to all of the personnel on it taking their keys.”
Twilight sighed. “Which would take too long…”
“Not necessarily,” Starlight answered. “Sure, individual trains and engineers would have their own sets of keys, but there has to be a ‘master set’ somewhere that the local authorities would have in case of an emergency, like needing to move an engine or searching through cargo. If we could lift the keys off of them, then we’d have a set that would work on any engine.”
“I’d think that set would be a mite hard to get your hands on, though,” Applejack frowned. “Sure folks like that keep ‘em clipped to their belt all the time.”
“Any way we can lift it off of them?” Twilight asked. “I’m not usually one for theft, but Pinkie’s Anima Viri is rather good at that.”
“Sure thing, Twilight!” Pinkie cheered. “Just leave it to me! I’ll get Maud to help me out, I’ll burst right in, all dashing and daring, run right up to him, do my hand waving thingee, and poof! We’ll have those keys and I’ll rush them straight back home shining pink all the way!”
Twilight’s face fell a little. “Oh, right… I forgot that Anima Viris tend to be kind of…flashy.”
“So does Pinkie, for that matter,” Dash threw in.
“Hmm…” Rarity thought aloud. “Pinkie, darling, I don’t suppose your family has any sewing equipment handy around here, do they?”
“Sure they do, Rarity! The family always makes and repairs their own clothes! And that was before Trottingham stopped giving us new ones!”
The designer quickly did a look around the group gathered, before looking up and starting to glance at those in the area. “Hmm…not too much to work with…” she mused aloud, “but I’ve put together a masterpiece with less before. This should do nicely. Twilight, do not worry yourself about those keys. Just give me a little bit of time and I can handle it.”
Knock-knock-knock.
The railyard authority, a rather obese, balding, and unattractive-looking man, glanced up from his desk and, in particular, the latest manifest he was reading. With a bored expression, he let out a heavy sigh as he pushed his chair away enough for him to rise up from it. Soon thereafter, he took his time making his way to the door and opened it up.
“Yeah, yeah…” he began even as it was opening, “I’m here. What do you need no…”
He trailed off, getting a most unexpected surprise.
A woman was standing there dressed in the most attractive multi-patterned traveling dress he had ever seen in his life. She carried only a simple case in front of her in both hands, and looked up slightly from an attractive hat, which was adjusted in just such a way to allow one beautiful eye to look out at him. Almost immediately, however, she cupped her hand to her mouth innocently…all while her eyelashes fluttered at him.
“Oh dear me…I’m so terribly sorry, sir. I seem to have interrupted you with something,” she looked up at him more imploringly, fluttering her eyelashes again.
The railyard authority was left stunned, having never seen such an attractive lady come to this part of the station, before he caught his voice. “Uh…um…no ma’am, I was just going over some documentation. Oh, uh…how may I help you?”
At once, she lit up with the cutest smile. “Oh, you will help me out? Thank you so very kindly! I’ve been running around all day and I’m positively exhausted, and you’re the first gentleman I’ve run into who’s offered to help. Oh, I must say,” Her eyes looked a bit more longingly at him. “I thought manners were dead in this town until I ran into you. I’m terribly grateful.”
She punctuated that with smiling a bit more. As a result, the railyard authority began to blush a little; clearly not accustomed to receiving this sort of praise and attention. He hadn’t even bothered to shave or put on a clean shirt this morning, but he immediately began to adjust his jacket to try to cover it as he straightened up. “Think…think nothing of it, ma’am. What’s the problem?”
“I’m afraid I’m terribly lost. I left early this morning to try and make my train, but I just can’t seem to find my way to platform 24.” She gestured down to her shoes. “These heels might be fashionable, but they’re absolute murder on my feet after being on them for six hours. Could I possibly trouble you to help me find platform 24?” She lowered her eyelids as she looked at him, growing more alluring. “I would be most grateful.”
The railyard authority swallowed as he turned redder. He flustered a moment before he began to smile weakly. “Cer-certainly ma’am. I can show you the way.”
“Can you? Can you really? Oh thank you, kind sir! Thank you ever so much!” Her alluring look grew stronger yet. “You have no idea how much this means to me. You’re a godsend. Are you certain I’m not drawing you away from anything important?”
He smiled a bit more. “It’s no trouble at all, ma’am.” He stepped forward, clearing his own doorway as the woman moved back, and reached out behind him. After fumbling a bit, for he couldn’t seem to take his eyes off the lady, he grasped the doorknob and pulled it shut behind him. “Just…just need to lock up quickly…”
He reached into his pocket and after fishing around in it longer than he wanted, accidentally pulling out a whistle and a tinderbox in the meantime, he finally managed to pull out a ring of keys. He blushed a bit more, made a gesture for her to excuse him, and then turned to lock the door.
As he scrambled with the keys, not getting it right at first and soon struggling to hurry and find the correct one, the woman poked her head over his shoulder. “Oh my! Goodness, you certainly have a lot of keys!” She gave him another winning smile as her voice turned heavier. “You must be a man who wields a great deal of authority to have so much responsibility…”
“Oh…heh-heh…well, I am one of the railyard authorities.”
“My word, I’d never remember which key went to which door if I had that many to keep track of…”
“Oh, it’s nothing too terrible, ma’am. Most of these keys are emergency ones for the trains. Just in case one needs to be moved or we have to let the magistrates inspect a car,” he answered as he finally finished locking the door and turned back to her.
“Really? That sounds so fascinating. Do tell me more…”
Starlight jotted the last bit down and looked over the paper. After a few seconds, she raised her eyebrows and shrugged. “Well, based on all of this, if all goes well and we execute all of these steps at once and have them coordinated just right, I suppose there’s no reason to believe we couldn’t pull this off in a relatively short period of time. Although…it does still hinge on one important item.”
“What’s that?”
Starlight looked up and tapped the paper with her pen. “All of this will be for nothing if we happen to get there at the wrong time; namely when there aren’t any engines being prepared for departure. Either all the trains are already loaded or they haven’t connected any cars yet. If we’re unlucky enough to make our move at that point we’re toast.”
“Indeed,” Rarity mused aloud, “I’d hate to think I’d waste all that time on that dress just for it to fall through…”
Dash shrugged. “We could always take a train that’s already loaded and fight our way out.”
“I know!” Pinkie piped up. “Let’s just tell them to have a train ready for us!”
Applejack frowned. “Not sure it works that way, Pinkie.”
“Actually, that’s not such a bad idea…”
The group turned to Starlight, who was looking thoughtful again.
“If we could forge a phony request for a legitimate freight transit, then we might be able to get a company to start setting up a train for an incoming cargo load. Then, before they can figure out that no cargo is coming but the train is set up, we could rush in and take it and head off on it.”
Twilight raised an eyebrow. “Can we really do that?”
“I think we just might be able to. We’re near the border and Trottingham is still finishing up their Appleloosan campaign. They’re probably needing shipping companies to depart at a moment’s notice for emergency supplies. Especially with how fast they’ve been moving and spreading out. So long as they think it’s for the military, they’re not likely to look twice. They’ll think it’s a priority and rush it through.”
Twilight paused, thinking this over for several moments. Her face eventually turned to the others. “That seems like it should work. What do you all think?”
“I ain’t sure I get it all, but sounds good to me.”
“If we can manage it, it definitely seems to have the best chance of success…”
“Yipee! Let’s go for it!”
“Well…alright.”
“Eh, I think my way’s better, but this one has a better shot of having a train ready, so go for it.”
Twilight looked back to Starlight. “Alright…let’s do it. It should help us coordinate better so that we have a definite time of departure, too. We better act fast, though. We need to get that part taken care of before we can move forward with everything else.”
“Right, right…” Starlight exhaled. “This plan is all well and good, but we don’t even know what’s the nearest city with a railyard from here… Now that we have this squared away, the next thing we’ll need is a map so we can tell everyone where they need to go.” She began to put away her papers at that. “No time like the present to move out… And since I’m not wanted by anyone, I think it’s probably best if I handle this part. Um, Pinkie Pie? I don’t suppose you could sneak me in to the nearest town?”
“No problem!” she cheerfully answered as she sprung up. “It’s a long walk, but that’s ok! We can spend the time looking for any Nighttouched that wandered into the forest trail!”
Starlight paused, before rolling her eyes. “Swell…”
“Take your time, darlings,” Rarity answered as she began to stand up as well. “I’m magic with a needle and thread, but fashion does take time.”
“And I need to get my lasso-n’ arm back into shape,” Applejack added as she rose.
“Maybe I’ll tag along and hit the nearest Huntsman’s Guild,” Dash shrugged.
“And if we’re going to have enough rats for all of this, I should go too,” Fluttershy quietly murmured.
Soon everyone was getting up and getting ready to move. Sunset found herself the only one still seated as they turned and began to wander off.
After a time, she looked about, seeing everyone either going to tasks or already at work. She continued to sit there for a moment more, feeling progressively more awkward, before she finally shrugged a little nervously.
“And…I guess I could try and make myself useful…”
The rest of the day didn’t go too well with Sunset. It wasn’t as if there was a shortage of labor to do at the quarry, especially in the attempts to turn the small simple wooden shack and mines into a place capable of a somewhat comfortable living space for the group of refugees. However, there was little she could get involved in. Apart from Twilight, she didn’t feel too easy approaching any of the Apple family members. Especially as they all had heard from Applejack about who she was. The ones from the northwest were a bit better as they weren’t as familiar with her, but the fact of the matter was she was still highly nervous to be around any of them as she still felt so vulnerable and helpless. It was getting better, but even if it wasn’t there was the third fact that she had little experience in more heavy labor or complex tasks. Other than carrying a few pails of water and moving around some temporary straw mattresses, there was little she could do.
As the afternoon came, she found herself alone again and wandering toward the edge of the quarry—feeling somewhat better by herself. The area had been busy earlier with Applejack’s training drills for her switch pulling but had mostly cleared out by now. Pinkie had already come back with the good news from the Cakes about getting the messages passed, and that they would be delivering them late that evening. Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash had just come back from their respective tasks and Rarity was putting the finishing touches on her dress back in the shack.
Realizing that everyone was being productive and she wasn’t made her sigh. She looked up ahead and outside of the quarry, toward the woods and the horizon. The sun was approaching it and had tinted the sky orange, and this far from the homestead of the Pies it was quiet save for birds and chirping insects.
Her eyes looked downward and spotted the mine cart that had been pushed around earlier, still on the end of the track. She headed for it, figuring she could sit in front of it and use it to block herself from the view of the others. Until she was able to get next to Twilight again, she preferred staying out of sight…
Yet just as she got close enough to look around the front of it, she saw something that made her stop.
Twilight Sparkle was already there.
In spite of the fact that the ground was mostly rock and gravel, it looked like she hadn’t even heard Sunset coming. Her knees were pulled up to her chest, her hand was on her head, and she was staring at the ground with a distant, troubled look.
Seeing this, Sunset immediately pivoted to turn around and go back; her face clearly showing it was better to leave this alone. However, she only got one step before she paused.
Her eyes looked at her own feet and, unknown to her, her expression grew a little anxious. Before she knew what she was doing, she turned her head and looked back behind her. Twilight still hadn’t noticed her. She held a moment longer before, very slowly, she found herself picking up her foot, turning it around, and pivoting back toward her. Almost uncertainly, she took a few more steps forward.
“Um…hey.”
Twilight absent-mindedly looked up to Sunset, her face showing she was still obsessing over whatever had made her look that way before. It took her a moment to realize she was there. “Oh…oh, hey.”
A bit of an awkward silence followed, at the end of which Sunset reminded herself that she had spoken first and Twilight was waiting for something from her. Her eyes went to one side as she exhaled. “So…Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy are back. So far so good, right?”
“Oh…oh, yeah…” Twilight quietly answered, as if the matter didn’t really interest her. “Yeah…so far so good.”
Sunset stared at her a moment longer. Finally, she forced herself to spit it out.
“Is…something wrong?”
Twilight looked at her, a trace of puzzlement on her expression. She was clearly a bit surprised that Sunset had even asked such a question, and as a result she actually reddened a bit herself. After a time, however, she exhaled as her face became anxious.
“I…talked with Shining Armor after practice today. I wanted to catch up a bit, but…” She swallowed. “He ended up telling me about all of what happened in Hoofheim. More than what Rarity told me. My parents…they’re still up there. Along with everyone else…”
Sunset said nothing, although her own face fell slightly. Twilight didn’t seem to notice as she turned and stared at the ground again.
“I know they don’t remember me, but that doesn’t mean I don’t care about them. That I’m not worried about them. And…and what Shining Armor and those people were talking about… What if it’s worse than Nighttouched? Even if it isn’t, what if there’s no way to turn them back the way they were? No one’s ever managed to turn a Nighttouched back. Fluttershy’s the only one who came the closest, but her power only works before they’re…all taken. What if they stay up there trapped forever by whatever that shadow thing was? What if…”
Her voice grew quieter. More fearful.
“What if they only way to save them now is…is to…to…?”
“Your parents are lucky people.”
Twilight snapped her head up to Sunset. She was now leaning against the mine cart, arms crossed, and frowning at the ground herself.
“Ex…excuse me?”
“Here they are, not even knowing who you are, turned into bloodthirsty monsters, and all after having sold you out to me to boot. Yet in spite of all of that, their ‘daughter’ still loves them and worries about them.”
Twilight hesitated, as if uncertain whether or not to be angry at those comments or surprised that Sunset was giving out something that sounded like a veiled compliment.
“I never had much use for parents myself…” Sunset went on. “And frankly they never had much use for me. They were all too happy to dump me off on Celestia and never speak to me again. I don’t even know if any of them managed to survive the Lunar Fall.”
She crossed her arms and lowered her head a bit more.
“Must be nice having at least something of a loving family… At least you felt something when they were gone.”
Twilight didn’t say anything else, just turned her own head away and looked at the ground. Sunset finally turned and looked over to her. Seeing her expression, her own look turned uncomfortable, before she exhaled in frustration and put a hand to her forehead.
“Look…I didn’t mean to make you feel any worse. I just…well…” She sighed. “I’m trying to say you shouldn’t worry. You got a lot of people around here who have your back. Who care about you.”
“What about you?”
Sunset turned back to Twilight, who was now looking up and back at her.
“Excuse me?”
“Who do you have?”
Sunset frowned. “That a joke, or something? I suppose I deserve it after what I just said… You should know by now nobody cares about me unless I can give them something. No one ever has…” She turned her head away. “…and no one ever will.”
“I don’t think that’s true, Sunset.”
She snorted. “And what would you know about it?”
“I have a pretty good idea that you wouldn’t have made it as long as you did without magic unless someone helped you escape from Trottingham.”
Sunset’s eyes widened a little. Her frown eased slightly as she stared at the ground. She gradually began to look uncomfortable as she turned her head more away from Twilight.
“And Celestia cared about you too.”
Immediately, her eyes shut as she snorted.
“It’s true. I know she kept some secrets from you…from both of us. That part was real, though. She cared about all of her students. That’s the one thing-”
“Just drop it, ok?” she half-snapped.
Twilight immediately clammed up. She looked rather taken aback at Sunset’s sudden outburst, and was left staring at her quietly. The woman had been looking angrier with every word Twilight said, and was now seething a bit. After a moment, she scowled and ran a hand through her hair. “This is what I get for trying to be ‘friendly’ for once…”
Twilight looked back up at her. After a moment, she began to lift a hand toward her and opened her mouth to say something else.
“Twilight! Twilight!”
Hearing the woman’s voice calling caused both Twilight and Sunset to look up to the edge of the quarry. It didn’t take them long to spot the form of Starlight Glimmer coming down the rock path, looking a little worn out and tired, but also waving at them as she half-ran, half-stumbled toward them.
On finally reaching them, Twilight stood up to face her as she bowed over and put her hands on her knees, taking time to catch her breath. When she finally recovered, she leaned back up, wiped at her brow, and reached into her vest.
“It wasn’t easy, but I got to the library and got some basic maps and directions of the city without anyone noticing me swiping them,” she panted as she pulled out a stack of hastily folded-up papers. “We’re in luck. The town Pinkie was always heading into? Turns out it’s a district of Manechester.”
Hearing that caused Sunset to look up. “Manechester?” she answered. “We’re close to Manechester?”
“It’s got a nice big railyard on it too. One that’s hard to patrol all at once, I’m guessing, by the size of it,” Starlight went on as she handed the papers over to Twilight, who accepted them a moment later. She immediately unfolded the top one, revealing a map of the city. “I marked it, as well as the local rail company offices. All we need is someone to head out there bright and early tomorrow morning, put in the fake order so that it’s ready by that evening, and we can all make our move at the end of the day.”
Twilight looked over the spots on the map, then folded it back up and looked at her. “Thanks, Starlight. This is major help.”
She inhaled one more time before straightening up. “Alright…all that’s left is who needs to head out there tomorrow…” She thought for a moment, then shrugged. “Well, they’ve got quite a bit of military in that town. They’re supplementing the police at the moment. Odds are if one of us gets spotted, it might turn into a major incident… So it should probably be me again.”
“They don’t have my face, so even if I’m a person of interest they won’t know who to look for, and I’m used to blending in with big cities. If worse comes to worse, I can fight my way out. Besides, I can read a map and directions well enough, but everyone else will probably need your help getting to the station on time tomorrow evening if I get delayed. You spent the most time studying the maps.”
Starlight was hesitant, but she exhaled after only a moment. “That’s true… It’s not exactly a settling thought, though… Are you sure?”
She smiled a little back. “Trust me. I know all about paperwork to boot. And I’m sure Pinkie will get me in the back way.”
She hesitated only a second more before shrugging. “Well, alright then. In that case, all that’s left to do is pass on the rest of the info to everyone else and set a time. Let’s head back.”
“I’d like to go with you.”
Both Starlight and Twilight were turning to go back to the homestead when they paused, turning and looking at Sunset. She seemed a little surprised she had blurted that out herself, but immediately folded her hands, wrung them, and looked to one side.
“I…I mean…that is…I’d like to come along, if I could.”
Starlight looked rather perplexed at the request, but Twilight looked downright uneasy. “I think it would be best if you stayed here until it was time to move out, Sunset. For everyone. If you’re still nervous about the others, don’t be. I talked with them and they said they’d leave you alone. Even Applejack. You’ll be fine.”
She winced before looking back. “That’s not it. It’s…it’s…um…”
Twilight looked even more puzzled. “What?”
“It’s just…uh…um…” She wrung her hands together more, looking more uneasy, before she finally winced and looked Twilight in the eye. “I’d…that is…I really need to pick up some cigarettes.”
Both Starlight and Twilight looked surprised. “Cigarettes?”
“Yeah, I…I haven’t had a drag in weeks. It’s really grinding on my nerves. I’m going to be too jittery tomorrow to make the trip if I don’t have a pack. I just need to grab some and then I’ll run back here. It’ll only take a little bit.”
Starlight leveled a critical stare at her. “Let me see if I get this straight… You’re a wanted woman, the authorities know your face, you’re with us so if someone spots you they’ll be likely to spot one of us, and knowing all of this you’re willing to risk unraveling our whole plan and exposing everyone so you can get yourself a smoke?”
She winced. “That’s…that’s not…”
“Sunset.”
She turned her head, seeing Twilight looking back at her and, for once, looking a little angry.
“Believe it or not, I don’t really want to brew any more bad blood between us than we already have, but…frankly, you need to deal with it. I know you’re getting used to living without your magic, but that’s what most people have to do every day and they don’t get any ‘special treatment’ for it. Hanging around me because you’re nervous about other people is one thing, but this is crossing a line. You need to stay here tomorrow and just hold out until it’s time to go. Do you understand?”
Sunset opened her mouth to protest, but promptly shut it again on seeing the look she was getting not only from Twilight but from Starlight. She sighed and looked away. “Yes.”
Twilight sighed tiredly herself and turned to Starlight. “Let’s go. We have a lot to make sure everyone’s clear on for tomorrow.”
With that, the two of them began to head back to the others. Sunset was left standing there momentarily, gripping her arms and digging one of her shoes into the ground. Her teeth bared and she uncomfortably winced. Eventually, she silently turned and began to follow the two back.
While Rarity had used most of the intact clothes among everyone to assemble her own outfit, there were enough left over for Twilight Sparkle to dress herself in something reasonably clean and neat that wouldn’t attract too much attention. The next morning, after Rarity gave her a quick new hair style in order to obscure her a little more, she headed out with Pinkie before the sun was up. Fortunately, their trip through the woods was uneventful, and the two arrived on the edge of town before dawn. With that done, Twilight spent a little of the pocket change everyone had managed to scrape together to call a steam cab and was off for Manechester.
Approaching the city was a bit of a jarring experience in and of itself. It might not have been quite as filthy as Griffonstone, but considering the fact that the city was still first and foremost an industrial hub that wasn’t saying much. The waterways on the side of the road quickly turned foul, the sky quickly turned hazy, and the buildings began to be stained with soot the closer she got.
Eventually, buildings, warehouses, and factories began to arise on the road on either side of Twilight and the streets began to fill with people. She didn’t like the fact that a fair number of them were magistrates or Trottingham military personnel; more so than in other countries she had visited as of late. There was nothing to be done about it, however, and she merely tried to settle in until the steam cab finally rolled to a stop within the first district of the town. Once there, she paid the driver, dismounted, and began her long walk.
The hours slowly ticked by as she made her way down the streets. She kept her eyes forward and open for spotting any potential trouble, but none of the local authorities looked her way other than a cursory glance. The rest of the civilians treated her the same as any other pedestrian.
Eventually, she began to make her way out of the industrial district toward the commercial one. Once there, the locals became less factory workers and more store proprietors and family members. News stands began to show up, with paperboys calling out the headlines. Twilight paid a bit more attention to this, listening for any news that pertained to them. However, not only was there nothing about the forced relocation, but what news she did hear mostly had to do with Trottingham fortifying itself to occupy Appleloosa while their government was collapsing. Other than that, she tried to ignore the growling of her own stomach every time she passed any form of food or market vendor.
Around the early afternoon she finally reached the street that her destination was on. Turning a corner, she began to walk down it and read the buildings along the way for the address. She ended up nearly counting to the right number when she heard another shout coming down the street; this one not from a news hawker.
“Come one! Come all! See the amazing feats of the Great and Powerful Trixie!”
She groaned and grasped the bridge of her nose.
She traveled another city block before she finally spotted her. Standing on top of a public bench that served as her stage was a woman clad in a wide-brimmed hat and cloak that was purple and dotted with stars. She was making one grandiose gesture after another with a stage prop magic wand in one hand and a deck of cards in the other. Several set up yet unlit fireworks were arranged around her. There were a few people pausing to watch her gestures and proclamations, but most of them simply avoided her as much as they could and kept walking.
“Shock and amaze at Trixie’s marvelous mind reading! Gasp and awe at Trixie’s priceless proficient prestidigitation! Wonder and excite at Trixie’s incredibly inconceivable illusions! Step right up and for the low price of only 25 pence you’ll step into a world of magic!”
“25?!” one person shouted. “There’s a magic show up the street for 10!”
“Proper magic costs extra!” the woman shouted back angrily.
Twilight grimaced and moved to the other side of the street before proceeding. Her pace quickened as she tried to hurry past as quickly as possible, keeping her head forward and actually raising her hand to half-cover her face. Nevertheless, she heard the shouting continue to grow louder as she neared—a mixture of more self-promotions followed shortly after by shouting at the audience.
“You there, sir! Care to see if the Great and Powerful Trixie can guess your weight? Or you there, madame! Step right up and see if you can stump Trixie in the cards! Or you there…”
A pause.
“You!”
Twilight’s teeth grit a little, but she kept on walking.
“You! I’d recognize you anywhere! You get right back here this instant, you! First you cut in on my market back in Fillydelphia and Manehattan, and then you nearly get me killed by a homicidal witch and her band of steam soldiers! I’m not done with you! Trixie is going to give you a piece of her mind before she shoves her great and powerful foot up your-”
“Hey!” a deeper, angrier voice called out.
“Stay out of it! This is business!”
“Hey you! You have a permit to perform here?”
“Permit?! Pft! The Great and Powerful Trixie has no need for silly permits with her repertoire! Especially not in the commercial district! Now buzz off!”
“You have fireworks in a main thoroughfare! That’s an ordinance violation without proper permits!”
“Oh for the love of…”
Twilight didn’t hear any more as the woman apparently dismounted the bench to argue, but she kept rushing to get away from there as quickly as she could. Already, her heart was beating faster after hearing what that woman had yelled in public loud enough for a hundred people to hear. She hoped no one paid much attention as she quickly rushed on to her destination.
Only about half a block later she came to the main office of the rail company that Starlight had selected. Lowering her hand at last she took a moment to glance around and make sure that no authorities were nearby…or, at least, not eyeing her. There were a pair of soldiers loitering around the front, but they were chatting with each other in what she presumed was idle conversation instead of anything official. With that in mind she took a deep breath and walked up to the stairs leading to the front entrance, and within moments she was passing inside.
The building interior was simple enough. Mostly a large open entry space with a few benches to one side, but all facing a wide spreading counter in the back with three separate stations manned by three separate clerks. Each one was alert and at the ready. There were other people in the back, but they were busy on other tasks and none of them seemed to be any type of authority.
She settled on the one to the far right. She walked up to him and forced a small smile. “Hello there.”
“Hello ma’am,” the clerk responded, “how can I help you?”
“My company needs a freight delivery. I know this is rather last minute, but we’re hoping to secure an engine by tomorrow morning.”
The clerk paused, a little taken aback. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but we have nearly a fully docket as it is. We’re only really available for express orders, and the charge will be extra.”
“Oh, that’s perfectly fine. This is an urgent matter. It’s a shipment for the front line.”
The clerk hesitated again, looking a little caught, before nodding. “Ah, I see. One moment, please.” He turned to one side, reached into a set of small cabinets near his station, and began to withdraw forms from it. It took about two minutes for him to come back with at least ten sheets of paper. “Now you’ll just need to fill these out. And once you’re done, we’ll have a messenger rush out the critical papers to the Manechester Railyard to make sure the proper authorities are notified so we can start getting things moving.”
She nodded back. “Thank you.”
The clerk finished by passing her a dip pen along with a well. Twilight accepted it and immediately went to work. Fortunately, even not accounting for her briefings with Starlight, Twilight had not only been thinking about what she needed to put down since the night before but had experience with writing phony papers in the past. In no time at all, she had finished the first three forms and passed them back to the clerk.
At that point, the door to the office opened. She turned and looked briefly, but found it was just another customer. Ignoring it, she went back to work. She managed to get two more forms before the door opened again. Once more, she glanced behind herself.
A moment later she snapped her head forward and did her best not to look nervous. It was a soldier of Trottingham. Swallowing, she went back to filling out her forms; all the while staying quiet to try and listen for what the soldier might be doing. Unfortunately, she didn’t hear any footsteps or movement behind her—a good indication that the soldier was posting herself at the door and not budging.
It took her a bit longer to fill out the sixth form, but still the person hadn’t moved. She was sweating a little by the time she filled out the seventh. By the eighth form, it began to become noticeable.
“Ma’am?” the clerk asked. “Are you feeling alright?”
“It’s…it’s nothing, heh,” she quickly said, “Just, um…feeling a little too much of this Manechester fog, you know? More used to being in the country, heh-heh…”
The first customer turned and left soon afterward, making Twilight more nervous as she realized she was getting so antsy that someone who came in after her was finishing before her. Soon another customer entered and had gotten his own set of forms by the time she finished filling out the ninth. She had gotten halfway through the tenth when she heard movement at last. The boots of the soldier were clicking against the floor, and they began to approach the counter.
She swallowed again. She stopped in the middle of her writing. She struggled to keep a straight face as she heard the sound get closer. Closer…
And, finally, went to one side.
“Sir, I would like to speak with you outside for a moment.”
“Wha…what?”
“Sir, please step outside.”
“What’s this about? I’m just commissioning an engine.”
“Sir, step outside now.”
A brief pause followed, before the man suddenly snapped around and bolted for the entrance. He didn’t make it far, however. The Trottingham soldier reached out and seized him, and quickly struck a blow at the back of his knee as he tried to push past that caused his legs to falter out beneath him. He sprawled to the ground and the soldier got on top of him to pin him down. Moments later, the doors burst open and two more soldiers rushed in. They quickly helped their comrade to restrain the man and pulled him up and off the ground. Soon they were dragging him out.
Twilight was rather stunned at the whole display, but the clerk looked at her apologetically. “I’m sorry about that, ma’am. It’s almost a daily occurrence now. In times like this, we get a lot of smugglers. The authorities have been patrolling our offices regularly but some occasionally still get through and the rest still don’t know well enough to stay away.”
Twilight, trying her best to look normal, smiled. “Quite all right.” A minute later, she finished the last form and pushed it over to him.
He smiled and nodded in reply. After giving a glance over the final page he looked up to her. “This looks well and in order. Just one minute.”
He stepped away and into the back. Twilight was left standing there, twiddling her thumbs and looking around while trying to be inconspicuous. She could hear some scuffling and commotion outside with the arrested smuggler but mostly she nervously waited for the soldier to come back. Although it was several minutes, the soldier was still gone when the clerk returned.
“Your request is on its way, ma’am. One of our couriers is delivering it as we speak. If you would like to come back in about an hour…”
“Oh, oh! No thank you! I’d rather wait.”
The clerk hesitated, but simply shrugged. “That will be fine as well, ma’am. If you would just like to have a seat over there.”
“Oh…sure! Of course!”
With that, Twilight made her way over to the bench and sat down. After that, she drew herself up and put her hands on her lap.
There was a clock just over the counter, and she had to fight not to stare at it for the next hour. It didn’t help that only one more customer came in before the soldier returned and took her post. This time, it was impossible to not meet gazes with her at least once, and after that Twilight struggled to stay calm as she kept fantasizing about her coming over and accosting her at any moment. Other customers came in and left. At one point, there were five of them in total, but eventually the number thinned out again to only one more besides her. All of them elected to leave while their requests were being processed, which only made Twilight more uneasy as that made her stand out.
The hour finally came and went but still nothing. Another fifteen minutes came and went and still she hadn’t been called up. She began to grow concerned. Was she being kept there? Stalled? Were more soldiers massing outside? She got so antsy and worked up that she began to fidget a little. In another few moments, she would have stood up and tried walking to look outside…
“Ma’am?”
The voice of the clerk distracted her just in time. She turned and saw him holding up a slip of paper, motioning to her. After a pause, she rose and walked up to him.
“You’re all set, ma’am. We have your confirmation form and the number of the locomotive. Loading time is 3 AM tonight.”
The sound of the front door opening went off behind Twilight, but she ignored it this time to try and finish up the transaction as fast as possible. She nodded back to the clerk. “Thank you.”
The clerk set the paper down in between them. “I’ll just need you to sign here to authorize billing to your company.”
“Of course.” She once again accepted the dip pen and began to write on it. As she did, she happened to catch the clerk looking up for a moment, seeming somewhat puzzled. That made her tense a little, but she tried to finish up the signature as fast as possible.
A moment later she was passing the slip back. Soon after doing so, she heard the door open behind her again. The clerk accepted the paper and took it back to file it while passing the receipt to her. “Now do you have any last minute changes you need to make to your order?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“Are you sure? It looks like your friend was trying to pass you one discretely.”
Twilight looked a little puzzled. “Excuse me?”
“The woman who just walked in. She tucked a note into your back pocket while you were signing.”
Twilight stood there silently for a moment, staring back at the clerk. She then spun around to the door, but it was already shutting again and whoever had opened it was gone. The soldier posted there was looking out the way the woman had come, but apparently hadn’t noticed anything until the clerk said something and only now appeared concerned.
Soon after, she patted her back pocket. A crinkling sound, that of paper that wasn’t in there before, resulted. Looking a bit unnerved, she reached into the pocket, grasped the paper, and quickly brought it in front of her.
It was a handwritten note.
Head to the outdoor café at the corner of Stallion and Heather.
Twilight’s jaw dropped slightly. She looked back up but there was nothing left to see. She stood there a moment, glancing between the clerk and the exit, before she finally reached over and snatched the receipt off the counter. Cramming both it and the note in her pocket and almost forgetting about the soldier by now, she rushed right for the door.
Seconds later, she was pushing it open and stepped over the threshold. She quickly glanced around, looking for any sign of who had left the note behind. The street was busier now. Especially since another group of soldiers was surrounding the street magician the way Twilight had come and were accosting her rather severely. Finally, her eyes spotted one person walking away from her and turning into a nearby alley. The back was facing her, but the person was tall and was dressed in a woman’s traveling coat and hat. Most of her hair was done up and underneath it, yet just before she vanished into the alley the smog and gloom above the city parted just enough for a ray of light to shine through. It struck her hair for the briefest instant, and Twilight saw it.
Rainbow iridescence.
Twilight’s eyes shrank into pinpricks as she gasped. She was frozen to the spot for several seconds of disbelief and shock. Then she ran down the stairs and for the alley as fast as her legs could carry her.
When she reached it and looked inside, aside from trash and a bend further in the path, she saw nothing. She quickly ran through the alley and turned the corner at the end. The area up ahead opened into another street, but there was no sign of the person. She dashed to the end of it and looked out again. This street was even busier than the previous one, and she winced as there were more people to try and look through and around. For several seconds she glanced one way and another, wondering if she lost the person, when she spotted the hat from before far down one end of the street.
Instantly, she took off after that person, pushing her way through the pedestrians a little as she ran. She managed to gain ground on the person for a few moments, but she kept weaving in and out of view behind others around her. Eventually, Twilight reached an intersection, but shortly after doing so she froze. She realized she had lost the person, and right where the path split three different ways. She glanced one way and another, looking desperately for her, before finally she caught a glimpse far in the distance down the left road. She soon vanished behind more pedestrians again, but Twilight turned and bolted after her.
On the chase went. Twilight tried her best to get around the crowded streets and close the distance between her and the person, but every time she gained ground the figure would duck down a new street or a new alley and by the time she figured out where she had gone she would be behind again. It didn’t take long before Twilight lost track of where she was in the city and where she had been, but that didn’t stop her from chasing after the person. Eventually, her more sensible side told her that the hat and coat could belong to any assortment of people in Trottingham. That she might have, in fact, been chasing the wrong person. Still she didn’t give up the hunt.
Finally, Twilight rounded the corner into another alley. This was another one with a bend in the path up ahead and, once again, she saw no one there. She was panting and sweating a little herself by now, but she broke into a full run anyway and quickly went to the turn. She snapped around the corner as fast as she could…
Only to run headfirst into a person coming from the other side.
“Oof!”
The force of the collision caused Twilight to fall to the ground, just before who she had run into did the same, dropping something heavy in the process. Twilight had to take a moment to gain her bearings in spite of her urgency, but soon she had them and began to push herself up again.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, but I have to…”
As she quickly spat out an apology, her eyes looked to who she had run into…and she stopped again.
“Sunset?”
The fiery-haired girl still looked nervous to even be out in public by herself, though not nearly as much as she used to. She looked more tense that she had just run into someone. She was still rubbing her head before she looked around herself. She spotted a cloth bundle nearby, obviously what had fallen, and began to reach for it when she looked up on hearing her name. Her eyes met Twilight’s and at once she looked like a kid with her hand caught in a cookie jar.
“Uh…um…”
“What are you doing here?”
Sunset winced. She began to look around. “I…that is…I just…I…”
After a moment Twilight frowned. “Please don’t tell me that you ran out to get the cigarettes after all.”
“No…I mean, yes! I mean…I…it’s…”
The mage let out a groan. “I can’t believe it! Are you crazy? There are soldiers all over Manechester! I’ve been getting the eye from them all day and they don’t even know me! They’ll identify you in a heartbeat! After what we said last night, and after how much you’ve been scared to death of getting arrested, how could you do something like this? It’s one thing if you want to put yourself at risk for tobacco, but risking Pinkie’s family along with everyone else for it?”
“I…I…” Sunset could only stammer.
Twilight glowered down at her a moment longer, before her eyes went over to the cloth bundle that Sunset had been going for. She sighed as she reached down for it. “Well, maybe you can share with everyone else who smokes, because it looks like you certainly got plenty…”
“Wait!” Sunset suddenly outburst, reaching for her. “No! Don’t…!”
Twilight didn’t listen. She reached over and snatched up the bundle. However, as her hands grasped the cloth, the weight of what was beneath fell out and to the ground with a loud clatter.
Twilight’s angry look turned into surprise as Sunset winced. There were no cigarettes in the bundle—just an old helmet.
The mage stared at it for a few moments as Sunset turned her head away in embarrassment. She looked confused, and leaned down to inspect it a bit closer before her memory clicked.
“Is this…the helmet that steam knight wore who always hung around you?”
Sunset didn’t answer. She kept her head turned away.
Slowly, things began to connect for Twilight. “You didn’t want to go to Manechester to get cigarettes. You wanted to get this…”
Sunset kept looking away but muttered. “When I was on the run on my own, I hid out in town when I was trying to jump the border. I couldn’t do it, and…and that was weighing me down. So I had to leave it…”
“But why do you have it? Why doesn’t…”
She trailed off.
Sunset twisted her lip. “You said it yourself. I never would have gotten away from the government alone. Well…” She sighed. “Not the whole way, at least…”
Twilight didn’t say any more. She looked back down at the helmet. Separated from the rest of the armor, it looked far simpler. The various dents and dings on it stood out, along with the stains of what could be blood.
“I treated him just as badly as the rest of the people under me. I didn’t care about him any more than the rest of them. But when they all turned on me at last, when I was helpless…he saved me. The only reason I’m alive is because of him. And…and I don’t know why. And now I’ll never know.”
She finally turned and looked back at the helmet herself.
“That’s all I have left of him. He took it off and put it on me when he shoved me away. I couldn’t…I mean…if there was a chance I could take it with me then…I had to…”
Twilight looked up at her. “Why didn’t you just tell me the truth?”
She nearly scowled as she looked away again. “I’m already pathetic enough as it is without my magic. I didn’t need to let you all know I’m even weaker than that…”
“Caring about other people isn’t weakness.”
Her lips curled. “Didn’t you hear what I said? I didn’t care about him.”
“Maybe you didn’t until that moment, but you do now.”
Sunset’s face eased when she heard that. She stared at the ground but said no more.
Twilight swallowed. She looked back down at the helmet. After a moment, she picked it up as well as the cloth. She wrapped it back up again and held it out to Sunset.
She glanced up at her momentarily, then back down again. After a few seconds, she finally reached out and almost snatched it away from Twilight before putting her arms around it.
“Don’t tell the others.”
“Sunset, it’s-”
“Don’t. Just tell them I went for cigarettes. They already hate me for everything else. What’s one more thing? I’d rather people think I’m selfish than weak.”
Twilight nearly protested more, but let it go. She began to rise soon after. A few moments later and Sunset began to push up as well.
“Forget that. What are you doing out here? Isn’t the commercial district the other way?”
Twilight’s eyes widened. “Oh no…I can’t believe I forgot!” She began to step around Sunset, much to the latter’s surprise, to go running again, before she sighed and slumped. “Oh, what’s the point… She’s long gone anyway. Besides, there’s no way it was her… I had to have just been seeing things…”
“What are you talking about?”
Twilight began to reach into her pocket. “I was at the rail station. Everyone went smoothly more or less. I got the order in and I got the receipt. We’re all set to go tonight. Before I could get it, though, someone came in behind me and slipped a note in my pocket.” She pulled out the slip of paper and passed it forward to Sunset. Shifting the bundle to one hand, she took it up and unfurled it.
A few moments later, her eyes widened.
“I have no idea who it was,” Twilight went on. “I didn’t get a look at them. Well…except for their backside, I think. I don’t know if it was a trick of the light or something, but…but I swear I almost saw…”
“This is…her handwriting.”
Twilight looked up to Sunset in surprise. The woman’s own eyes had widened as she looked over the note.
“You think so too?!” she nearly shouted.
Sunset looked rather bewildered and confused, but she slowly nodded. “I saw it enough times on a chalkboard to know… But that’s…that’s impossible…” She glanced back up and to Twilight. “Right?”
The mage nervously exhaled. “It happened right in front of me. I watched her die that night along with the rest of the class. A lot of things happened that night that didn’t make sense, but I definitely saw that. That’s why I couldn’t believe it. But…it was an explosion…they never recovered all of the bodies as much as I could tell… It happened right there. She never left the carriage. I was looking at her. And yet…”
Sunset glanced back down at the note. She frowned soon after. “It sounds impossible based on what you’re telling me, but even if it wasn’t I’d still not like this. Who would have known you were going to be there at that rail station? And why would they leave you this note? You sure it wasn’t one of the others trying to pass a message?”
She shook her head. “This person was tall…tall like her. It couldn’t have been anyone from back at the quarry.”
“This is too weird to me. It can’t be good.” She passed the note back. “If I were you, I’d crumple that thing up, throw it in the nearest trash can, and forget I ever saw it.”
Twilight looked down at the note momentarily. She bit her own lip and winced. Eventually, though, her face firmed up again. “I’m sorry…I can’t do that.”
“What?”
“I’ve got to at least try and check it out.”
“You have no idea who that person is or what they wanted, but you just admitted to me that it’s impossible that it could be Celestia.”
“Maybe…but I still need to check. If I don’t I’ll hate myself for it.”
“Twilight…”
“If it was the Trottingham authorities, they had more than enough chances to bust me all day. There’d be no need for this elaborate ruse.”
Sunset hesitated afterward, still looking disapproving, but in the end she sighed and shrugged. “Fine. If I expect you to understand me going back for the helmet, I’d be a hypocrite if I wanted to slam you for this.” She looked back down at the note in Twilight’s hand. “Stallion and Heather aren’t far from here, and I need to go that way to head back anyway. We should probably stagger ourselves to make sure we aren’t seen together.”
Twilight nodded back. “Alright, that makes sense. I’ll head out first.”
Sunset was right about the location. They weren’t more than three blocks away from the spot mentioned in the note. Now that she had presence of mind back, Twilight made her way there more slowly and carefully, making sure not to cause any undue attention from the local authorities and magistrates.
It didn’t take her long to notice that the area was a bit more dilapidated and old than the commercial district. Nothing run down or indicative of urban blight, but definitely more neglected and from the older parts of the city that people would tend to avoid. Not as many bigger business or locales. Of course, the benefit of that was that there weren’t as many magistrates either.
She finally made it to an alleyway across from the café that had been mentioned in the note in question, but she halted there. The street ahead of her wasn’t as wide as the main thoroughfares, so she got a pretty good look at the outdoor patio with a series of tables and chairs. It didn’t look too terribly fancy. More like the outdoor area had been used in order to save on room in the small building servicing it. It was tea time in Trottingham at this hour and most of the people outside were enjoying it. Many of their heads or faces were obscured, but the ones that Twilight could make out didn’t look too outstanding.
“See anything?”
Twilight let out a small yelp before spinning around to who had spoken up behind her. She found herself face-to-face with Sunset Shimmer.
“What…what are you doing here? I thought you were headed back?”
“I am. There’s an old waterway canal just up ahead. I followed that into town and I was going to follow it back out again. There weren’t as many people at this café before though…”
She exhaled and eased down. “No one saw you, did they?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so. If they had, this part of town would be the perfect place for an arrest…”
“Why don’t you try wearing the helmet to hide your hair?”
Sunset stared back at her blankly for a moment. “Riiight…because a person walking around a busy industrial area with a steam armor helmet on is way less conspicuous than my hair color.”
“Er…good point.”
“Anyway, have you seen anything?”
She shook her head and turned back. “Nothing out of the ordinary. As for whoever’s eating out there, I can’t make them all out. About half of them have their backs turned. It’s just…”
She trailed off.
“Hold on…”
She leaned in, looking at the outdoor area again. She stared at it silently for a few moments.
Sunset stepped a little closer. “See something?”
Twilight didn’t answer. After a little longer, she spoke softly. “Hold on…”
Without another word, she suddenly stepped forward and out of the alleyway toward the café. Sunset was a bit surprised, but then instinctively reached her hand out after her.
“Twili-”
She cut herself off, realizing she was coming out of the alley. She withdrew for a moment, nervously looking one way and the other. The street seemed empty enough. There weren’t even any coaches around, and the few pedestrians were all far away. Nevertheless, she nervously hesitated a few moments more before swallowing and stepping out after her.
By that point, however, Twilight had already made it across the street and was on the sidewalk. As soon as she reached it she stopped and called out.
“Spike?”
Sunset caught that name as she finished crossing the street herself. Her eyes went over to one of the tables in particular. A woman was seated there, hair up in a tight bun, back to the street, and reading a newspaper. However, underneath it there was a rather peculiar-looking dog that was green and purple in color.
Twilight had scarcely called out to him when the dog perked his head up and began to look around eagerly. He sounded a bark or two, alerting the attention of the one seated at the table, but when she glanced down at him he quickly got up the rest of the way and barked again. Twilight lit up.
“Spike!”
Although it attracted the attention of several other patrons, it also caused Spike to look straight at Twilight. Immediately, the dog’s tail began to wag rapidly as he let out a happy whine and bark. Soon after, he took off and ran straight through the other chairs and furnishings of the café straight for Twilight.
“Spike, it’s you! You’re alright!” she called back, her own face lighting up. She quickly squatted to the ground and was just in time to put her arms around the dog as he happily began to smother her with kisses. As Sunset watched, Twilight laughed out loud while doing her best to hug the excited dog. She even caught tears welling up in her eyes and rolling down her cheeks. Spike seemed impossible to still. He only kept whining happily and nearly jumped up on top of her while barely containing further barking.
Finally, she calmed enough to wipe her eyes and put her hands on him to calm him down. “I don’t believe it! You’re here and you’re ok! Where have you been? Who have you been with all this time?”
Spike, obviously, couldn’t answer except for more whining, so Sunset instead looked up and back to the table.
When she did, she was just in time to see the woman was already standing up. She had been glancing over her shoulder, but on seeing that Sunset was looking at her she quickly spun back around. Taking up a cane, she left her chair behind and began to move for the rear exit.
“Um, Twilight? I think he was with her.”
Twilight gave Spike one more affectionate pet before she stood up. She spotted the woman moving as quickly as she could away from them. She stared at her for a second or two, but then her enthusiasm faded and her attention fully focused on her with a faint look of recognition.
“Hey…hey! Hey you!”
The woman didn’t respond. Only tried to walk even faster.
“Wait! Stop!” she tried ineffectually shouting. When that didn’t work, she turned her head slightly behind her. “Come on! After her!” Immediately after saying this, she began to head around the side of the café patio, trying to cut her off.
“Wait!” Sunset shouted. Again, it made no difference. Twilight was already off and Spike was on her heels, leaving her standing behind with multiple people staring at her. Wincing, she quickly turned her head away and, having no other choice, began to follow after them.
The woman herself made it to the edge of the café and out between the last two rows of tables. She went into the street and began to walk down it at an accelerated pace. That, however, only lasted until she was out of eyesight of anyone from the café. After that, she tried to break into a run or, at minimum, a jog. She didn’t get too terribly far with it. She soon began to hobble, and Twilight and Sunset heard exclamations of pain from her after she overstrained herself. In spite of taking the longer way around, both of them were catching up fast. The woman finally turned down the corner up ahead, going into a much smaller one-way side street. Yet when the two ladies turned the corner, they saw she was still in full view.
By this point, panting now from what sounded like trauma, she turned the next corner she came up to. When she did, Sunset caught a brief glimpse of the side profile of her face. Almost immediately, she showed a few sparks of dim recognition too…
“Hold on!” Twilight shouted again, but to no avail. The woman vanished around the corner soon after. Yet both of them could tell it was into an alley and, from the looks of it, a dead end one. They quickly rounded it after her.
For a moment, the three of them saw the woman continue to try and get away from them, but she only got another two steps before she saw ahead that it was indeed a dead end. She slowed to a halt soon afterward, and both Twilight and Sunset stopped behind her.
“Just a minute…”
The woman kept her back to them. “Leave me alone. If that’s your dog, take him and go.”
“I can’t do that. We need to talk.”
“I have nothing to say to you. Leave me be.” She began to turn around, using her cane again and meaning to push past both of them to go back to the street.
That was when Twilight said it.
“Nightmare Moon!”
The woman froze where she stood. Sunset’s eyes widened. She turned to Twilight in shock, but the mage was staring fully at the woman and not looking away.
After a moment, a long, tired sigh came from the woman. She finally turned to fully face them. She looked very weary. Very worn. Her eyes were dim and almost sunken on her otherwise fair face, which still looked very young in spite of her age difference with the two of them. She looked nothing like the monstrosity that had been in the Castle of the Two Sisters. Not even a shadow of her, in fact.
One detail did stand out, however. Her eyes were normal, just as circular as anyone else’s would be. Yet the retinas were the same vivid green as that night, when they gleamed in the darkness. Unmistakably the same color.
“What the devil is he barking at? That light came from over there!”
“Hey boy! What’s all that noise about? What you got over there, huh boy? Why you got… Oh…oh bugger… Come here! Come here quick!”
“What you hollerin’ about now?”
“There’s someone over here!”
“What?”
“There’s someone over here! Looks like she got knocked out of a train! Oh…oh bugger, she’s bleeding! She’s been stabbed in the back! She’s still breathing! Call the doctor!”
The two sides were silent. Neither Twilight nor Sunset knew what to do; only that the person in front of them was a far cry from the one they met in the Castle of the Two Sisters. She, on her part, managed to look at them but frowned.
“So,” she finally spoke, “what do you want with me? If you’ve come to finish me off, that should be simple enough. I have none of my power. Or were you planning to take me before the authorities?”
The two hesitated. It was clear from the expressions on their faces that neither of them really knew what to do at this point. Yet it was also perfectly clear that the madness, the megalomania, and the prideful wrath that Nightmare Moon had flexed so freely and wantonly before was gone. Luna didn’t just look physically different from her. Seeing her now, she had only the withered remains of the spirit and vivacity that the dark goddess had possessed.
The longer the two looked at her the more clear it became that she was once the entity that had brought Greater Everfree to its knees. However, realizing that only made it a starker contrast and more unbelievable sight to see her reduced to what she was now. Veiled in mortal flesh and with only broken down remains for a will. Any traces of fear or anxiety that either of them would have had to think of being in the presence of Nightmare Moon again faded. They both gradually eased and relaxed.
“No,” Twilight finally responded, “I’m not going to do that.”
“Then leave me alone. I couldn’t cause anyone more trouble if I wanted to.” She began to step forward again.
At once, Twilight got in her way, causing her to stop once more. “I didn’t say I would let you go.”
Luna scowled. “If you don’t want to destroy me but you don’t want to leave me be, then what do you want from me? I have nothing left.”
“I want you to tell us everything. I want you to tell us exactly why you did what you did to this world. I want you to tell us what you meant back in the Castle of the Two Sisters. And I want you to tell us what’s happening to this world and to the Nighttouched that are still here.”
Luna stiffened. She silently stared back for two seconds.
“I can’t help you,” she finally said, much quieter than before. She tried to push her way forward again.
Once more Twilight blocked her. “After everything you did to this world and all the people who are dead because of you, you don’t get to just ‘walk away’. Not without answers.”
“It doesn’t matter. None of what you’re doing matters. Not anymore,” she darkly answered.
“Why not?”
“Why are you asking me? You said it yourself…I’m Nightmare Moon. Why do you think I’m inclined to tell you anything?”
“Because you really, truly don’t look like the person we met in the Castle of the Two Sisters.”
Luna swallowed. She exhaled and looked away.
“The person I met there was insane and malevolent. I don’t know what kind of person you are, but you don’t have that same look in your eye. You don’t speak like she did. And now that I’m seeing you like this and thinking back, I’m realizing that you sounded and looked different after I put the Binding Seal on you. You changed, somehow. And something tells me that the ‘Nightmare Moon’ or ‘Luna’ I’m talking to right now is far more reasonable than the one I met in the Castle of the Two Sisters. She might even feel some remorse over what she did.”
Luna’s hands clenched into fists. Her eyes closed.
“I already told you… I can’t help you.”
Her voice grew bitter.
“You and everyone else in Greater Everfree saw what happens when I try to ‘help’.”
A moment of silence passed over the group, but Twilight stepped closer.
“Please…tell us why you became that…thing that was in the castle. What you hoped to gain by bringing all of that darkness and death. Tell us what’s happening to Greater Everfree. What’s happening in the south seas. What’s happening to the Nighttouched.”
“It won’t make any difference. It’s all inevitable now.”
“Please.”
Luna kept her eyes closed. For a short time, it looked as if she would just stand there until they left her alone. Her throat tightened and her face twisted. Finally, she sighed in defeat and opened her eyes again.
“The world is ending.”
Both Twilight and Sunset looked stunned. “Excuse me?”
“The world as you know it is coming to an end. The land…the water…the birds…the beasts…cities…nations…governments…families…friends…even the seasons and your concepts of day and night… All of it is going to go away. And I honestly can’t say what will be left or who.”
Twilight looked aghast. “But…why? How?”
Luna again closed her eyes and was silent.
A thought came to Sunset. “Does this have anything to do with the Angr-”
She cut herself off as Luna suddenly lunged at her with an enraged look.
“Didn’t Celestia warn you not to say that name?!”
Sunset recoiled, staring back at Luna while standing perfectly rigid. Twilight was much the same. Even Spike drew back and whined. A silence hung over the area for several seconds before Luna took a breath and leaned back.
“That…thing…” she continued, far more calmly, “is essentially what you can think of as the herald of the apocalypse. When it appears, everything…everything you know and love…will come to an end. Your guns…your cannons…even the most powerful spells you can think of or imagine…they’re nothing more than gnats to it. The sum of all firepower of all of the nations of this world combined striking it together would be like a needle pricking your finger. But it? With a wave of its hand it would sweep a major city away like dust in the wake of a broom. It could uproot a forest like a carpet being rolled up. It could overturn a mountain range like a child playing with blocks. And it’s on its way.”
“How do you know all of this?” Twilight asked.
Sunset looked up. “Wait…it’s you, isn’t it? I remember you. That one time I got called to the Headmistress’ office. I saw you walking out of it…”
Luna looked at her a moment but said nothing.
Twilight’s own interest was piqued by this. “So you did know Celestia...”
“I would think so,” Luna sighed in response. “After all, she was my sister.”
Now the two were truly surprised, gaping at her in open-mouthed shock. “Then why did-”
“You were asking me questions about why the world is changing; not about my relationship to her,” Luna coldly cut off.
Twilight was taken aback. She held momentarily, clearly wanting to know more, but forced herself to bite it back. “Alright. You said it’s on its way. What do you mean by that?”
Luna took in a deep breath, looking a little tired. She turned and ended up hobbling over to a bit of masonry jutting out from a wall. She leaned against it and sat down, making herself more comfortable. She then looked up to Sunset.
“One thing I definitely remember before I blacked out in the castle… You stabbing me in the back and telling me that you were going to become a god.”
Sunset winced at that, her own eyes turning to the ground.
“Then that means you know the true potential of Anima Viris. You’ve seen it now firsthand—what happens when one completes their Promethian Sigil with six balanced Anima Viris. The power it gives. It’s the same way with the herald. Alone, it is more than strong enough to destroy whatever military force would be set against it. Yet it too, at this moment, wherever it is, is ‘incomplete’.”
“Are you saying that the A-”
Luna shot Twilight a cold glare.
“…The ‘herald’ has a Promethian Sigil too? That it’s just like us?”
“Not exactly. Most individuals who have a Promethian Sigil have a soul of their own. Not the herald. It’s a creature of pure hate. Pure evil. Its one and only desire is to bring death and pain. But yes, it too has a Promethian Sigil. And it needs to fill it with specific Anima Viris to achieve its full potential. Very specific.”
Sunset put a hand to her chin. “That makes sense. I needed all of Celestia’s to get to full power myself. And when I put the wrong one in…”
“Wait.”
The flat word by Luna caused Sunset to turn to her. The woman was looking up again and staring at her hard.
“You’re the one who took her Anima Viris?”
Sunset was caught. Her face quickly turned, making it clear she knew she had said the wrong thing. This became even stronger as Luna’s own face rapidly began to tighten. Her eyes burned at Sunset as her hand momentarily tightened into a fist. Sunset started to recoil again…
Yet, just as soon as it came, it left. She relaxed her hand, turned her head away, and snorted. “I should have known. Who better to stab me in the back than the one who stabbed her in the back? This is why I thought that academy of hers was a terrible idea…”
Sunset stayed back a moment before she uneasily exhaled, slowly relaxing again. Twilight, a bit on edge herself after the exchange, looked back at her. “You said it needs specific Anima Viris. What do you mean?”
She sighed. “The same ones that I had. All six of them.”
Twilight looked surprised, but soon after a look of realization came over her. “Wait. If that’s true, then…then does that mean the reason you…”
“Once an Anima Viri is a member of one individual’s house, it can’t go to another unless the household head wills it. Or the household head is killed or bound,” Luna quietly answered. “So long as those Anima Viris were united to Nightmare Moon, they could never go to the herald. And while Nightmare Moon may not have had the same power as the bringer of the apocalypse, so long as that same bringer didn’t have any Anima Viris of its own she was more than a match for it.”
“So that’s what you meant back in the castle…” Twilight quietly answered. “That’s why you said you were the only thing holding it back… But I don’t understand. Why did-”
“Why did I envelope half of Greater Everfree in everlasting darkness?” Luna whimsically finished for her. “Why did I create the Light Eaters and the Nighttouched? Why did I kill hundreds of thousands?” She sighed. “It hardly matters at this point, but you know by now what the Anima Viris are, don’t you?”
Twilight grimaced. Sunset inhaled and exhaled before answering for her. “Souls.”
“Then you should have a good idea of what it means to call on the power of an Anima Viri. It says it right in the contractual ritual. To use the power of an Anima Viri means that your soul must unite with its soul. Your body is no longer solely yours but belongs to it as well. Call on two Anima Viris, and now there are three in control of one body, and both of them could be opposed to one another as well as to their household head. By the time you get to six, you’ll have the sum power, yes, but by that point you’re only one voice in a multitude. If they aren’t balanced, if they aren’t compatible with you, and if you haven’t mastered them, then you’ll cease to be you. Instead of you using the power of the Anima Viri’s soul, the Anima Viri uses the power of your soul. And your flesh. The result is what Nightmare Moon was.”
She glanced over to Sunset, looking at her darkly.
“Or perhaps…something like what you became.”
She again shuddered uneasily, looking away.
“The point is now that those Anima Viris are no longer bound to me, they’re free again. The herald will find them. It might take it some time, but it will. Until then, things in this world will go from bad to worse, and when things reach their zenith it will come.”
“You’re sure about this?” Twilight asked. “I mean…how do you even know that…that it’s out there?”
“Believe me, it is,” Luna sighed again. “If it wasn’t, you wouldn’t be seeing people appearing everywhere with new Promethian Sigils.”
“But I don’t understand. What made it show up now? And why-”
A low growl from Spike cut Twilight off. She looked down to him, and saw he was now facing the opposite end of the alleyway. Sunset spotted him as well and looked behind them. “Uh, Twilight…?”
She turned and looked back along with Luna. A man had rounded the corner. He looked like a normal civilian, at least in terms of clothing, but he glared at them with a fierce, unwavering stare. His body was tightened and his face stern, before he fully rounded the corner and began to approach them.
Sunset sighed. “Great…not again…”
Twilight exhaled before she reached into her pocket, pulling out an old tool handle she had gotten from the quarry. She began to aim it in front of her. “I’ll do this quick. We’ve spent too much time in the open as it is.”
No sooner had she finished saying this, however, when a woman turned the corner as well. Her expression was much the same as the man’s. Soon after, another woman joined her. And then a fourth from the opposite side. A teenager followed behind that. Then two more people followed, with more coming in behind them.
Twilight’s wand arm began to lower as she started to look nervous, along with Sunset. Spike kept barking at first, but now he began to whine and pull back. “Uh…there’s…there’s more than I thought…”
Sunset started to back up. “Just how much around the city did you run when you were looking for that person?”
By now, there were a dozen people filling one end of the alley and moving in quickly with more falling behind. Twilight swallowed. She began to raise her hand, clearly meaning to use her Anima Viri, but lowered it again on seeing everyone closing in too fast. Instead, after another moment of deliberation, she held out the handle and began to draw a sigil.
Not only Sunset but Luna recognized the emblem, and quickly covered their eyes. Twilight did the same a moment later, right before driving her wand into the center. In a brilliant blast, the sigil ignited with a tremendous bursting sound combined with a brilliant flash of light that radiated throughout the entire alleyway. In spite of their fearsome looks and single-minded obsession, the eyes and ears of the incoming crowd were pierced, and a moment later they froze and recoiled as their own vision was blinded.
As soon as the light died down, Sunset lowered her arm and saw that while the incoming group still had their eyes wide open, they were staggering and stunned. She quickly spun around to Twilight. “It worked! Let’s go!”
She took off for the crowd, moving for the biggest gap in their ranks she could still find. Spike began to run after her. Twilight nearly followed, but hesitated and spun back around. Luna was still standing there, grasping her cane but looking uncertain.
“Come on!”
She looked to her in bafflement. “You want me to come with you? You can’t be serious. Not after-”
She didn’t get out another word as Twilight reached over and seized her by the wrist. “We’ll argue later! Just come on!”
Before she could protest further, Twilight was leading her on after Sunset and Spike and into the crowd. Moments later, Sunset brushed by one person, making physical contact. Immediately, she wheeled around and clutched frantically for where she had been touched, trying to seize whoever did it. Spike went past another’s leg, and that man immediately dove to the ground furiously grasping for the source. By the time Twilight and Luna reached the crowd, all of them were beginning to reach out and fumble for them. The two had scarcely gotten halfway past them when they all began to turn toward her; indicating their vision was clearing fast.
As Twilight reached the end of the crowd, one of them suddenly lunged out for her and nearly seized one of her arms. Fortunately, she only got her sleeve, although her grip was so strong she immediately ripped it clean off of her arm. The sound alerted the others and quickly caused them to turn to the two as well, but Twilight pulled Luna free soon after. With Sunset and Spike already out, the four took off into a run. They only had about a five second head start before the people they just escaped turned around and took off after them.
In spite of the fact that Luna was hobbling and reluctant, she allowed herself to be pulled along as the group ran back the way they had come, ducking back around the street and heading back to the café. However, as soon as they got near they could tell something had already gone wrong. The area was a mess and whatever patrons were still there were frightened-looking and scrambling for it. A few looked injured. When they emerged into the street on the other side, the reason became clear. Another man was coming barreling down the road from one side while another woman was running down the other; making it clear that the mob that was now behind them had to have gone through the café to reach them.
Twilight and Sunset looked one way and the other before the former let out a nervous sigh. “Great, there could be more coming. I don’t think we can avoid making a scene…”
“Let’s just get to that canal and get out of here,” Sunset retorted. She pointed in one direction. “It’s that way!”
A commotion sounded behind them. Sunset glanced back, seeing the crowd coming around the corner and picking up speed. Twilight let out an exhale and finally turned to the direction Sunset indicated. The woman coming down the road was nearly on them, but she quickly squared herself off against her and began to form the Binding Sigil. Just as she reached striking distance, she lashed out and executed it directly on her forehead. Instantly, her eyes went wide and her body went limp, and no sooner had she fallen to the ground than the group took off again.
In spite of Luna’s gait, they tried to push themselves faster this time to put more distance between them and the crazed crowd behind them. Now, however, they had to keep their eyes forward for signs of any more random individuals coming toward them. At this point they were so close that they couldn’t afford to be stopped again.
Eventually, the four moved past a series of scaffolding for roof repair on one building. Just beyond it was another intersection. Sunset pointed to it. “There! That’s the turn!”
Twilight headed straight for it. As soon as she reached the bend, she tried to duck down into the alley only to cry out and get pushed back a moment later by a crazed civil workman emerging from within it. She was so caught off guard that she was immediately thrown to the ground, and seconds later he was struggling on top of her to try and overpower her.
Spike quickly moved in and seized him by one sleeve, biting down and trying to drag him back. Sunset was left standing stunned for a moment before she did all she could think of. Using her cloth-wrapped helmet as a crude brunt instrument, she got behind the man and began to beat against his head while Twilight struggled to get her impromptu wand up.
Luna was left standing to one side, regarding the situation somewhat indifferently. She glanced behind them, seeing the crowd still on their heels and bound to overcome them while they were dealing with their current threat. She glanced back to the three, then back to them.
Finally, she sighed tiredly. Choking up on her cane, she held it up straight and swung at one of the support rails on the scaffolding with all of her might. With a snapping sound, the support rail was broken clean off, and immediately it set off a chain reaction that traveled up the scaffold all the way to a pile or roof tiling and unmixed bonding materials. Soon after, the entire collection rained down just as the crowd passed by it, burying half of them in a deluge of stone, tile, and mortar. The others tried to move back or around it, but simply the impact of the unmixed materials sent up a cloud of dust that obscured their vision once again.
Meanwhile, Sunset finally dropped the helmet and grabbed the man’s other arm, and with Spike it left him pinned long enough for Twilight to quickly take up her wand, form the Binding Seal again, and execute it on his forehead. Moments later he slumped like a sack of potatoes and fell to one side, and Twilight quickly began to stagger back to her feet. Sunset turned and went for her bundle, just as a sound of rapid boots trampling began to echo down another street up ahead.
“You’ve got to be kidding me…” she moaned. “Just how many Promethian Sigils are there in this city?”
Twilight, just as she got up, looked more uneasy. “I don’t think those are Promethian Sigil bearers…”
She quickly gestured Sunset on around the corner, followed by Spike. Luna, looking reluctant again, nevertheless came up after them and Twilight quickly followed her around the corner. Yet just as they entered the street, she looked up and glanced back down the main road to an intersection up ahead.
Sure enough, she caught a glimpse of the first line of Trottingham troopers rounding the corner with rifles out and at the ready. Two of them looked up and straight at her, but she instantly turned away and pushed Luna down the road with her.
As the four charged along, they heard calls to stop and halt behind them, but none of them heeded it. More scuffling soon rang out, but everyone winced a few seconds later when a hail of gunfire erupted. It wasn’t aimed at them but rather at their pursuers. After just long enough of a pause to reload, another sound of firing rang out, followed by faster footsteps. Before it could reach their road, however, Sunset led them down a turn into an alleyway. From there, they ran straight through the narrow, twisting passage before coming to an end overlooking a drainage ditch.
On reaching it, Twilight froze and grimaced. These ditches weren’t the most clean or sanitary places to begin with in industrial cities, but this one looked like it had long since been clogged with the foulest filth imaginable. Sunset, however, only hesitated a moment before charging into it with a sickening, squelching noise, then turned back to the others. “Come on!”
Even Spike gave out a bit of a whine before he hopped down and struggled to stay on the angled sides, out of most of the muck. Twilight only reluctantly and slowly stepped down and into it. Luna, grimacing again, actually looked back over her shoulder a moment. By now, the sounds of the soldiers coming down their street became audible, and finally that caused her to resign and step in as well. Once in, they turned and began to run down the canal.
The bootsteps continued to get closer, and started to echo in the adjoining streets. Only a short distance down the canal, a grating walkway stretched over a section to provide a bridge for one of the side streets.
Twilight quickly pointed that way. “Over there!” she whispered loudly. Pushing ahead to take the lead with Spike, she quickly moved underneath it. As soon as she was there, she moved up and back against the sides of the bridge, pushing herself as far as she could out from under the grating. Spike seemed to follow suit. Sunset, on arrival, quickly took the opposite side, and soon found herself side-by-side with Luna. As a result, she looked at her somewhat uneasily, but Luna just kept her eyes forward and a stone expression.
They were only under there for a short time, just long enough for the ripples that they made in the filth of the canal, to fade, when they saw shadows move over the grating. The metal “dinged” with each clack of a boot overhead. Sunset kept her eyes to the ground as she cringed, but Twilight managed to look up and watch; spotting glimpses of boots, belt buckles, uniforms, and rifles. Soon after, further in the distance, more gunfire was heard. The initial set of boots passed soon after, but the streets continued to echo with noises followed by the occasional gunshot.
For a time, the sounds and noises continued. Occasionally a scream from a civilian followed by someone shouting an order rang out, along with another gunshot at points, but nothing else. It seemed like things might have been calming down.
However, not long after, sounds were heard coming down from the next alleyway down.
“Did we get them all?”
“I think so. They lost the source, but it looks like we got all the stragglers. We’ll do another sweep to make sure.”
“Forget that. Get your men and women looking for the source.”
“The source? By now they could be hiding anywhere or even leaving the area…”
“Some of the members of my unit spotted them. There’s several of them together. One of them was unknown, but one of them definitely had the hair of the Fire Witch fugitive.”
Sunset looked up at that, pupils contracting.
“Are you serious? I thought they finally concluded she fled the country?”
“She’s back now, it looks like. And it looks like they were right about that theory of her being the Instigator. She’s probably doing sabotage for Manehattan or Fillydelphia at this point. If that’s the case, orders are to take her alive. Neutralize anyone with her.”
Twilight paled a little herself on hearing that, while Sunset struggled not to cringe further.
“Understood.”
“Move out.”
There was no more talking after that. After about ten more minutes, the gunshots and screams had stopped, and all foot traffic was down to a minimum. Nevertheless, both Twilight and Sunset were on edge now, and it was a bit longer before they felt bold enough to speak to each other in whispers.
“Did you hear that? That ‘Instigator’ thing they mentioned?” Twilight spoke up. “You think that’s what Gilda was talking about in Fillydelphia? It sounds like the Trottingham people think all of these folks going crazy is due to a weapon too.”
“I don’t care what they think! If they identified me, then I just want to get out of here!” Sunset barely kept from shouting. “Can we go now or what?”
The mage exhaled. “Fine… To be honest, we’ve already spent too much time here already, and I don’t think we’re going to be able to get a steam cab this time… Working through this canal is going to make things take even longer…”
She stepped up to start walking, and Sunset readily rose and began to go down the canal pathway. Twilight was going to follow, but she ended up stopped and turning back to look at Luna. The woman herself was easing against the wall to avoid having to use her cane for balance, and didn’t seem eager to move.
“Aren’t you coming?”
“And why would I be going with you?”
“You can’t stay here. If they spotted you, then they’ll be after you too now.”
Luna sighed, looking to the grating over her head. “Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad… I just wanted to live a quiet life until the end but apparently that’s as impossible as going home. If you’re worried about me exposing either of you, don’t be. I have nothing to gain from that.”
Twilight turned to face her. “There’s a lot more questions we need to ask you too.”
She closed her eyes. “I already told you I can’t help you. Nothing of what I’m telling you will do anything except show you how inevitable it all is.”
“It might not be. And we need to know more before we can say that. If you really don’t care one way or another, then please…come with us. Because we do care one way or another.”
Luna let out a long sigh. She cracked her eyes open again and looked back down at Twilight. Her eyes flicked to Sunset, who had stopped and looked back, but still was eager to get moving. Finally, she pulled herself off of the wall.
“Very well. I suppose there’s some merit to talking to the last person who saw Celestia alive…”
Twilight smiled back at her as she began to hobble after them. “Thank you. We appreciate this.”
“Yes…I’m sure your friends will very much appreciate seeing me,” she sarcastically snorted. “As will anyone else who learns about who I am…”
Twilight winced a bit at that, but Sunset used the moment to motion them on. “Come on! We’ve got a long way to go and we need to get started before any more soldiers show up!”
Much to Twilight and Sunset’s displeasure, the sun had already been down for an hour before they finally managed to work their way to a more obscure and sparsely populated part of the industrial district of Manechester. Their blood ran a little cold when the clock sounded the alarm for 7 PM. With time fast running out, they had no other choice. They had to chance getting a steam cab. It was a bit pricey for three of them plus a dog but, grudgingly, Luna fit the bill for them—apparently having access to more funds than any of them.
Even so, they couldn’t afford to have the cab drop them off at the quarry. They only managed to get into the adjoining town before they had to make the long walk through the forest. By the time the cab dropped them off, the town’s clock tower signaled 8 PM. They were forced to practically run through the woods to get back, which was not only hard to navigate and not only dangerous in terms of Nighttouched, but also involved having a person come along who had a limp. Eventually, Twilight had to equip her Anima Viri both for light as well as for defense, in spite of the risk of signaling people nearby.
They made much better time after that, but it still took far too long to finally clear the forest and emerge on the trail leading into the quarry. That was soon confirmed when they saw figures running out from the shack and up to them, revealing themselves to be the rest of the ladies.
“Where in tarnation have y’all been?!” Applejack nearly screamed at them. “It was bad enough that Twilight was past due, but we were frettin’ all day that Sunset up and ran off to turn us in!”
“Gee,” she muttered, “thanks for the vote of confidence.”
“After all that you’ve put us through, darling, you’re fortunate to be getting the benefit of the doubt at all,” Rarity sharply responded.
“Wait,” Fluttershy spoke up, looking to her feet. “Is that…?” Her face lit up. “Spike! It’s you! You’re alright!” Immediately, she bent low to the ground, allowing the dog to happily bark and run up to her. She reached out to start giving him belly rubs, which he readily complied with by lying down and rolling over. “Who’s a good boy? Yes you are! Yes you are! Angel, look who’s back!”
The rabbit, still lounging in Fluttershy’s satchel, looked less than enthused.
“Oh, oh! And look!” Pinkie cheered. “You brought another friend along too!”
This prompted everyone to look up and focus on Luna. She merely stood there with her cane at her side looking somewhat dully back.
“Oh…hello there, dear,” Rarity spoke up after a moment. “Didn’t mean to ignore you until now. Um…may I ask who you might be?”
“She’s, um…another fugitive from Trottingham who we ran into,” Twilight immediately interjected. “She helped us by footing the bill for the steam cab. I’ll explain later. Right now…” She reached into her pocket, scrambled around for a bit, and then pulled out the receipt. She passed it over to the group. Rainbow Dash reached over and plucked it from her hand, then brought it back and opened it up to start reading.
“Alright…we’re going to need to get moving pretty soon. Let’s get back, tell everyone to load up, and then start heading out.”
“Wait,” Dash suddenly spoke up, looking at the slip in some disbelief, “this slip says to load up at 3 AM. Tonight?”
Twilight looked a little uneasy. “Um…yeah…”
“3 AM? It just turned 10!”
She paled. “Wh-what?”
Applejack wheeled to Dash. “Wait now…come again?”
“You mean we only have…five hours?” Fluttershy spoke with a panicked whine.
The ladies spun back to Twilight, but she could only offer a sheepish look. “I…I meant to be back a lot sooner, but we didn’t have a choice! We ran into the authorities and they IDed Sunset! We had to head back keeping our heads down!”
Sunset immediately winced on hearing that, because the change was almost instantaneous. Whereas before everyone was looking at Twilight in disbelief, now their eyes turned to her, and were far sharper and more critical looking. Applejack frowned and Dash actually grit her teeth and muttered. As for Sunset, she clutched her bundle and looked like she wanted to shrink out of sight right then and there.
Twilight quickly cut in. “Look, we don’t have time for this right now! If we’re going to get everyone to the station in time, then we need to leave in the next fifteen minutes!”
Dash groaned. “Celano is not going to like this. She thought I’d give her another two hours at least to start looting. If we don’t want them to back off of the deal, then I’ve got to leave right now.” She stepped to one side, getting ready to call on her Anima Viri.
“Oh…I’m not sure all of the rats will get in place on time…” Fluttershy spoke up nervously. “Could we possibly leave any sooner?”
Applejack let out a groan and turned around. “Come on, y’all! We need to get everyone ready to mosey like yesterday!”
A bit sorely, the others turned around and began to run back to the shack, while Rainbow Dash called on her own Anima Viri. No sooner had she equipped it when she took off in a blaze of speed the way that the others had come. Sunset continued to wince, holding a hand to her head and groaning. Twilight herself was looking increasingly uncomfortable as well.
Luna simply balanced on her cane and exhaled. “So, shall we bother heading down as well or just wait on them?”
Fifteen minutes later, right on schedule, everyone headed out. All who were able-bodied enough to walk easily were up, dressed, and on the move while the weaker children and more elderly rode on the Pie’s wagon. They had stopped only long enough to quickly set up fake bodies on the floor mats and put out all the lights, to hopefully confuse anyone who came by to check the area that they were asleep. After that, everyone headed up the quarry path and made for the forest.
“We’re going to have to keep a steady pace!” Shining Armor announced from the front. “We have less than five hours to get to the train and load up and we’re going to need every minute of that to get there on time! Stick to the plan once we get there!”
“Oh, wait!” Pinkie suddenly shouted, looking around frantically. “Where’s Maud? I haven’t seen her!”
“Right here, Pinkie,” a dull monotone responded, causing not only Pinkie but the other ladies to immediately look up in surprise. As it turned out, she seemed to have appeared right next to Pinkie’s side.
“Oh! There you are!” Pinkie grinned.
“Don’t worry about me. I’ll make sure to get out. Just concentrate on getting everyone else and yourself away.”
“You got it, Maud!”
Twilight and Sunset both struggled not to grimace on hearing the exchange, and couldn’t help but look up and around. A few people were looking at Pinkie strangely, clearly only hearing her talking to nobody. Limestone let out a groan and an eye roll but said no more. Aside from that, the only other reaction was from Luna, who was walking alongside the group and happened to be nearby at the time. She kept her eyes forward, or at least seemed to, before she finally spoke in a quiet voice.
“Soul projection, I see. Commendable for one who has so little experience with her Anima Viri. I’m a bit surprised you aren’t fatigued from continuously doing it.”
Pinkie, clearly not understanding any of this, merely giggled and kept bounding along. Maud, on the other hand, raised one of her eyebrows and looked at Luna. However, she offered no more and simply kept looking forward. Maud eventually did the same and, the next time Twilight and Sunset blinked, they saw she was gone.
The next two hours were much like the previous, only with more people to protect. This time, the going wasn’t so lucky. At one point, a pack of wild dogs with gleaming eyes emerged from the woods and rapidly approached the caravan. However, everyone worked together quickly. Twilight scattered them with fire before Applejack and Pinkie moved in with their weapons to fend them off. The biggest surprise was when Fluttershy fumbled for her own Anima Viri, ending up accidentally activating Melvin’s and taking the role of the Rogue, although she was still too squeamish to use the dagger that her walking stick had turned into.
“Wait,” Twilight had spoken up, “you have two Anima Viris now too?”
“I…um…guess I forgot to mention it…” she answered quietly.
“I wonder what sort of new role she can take now?” Starlight spoke up.
“Oh…I tried doing two at once, but…it doesn’t work. I just swap out one for the other.”
“There’s a trick to it…” Sunset found herself blurting out, going silent soon after. However, it was too late. The rest of the ladies looked to her.
Applejack swished her lips. “Alright, then that there’s the first useful thing you can teach us when all this is done.”
She exhaled. “Fine. That means you all keep me around for now.”
Barring that incident, the rest of the journey went smoothly and without any encounters with Trottingham authorities. However, that was only the first hurdle. There was no chance of taking a steam cab now the last leg of the journey, so once they were out of the woods and on the streets they had no choice but to split up into smaller groups to make themselves less conspicuous. The Pies took the lead with each group and, unfortunately, as the six ladies all had Anima Viris, they needed to split up as well. Twilight and Sunset ended up going with Pinkie and Luna along with some of the other civilians on the most winding route, as Pinkie had appeared in that town multiple times and they needed to keep her in the dark. The going wasn’t easy. Not only was the road long and roundabout, but Trottingham patrols were out and forced them more than once to wait in shadows or take longer ways. Each time the distant clock tower sounded out another quarter of an hour it grew more uncomfortable, but finally they made their way back into the industrial district of Manechester.
From there, although the factories were long since shut down, the smoggy atmosphere allowed sufficient obscurity for everyone to gradually make their way to the rendezvous point—a cluttered side street about four blocks away from the station. Pinkie’s group made it there second, following Limestone’s. Cloudy Quartz’s group followed soon after by Igneous’.
While still waiting for Marble’s group to arrive, a creaking was heard down the road. Everyone hid and watched the street. Gradually, though the gloom, a covered wagon drawn by a team of four horses made its way along and to the road. It turned into it soon after, and those gathered saw that it was being driven by an older Huntsman woman with a gold hoop earring and a peg leg in one seat and Rainbow Dash in the other. She hopped out, and not long after other wagons began to arrive. Marble’s group finally came as the fourth wagon pulled in, but a fifth wagon joined it before Dash hopped out and faced the others.
She did a look around the area while the woman who had been with her dismounted as well. “Alright, that everyone?”
Twilight nodded. “Everyone in our group. What about yours?”
The woman motioned her head to the back of the wagon. “See for yourself.”
Twilight looked up and at the back of the first wagon. She walked to the rear soon after and lifted up a loose part of the canvas in the back. Despite the darkness, she was just able to make out the forms of several people dressed like customary Gaitians.
She exhaled as she let the flap lower again, looking back out to her. “Thank you. But…it seems like a lot of wagon space just for the families…”
The woman smirked. “That’s because it’s more than the families.” She leaned her head up and looked out to the other wagons lined up behind hers, in particular their own drivers. “So how’d we make out, boys?”
The first one grinned and motioned behind him. “Ripped off a liquor store. Those folks in Manehattan will pay top dollar for this brand of whiskey.”
“Fine dinnerware is a bit too fragile to take along,” another one snickered, “so I helped myself to the tea and silverware.”
“I raided myself a weapon’s depot,” the third laughed, before motioning behind him. “Made out a lot better than old Beady back there. He raided a textile factory of all things. Kept going on about Trottingham fabric.”
“Ooo!”
Twilight briefly turned her head at that, finding herself looking at Rarity. Immediately, she cleared her throat and calmed down.
“Sorry.”
“How’d you make out, captain?”
She smirked. “Oh, let’s just say that I appropriated a grab bag from the latest Southern Equestrian imports. Just sailed in today. I’m sure the fine people out west will appreciate these goods more than Trottingham, being far rarer out there and all. I think I even managed a couple barrels of opium.”
The others whistled in excitement. Twilight, on her part, began to look rather uncomfortable, along with several of the others. She turned back to the woman soon after. “You, um…made quite the splash tonight raiding the town, didn’t you? Are you sure you didn’t attract any more…unwanted attention?”
The woman gave her a sharp look. “You’re the one who didn’t get us the rail number on time to head out sooner, but we’ve been at this for years and we know what we’re doing. Just make sure we have enough time to load this all up when we hit the railyard and we’ll be fine.”
She looked uneasy. “Well…we really just want to make sure we get the people loaded first. We may have to cut it pretty close after that-”
She was cut off as the woman leaned in and glared at her.
“Listen here…we didn’t get kicked out of the guild and made human trafficking fugitives of Trottingham for nothing. We intended to make a splash when we got out of this country and that’s what we’re going to do. Either the whole load goes or we see how much of a reward we can get for reporting about 100 Gaitian fugitives, got it?”
The seriousness of her voice was not to be denied, and it immediately made Twilight wince uncomfortably. She could only meekly nod back. “Sure…got it.”
Starlight’s eyes flicked between the two of them for a moment, noticing the woman was still frowning and wary of Twilight now while the latter was getting progressively more nervous, and finally cleared her throat. “Ok then…time to get a move on. Everyone, remember the plan. We go in through the rear like we’re here to load cargo, get signed in, move to the train, and when everyone’s in position we make the run in one shot. Everyone clear?”
As she sounded this out, Sunset looked up and over to one of the Huntsmen, who had reached into the back of his own wagon and come out with a cigarette. As he poked it in his mouth and went for a lighter, she inched over to him.
“Hey… Don’t suppose I could bum one off you, could I?”
“Actually,” Dash’s voice called from behind her, “I got something even better for you.”
She turned to the woman, just in time to see Dash swing her hand around and drop it on top of her head. Immediately, a large quantity of greasy oil was plopped on top of it. Sunset recoiled in revulsion as Dash simply made a few motions to get it to start sliding all over her scalp.
She smirked at her. “There you go. Instant hair dye. Cool, huh?”
Sunset groaned as her eyes opened. “Thanks…”
The group took some time to get themselves better organized, in particular making sure to hide all of the Gaitians except Pinkie. Fortunately, the Huntsmen had not only taken the precaution of lifting some basic coveralls for themselves but enough for most of the others who would stay outside the wagons, including the ladies. After slipping into them so that the group would at least appear on the outside to be basic freight loaders, they moved on. Fifteen minutes afterward, they finally were in eyeshot of the Manecheter rail yard.
The ladies had spread out at that point. Twilight, Fluttershy, and Applejack stood against one side of the first wagon while Starlight, Rarity, and Rainbow Dash stood on the opposite side. Pinkie relocated to the last wagon, leaving only the Huntsmen drivers out in their seats. There were other teams with freight waiting to load already queued ahead of them, so they got themselves in line and slowly made their way forward. It took about another twenty minutes of progress, but they slowly moved forward until they neared the large surrounding fence to the train yard, and in particular a large gate.
As the last load in front of them cleared the way, they finally approached the entrance. There was a booth there and a couple workers who seemed to be railyard authorities. There was also, much to the group’s displeasure, a not-too-small assembly of soldiers. Each of them had rifles. They stood at a distance, apparently letting the railyard authorities act first, but they were still more than close enough to make Twilight struggle not to gulp or shudder.
As soon as they came to a halt, one of the railyard authorities walked up to her side. Seeing as she was the one in front, she moistened her lips and smiled at him. He smiled back, although it was far more faint than hers. Applejack simply gave a head nod while Fluttershy dipped her head down slightly before giving a weak smile of her own.
“Hello there. Confirmation?”
Twilight shifted a little before reaching into her pocket and pulling out the slip of paper from earlier. She passed it over, letting the rail authority accept it. “There you are! Engine 7! On schedule to start loading up!”
The authority looked over the slip for a moment before nodding once and passing it back to her. She accepted it, sighing mentally, and smiled back. “Thank you! Have a good evening!”
“Freight invoice?”
Twilight had just been starting to turn to motion the others in when she froze. She looked back at the man. “Excuse me?”
“May I see your freight invoice?”
Twilight went rigid. She stared blankly back at him. “I’m sorry…my…freight invoice?”
The smile faded a little. “Yes, your freight invoice.”
“I…wasn’t aware we needed one.”
The smile faded all together. “New regulations for all outgoing freight went into effect last week. Freight invoices are to be presented at the time of departure and reviewed prior to loading. If you don’t have a freight invoice prepared, then we will have to inspect your cargo now and draft you one.”
Twilight fought as hard as she could not to wince. Applejack and Fluttershy both began to grow nervous. “Th-that…that won’t be necessary… I mean, heh…we have such small loads compared to everyone else…”
“There are no exceptions to the rule, regardless of cargo size.”
“Th-then we’ll go ahead and handle it!” Applejack quickly spoke up.
The authority looked over to her. His face turned curious. “That accent… It sounds…”
Twilight paled and quickly got in his way. “What my colleague means to say is that we’re perfectly willing to comply with any regulations, but we have so little freight it would probably be easier if you just let us draft one up for you and then hand it over. So…do you have any paper?”
“We still need to verify the invoice following receipt.” The authority turned and motioned to the other authority to come over. “Let’s start with the first and move down the line.”
The other nodded and began to come over. Twilight stiffened, looking back to Applejack, but she, realizing she couldn’t even speak at this point, could only shrug helplessly. Fumbling, she turned back and stepped in the path of the authority as he tried to move to the rear. “Wait, wait… Um…er… It’s just that we can’t…that is…we’re not… I mean, could we…”
The authority looked down at her with growing irritation. “Please stand aside, ma’am. We need to do our job.”
“Yes, I know, but… I was just… That is…could you just wait for a few minutes? We need to…to…”
His irritation continued to rise. “Ma’am, please stand aside or I will be forced to bring in the authorities.”
Twilight paled a little more. “There’s no need for that. I just needed to talk with you a bit more for one second-”
“You’re holding up the line. People have schedules to meet.” He began to turn to look at the nearest soldier. The soldier, in turn, looked up and began to shoulder his rifle, but didn’t move just yet.
Twilight could only stand there and stammer. She didn’t know what else to say or do, and any further arguing seemed like it would only make thing worse…
“Excuse me…?”
Both Twilight and the authority paused on hearing that sound. Twilight turned her head, a bit surprised to see Fluttershy meekly stepping forward. She continued to bow her head, letting her hair somewhat obscure her face, but she looked at the man timidly.
“Um…sorry…I…don’t mean to interrupt…” she practically whispered. “It’s just that…um…uh…well…we have a lot of sensitive cargo to load and…we really need to get it on board the train as soon as possible…so…uh…um…I was wondering if maybe just this once we could get by without our invoice? Please?”
The authority frowned back at her. “I really don’t have time for this. If you don’t have the invoice, then stand aside.”
He nearly moved forward, but Fluttershy took a step closer, looking up a bit more and letting some of her hair fall back off of her face.
“Um…I’m sorry sir. I know you have a job to do, and you’re very diligent at it…but this was really just an honest mistake on our part. Could we maybe let it go? Please? It would mean the world to us.”
The man inhaled and squared himself in her face. “Look…I’m getting tired of this and I’m tired of repeating myself. I’ve heard enough.”
He began to raise his hand to the soldier again. This time, it was clear he meant to call them over. Twilight started to shudder. Applejack started to reach for her hammer…
Before either of them could make a move, however, Fluttershy fully looked up, letting the last of her hair fall away from her face, and spoke.
“Excuse me.”
Neither Twilight nor Applejack nor any of the others in earshot of that were sure what happened next. All they knew was that they suddenly found themselves turning fully to Fluttershy and focusing on her, and that, for a few seconds, that was all they could think about doing or compel themselves to do. The look on the authority’s face, irritated until now, melted away as he found himself staring directly into her eyes. He didn’t move, speak, or even seem to breathe.
As for Fluttershy, she spoke with a force and volume that seemed impossible for her.
“I have tried to appeal to you being reasonable over an extremely minor mistake, but I suppose it’s just too much to expect you to show the slightest hint of leeway to a group of underpaid, tired loaders working late to try and get a shipment out to the front lines in a timely manner. So instead I will have to insist that you help us this once by overlooking one small slip of paper and let us start loading the train, or I will get very testy!”
Twilight let out an exhale, only realizing at that point she had been holding her breath. All in the area did the same, for Fluttershy’s voice seemed to radiate through them when she spoke. Yet no effect was greater than the authority. His pupils dilated as she spoke, and he gradually cringed and shyed away from her as she continued to get closer with each word, looking him straight in the eye the whole time. When she was done, there was a moment of silence. Neither the soldiers nor the other authority moved.
Finally, the man swallowed, stood up, and, without looking away from Fluttershy’s stare, took a step backward.
“Move…move on.”
The other authority gave the man a puzzled look. “What? Didn’t they-”
“They’re clear!” he instantly cut off, nearly shouting. “Move on! Let them load!”
Twilight blinked in astonishment. The other authority was flabbergasted. He stammered and looked at them for a moment, but finally sighed and stepped back. The first authority stepped away and motioned them on rapidly. This left everyone confused a moment longer, before Twilight looked back to Fluttershy.
A good thing too, for at that moment she let out a bit of a sigh before her legs gave out beneath her and she started to collapse. Twilight quickly moved in and grasped her, keeping her from falling all together, but her head lolled. Gritting her teeth, the mage kept her upright for a few seconds before she rolled her head back. By that point, the wagon teams, not looking a gift horse in the mouth, immediately began to move forward and through the gate. Twilight hardly noticed, however. She instead focused on Fluttershy, looking dazed and semi-conscious, and especially at a welling under one of her nostrils. It looked like a drop of blood.
Luckily, Applejack soon stepped up behind them and lent her own arm in to support Fluttershy. “Y’alright?” she asked in a faint whisper.
“I…I’m fine,” Twilight began to answer, “but Fluttershy, she’s…”
“I’m…I’m ok…” she half-whispered back, even as she continued to loll her head around and shut her eyes. “Just…just need a…a moment…”
“Well then, come on!” Applejack pushed. “We gotta move in while the gettin’s good!”
Twilight nearly protested, but Fluttershy gave a stiff inhale, and forced her feet under her. While she still leaned on Twilight for support, she began to move forward. The mage, realizing they were still under the eyes of the authorities as well as the soldiers, didn’t stall any longer. She began to lead her on. Soon, they were moving through the gates as well.
A couple minutes later, once they were among the freight platforms and obscured by steam clouds and the hissing of boilers, Fluttershy finally stood and walked on her own again. She wiped away at her nose once and was then normal. “I’m alright now. Thank you.”
“Are you sure?”
She nodded.
“That was amazin’!” Applejack interjected. “I didn’t know you could do that starin’ thing on people!”
Fluttershy’s eyes widened for a moment, before she turned red and cringed again. “I, um…well…it’s not something I really like to do…”
Twilight thought about that a moment and shrugged. “I guess I can understand that, but thank you still. You really helped us out back there.”
Fluttershy merely kept blushing. Twilight looked up from her side and around for the nearest clock, eventually finding one mounted along the platform. Taking a quick look at the time, she turned back to her. “When does the diversion happen?”
She looked up and to the clock as well. “Oh…I told them right on the dot at 3 AM, so…about 20 minutes?”
She nodded back and looked up to the wagon. Before she could say a word, however, Celeano gave a single nod back to indicate that she understood. With that, everyone looked forward and kept walking.
They continued to walk along the rows, passing by several platforms, engines, cars, and teams loading up their own respective cargo. Yet only a few minutes later they arrived at the appropriate platform and, sure enough, a large steaming locomotive with the number “9” emblazoned on the side. There were only five open cars attached to this one, but that was more than enough for their purposes. Better yet, it looked as if the engine had already been prepped well in advance and the engineer crew was already up front and lounging while they waited for the load to arrive.
As they pulled their wagons up onto the platform and alongside the train, Twilight took a moment to look around and assess their situation. It was a busy night, even for 3 AM. There were two other trains on either side of them loading up, and more in front and in behind. The tracks ahead quickly turned into a convoluted mess in a series of rails and switches leading out, and crew members both for the station as well as loaders and engineers were bustling about everywhere. And that wasn’t getting into the number of soldiers about patrolling the area constantly. They seemed to be paying a lot of attention to individuals going to and fro for that matter. Like they were looking for someone.
She inhaled stiffly as they came to a stop, and then turned back to Celeano. “Alright, we have…” A glance to the clock. “Eighteen minutes.”
“We’ll get busy.” She immediately put down the reins and hopped off of the wagon. The others quickly did the same.
Moving in wasn’t quite as easy as they would have liked. With the number of people around, the six ladies moved out to quickly shut the doors for the freight cars on the opposite side, creating an obscured view from one angle, and then took positions to wait for when no one was around. As soon as the coast was clear, they rapped on the sides of the wagons, and a few people would come out and quickly get into the freight cars; pushing themselves against one side. Luckily, it only took about eight minutes to get all of the people on. Once that was done, the Huntsmen got to work unloading their own cargo. Fortunately, the crates they had swiped were modular with railings and fittings into the train’s loading carts, allowing them to more quickly pull out the loads. Furthermore, they seemed like seasoned pros at it.
Nevertheless, with five minutes left, and half of the cargo still left behind, Twilight was growing a bit nervous. She kept her eyes open and, by now, she had noticed that a few people seemed to be glancing their way more often than she liked. Some of them even stared for a bit. Keeping that in mind, she moved around to Applejack, Starlight, and Double Diamond. The three of them turned to face her as she neared, and she slipped in alongside them and whispered.
“Let’s go.”
They gave small nods and fell in behind her. Together, the four made their way up for the engine compartment. Twilight kept looking around even while trying to remain casual and, once again, she couldn’t help but notice that folks were looking at her. In particular, one of the railyard authorities was staring at her and their group.
“I’ve been keeping tabs,” Starlight whispered as they advanced. “There’s three all together. Two are in the engine compartment. One’s in the coal scuttle.”
Twilight didn’t answer, not giving off any more signs of what they were about to do. She instead reached into her pocket and grasped the tool handle she had earlier. The four kept walking until they finally reached the space between the engine and the coal car. The four paused there a moment, casually looking around on the platform one way and the other. Then, as nonchalantly as possible, Twilight stepped in and the others quickly followed behind her.
They barely had gotten in and out of view before they were faced with the interior of the engine. Behind them was the open door to the coal car, but Twilight ignored that for now while Applejack kept her eyes on a single engine worker with a shovel rummaging around in it. Her own eyes were on the engineer and his assistant monitoring the pressure gauges and checking the fire. However, the two of them noticed fairly quickly that they weren’t alone. Both looked up and turned around, spotting the four people.
The engineer straightened. “Can I help you?”
Twilight was quiet a moment longer, but then yanked her “wand” out, aimed it forward, and performed a sigil and incantation in an instant. Both rail workers were shocked to see a mysterious woman suddenly drawing a symbol of light in the air, and it caused them to hesitate until she had executed it. They barely had a chance to make another sound before the sigil evaporated into mist and washed over them, and moments later both moaned and passed out.
“Boss?” a voice called from the coal car. Seconds later, the third worker began to step out. “Did I hear something? What’s going on-”
He was cut off, for as soon as his shoulder cleared the door Applejack seized him, yanked him out the rest of the way, and drove his head into the nearest metal piece of paneling with a dull clang. Instantly, he went limp and fell to the ground.
As soon as he was out, Starlight and Diamond moved to take over in the engine compartment. Applejack quickly grabbed him again and drug him further into the cabin and out of view. Twilight looked at her uneasily. “That…didn’t fracture his skull just now, did it?”
“Nah. My brother got hit with a lot worse than that at the old rodeos. Just knocked him loopy for a while.”
“Um, your brother is a lot stronger looking than him…”
“You really wanna worry ‘bout this now?”
Twilight sighed in defeat. “Get your lasso ready. I’m going to step outside and see which tracks we need to hit.”
Applejack nodded back and began to reach into the coveralls. A tapping of footsteps was heard soon after from the railing alongside the coal car. Twilight looked up and to the side of the engine, and a moment later saw Rainbow Dash poking her head around the side.
“How’s the loading coming?”
“Pretty quick. How’d we do up here?”
“As good as we could expect. I’m going to check on the front.”
Twilight headed out to the same opening and looked about. Much to her relief, the train was a model that had a railing alongside both the coal car and the engine that went all the way to the front to the “cow catcher”. That meant it would be easy for both her and Applejack to move around and back to the cars once the engine was in motion. With that in mind, she stepped out onto the railing and moved to the front of the locomotive. She positioned herself right beneath the forward light and looked ahead.
She spent several seconds there, pointing at the air and quickly looking over the tracks ahead as well as the switches. After a few moments she believed she had it down for the first set and nearly stepped back in.
However, she paused when she caught something on two platforms away.
One of the railway authorities was standing next to an officer with two soldiers flanking her. A moment later, he looked straight at her and the engine and pointed while still talking. The officer turned and looked as well, meeting her gaze for a moment. Right afterward, she turned and said something to the other soldiers. They nodded and instantly scrambled.
Twilight turned white again. “Oh no…”
Without wasting any more time, she quickly turned about and ran back into the engine compartment. Starlight and Diamond were still messing around with the controls and Applejack had just begun to get her lasso ready when she broke back inside.
“We have to leave now.”
Starlight looked up from the gauges. “Excuse me?”
“One of the authorities is calling out the army on us. I just saw it. We have to get going.”
Applejack snapped her head up. “Beg yer pardon?”
“Say what?” Dash echoed.
“But…but Fluttershy’s diversion won’t even happen for another…” Starlight paused long enough to reach into her pocket and pull out her watch. “…Four minutes!”
“And we’re still loading in the back!” Dash added.
“Then go help them!” Twilight nearly shouted at her, before looking at Applejack. “You need to hurry up and get your Anima Viri on!” She looked at Starlight afterward. “Get the engine ready to start moving! I’m not sure when they’re going to have this surrounded!”
Starlight still looked uneasy, but sighed in resignation and turned to Diamond. He swallowed as he reached into his pockets to start fumbling for the keys Rarity had given them. As he fished them out, and Dash turned and ran along the railing for the back to pass along the word, Twilight stepped inside and hid herself as best as she could.
A few moments later, she began to hear a yell from behind her. “Member of my house, I command-”
She instantly spun around and waved at Applejack. “Keep it down!”
“Well how the hell am I s’posed to be commandin’ if I can’t shout?”
“Just do the best you can!”
The farmer grumbled, but raised her hand and spoke in a somewhat “quieter” voice. Although it took her a couple tries, she seemed to still manage to get it, but Twilight didn’t focus on that. She kept her eyes outside.
Unfortunately, it didn’t take long for things to get bad. She began to hear distant sounds of boots clicking and, soon after, she saw an entire troop of armed soldiers begin to run down one of the platforms for the ground level, obviously headed for them. She glanced behind them and saw, further down the track on a rear platform, a second group was coming from there. There was no telling how many more were still coming.
She ducked back inside. “Please tell me we’re ready to move.”
Starlight and Diamond were still fumbling with the controls, but the former looked up to her frowning. “What good will it do if everyone’s eyes are still on us? We still need that diversion!”
Twilight let out a bit of a whimper, ending up ducking inside all the way. Even so, it wasn’t long before the sounds of clacking boots, now clearly on their own platform, began to sound out. They were rapidly getting closer too. The mage nervously hesitated, looking from Applejack, now in her own Anima Viri form, to Starlight and Diamond, still holding off on starting the engine, to the unconscious crew on the floor…
Seeing that, she finally reacted. She dove to the ground for the main engineer and seized her cap off of her head and put it on her own. Soon after she began to struggle with her kerchief as well.
“What’re ya’ doin’?” Applejack asked on spotting this.
“I don’t know! Hopefully something that will buy a little more time!” Twilight nearly shouted as she got the kerchief off and quickly tied it around her own neck. As she did, the footsteps got closer yet; nearly on the train car. Letting out a nervous exhale, she leaned back up, turned her head, and then ducked it outside of the opening between the engine and the coal car.
It was just in time. The soldiers were running up the platform with an officer heading them up right that moment. Fortunately, it wasn’t the same officer she had locked gazes with before. Keeping the rest of her body obscured, she called out. “Oh…hi! Is something wrong?”
The soldiers all had rather stony expressions, but fortunately they did slow down. “Step out of the engine,” the one in the lead called to her. “You and everyone inside there. Right now.”
Quickly, she feigned innocence. “Oh? Is…um…something wrong?”
The officer was unamused as she kept nearing. “Step out of the engine right now.”
“Er, uh…” she began to look uneasy, fumbling for a moment, before she nodded. “Right, right…of course. Just, um…just a second. Let me let everyone else know…”
“I said-”
But Twilight quickly ducked inside before the officer could get the rest out. Her face unchanging, the officer raised a hand so that the soldiers behind her could see it, and then beckoned them all to come forward at once. Their rifles shifted into the ready and they quickly moved out to flank the officer. In moments, they rushed forward and positioned themselves around the space between the cars. The officer moved back into their ranks as their weapons went up.
“Everyone,” the officer called inside, “this is the national guard. You are to vacate the engine compartment immediately. If you do not comply this instant, we will have to remove you by force.”
There was no response. After a few seconds of silence, she frowned. She raised her hand again, intending to tell her soldiers to move in.
However, she was interrupted by a flash of light from within the compartment. Moments later, to her surprise as well as that of the other soldiers, a powerful, forceful, piercing gale suddenly burst from within the engine and came billowing out with the force of a tornado. It slammed into the closely compacted soldiers so strongly that their weapons were caught and flung right out of their hands, followed shortly thereafter by the gale ripping off some of their clothes. Most of all, however, the force hit them so strongly that they were swept up into the air and then hurled off of the platform and onto the tracks on the other side of it; like they were nothing more than dust before a broom. Moments later, each one was giving a mild cry of surprise or pain as they were dumped onto the ground, although most of it was obscured by the hisses of steam and noises of loading around them.
Inside the engine compartment, Twilight, now in her own Caster form, let out a whistle as she lowered her transformed wand. Starlight and Diamond were both staring at her dumbfounded.
“I thought you said you were going to buy some time!”
She winced. “Well…I did! Just…not as much time as I hoped…”
Granted, it did take a little while for the soldiers to realize what had happened. Seeing the officer and her troop getting blasted out had left anyone who witnessed the event confused while everyone else was left waiting for them to get in position. Yet after about another minute, they began to realize that the group had been disabled and left in a heap on the rail level. When that happened, a whistle was blown, and the soldiers that were already surrounding the train were quickly doubled-up upon. The bootsteps clacks were getting louder than ever as more troops came out and took their positions along the train; now aiming their rifles at every car. If that wasn’t enough, Twilight and the others thought they heard noises from large machinery grinding, implying they might have been getting an artillery piece out to aim at them.
Applejack began to tense up. “Um…Twilight?”
“Not yet!” She looked on both sides of the engine but didn’t move.
Starlight held up her watch. “Just a little longer…”
Another set of bootsteps was heard rushing up to the sides of the engine. This time, it didn’t seem like they were going to give them an opportunity to surrender from the sound of the orders being shouted.
“Twilight!” Applejack spoke again.
Starlight suddenly looked up. “Ok, now!”
Everyone looked up together. However, all they heard were the sounds of the army outside mixed with the noises of the steam engines. A few seconds passed, and that was still all they heard.
“…Well?”
Twilight winced. “It…might take the rats a few seconds to gnaw through things if they didn’t start until now…or…maybe they misinterpreted Fluttershy’s command…?”
“That does it!” Applejack yelled as she took up her lasso, going for the hammer on the end. “I’ll just get out there and beat ‘em down!”
“We can’t get in a fight now!” Starlight nearly shrieked. “Most of us don’t have Anima Viris to protect us!”
“Well we can’t just stand ‘round here!”
Hearing the boots getting closer, Twilight let out a moan, before she raised her wand up again. She started to draw another sigil—a greater one this time. She got it ready to execute the moment the next batch of soldiers came into view, even though she was hearing them coming from both sides this time…
Before she could complete it, however, loud noises burst all around them. They weren’t from explosions or gunshots either. They were the sounds of steam lines and boilers breaking, and they were shortly accompanied by the sound of rail workers crying out—some in pain, others shouting in emergencies. Soon after, a more explosive sound was heard—this one from the gas lines fueling the lights around the platforms. A portion of them immediately went dead followed by a pillar of flame arising from another side of the rail yard. Another burst soon followed that one, followed by alarms being rung and more people shouting and running.
That was all Twilight needed to hear. She lowered her wand and turned to Applejack. “Now!” Before bolting out the opening, she shouted to Starlight as well. “Let’s go!”
Starlight quickly went to the engine controls while Diamond immediately moved to the engineering crew to shove them out of the open cabin. As for Twilight and Applejack, they went out opposite sides of the engine. They were both equipped with Anima Viris, so there was no way they would completely escape notice. They had no time to worry about that, however; only hope that Fluttershy’s diversion would distract everyone long enough for them to finish their business. Only halfway up alongside the engine it began to move forward, causing both ladies to focus entirely on their task. Even when they heard soldiers beginning to yell out, this time at them, they kept running until they were at the front of the engine positioned above the “cow catcher”.
Twilight took a moment to take in the aftermath of the diversion. Two different pillars of flame from ruptured gas lines were illuminated over the rail yard at different spots, but clouds of steam from ruptured boilers were going off in at least eight. Workers were scrambling everywhere to try and get things under control, and they were frequently running into soldiers who were scrambling in other directions trying to figure out who was attacking them and where. Nevertheless, many of the soldiers that had come to their own train engine were still standing there dumbfounded, or even still looking at them.
“Stop that train!” a voice sounded on a megaphone. “Stop that train!”
She didn’t look any more. As Applejack took position next to her, she turned her head forward to the first switching station. “Applejack! The first and second! Now!”
She quickly snapped her lasso up as the train lurched forward and pulled the first switch. By the time she pulled her arm back, rifle shots began to go off. Twilight cried out and ducked, but Applejack stood her ground and readied her lasso again. She soon snapped it out, pulled the other switch, and yanked it back. The tracks ahead changed, and as the engine began to pick up more speed it landed on the junction and rolled past it.
Gunshots continued to fire, but since the train engine was already rolling out from the platforms, the front of the engine seemed to be clear. Twilight risked holding her head up, and noticed that while soldiers were still running out on the tracks in front of them, clearly trying to get ahead, they weren’t in a position to fire any more at a standstill. She also noticed, much to her shock, they were coming to the next station quickly. Immediately she rose again.
“N-Next one! Pull switches 3 and 5 and shift 2 and 6 back!”
“Call out the next one faster!” Applejack yelled back as her arm went up. “We’re pickin’ up speed and I ain’t sure I can get all o’ em!”
Her lasso snapped out twice, once for switch 3 and once for switch 5. However, the train was now going at a steady 8 km per hour and getting faster, and they were already closer to the next switching station than they had been during practice. Applejack quickly grit her teeth, choked up on her hammer, and yanked it back to fling it forward at the second switch. She hit it, and used the impact it had from bouncing off of it to quickly reclaim her hammer and fling it again just in time at the sixth switch. Twilight nearly thought they had missed it, but the engine rolled onto the right tracks and kept going along the next switch.
Now they were beginning to outstrip the soldiers, and the surrounding train engines began to fall away as they hit a straightaway. Twilight leaned out more, looking ahead and trying to spot the next switching station and the right direction as quickly as she could. Yet she realized that was going to get more difficult as they continued to pick up speed. The end of the rail yard eventually began to become visible in the distance, and beyond it the individual tracks breaking off and moving out into the distance. When that happened, she finally spotted a series of tracks going to one junction and the switching station nearby. Nevertheless, she had to look a bit closer to see the switches as they kept nearing.
“Twilight!” Applejack shouted even as she began to whip her lasso into the air.
“Pull 1, pull 2, and push 3!”
“Damnit, too slow! We ain’t got time!” she shouted as she snapped her lasso out, hooked the first switch, and gave it a yank. Although she moved as fast as she could to snap it loose and bring it back, by the time she managed to swing out the lasso and pull the second switch, they were already passing by it even as she loosened the rope to reclaim it. “I can’t hit the last-”
She was cut off as she heard a sigil being executed next to her. She looked, and recoiled a moment later as the symbol Twilight had just traced in the air evaporated into a head-sized chunk of ice, which went flying like a missile for the switches. Moments later, it hit the third switch and snapped it forward.
There was a bit of squealing and grinding from the front of the train, but it managed to connect to the right junction. Soon after, it was changing direction again and moving out onto a series of tracks streaming away from the rail yard. Moments later, as it increased speed to about 16 km per hour, it rolled out from under the gate and into the area outside of Manechester.
Twilight sighed in relief and lowered her wand, and turned back to Applejack. The farmer was amazed for a moment, but then grinned back. “Well, awright! That’s how it gets done!”
“This track should be a straight shot for miles!” she called back with a faint smile of her own. “Let’s get back and tell the others!”
Applejack nodded and turned around to start going back along her railing, while Twilight turned about and went along hers. In a few moments, both of them had managed to cross the heating-up engine and reached the opening again. They didn’t go inside, but rather both grasped the rails and looked within, seeing Diamond adjusting the controls while Starlight was going for one of the maps she had ripped from the library.
“We made it!” Twilight called.
“Well…almost,” Starlight answered with a shrug. “I’ll say we’re in the clear from Manechester once we hit the Reins river in a couple miles. There’s a long rail bridge across a pretty deep chasm, but the tracks reduce to two parallel tracks running across it. Once we’re past that, nothing should stop us for a good long while into Appleloosa, and no one has a chance of following us.”
“Alright,” Applejack answered with a nod. “We’ll let the others know, then I’ll head on back here and help you out with that coal. Want to get this engine runnin’ good and hard all the way to Mount Aris, after all…”
She began to crawl along the side past the coal car. Twilight nodded back at them. “Great job, both of you.” After that, she began to follow along as well.
The train continued to pick up speed, approaching about 32 kilometers per hour by the time they reached the junction point between the coal car and the first freight car. As a result, both of them were rather glad to be off of the rails and into the junction between the cars before the speed picked up any further. Both slipped off onto the small platform area and faced the forward door to the car, and after exchanging smiles Applejack reached out and opened the door up.
Both began to step inside. “Everyone, good news! We…”
Twilight’s voice trailed off. Her smile faded into a look of horror.
Applejack’s eyes widened in shock. “Aw hell no… Not another one!”
Most of the passengers who had loaded into the car were currently pressed against the rear and cargo containers in huddled fear and terror. The Huntsman who had overseen letting them in was currently face down on the ground, looking barely conscious or able to move. Sunset Shimmer, who had happened to load into that same car, was pressed against a wall, looking terrified and helpless to do anything but stare in shock. Nearby, Luna stood aghast, have shrunk back but clearly not knowing what to do. Spike stood before both of them, alternating between growling and whimpering.
In the center of the car was Shining Armor, wielding his Anima Viri for all the good it was doing him. He was currently being forced to his knees courtesy of a gauntleted hand throttling him, and in spite of both of his own hands holding onto it and trying to pry it off it wasn’t budging.
The gauntlet belonged to a matching set of armor—a style of which Applejack currently knew all too well. It was a similar design to the one she had seen on the attacker of Fort Appleloosa, although this one was more streamlined with accents for small metallic wings on the boots, arms, and even the back. Not so much functional as creating additional gleaming blades along it. Unlike that previous suit, however, this one appeared to be a true suit of armor enclosing a real individual. Nevertheless, the form was still distinctly feminine. The helmet was different too. It had a true mouth-guard and visor, although a faint light still seemed to be coming from the eye regions. The crest and comb over the top was arranged into a war-like mohawk.
One thing it definitely had in common, however, was the fact that its opposing hand was currently extended over the back of one of Shining Armor’s palms and was tracing lights out over it. After a moment, it flashed red.
Her shock vanishing on seeing the situation her brother was in, Twilight’s face tightened. “Hey!”
The helmet of the figure immediately turned up and to the both of them. Applejack, tensing, quickly began to undo her lasso from her hammer. Twilight herself began to reach for her wand. “Let him go! Right now!”
The figure obliged, although it didn’t seem due to what Twilight had said. She simply flung Shining Armor out of her hand like he was trash to her. In spite of how minor the gesture was, he instantly went sailing so hard across the freight car that on colliding with one of the sliding doors, a cracking sound went out from some of the timbers being fractured before he fell to the ground. Following that, the figure immediately stood up and fully faced Twilight, ignoring Applejack as well.
That made the Caster tense a little, especially as she started to walk forward.
“Stop right there you horrid monster!”
The armored figure hesitated in mid-step, and both it as well as Twilight and Applejack looked up and to the other end of the car. Apparently, she had caused enough of a commotion to already alert the next car, because the rear door had been flung open and Fluttershy, Rarity, and Pinkie Pie ran in with their Anima Viris equipped. Rarity had claimed a new rapier and aimed it forward at her. Pinkie Pie eagerly leapt to one side while Fluttershy, gulping and using her Anima Viri that clad her as the Healer was on the other side more reluctantly.
“You and your ilk have caused more than enough trouble! Well, you’re not stopping this train! We’ve worked far too hard to let some crazed brute come in and start destroying the place!”
The armored figure looked at the three of them for a moment. It’s head slowly swiveled back, looking at Twilight and Applejack, the latter of whom now had her own hammer up and ready to go. It stood there unmoving, apparently seeming to try and decide between either group.
However, the Warrior among them didn’t wait. “Get ‘er from both sides!”
Applejack broke into a charge for the armored figure, whipping her arm behind her as she did. Rarity hesitated only a moment before clenching her jaw and charging in as well. Pinkie, giving a cheer and seeming to mostly just want to join in the fun, bounded after them. Fluttershy alone held back uncertainly, while Twilight raised her wand only to lower it again, knowing she couldn’t risk casting around any powerful spells in the enclosed train car.
In moments, both Applejack and Rarity arrived at either side of the figure. Both of them took aim and readied to attack…
Yet neither of them got the chance. As Applejack neared range, the figure suddenly side stepped and closed the distance up to her. While she was still shocked at the move, the figure swung a fist around and smashed the bottom of it into a sensitive spot under her swept back arms. She gave a mild cry in response and aborted her charge; her arms faltering in response to the blow. Immediately, the figure bounded off from where she stood before Applejack and vaulted toward Rarity. The Magician had just been readying her rapier for a thrust when she gave a start on seeing her sailing at her, moments before she swung and drove her foot into her nearest side. Rarity immediately gave a more pained cry and stopped her own charge, faltering back and letting her sword arm fall.
Applejack, in spite of being in clear pain from that hit, quickly tried to shift her hammer to one hand and took a step forward. Yet just as she was raising it up, the armored figure nimbly pivoted off from where she struck Rarity and sailed back at her, this time aiming a blow for her exposed abdomen. Applejack again had no chance to react before she was struck, this time hard enough to knock some of the wind out of her and make her knees buckle. By that point, Pinkie had reached the two of them and quickly stopped bounding. She squared her feet against the ground and went for her knife…
She never got the chance. Without missing a beat, the armored figure flipped nimbly backward and away from her strike against Applejack, launching herself high enough to sail over and past Pinkie all together. The Rogue actually went wide-eyed in surprise for a moment before a blow swung out from the figure’s fist into the back of her head. Pinkie didn’t give a cry of pain, but she did give one of alarm as she was knocked forward and clean off of her feet to sprawl against the car floor.
Rarity tried to spring up and thrust for her side as soon as she landed, but was halted yet again when the armored figure immediately pivoted on one foot and buried her steel toe under her arm. Rarity cried out even louder this time, and her hand opened and let her rapier slip from her grasp all together. A moment later, the armored figure spun around completely and brought the side of her opposing heel against her face. Her head snapped to the ground, followed by a splattering of blood against the floor. Still not done, the figure fully orientated toward her and proceeded to smack her head one way and the other with a series of three rapid blows, and on finishing she collapsed to the ground in an instant. Her aura began to fade as her clothes reverted to normal, but she herself remained lying there.
Sunset could only gape in shock at how fast Rarity had been struck down and how badly the others were doing, but she was snapped out of it when she felt a hand seize her shoulder. “You!”
In a shocked start, she turned her head to the side—finding herself face to face with Luna glaring at her. Her cane was grasped tightly in one hand while the other had seized her.
She motioned up. “Make yourself useful! Get that freight door open!”
She began to rise afterward, but Sunset merely blinked and stammered. “M-Me? You can’t be seri-”
“You were bold enough to steal my sister’s Anima Viris! The least you can manage is enough courage to open a train car!”
Without another word, Luna rose to her feet and quickly strode over to the stack of crates that one of the Huntsmen had loaded into the train car. She raised her cane and drove the end of it into the top of one box like a crowbar, beginning to pry vigorously. Sunset herself stood stunned and silent a moment longer, but what Luna had said resonated with her. Swallowing, she managed to push herself up a bit slowly, and once standing went over to the handle to the train car.
Pinkie, giving a nimble flip, arched her entire body in a snap and sprung back to her feet. Now recovered, she turned to attack again, only for the armored figure to instantly snap around, face her, seize her arm before she could outstretch it, and then violently catapult herself around to fling Pinkie over her shoulder and across the car. The bystanders cried out and parted as Pinkie went flying past them and smashed into the rear wall, breaking the wood paneling in the process.
However, this grandiose move seemed to be her first blunder. Applejack, toughing through her pain and soreness, had hoisted her hammer up again and run up behind the figure. As she rose again, Applejack already had her hammer up and at the ready. Before the figure had a chance to run around, she brought it down against her head.
“Augh!”
Yet to everyone’s surprise, especially Applejack, it was her head that ended up snapping back from the blow. She was knocked down to one knee and a gash of blood materialized on her forehead, while her opponent never reacted at all. Twilight and Sunset alike both had to blink, wondering if they had somehow seen wrong. Applejack had clearly struck the figure…and yet she took the hit.
As for the figure, she snapped around, faced Applejack, made a palm with one of her hands, and brought it down with a chopping motion against her shoulder. A crack went out from her collarbone as a result, causing her to drop her own weapon and yell in pain. Instantly, another steel toe came out and drove into her middle, knocking the wind out of her and causing her to fall to her other knee and bend over. The figure finished by hoisting up her arm, projecting her elbow, and slammed it down on the back of her head. Soon, Applejack was flattened to the ground as well, her own aura rapidly fading.
As Luna pried the top of the crate loose and Sunset continued to push the freight door, now beginning to open it up and exposing the running track alongside them, Twilight reacted the moment that Applejack was down. She had already been drawing a blazing electric rune and now executed it, sending a directed bolt of lightning straight at the now-exposed armored figure. The figure was still slowly looking up when the bolt hit her…
“Yah!”
…Yet just as with Applejack, it was Twilight who ended up being swept off of her feet by the force of the lightning blast. She snapped back and slammed into the rear wall, and afterward her body was even smoldering slightly from the strike. Soon she slid to the floor looking agonized, her muscles momentarily numbed from the blast.
Fluttershy, on her part, still looked nervous, but frantically called upon her other Anima Viri. Immediately, her aura burst, traced the etching of a lion in the sky, spilled out over her…and turned her into the role of the Rogue. That only made her give a panicked whimper. As she struggled to call on her other Anima Viri again, only to once again clad herself in the role of the Healer, Pinkie managed to spring up. Still looking unhurt, she smirked and stuck her tongue out, narrowed her eyes, and went for a straight dash right at the figure. The figure, on her part, turned to face her; waiting for her to get near.
Finally, the figure lashed out as Pinkie made a gesture with one limb. However, as she struck a blow for the Rogue’s side, Pinkie instantly pivoted around and dropped into a slide instead, rushing right past the gauntlet and sliding under the figure’s opposing arm. Based on the gyration of the helmet turning and looking to her side, it seemed for a moment as if she had honestly been caught off guard. Moments later, Pinkie sprung up behind her, holding out her hand.
“Ha!”
Unfortunately, her hand was grasping her own belt buckle—a fact she noticed a moment later when her own trousers dropped. As her undergarments were exposed, her face turned to a look of surprise as she glanced down at herself, then back up sheepishly. “Oops! My ba-”
She was cut off when the armored figure swung completely around, dashed forward, and slammed her fist into her throat. While, once again, Pinkie didn’t look to be in particular pain from it, she did gag and clutch for her neck—allowing the figure to leap into the air and knock her against the chin with a double upward kick. The first blow knocked her head to the sky while the second launched her into the ceiling. Her skull connected against one of the support beams later with a resounding clang, before she fell to the ground and landed on her rear end, her hands and arms sprawling out. While she looked more dazed than hurt, she also didn’t spring back up.
The armored figure straightened up again soon after and stood there motionless for a second, before snapping around in another flash and reaching out with a slapping motion. Fluttershy, again in the Rogue role, had given up trying to equip two Anima Viris and instead ran at the figure from behind. Unfortunately for her, her combination of lack of experience and hesitation cost her as she found her hastily-picked up knife slapped right out of her hand before she could even make a thrusting motion. A moment later, while Fluttershy was still gaping and recoiling from the sudden movement, the figure drove her fist into her middle in a thrusting punch, taking the Rogue off of her feet and sending her sliding all the way against the opposing wall.
With that, the figure turned again and focused fully on Twilight. Still recovering from the thunder blast, she had just raised her wand again. She had begun to etch the symbol for a sleep incantation, but she was only halfway through it when the armored figure rushed up to her and slammed her foot down on her wrist. It was immediately shoved to the ground and crushed so hard that Twilight gave a cry before letting her wand fall from her grip.
She didn’t get to cry out long, as the figure seized her by her neck, yanked her off of the back wall, and slammed her down against the ground on the main car more painfully. As she lay there stunned and sprawled out, her head and back now freshly agonized, the figure straddled her body and looked down at her through her visor. It began to lower over her…
“Twilie!”
Twilight heard Shining Armor’s voice call out, and a moment later she turned and watched as he staggered back to his feet. Soon after, he eschewed the staff in his own hand and ran at the figure with a tackling move. However, without even shifting off of Twilight, the armored figure rose, turned to him, raised an arm back, and swung it against his head in a backhanded straight before he could get his arms around her. The blow was loud and sickening-sounding, causing Twilight to wince before looking in dread as she saw blood erupt from the side of Shining Armor’s head before he began to go down.
Yet before he could fall, he let his staff hand open and used what strength and consciousness he still had to thrust it forward, letting it sail through the air for a moment before it landed…right in Twilight’s outstretched palm.
Her aura swept over it, transmuting it into a new wand in a moment. At the same time, she heard a growl from behind her. The armored figure looked up and saw Spike lunging for her as well. She responded by instantly swinging her arm out, catching the dog at the side and making him yelp as he was battered away. Yet as much as that pained Twilight to see, she tried to use the moment. Her wand went up and she began to etch the symbol in the air again…
Too slow. Before she could finish, her wand hand was again slammed to the ground, and this time was painfully wrenched underneath the steel boot of the armored figure. Enough to where Twilight arched back and writhed. She began to cry out, only for the figure to extend her hand and wrap around her throat in a throttling move. She crushed almost to a choking grip, making the Caster gag as she struggled to breathe—let alone cast a spell.
With no other move to make, she reached out with her free hand and seized the iron grip of the armored figure, struggling to get it free. This, however, seemed to be what the figure wanted. Her own free hand immediately hovered over hers; in particular the Promethian Sigil. Moments later, red beams of light came out.
Seeing this, and remembering it both from what the others said as well as what had happened to Shining Armor, Twilight hesitated. She opened her eyes wider and ceased her struggling momentarily, instead watching the beams trace over her hand. They did so for a few more fateful seconds.
Then they changed.
They illuminated green.
At once, the figure’s head looked up. The visor reorientated on Twilight’s head. It stared at her for a moment, before pulling her hand back. At once, she made a fist. In response, a series of razor sharp blades erupted from around her wrist and extended past her hand.
A second later, she was aiming them right at Twilight’s head.
The Caster’s eyes widened in terror. She began to struggle more frantically to escape, but it was no good. She was held too tightly. She flipped her legs and body up and down to try and pry loose, or force her hand with her wand up, but it was useless. She couldn’t get free, and no one else was there to…
“What the hell…?”
The armored figure’s head looked up. Twilight couldn’t see behind her from her position, but she recognized the voice. The door to the rear of the car was now open and, standing in it, looking baffled and utterly clueless as to what had just been going on, was Rainbow Dash. She glanced over her fallen friends and the people huddled in terror for a moment, before looking up and seeing the cause of it. Her eyes locked with those in the visor.
Then something happened that Twilight truly never anticipated.
The armored figure hesitated.
She actually felt the grip on her neck loosen. The foot lifted off slightly from her hand. The bladed fist remained raised in the air, but the figure didn’t look down at the mage to finish her. She simply held there and stared at Dash silently.
Fortunately, Twilight had been praying mentally for an opening, and she seized it. Without moving her wrist, she quickly began to redraw the symbol. Once enough of it was etched, she began to croak out the correct arcane commands. The armored figure snapped out of it at this, turning her head back down to hers, but it was too late. Twilight had just enough time to pry her hand out before she could pin it again, aimed the wand forward until she was pointed directly at one of the figure’s exposed eye holes, and executed the sleep incantation.
Mist gushed forward and into the suit. Whether it was because the openings were a vulnerability or the figure had been too distracted to do whatever “mirror” technique she had done before, the spell landed. Immediately, the figure shot to her feet in an attempt to get away, but soon that turned into a somewhat-wobbling stagger as the spell tried to take effect on her. It wasn’t enough, unfortunately, to fully affect her. Twilight could see she’d recover in seconds…
Yet that was the moment Luna, brandishing a new and loaded Trottingham rifle, took the moment to run in from the side. She raised the barrel, pressed it against a joint in the knee armor of the figure, and fired a shot straight into it.
A deafening echo resounded through the enclosed train car—a mixture of the gunshot and the clanging of metal. A shot that close should have taken a normal person’s leg off. As it was, that leg gave way underneath the armored figure, and she went into a further stumble. In particular, she staggered a few steps right toward the open door of the freight car, before managing to stop herself and wobbling. Twilight turned to it, seeing that they had not only reached the rail bridge but were currently crossing it. Outside was nothing but the Reins river far below, a set of train tracks, and the night sky.
Maybe a little more than that. With the door open, she could hear another train’s whistle blaring and saw a light on the tracks quickly growing brighter. Another train was coming the opposite way…
“Knock her out!”
Luna’s yell snapped Twilight out of it. She blinked and looked again, seeing the armored figure just starting to regain her footing, but only a precious foot from the opening in the train car. Realizing what Luna was saying, Twilight quickly fumbled for her wand again and raised it…
Fortunately, Dash was a step ahead of her. She didn’t have time to equip her Anima Viri, but she didn’t bother with it. Instead she ran right up to the staggering armored figure. As the figure looked up and spotted her, however, she made her move. Leaping into the air, she grasped one of the support pipes hanging from the ceiling, utilized it as a fulcrum, and swung on them in a pendulum fashion to bring both legs down, around, over, and struck them together against the side of the figure’s head.
The impact would have been nothing under normal conditions, but with the sleep spell, the blasted leg, and the lack of balance, the force was enough to knock her back again. She staggered one more step before gravity took her and caused her to fall back and out of the speeding train car’s opening.
In an act of perfect timing, one final train whistle went off from the opposing engine before Twilight saw the armored figure’s upper body go flailing and falling back…right into the path of the incoming train. A sound of metal on metal and a flash of sparks erupting resounded for a heartbeat before the armored figure was yanked completely out of the car and into the night.
Twilight blinked a few times, reaching up with her free hand and grasping for her sore, and likely bruised, neck. After that, she stagged up to her feet and half-stepped, half-wobbled over to the open freight car doors. Sunset, who had been huddled to one side nervously gripping the handle to the door, now nervously looked outside along with Twilight.
It was impossible to see anything for the next thirty seconds, however. That was how long it took the opposing engine to fully pass them. Once it had, they were already over the bridge, and the river stretched out far behind them. There was no sign of the armored figure, live or dead, and no sound except for their own chugging engine.
After a time, Twilight exhaled and leaned back in, falling back to the ground. Sunset swallowed and wiped her own brow, before she began to pull the door shut again. As she did, Twilight looked up and around. Spike, fortunately, wasn’t badly hurt and almost immediately sprung up before running up to her and putting his head in her lap. Luna let her rifle fall to the ground and leaned against the wall, slumping down with a sigh. Shining Armor’s head was still bleeding, but he was pushing himself up. On looking around and spotting that Rarity and Applejack were both still down, he began to make his way over to the former of the two. Fluttershy let out a small whimper as she picked herself off of the back wall, and Rainbow Dash finally relaxed and let herself down off the pipe only to gaze in astonishment at what had just happened.
Last of all, as the rest of the passengers began to ease down and the Huntsman groaned and started to pick himself up, Pinkie shook her own head, blinked, and looked around.
“Oh…is it over?”
“What the hell was that?” Dash exclaimed.
Twilight took a few more deep breaths, giving a painful swallow, before she looked out over the floor. The rifle bullet casing from the shot that Luna had fired was nearby, but so was something else. A small disk of metal. She reached out and grasped it, realizing it had come from the shot to the knee of the figure. She pulled it up and looked over it.
Like the armor piece on the previous suit, it had writing on it.
“Sinum Cirrus.” She read aloud, before tiredly tossing it to one side. “Whatever that means… It was obviously one of the same people who attacked the others. Only this one was brand new.”
“Oh no…” Fluttershy muttered, halfway between picking herself up to go and aid Applejack, as Shining Armor reached Rarity and began using his own abilities over her. “You mean…there are th-th-three of them now?”
Sunset exhaled as she latched the door, and turned around to slide down against it to the ground. “We just knocked that one into an oncoming freight train. Maybe there’s only two now…”
“Yeah!” Pinkie suggested, before her face fell a little. “Oh…unless she was like the one we met in Fort Appleloosa. Because I don’t think even that would have stopped her… I mean, she did go headfirst through a couple really thick walls…”
“Ugh…” Applejack groaned. Not waiting for Fluttershy, she was beginning to push herself onto her back already. “I’m gettin’ real sick and tired of gettin’ the tar beat outta me by those freaky suits of armor…”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry…” Fluttershy immediately apologized as she quickly ran over to her the rest of the way. “I did my best to try and put on both Anima Viris at once, but it just wouldn’t work.”
The door to the front of the car creaked. Everyone, still tensed up from what had just happened, went rigid and braced themselves as the spun to it.
A moment later, it opened up and Starlight walked in with a sigh.
“Is Applejack done back here yet? Because we’re burning through coal pretty quick and we could really use a…”
She trailed off, her eyes widening on seeing the state of the car and, even more shocking, its passengers. She was left speechless for a moment or two.
“Uh…what happened back here?”
“Had to throw a stowaway off the train,” Dash answered as she eased up and crossed her arms.
“Twilie.”
Twilight looked up to Shining Armor. His own hands were still extended over Rarity, who had already stopped bleeding and was starting to stir and come around, but his face was now on her and looked concerned. Even worried.
“Whoever that person was, she was looking at our hands. The ones with those symbols on them.”
“Oh…” Rarity mumbled from the ground, wincing a bit but keeping her eyes shut. “Yes, yes…they do that… That one Fluttershy and I ran into did the same to us…”
“But it was different with yours,” he went on. “It looked like she just wanted to disable the rest of us. She didn’t even care about me anymore after she looked at mine. Mine turned whatever light was in her hand red.”
Rarity’s eyes slowly opened up. She blinked a few times. “Now that you mention it…I recall the same thing happening with my hand…”
Fluttershy had just begun chanting over Applejack when she paused. “Oh…it happened with me too.”
“But not Twilight’s. I saw it too.” Sunset spoke up before turning to her. “When she did that thing to your hand, it turned green. And then…it looked like she wanted to kill you.”
Twilight began to look rather uncomfortable on hearing that. Obviously, the thought of a mysterious and powerful entity, or possibly three of them, out specifically for her left her nervous. She winced, holding her hand closer to her chest and glancing down at it. It still looked the same as always, but her expression grew more anxious staring at it anyway. Especially the one new symbol she had gotten from Sunset Shimmer… It didn’t help that when she looked up everyone’s eyes were on her.
Applejack crooked her brow. “Why in tarnation would she want you and not us?”
Twilight looked uncomfortable a moment longer before lowering her hand. “Well, we can worry about that later. For now let’s just worry about Mount Aris.” She turned to Starlight. “Now that we’ve crossed into Appleloosa, we’re in for smooth sailing from here on in, right?”
Starlight stared back a moment, before she smiled reluctantly. “Sure! Just, uh…so long as Trottingham doesn’t have any engines stopped on any of the tracks ahead to act as blockades…because there’s no way we’d be able to stop in time for that running as fast as we’re going.”
Twilight stared back expressionlessly for a moment before closing her eyes and moaning.
“Uh, if it’s the same to you guys?” Dash ventured, gesturing behind her. “I’ll sleep in the back car.”
Rarity let out a small moan as she splayed out on the floor of the freight car, letting her arm roll up and out the open door dramatically. “I…am…never setting foot on a train again for the rest of my life. All it will ever bring to mind is thoughts of discomfort, starvation, dehydration, and fighting to the death with brutes in obscene suits of armor…”
“You might not dehydrate so fast talkin’ less…” Applejack groaned as she walked back into the car before plopping down in her own spot against the wall.
Rarity didn’t seem to notice. “I think out of all the things I miss, it might be regularly bathing…” She turned her head. “Are you the same, Fluttershy?”
“Oh,” she spoke up quietly from her own spot, seated against a crate with Angel curled up on her lap. “I think it’s probably not eating every day that I miss the most…”
“I should have asked the princess if we could have some cookies waiting when we got there…heh heh…” Pinkie spoke up from her own spot, half draped over a crate, and her laugh getting a bit weak at this point.
Not long after, a long sigh was heard from outside. The ladies looked up and spotted Shining Armor, Twilight Sparkle, Sunset Shimmer, Rainbow Dash, and Spike walking back to the open freight car. Their outer shirts were taken off and used to load up an assembly of small tins. Behind them was the switching station they had stopped the train at and, along with it, a few abandoned supply crates and packs from the incoming Trottingham forces. At this point, most of them had been thoroughly picked over.
On reaching the car, Shining Armor set down his own load, letting the tins spill out. “Alright, we should be loaded up on water for the rest of the trip. But as for food, this was all we could find. Trottingham rations. They must have had to leave these behind.” He took up one and tossed it over to Applejack. “We got enough for everyone to share one. It’s not much and they’re going to be hard to choke down, but it’s all we got until we hit Mount Aris.”
Applejack took up the tin and looked at it for a moment as Shining Armor began to pass out the others. She finally went for the key, broke it off, and opened it up. She sniffed soon after, immediately making a face and pulling back.
“Sheesh, those big fellas must not got any sense o’ taste… Sure this ain’t dog food?”
“Oh, it isn’t,” Dash sighed as she walked by with her own load to the further cars. “If it was, Spike would have eaten what we gave him…”
The dog let out a small whimper.
“We’ll get the next car,” Twilight sighed with her own load, before turning aside and beginning to walk on down the line. Sunset rapidly fell in behind along with Spike. “We need to get moving again as soon as we can.”
Only walking down a short distance, Twilight came to the next open car. She took a moment to dump her own tins down on the edge of it before climbing inside herself, and Sunset soon followed before Spike hopped in as well. Those gathered within all looked to them, and she gestured down to the loads.
“We’ll have to give one for every two people. I’m sorry, this is all we got.”
The various passengers grimly nodded before they picked themselves up to come get it. As they all came over, Twilight looked up and over to one side. Seated in a corner was Luna. She had relocated to the car soon after their initial departure from Trottingham; apparently not wanting to cause enough of a fuss to have people start asking about who she was.
After staring at her for a moment, she reached down and picked up one of the tins before they were all gone. She walked over to her afterward. Sunset hesitated a little before more reluctantly following, and Spike fell in right behind. They soon reached her and Sunset moved to one side, sitting on the nearest crate with her back against the wall. Luna simply continued to look indifferent, as usual.
Twilight offered the tin to her. “Here.”
“I’m not hungry.”
Twilight pulled her hand back before slumping. She turned her head to Sunset soon after, finally extending her hand out to her.
She took it. “Thanks.” Bringing the tin over, she looked over the top and grimaced a little. “Beef. This one’s going to go down hard…” She began to reach for the key. “Back when I was still running with their military, we always tried to steal whatever Fillydelphia rations we could get. Those ones actually taste like what’s on the tin. I think the commodore’s greatest achievement is finding a way to make soldiers that can actually digest this stuff.”
Twilight let out a little snicker as she sat, causing Sunset to look up to her.
“What’s so funny?”
“Nothing. It’s just…I think that’s the first time I’ve heard you make a joke.”
Sunset, subconsciously, smirked a little. “It’s only a half-joke, really. The real joke here is this food…” She finished unrolling the top of the lid, exposing the contents, and looked in and over them. After a moment, she began to dig into it.
Twilight, on her part, kept staring at Luna. While she did, the rest of the tins were gradually distributed, and the train car was shut up again. Only about a minute later, the train gave a whistle, and a minute after that it began to start moving again.
Sunset had eaten about all she could immediately and set the tin down to digest a little, and Twilight looked down at her own hands for a moment before looking back up to Luna. “So about what we were talking about earlier…before everything happened?”
Luna kept looking forward as she leaned back a little more. “Yes?”
Twilight swallowed. “I remember back at the Castle of the Two Sisters. What you said…about Celestia.”
Sunset looked up a little at this, although she said nothing.
“What about her?”
“Was it true what you said? About her being…well…”
Luna sighed and closed her eyes. “Yes,” she stated flatly. “It was all true. That’s why my sister and I didn’t really see eye-to-eye toward the end. We both saw the way the world was turning. I advocated for one way while my sister advocated for another—a way that I sharply disagreed with. It didn’t matter, though. She was the eldest and it was her judgment to make. My opinion…” Her jawline tightened as she frowned slightly. “…was irrelevant.”
“So you left Canterlot?”
“I had left Canterlot some time ago. I no longer cared for how things went there, nor in sitting around waiting for a chance to become useful. I came back briefly to talk with her and, when my counsel went ignored, there was nothing left for me there. I decided to retire and wait for the end.”
Twilight looked at her a little more intently. “But then Celestia disappeared. So you came back.”
Luna said nothing.
A somewhat uneasy silence passed, and at length Sunset spoke up, changing the subject. “You weren’t that intimidated by that thing that was on the train last night. I don’t suppose you know what it was, do you?”
Luna opened her eyes again. For a few brief moments, a change came over her. Her gaze grew faraway, as if she was considering something or thinking of some possibility. A very serious one, based on the look that came over her face. Yet just as soon as it came, she blinked a few times. She leaned her head up, and looked at both women together.
She ended up staring for quite a while, enough to make both of them uncomfortable. She glanced between the two several times. Finally, she looked at Twilight. She glanced down at her hand bearing the Promethian Sigil.
After staring a few seconds more, she leaned back again.
“No one. Probably no one.”
Sunset couldn’t help but notice the choice of words. “Probably?”
“I just had a thought for a moment, but it’s passed. The armor that the figure wore. It reminded me of Canterlot.”
Both Twilight and Sunset looked up at that. “Canterlot?”
“But…does that mean?”
She sighed and shook her head. “It’s been seven years since I brought night to half of Greater Everfree. Any number of possibilities could have happened. There’s no telling how many secrets were lost or scavenged. After all, both of you knew my identity, didn’t you?”
The two ladies hesitated. Neither of them seemed entirely satisfied with that answer, but Luna didn’t seem to be ready to offer any more than that.
Twilight finally spoke up again. “I didn’t have the chance to finish asking you in Trottingham, but how do you know…” She swallowed. “How do you know that…it…is loose?”
Luna sighed. “How do you know night is going to fall? Or the seasons are going to change in the next month? Or even that you’re going to get hungry ever again? It…is inevitable. It’s like the passage of time or the way of nature. Nothing can stop it.”
“You don’t believe that.”
She looked at her crossly. “I don’t, do I?”
“If you did, you wouldn’t have become Nightmare Moon.”
Luna’s crossness disappeared. She sat there caught for a moment, before she exhaled again. “That was misguided on my part. A snap decision…made out of emotion. Yet you saw the result. I just slowed things down. The end would have been the same.”
“I don’t think Celestia believed it either,” Twilight went on. “In fact, I think that was the main reason she opened that academy. She wanted it to be stopped one day.”
Luna closed her eyes and snorted. “Celestia had six Anima Viris, the ability to see inside everyone, and the power of a god, and even she couldn’t change fate. Your fire-haired friend over here proved to be more than enough for her.”
Sunset grimaced, looking to one side, but said nothing.
“Then she ended up being killed by goodness-knows-who. That was always her problem. Ever since we were little she always refused to see things the way they were. And it looks like she passed that on to her students.”
Twilight frowned. “It’s not so wrong to try and find a way to stop…that thing without hurting more people, is it?”
Luna was quiet for a short time. Then she opened her eyes again.
“You’re both former students of Celestia. If you are, then I assume she told you the story of the Town of Sinamity.”
Twilight looked puzzled. She turned to Sunset, who looked up, but she had no other change.
“Apparently not,” Luna sighed. “The Town of Sinamity is a utopia. Wealthy, prosperous, clean, and peaceful. There is neither pollution nor crime. There is neither prejudice nor classism. Everyone is equal and everyone’s needs are met. There is good food and water in abundance, comfortable living for everyone, and plenty of time and surplus wealth for parties, carnivals, and festivals. The education the children receive is immaculate. The businesses are all successful and produce the highest quality goods. The government is fair, just, and equitable. There is no poverty there. No want. No disease. No sadness. No father ever lies awake wondering how he will get his family through the next year. No mother ever has to cradle their dead child against their bosom due to famine and illness. No child is ever beaten, abused, or left an orphan. It is, for all purposes, the perfect kingdom. A paradise.
“There is only condition that must be fulfilled—one rule that needs to be kept. There is an oubliette in Sinamity. And at the bottom of it, kept in eternal gloom and darkness, there is a single, solitary child. The child must never be allowed to see the sun or to walk on the grass. The child must never be given any relief from heat or warmth from the cold. What little food is given to the child must be bland or terrible, and only enough to keep them alive. None must ever smile at the child, or say a kind word or even a word of greeting, or show the slightest hint of pity, sympathy, or care for the child. The child must be left there in constant neglect, misery, and anguish forever.
“Because the very second, the very moment, the very instant that the slightest act of compassion or mercy is given to this child…the paradise will be broken. All the horrors of the world…war, pestilence, famine, disease, poverty, pollution, injustice…all of it will come upon the city. Sadness, misery, and fear will once again reign. Everything that’s good and great that ensures such prosperity and peace for the multitude there will be gone forever.”
She took a deep breath. “Now…I ask you the same question that my own teacher once asked Celestia and I. What do you do in that situation, if you are a resident of Sinamity, and tasked with feeding the child?”
Twilight and Sunset were quiet. Twilight almost opened her mouth to speak, but stopped herself, rethinking what she was about to say almost immediately. She nearly spoke again, but ended up bowing her head.
After a few moments of silence, Luna leaned back again. “I know what you want to answer. At first, you’d answer the same as most students normally do. You want to care for the child. You want to show mercy and you don’t believe exploiting anyone for personal gain is right. However, I can also see you thought harder about that before you decided to speak. Perhaps you even thought about the way the world works now. How it’s not so different from Sinamity after all.”
Sunset finally looked at her. “What did you answer?”
Twilight looked up at Sunset, a bit surprised she was saying something, yet Luna responded without hesitation.
“I said I would do exactly as I was supposed to. I would feed the child the same bland food without so much as a word or a smile. There’s no argument to be made here. An entire town of thousands…including many innocent children and loved ones…versus a single life. Eternal peace and prosperity for them versus the misery of one individual. If you think that sounds callous or heartless, that’s only because you don’t stop to think of how many poor farmers grow your food and harvest the textiles for your clothes. You don’t think about how many mothers and babies are turned into food for the birds when your country goes to war…how the very land you or your family lived on is yours by virtue of the fact that your ancestors once killed someone for it, regardless of where you come from. You don’t even think of what the commanding officers in Trottingham are going to do to those soldiers you knocked out escaping from their country, and how they were likely just fighting to support their own starving, impoverished families. If I can live with myself in the face of all of those lives I ruin or make miserable, surely I can live with myself if I only end up tormenting a single person.”
That dark note left both Twilight and Sunset mute. They stared back with somewhat hollow expressions.
“That’s what it means to be a pragmatist. No one ever says anything good about it, even as they consent to it every day of their lives.”
The two ladies were quiet for some time after that. Even Spike’s ears were slicked back as he lay on the ground. Twilight, very uncomfortable now, looked around for a few moments, before her eyes looked at her hand again. She glanced up to Luna once more.
“Just one last question.” She held up her hand. “Do you know what this symbol says? The language is too old. I can’t read it. It came from your Promethian Sigil, though.”
Luna simply shook her head and sighed. “I’m sorry. That script is too old even for me.”
Sunset looked a bit confused. “But…you could use the Anima Viri, couldn’t you?”
“I knew the names, not what went with what symbol,” she answered. “I can’t help you.”
Twilight slumped and sighed. Sunset stared on at Luna, however, yet she simply closed her eyes and said no more.
The train was back at full speed when Twilight, Sunset, and Spike stepped out on the junction between cars to move back to the first. The dog, not wanting to hang around long, quickly passed through and whined and pawed at the door to the adjoining car. Twilight quickly moved across to let him in and nearly followed after.
Before she could, however, Sunset called out. “Twilight.”
She stopped where she was, turning back to her.
“Are you going to tell the others about Luna? About who she really is?”
The mage hesitated. She looked to one side, but then sighed. “I think I have to at one point, but…I’m going to try and keep it quiet for now. Not while we’re all stuck on this train starving, sore, and tired. We don’t need any more trouble.”
Sunset grimaced but shrugged. “Can’t argue there.” A pause, before she looked more anxious. “And…about…that thing.”
Twilight looked uneasy.
“You think what she’s saying is true? That…well…what she said?”
“I don’t know. It seems too ridiculous to believe. I know things are bad, but…none of it seems as bad as what she’s saying. Then again, seven years ago I would have said you were crazy to suggest someone like Nightmare Moon could exist…”
“If she’s telling the truth, then that symbol on your hand…”
“What about it?”
“She said that it needed to collect Anima Viris just like I was trying to do. And once an Anima Viri is bound to someone, the only way to unbind it is if they give it up, if someone uses an orichalcum dagger, or if they…”
Twilight turned a little pale. She clenched her hands uncomfortably as she clearly began to look nervous.
“That person last night was looking over Promethian Sigils. They found something with yours, and then they tried to kill you…”
Twilight sighed. “I think Luna would have reached the same conclusion if that person had been…you know what. Besides, she said that even alone that thing would be stronger than any military force. That person was strong but if it had trouble with a freight train, I’m not sure it’s who she was talking about.”
“Then who was she? I get the feeling Luna knew a bit more than she was saying.”
The mage winced. “I kind of do too, but she’s not talking right now. Hopefully she’ll open up later, but for now let’s just focus on Mount Aris.”
She turned to go back in again, only to hear a snicker from behind her. She looked back and saw Sunset was wistfully smiling.
“What is it?”
She snickered as she ran a hand through her hair. “Never thought I’d be confining in you of all people. When we first met up again after the Castle of the Two Sisters I thought you’d throttle me in my sleep. Now I think you’re the only person I don’t feel nervous around.”
In spite of herself, Twilight actually found herself smiling ever so slightly before turning back and going inside.
The door to the front of the first car opened, prompting the ladies to look up. They saw Starlight poke her head in, but they immediately knew something was wrong the moment they spotted the look on her face.
“We…might have a problem up ahead.”
Twilight took a moment to process this as she leaned up. She frowned a bit as she felt her stomach grumble again, but even more from how sore she was from lying on the bare floor of a train car for three days now. Everyone else was much the same. While they had been fortunate not to run afoul of any more soldiers from Trottingham and had reason to believe they had outstripped their front line, now that they were well into Appleloosa, the trip had been long and as unpleasant as riding in a freight car on a train could be. They had finally thought there was a bit of relief on the horizon when Starlight had popped out not fifteen minutes ago to tell them they saw the first sign alerting of the Mount Aris border, and had begun to slow the train down as a result.
That was…until she walked in just now.
“What kind of problem?”
Starlight pulled through the door a bit more. “Well, we’re nearly to the border switching station and it looks like the Mount Aris army has taken up residence…and that they don’t want anyone coming through.” She turned to Pinkie Pie, who herself was slowly looking up from the floor. “If you have any clout with the princess, we could probably use it pretty soon.”
“Oh, no problem!” she chirped, immediately hopping up. However, she stumbled a little as she did before balancing herself. “Uh, heh…a day without food kind of makes me lose the spring in my step…”
Twilight wasn’t nearly as optimistic. She glanced to the others, and they began to rise as well only to look at her uncomfortably. The refugees that were in the car, on the other hand, looked even more uneasy and a little fearful. The Huntsman that had rode the car with them began to tighten up as well.
Finally, she held out a hand to them. “Ok, no need for us all to get out there. Pinkie, I’ll come up with you to the engine. Everyone else, spread the word that we made it to Mount Aris to the others.”
As Twilight began to stand up, Spike readily stood to follow after her. Sunset began to rise as well. “Twilight…”
“It’ll be fine,” she cut off. “Just stay put. I’ll be right back.”
“Yeah…” Applejack muttered. “Ya’ already got us in thick enough back in Trottingham. Don’t try for two countries, now.”
Sunset frowned a little, but after holding for a few seconds she sighed and let herself slump down. She looked up and around a little uneasily, but in the end she pulled her knees up to her chest and reluctantly sat there looking at least a little calm. By now, Pinkie was up as well and at Twilight’s side, so after casting one last glance back to Sunset she turned and went for the front of the car. Pinkie and Spike followed, and soon they were accompanying Starlight back outside and around the railing leading to the engine.
The sun was out and things were clearly visible, but it wasn’t the most wholesome of sights. Most of it was open countryside that had been either ranches or farms until late, but it had a large amount of traffic across it. Like a number of people had been camped in the area and had frequently been moving to and fro across it. None of them were there now, however, and the area was practically deserted. More fields stretched to the south while forests stretched to the north, and as they came around the side of the engine they were able to look west to see the looming Hyperborean mountains.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t all that was there.
Sure enough, the switching station on the border was just up ahead, and the train was slowing down rapidly so it could halt just before reaching it. On the opposite side of the border was close to a hundred Mount Aris soldiers. Many of them were the infamous “hippogriff” class in full battle array. There were also two artillery pieces in mounted areas pointed at the tracks and at any train coming down them. Lastly, the rails themselves were piled up with a roadblock made not only of palisade but heavy stones as well. Twilight only had to take one look at it to realize that even if Pinkie could get them inside, there was no way the train was going across. Yet she doubted they would have put that up if they intended to let people in…
The train finally chugged to a stop a good 30 yards from the nearest soldier, and still a good way from the switching track. As it stopped, Starlight, Twilight, Pinkie, and Spike all made their way to the railing on the front of the engine. With it stopped, it was easy for them all to move in front of the cow catcher. It was also easy to see the cold and unfriendly glares of the soldiers facing them. Twilight and Starlight looked to one another. Starlight looked particularly nervous, and Twilight couldn’t help but soon look the same. She looked forward and, not knowing what else to do, held up her hand.
“Um…hello! We were, uh…well…wondering…if we could get into Mount Aris? Please?”
She wasn’t even sure if her voice carried far enough for them to hear that. However, she got a response regardless. One of the soldiers had a megaphone. He held it up and yelled inside.
“By executive order, the border of Mount Aris is closed indefinitely. Switch off here.”
Starlight and Twilight both stared back wide-eyed. Their jaws hung a little. After a pause, Starlight cleared her throat and ventured a small smile of her own. “Um, excuse me? I don’t want to tell anyone how to do their job or seem argumentative, but we’re not normal freight carriers or tourists. We’re a train loaded with refugees all the way from Trottingham, and I was wondering if-”
“Mount Aris is closed indefinitely. If you approach, we will open fire.”
Starlight blanched as she was cut off, before shutting her mouth. “Ok…”
“Uh, Pinkie…?” Twilight called out hopefully.
“Wait everyone!” she piped up, crying out and waving her hands. “It’s ok! We have permission! See?” At that, she reached into her hair, fished around a bit, and emerged with an envelope. It was a bit battered and worn, but it was still intact and sealed. She waved it furiously above her. “We have a letter from Princess Skystar! She knows we’re coming!”
That caused a reaction from the soldiers. The one with the megaphone lowered it, looking a bit puzzled, and turned and began to talk with the others. A few more spoke before they all turned to one of the hippogriffs. They spoke back and forth for a few moments before he nodded. He began to walk forward, past the soldiers, up to the border itself. He was flanked by four other soldiers, who continued to look cold, but kept their weapons shouldered.
On reaching the border, he cupped a hand to his mouth and yelled. “Bring the letter over!”
Pinkie grinned and immediately hopped off the train, before either Starlight or Twilight could stop her. Soon, she was bounding up to the border herself. Sighing, Twilight quickly climbed down, with Spike following on her heels. Starlight nearly moved, but then looked back to the engine, trying to decide what was appropriate, and finally electing to remain there. The two ladies and the dog were free to walk along the tracks up to the switching station and toward the gathering of soldiers.
Once they came close, one of the soldiers walked toe-to-toe with the border, but no nearer, and held out her hand. The three approached and Pinkie readily extended it out and gave it to her. After she had it, she turned around and walked up to the hippogriff while Twilight, Pinkie, and Spike stopped and waited. The soldier passed the letter off, and the hippogriff reached into his pocket for a pair of glasses. On putting them on, he held up the letter, examined it, and flipped it over the study the seal. After a few moments to validate it, he moved his thumb out to break it, opened it up, and then pulled out the letter inside. He read it over, especially the part on the bottom where Twilight assumed there was a signature.
He took about a minute to do all of this, as the three patiently waited. At last, however, still holding it in both hands, he looked up to the two ladies.
Then, without a word, he promptly tore the letter into pieces and threw them away.
Pinkie’s jaw dropped as she let out an exaggerated gasp, but Twilight wasn’t much better. “Wha…wha…wha…?”
“The contents of this letter mean nothing now,” he stated simply. “The date on it shows it was written some time ago when we were in a different situation. Since then, Mount Aris is now under wartime conditions and orders like these are, effectively, obsolete.”
Twilight was still flabbergasted. “Wartime…?”
“I suppose that you all haven’t gotten the news in Trottingham, but two days ago an assassination attempt was made on the heir apparent. A bomb was planted that killed eight people. I am not at liberty to reveal the details as investigation is ongoing, but suffice to say the suspects are all non-residents of Mount Aris. As a precautionary measure, the princess is being relocated to safer areas and the commander-in-chief has ordered the borders closed. No one is to enter, especially from the eastern border given the current political situation.”
“But…but…Princess Skystar invited me!” Pinkie protested. “That note said so and everything!”
“Sir,” Twilight insisted, “I don’t know how much that note told you, but we just fled Trottingham with a whole trainload of people we smuggled out from under their government’s nose. They had to leave their homes and everything behind and they’re now political refugees. We can’t go back, especially now that Trottingham is taking over Appleloosa. These people need political asylum-”
“The order stands,” the man coldly cut off. “The borders remain shut. No admittance. You can go south from here and try your luck at the Griffonstone border or you go north to the roundabout and return to Appleloosa. None of you are setting foot in Mount Aris.”
Twilight let out an exhale, running a hand through her hair in growing frustration. “Sir…I don’t know if you’re too familiar with the term ‘political refugee’, but we can’t go back into Appleloosa now. We came this far because we were guaranteed asylum in Mount Aris-”
“You were never ‘guaranteed’ anything, and if it wasn’t for that letter I wouldn’t even have had any reason to believe you. You’re not getting into the country.”
“Can I talk to Princess Skystar real quick?” Pinkie suggested hopefully. “I’m sure we could sort out this whole mix-up if I could just pop in.”
“Or could we at least speak with a higher authority and present our case?” Twilight asked, beginning to sound more desperate.
“I am the only authority that need concern you,” he flatly retorted. “Now are you going to switch off or do I need to threaten you with artillery fire?”
Twilight froze, going a bit rigid at how sharp that threat was. Pinkie slumped as her hair appeared to sag a bit. There were a few moments of silence between the two.
Finally, Twilight sighed. “Sir…we’ve gone with very little food and water for a few days now and no decent place to sleep. We have children with us. Could we at least get a little relief?”
“You’re not Mount Aris citizens and so, frankly, none of that is our problem,” he answered as he reached into his pocket. Emerging with a watch, he glanced at it a moment, and then back up to them. “The only thing we’ll give you is fifteen minutes before we start firing warning shots.”
Pinkie continued to look at him imploringly. “Can you at least write her a note?”
Seeing that was useless, Twilight sighed as she reached out and took Pinkie’s arm. She practically drug her away from the border as she continued to look at the hippogriff with quivering lips and big eyes. Spike, whining a little, followed behind. Once all of them were a short distance away, they turned their backs and kept walking.
On reaching the engine, Starlight could guess the reaction based on the looks on their faces. “So…what now?”
Twilight sighed. “We need to get the others together. The other ladies, Shining Armor…maybe we can wait on the Apple family and the Huntsmen. We’ve got to think of our next move. Hopefully pretty quickly because the clock’s ticking and we’re already down to fourteen minutes…”
“You mean all of that running around that we did back in Trottingham was for nothing?!”
Twilight winced as Dash shouted loud enough to be heard in the adjoining car. Nevertheless, she was the only one who looked too sore about being overheard. Applejack had thrown down her hat and was cursing up a storm. Rarity had thrown herself on a crate on one of her drama queen reactions. Fluttershy was clutching Angel and sniffling as the latter seemed to be trying in vain to comfort her. Shining Armor was holding his hand to his head. Double Diamond was slumped in a corner. Big Macintosh, the only one of the Apple family to be brought in, sighed tiredly. Celaeno, representing the Huntsmen, was pacing about before she kicked one of the crates with her intact leg. Lastly, leaning against a wall with her cane, stood Luna. Twilight had tried to leave her out but she said if she had been drug this far she wanted to be in on this.
Celaeno turned to Dash angrily after a moment. “Why did I listen to you, Rainboom? I should have known all along this would be another bust…”
“Aw, can it!” Applejack retorted. “All you’re losin’ out on is a bunch o’ junk! My family ain’t go nowhere to go but right back to Trottingham gun barrels!”
“I’m never going to see a beignet again! Or even a bar of soap!” Rarity cried, throwing a hand over her face.
“I’m really, really sorry, everyone!” Pinkie apologized. “Princess Skystar said her letter would let us all come in! And I didn’t have a newspaper around to check to see if it had an expiration date!”
Twilight, recovering from Dash’s yell, sighed. “It’s not your fault, Pinkie. You couldn’t have known this was going to happen… None of us could have. Now we’re stuck, though…”
“I can’t really blame them though,” Fluttershy spoke up meekly. “They might be scared of what happened to Cloudsdale, now that Trottingham is moving up to their border…”
“Forget Cloudsdale,” Dash sighed. “We need to go somewhere else.”
“That’s a big problem,” Starlight chimed in. “The only other country that borders Mount Aris is Griffonstone, and they’re friendly to Trottingham. My guess is they’re not going to be any happier to let political refugees in than Mount Aris is…”
“Could we go by boat?” Shining Armor suggested. “This track should take us right by the port, shouldn’t it?”
“Assuming the port isn’t already under Trottingham control and, if it isn’t, that it isn’t mobbed by people trying to escape?” Starlight answered. “We would still have no money for a toll and we’re smuggling on top of that.”
“I guess not…” Shining Armor muttered.
“We have no choice, we’ll have to chance it.” Twilight sighed. “We can’t go back to Trottingham and Appleloosa is under their control. It’s our only shot even if it’s a longshot.”
“Not to try and add bad news on top of bad news, but I don’t know if we can make it that long,” Sunset spoke up, earning a number of stares. It made her recoil slightly. “I mean…I don’t want to sound like ‘that person’, but this whole trip was made with the idea that we could get off in Mount Aris and, presumably, have a place to rest and eat. None of us have had more than a couple bites in three days. We’re out of water. The kids in the back are starting to get more miserable and the adults are going to be with them soon. If you’re thinking we’re going to go around the Hyperborean Mountains and up into Manehattan, that’s going to be close to a week. Not to mention we’re on a Trottingham train and any country along the way might turn us away as soon as we get near.”
Rarity let out another moan. Dash eyed Sunset crossly. “Are you sure you weren’t trying to add bad news on top of bad news?”
Twilight let out a moan of her own as she grasped the bridge of her nose.
“That’s not true.”
This time, everyone looked up to who had spoken.
Luna hadn’t moved from the wall, and was still leaning on it and staring to one side, but she had clearly been the one who said something.
Sunset blinked. “Excuse me?”
“What you said about Griffonstone being your only shot. That’s not true,” Luna answered, not looking up. “There’s another country’s border nearby, and you should be able to reach it in this train.”
The group looked rather confused at that, more so than the fact Luna had spoken up to begin with. Twilight ended up looking uncertain. “Um…did another country split off to form its own nation while we were in Trottingham? Because I don’t know of any…”
“What about Equestria?”
The chamber went silent. Now everyone was staring at Luna with wide-eyed surprise.
“Er…beg yer pardon?” Applejack asked.
“Did…did you say…Equestria?” Fluttershy nearly whispered.
“I recognize this track. We take it another forty miles north and there’s an old switching station that goes up all the way to the old boundary of Appleloosa. From there, I know of a private route that we can switch on that will take us all the way to former Canterlot.”
Rarity let her hand fall. She blinked and leaned her head up. “How do you know that?”
“That’s impossible,” Celaeno spoke up. “The Huntsman’s Guild has been reporting on the progress of reclamation of Equestria. Even if they had gone nearly far enough north to clear the tracks to get someone to the old rail lines in Equestria, there’s no route from here.”
“I said it was private, did I not?” Luna answered, finally looking up and turning to the others. “And it’s not guaranteed, but there’s an excellent chance that it’s still clear even after seven years.”
“That’s crazy,” Dash retorted. “Even if that city is still there, it’s got to be overgrown, eaten out, and torn to bits by the first batches of Nighttouched that ran through.”
“Perhaps, perhaps not. Canterlot itself was walled, and the Nighttouched would have no reason to attack the plumbing. I’d guarantee you could get water there at least. If the old gardens are still there, there’s a good chance for food as well. And some shelter. Lastly, there’s a roundabout station up there. We should be able to get on a track that could get us all the way to Manehattan or at least Fillydelphia.”
“Uh, yeah, along with swarms of every last Nighttouched that’s been squatting there for seven years.”
“We can’t go up there,” Shining Armor spoke up. “Canterlot’s too far north. There’s no telling if that shadow we ran into is around it. Or more of those swarms of Nighttouched. Even if we made it that far, what then? What if that station is overrun or the tracks are blocked?”
“Well, we seem pretty well ‘trapped’ ourselves at the moment,” Luna answered. “And we’re already surrounded by people who want us dead. I’ll say we have a better chance of making it if we go to Canterlot from here. Not the best, mind you, and there’s still a risk involved. I’m merely giving another possibility. It’s up to all of you if you want to take it. If we go there, however, I can get us inside. And I guarantee we’ll be safe from Trottingham, or any other country, if nothing else.”
Starlight raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean by that?”
“Are we going to Canterlot? Because if we aren’t, there’s no point in me explaining why.”
Starlight frowned but said no more. The others turned back and looked to one another. For a few brief seconds there was silence, as each person waited for the other to say something. At last, it was broken.
“I think we should try it.”
Yet another surprise went through the car, this time because both Twilight and Sunset had spoken at the same time. They both looked the most surprised of all, however, and looked to one another curiously.
After a moment, Sunset blanched and coughed. “I mean…I know I probably don’t get much of a vote, but I think it might be a good idea. What place could be safer than a place where no one can find us? Or wants to risk getting to us? No one even knows a train track goes that way, do they?” She turned to Twilight. “Was that what you were thinking?”
Twilight hesitated, looking put on the spot, before she shook her head. “Um…yeah, yes! Of course! I mean, well…” She grimaced a moment, looking around at the people in the room, before she swallowed. “Those of you who know me…know that Canterlot isn’t exactly an easy place to get to. Based on what I told you before, you should know that it’s safer than you think. Sure, we may still have the Nighttouched to deal with, but…there’s a good chance we might not. And if we stay out here, we’re going to have to deal with the Trottingham army. Besides, we’ll only be there long enough to get situated. See if we can find any food from the abandoned farms and water. Then we’ll be on our way again and finding a way back to Manehattan.”
“You sure about this, Twily?” Shining Armor asked. “Those things we ran into and that shadow…it wasn’t fooling around. But you know the area better than any of us. Do you think it’s safe?”
She continued to look uneasy. “Well…I can’t guarantee it…but I think there’s a good chance it’s the safest place we can be right now. Especially if we move out fast.”
He looked at her for a moment more, but then exhaled. “Alright then. I’m for it. I know enough to know Twilight’s smarter than me about these things, so I’ll go with her judgment.”
“If it can avoid having to try and make a trip through Griffonstone or over the Hyperboreans, I’m willing to risk it,” Celaeno shrugged. “It can’t be any more dangerous than that. Just so long as there really is a train track we can take.”
“That’s four so far,” Starlight exhaled. “Anyone else? Because I don’t think we have much time left on that limit Mount Aris gave us…”
“Now just a minute, darling,” Rarity spoke up, fully rising into a seated position and looking at Twilight uncertainly. “I don’t mean to sound rude, but you’re having us going on an awfully large amount of faith right now.”
“Really,” Dash threw in, jabbing her thumb at Luna. “Who is she, anyway? And you told us all that everything in Equestria was a big secret. So how does she know about any secret train tracks in and out of it when the Huntsmen don’t?”
The rest of the ladies began to look at Twilight as well. She swallowed again. Sunset herself winced, realizing the time had come. After a moment or so, Twilight straightened herself up, took a deep breath, and turned to the others. “Starlight…could you, Double Diamond, Big Mac, and my brother work on getting the tracks switched so that they know we’re leaving? And Celaeno and Luna? Could you step out into the next car for a moment? Tell everyone else what we’re doing real fast?”
The Huntsman didn’t look like she liked the idea of being ordered around, but she turned to go do as she was told. Luna flashed Twilight a single look, indicating she knew what this was about, before she followed. Starlight, a little hapless at all this, nevertheless resigned herself. The others still looked a bit curious, but got up and moved out as well. In a few moments, the train car was shut again, and it left only Twilight, Spike, Sunset, and the rest of the ladies.
She took another deep breath to steady herself. “What I’m about to tell you all…just…try and keep an open mind and not yell too much or do anything drastic. Please?”
“Where is she?! I’m gonna split her fool head open!”
“No you’re not! Not before I break every bone in her body!”
“Um…I-I-I’m fine with just…um…getting off this train and getting as far away from her as humanly possible.”
“I’m with Fluttershy! I want off this engine immediately!”
“Hmm…I wonder what happened to her wings?”
Twilight winced uneasily and sighed. “Yeah, I was kind of thinking this was going to be the case…”
Sunset, on her part, at least had the presence of mind to stand in front of the doorway as soon as Applejack and Rainbow Dash began to move. “Now hold it for just a moment!”
“You get out of the way right now! ‘Specially since I’m still keen on crackin’ yer skull open too!” Applejack barked.
“You can’t run around this train engine trying to kill someone! You’ll throw everyone into a panic! Everyone’s nerves are already shot from being stuck on this train running from Trottingham!”
“Everyone, there’s nothing to worry about!” Twilight threw in. “Her Promethian Sigil is sealed! She’s just a normal person now!”
“And how does that make me want to knock her teeth in less?” Dash retorted. “Do you have any idea what I’ve been through because of her?!”
“What we’ve all been through!” Applejack joined in. “Including my family! You know how many of us died ‘cause of her?! You can’t expect us to just sit back and forget about all that, Twilight! She’s gotta pay!”
“But we can’t do that now! We’ve got to rely on her to get us into Equestria!”
“Do you think I want to go anywhere she suggests?!” Rarity nearly screamed. “I wouldn’t follow her into my own boutique! Goodness knows what horrid devilry she has planned! Trying to abide Sunset was one thing, but this? This is too much!”
Sunset sighed. “Do you think I feel any better? I literally stabbed her in the back at the Castle of the Two Sisters. Twilight’s right, though. We can’t get rid of her now. We need to get into Equestria.”
“I’m with Rarity!” Dash responded. “I don’t have to go anywhere she wants me to go!”
“She was telling the truth about where we’re headed being safer, though,” Twilight protested. “Sunset and I both know that. There’s probably no place safer than Canterlot in Greater Everfree. And like she said, it’s the lowest risk chance of getting back to Manehattan.”
“I could give a bull’s patoot!” Applejack retorted angrily.
“Um…” Fluttershy spoke up meekly, “I can understand where everyone is coming from, of course…but, um, before we do anything drastic…I don’t suppose there’s any way she can, well…undo what she did to all of those animals?”
Twilight sighed again. “Like I said, I sealed her Promethian Sigil. She couldn’t undo any of her power now even if she knew how.”
“Alright, then there’s no reason to keep her around,” Dash simply answered, nearly going for the exit again.
Sunset again stepped in front of it. “We may not like her or what she did to Greater Everfree, but we still need her. Like Twilight said, she’s already been sealed. She’s not the problem. It’s what she was keeping back that is.”
Dash quirked her eyebrow. “What do you mean?”
“Remember what she started to say before Sunset…well…you know?” Twilight spoke up. “She was telling the truth. We’ve got bigger things to worry about now.”
Fortunately, saying that was enough to get everyone to calm down long enough for Twilight to go into more detail. She proceeded to explain, in as general terms and brief as possible, about everything Luna had told them in regards to the Angra Mainyu. It took a little while longer than she wanted due to the need for keeping the title secret, but she finally related everything.
By the time she was done, tempers had cooled slightly although everyone still looked mostly either scared or angry. Once it was finished, though, Pinkie looked chipper. “Oh! It’s just like with Sunset Shimmer again! Only now instead of getting one spirit to become a big scary world-destroying monster, it needs to get six to become a big scary world-destroying monster! Just like old times!”
“I still ain’t forgivin’ her…” Applejack muttered.
“Good grief…” Rarity sighed. “I’m never getting back to Carousel Couture…”
“Um, Twilight?” Fluttershy spoke up nervously, having only gotten more fearful on hearing the news. “I have a question. If, um, this monster is really as strong as Luna says it is, then I don’t think even we can stop it…”
“I’ve actually been thinking about that,” Twilight answered, “and I think we might not have to.”
This caused everyone, Sunset included, to look a bit puzzled. “Excuse me?”
She held up her hand. “The reason Luna became Nightmare Moon was because she took all six Anima Viris that…that the thing was supposed to get. She did it so that it could never get them and she’d be strong enough to keep it at bay. Now look…I have one of them now, and I’m still perfectly fine. For them to take someone over, you must need at least two of them together. One is no problem, though. And I realized that so long as I have this Anima Viri, it’ll never be able to get all six.”
Dash looked uncomfortable. “Um, Twilight? Doesn’t that…uh…make you a ‘marked woman’?”
“Especially since when Sunset had five Anima Viris she was still super-duper strong and scary?” Pinkie threw in.
“That’s just it. If we want to beat this thing, then we don’t want it to get any Anima Viris that it needs. That means that we need to get them all ourselves, and each one of us needs to take one.”
Now the group looked very surprised.
“Excuse me?”
“Beg yer pardon?”
“Don’t you see? That’s how we can beat it. One person might not be able to handle all six Anima Viris, but if each one of us takes one then it can’t get them, and it’ll be weak enough to stop.”
“Er…I’m not sure about that part,” Sunset spoke up. “From what Luna said, it’s still going to be rather tough. Maybe even tougher than I was. I’m not sure the six of you can handle it with just one Anima Viri apiece.”
“That’s where you come in,” Twilight responded.
Sunset looked surprised. “Wha…me?”
“You know how to equip multiple Anima Viris, right? Well…you need to show us how to do that. You’re right in that we might not succeed just using one at a time. If we can put on multiple and activate the stronger roles, though, maybe we’ll be strong enough to pull it off.” She turned back to the others. “And that’s why we need Luna for now. With Celestia gone, she’s the only one who still knows about all of these things. And that’s why we need her to get us into Canterlot and Equestria. If there’s any secrets there that can help us stop this monster, we’ll find them in there. But we can’t get them out of her while we’re on this train. Not without risking letting everyone else know about that monster. That’s why we all need to stay calm for a bit longer and just put up with Luna being here.”
A moment passed. Everyone looked rather uncomfortable with that. Even Spike let out a low whine.
Fluttershy inhaled and exhaled nervously. “Oh dear… I was hoping that we’d be done with everything soon. I’m not sure I like the idea of having an Anima Viri from something that’s going to destroy the world inside me…especially if it drove Luna crazy and had her do all of those things to Greater Everfree…”
“But we’ll all get to spend more time with each other!” Pinkie encouraged, leaning in and nudging Fluttershy a bit. “And that sounds like fun to me! I’m in!”
“Considering all of the misery she’s put my family and Ponyville through, I’m going to have a hard time being cordial…” Rarity half-muttered. “And my sentiments are with Fluttershy in regards to having any Anima Viris like the ones she had.” She sighed. “But if I must, then I must.”
Applejack rolled her eyes. “Fine. Just don’t expect me to be neighborly to her. And I’m gonna tan her hide one way or another after all this is done.”
Fluttershy let out a small whimper as she clutched Angel more tightly again. “Ok…” she half-whispered.
“Whatever…” Dash muttered. “Just get one thing straight, Twilight. As soon as we get into Canterlot,” She jabbed her thumb at Sunset. “Both she and Nightmare Moon start pulling their own weight. They need to start talking and give us a reason to keep them around.”
Twilight hesitated, but then nodded. “Right. That seems reasonable. Just everyone…keep it quiet for now. At least until we reach Canterlot.”
“Ah, the Greater Everfree Forest…so glad to be back here this close to dark after…what? Less than half a week?”
Starlight’s sardonic mutter didn’t arouse much response from the rest of the people in the engine as she continued to slow down the train to a stop. Double Diamond, looking as puzzled as most of the people on the train were, continued to vent the drive while wondering what they were doing there, even as he, Shining Armor, Celaeno, and Applejack continued to look around themselves tensely. After all, where they had ended up was rather overgrown. The forest was thick on all sides and, with evening approaching, was rather dark. Just getting there had been a foreboding experience. The track hadn’t been serviced in years and their cow catcher had pushed aside several brambles, branches, and even a few logs that looked potentially large enough to derail them. The fact that there was no remote chance of a turnaround anywhere only made people more nervous as it looked as if they would run themselves off the track at any moment and be stranded surrounded by monster-infested woods.
Nevertheless, Applejack’s eyes kept flickering to the front of the train, where Luna stood at the head of the engine along with Twilight and Sunset, and with a constant look of grim distrust. Luna never noticed it. She kept her eyes forward at all times, even as Twilight and Sunset frequently had to duck or shift their heads to avoid getting smacked by branches and brambles. Unfortunately, that’s all that the path forward looked like with no end in sight. Nevertheless, a while ago there had been a marker, and Luna had instructed them to slow down the train. And as they came around a bend, they saw why.
Right in front of them was the end of the line. Nothing but a bit of track terminating into woods with one last iron and wood barricade piled up in front of it. It was like they were ending up in a small box at the end of a forest tunnel rather than going down a track. It didn’t take long for the engine to inch forward the last few yards and, with a loud hiss, come to a halt right in front of it.
Twilight glanced about the situation, saw how enclosed they were and the block ahead, and then looked at Luna. “So…what now?”
She didn’t answer. She had already taken up her cane again, and was in the process of unscrewing the cap on the bottom of it. After a moment it was off, exposing a hollow place inside. She shook it a little, and both Sunset and Twilight spotted what looked like an odd key come out, landing right in her palm.
Once she had it, she shifted the cane to one hand and the key to the other and looked up to the barricade. She stepped closer, looking over it for a few moments. Her hand reached out, close enough to touch it, and started moving around on some of the wood and the brambles grown over it.
“It was around here somewhere… Where…?”
She paused.
“Here.”
She raised her hand and brought the key to one particular nondescript part of the barrier. In the dim light, it didn’t look any different from any of the other parts of the barricade. Nevertheless, with some work, she forced the key into it. After that, she grasped her hand around the backside, tightened her jaw a bit, and gave a turn.
A tremendous latching sound kicked off from the barrier. Moments later, the sounds of gears turning and counterweights moving began to go off, followed by a creaking so loud from the barrier that the two ladies nearby stepped back. Those back in the engine and the other cars looked outside and let out a small gasp.
All of the logs, stone, and the rest of the blind side of the path was split apart and swung aside on massive, unseen, concealed levers, like the machinations of a drawbridge. The huge bits and pieces that blocked their way were brought aside and the end of the path opened up completely. What was once a formidable stop into nothing but wilderness and overgrowth was stashed away into hidden indentations.
It took a whole half a minute to fully swing everything aside, and when it was done everyone was astonished at what was left behind. A long stretch of rail enclosed by concrete walls and gravel foundation stretched much further and deeper into the woods as far as they eye could see. It was particularly well built, it seemed, for in the years since it had gone out of use it had suffered only the slightest signs of age and disrepair. In all honesty, it still looked better than many tracks in use in Appleloosa.
The group was flabbergasted, stunned that such a complete and well-maintained track could still be there and hidden so well for so long. Luna, on her part, raised up her cane and began to reattach the bottom.
“We can go now.”
Twilight blinked a few times, but then composed herself. “Right…” She turned her head around and looked at the side of the engine. She managed to spot Starlight still open-mouthed staring at the route ahead.
“We can get moving again, Starlight.”
“This…this is…incredible…”
“Starlight!”
“Huh? Oh! Oh yeah! Let’s…let’s get this engine moving…”
As she ducked back into the cab, Twilight exhaled and looked forward again. She began to get a bit more tense, looking at the track ahead. She reached out and grasped the railing to balance herself. However, she soon noticed other loud breathing nearby. She turned and looked, and saw Sunset was much the same. If anything, she looked more nervous than her. Her palms were sweating.
“Never thought I’d actually be going back…” Exhaling, she turned to Twilight before motioning her head behind her. “If they think that was something, wait until we hit Canterlot.”
For the next fifty miles or so the train made its way through the concrete tunnel. Fortunately, the tracks were still in good condition even with a few signs of more evident damage or wear later on. They finally emerged again out onto more open tracks, but they still looked to be in good condition even as they continued to wind their way through forests. Those soon gave way into mountains, however, and much of the rest of the journey involved winding in and around valleys of towering peaks, alongside steep ravines, and past sheer, rocky cliffs. If it wasn’t for the isolation and the stress of the current situation, the journey would have been rather majestic and picturesque. As it was, night fell again, and everyone spent their time huddled in the cars hoping and waiting for it to pass without incident.
Luna was up before dawn the next day and advancing once again to the front of the train, and, once again, Twilight and Sunset joined her. At that point, they were still surrounded by mountains, but on reaching the northern side they came to more hilly areas instead. Segments of the landscape had lost their rockiness and had given way to forests, alpine lakes, and even a few open fields. Still, however, aside from the track they were on there were no signs of any life or civilization.
Nevertheless, both Twilight and Sunset were beginning to look expectant as they advanced to the engine compartment. The three looked inside, seeing Double Diamond snoring away in one corner and Shining Armor yawning while Starlight Glimmer struggled to keep her eyes open.
Luna immediately coughed, loud enough to not only get Starlight and Shining Armor to look to her but Diamond to snap awake as well.
“Spread the message to everyone. Everyone needs to stay on board and holding onto a piece of the train with their bare skin.”
They looked a bit puzzled at this, but Shining Armor glanced at Twilight and saw her only give a firm nod back. With that, he drew himself up and began to walk out on the opposite side. “I’ll start passing along the message.”
Soon he had left, and Luna turned and began to walk up to the front of the train again. Again, Twilight and Sunset followed, and soon all three were at the front.
Once there, Luna again went for her cane, but this time grasped the crook handle and began to rotate it. “I take it you both are familiar with what a Glyphkey is, aren’t you?”
Both Twilight and Sunset hesitated, glancing to one another, before looking back and nodding.
She finished unscrewing the end of the cane and pulled it off. Once there, she grasped the portion of the crook she had just disconnected and pulled the end completely off. When she did, the two saw something glimmering with a golden luster underneath, vaguely in the shape of a metal device with teeth for tumblers. She pulled this out and grasped it in her palm, showing just enough to get a glimpse of a gemstone embedded in it.
“This one is mine, and currently it’s the only one in existence to Canterlot. I’d like to keep it that way. Therefore, I don’t want anyone making any Glyphkeys while we’re in Canterlot without my permission.”
Twilight looked a little surprised. “Well wait a second… We-”
“I wasn’t asking for your permission,” Luna flatly cut off as she put her crook over one arm and grasped the railing of the train with her free hand. “I have the only Glyphkey right now. That means if I so desire, I can keep you out of Canterlot now or banish you whenever I wish. And I will if I learn you’re crafting another Glyphkey behind my back. One of you already backstabbed my sister and both of you tried to kill me. I’m just letting you know I don’t fully trust you and I’m giving you ample warning.”
Sunset couldn’t help but frown at that. “She doesn’t trust us…”
Twilight sighed, but didn’t argue.
“Just let everyone know that if they leave Canterlot without telling me first, they’re not getting back in,” Luna stated before looking forward again.
Another hour passed. Dawn continued to near, but due to the surrounding mountains it never quite broke. Twilight and Sunset watched as the hills slowly began to fade into the surroundings, leaving them with a relatively flat landscape. The forests again cleared to reveal more clearings. At last, Luna took in a deep breath. “This is it. Brace yourselves.”
Sunset and Twilight both looked forward, their faces a mixture of tension and anticipation. Their old memories were both running at what they knew was coming. And in spite of the fact that both were expecting it coming, it still managed to catch them off guard. One moment, there was nothing but long, empty countryside in front of them.
Then, there was a shimmer of light that seemed to pass around them like a ring, and there it was.
It didn’t take long for every last person on the train to cram to the junctions or open the side doors so they could see it and marvel at the sight. Twilight and Sunset were, honestly, among them. It had been so many years and what seemed like a lifetime ago—such that a part of their minds had almost wondered if it had indeed been real. And yet, there it was.
The entire hillside was no longer covered with forest and clearings. Instead, a massive city, beautiful, picturesque, warm, and inviting stretched before them. It surrounded the base of the hillside for a mile in all directions. Some of it did look rather overgrown and unused by now, but even after seven years of neglect the bright colors, the splendid architecture, and the attention to gardens and décor made it a sight to behold. It wasn’t a “modern” city at a glance. It looked older and rustic. That, however, only added to its charm. It didn’t have any of the cold, hard, and unfeeling iron and steel of modern cities. No smog or soot stains there. No garbage or filth in the waterways. Just a beautiful, perfect-looking city.
High at the top of the hill spanned a massive citadel. Tall, powerful walls, thick and looking like they had been beautifully crafted from a sculptor rather than a modern mason, surrounded it on all sides, and no gate was readily visible. Yet even as tall as the walls were, those on the train could see beyond it was a splendid set of spires and towers. Each one beautiful and towering into the heavens, looking to be the pinnacle of medieval architecture. It looked like a cathedral court. Perhaps even a place for a castle. And not a minor one at that, but one easily comparable to the more majestic locales in the Dragonlands and Trottingham. It wasn’t long before many of them were in awe.
“We’re in now,” Luna commented as she removed her hand and began to replace the Glyphkey. “You can go back to the others. I’m sure they have plenty of questions. The track should lead straight into the royal square.”
She said no more, as if that settled the matter. It once again resulted in Twilight and Sunset looking to one another, but eventually both of them turned and began to head back to the engine without another word.
On arrival, they found Shining Armor, Starlight Glimmer, and Double Diamond were all now fully alert. At this point, they were starting to enter the city itself, and as a result they were constantly wide eyed and gaping at everything around them.
“Twily…” Shining Armor spoke breathlessly. “I…I had no idea all of this was here.”
She smiled a bit in embarrassment. “Well, heh…I did tell you that this place was…special…”
“So this is where your headmistress wanted me to go…” he mused aloud. “It’s like a place out of 200 years ago…”
“Not quite…” Starlight mused as she looked around at the passing roads more closely. “These roads are paved with a concrete I’ve never seen before. The architecture…the style may be old but I’ve never seen the material. There’s sewer systems and lamps, but…but I don’t see anything for gaslighting. As old as this place looks, it must be technologically advanced…”
“Starlight, look!”
Double Diamond speaking up alerted not only Starlight but also the others. He pointed out at one passing building. All of them looked that way, and Starlight soon realized why.
“The same symbol that was on that one place we found…” she mused aloud. “So it must have come from here.” She looked a bit closer, glancing about from one place to another up and down the streets. Soon after, her brow began to furrow in confusion and concern.
Twilight noticed it. “Something wrong?”
“Something’s…off,” she stated. “There’s no people here, just like I expect for being this deep into Equestria. No wildlife either. Besides that, though…this place is in great shape.”
Sunset shrugged as she looked outside. “You got that right. Aside from none of the residents being here and nothing running, this place looks almost as good as it did when I first got here.”
“But why is that?” Starlight echoed back. “Why aren’t the windows broken? Why aren’t the doors smashed in? Why isn’t their rubble in the streets? I don’t mean to sound morbid, but…where are the skeletons?”
Both Twilight and Sunset looked up. They both realized that this was a good point.
“I thought that myself.”
Again, everyone’s attention was diverted, this time to Luna just as she came in through the side of the engine. Her eyes were aimed at the city around her, not looking in the most at-ease state.
“I can tell you this much. If there was anyone who could have guessed what was happening at the Castle of the Two Sisters and attempted to run before it got too bad, it would have been the people here. Yet if they escaped…then I’m not sure why the rest of the world never heard from them. Or why they haven’t returned.”
Obviously, no one had an answer for this. Only that it seemed to be another uneasy thing to possibly worry about. However, Twilight and Sunset didn’t dwell much on it. They had enough on their plates for now.
Thirty minutes later, they pulled in for a stop at the abandoned station. At long last, they were all able to unload, although, with some persuasion, the Huntsmen left their stolen goods behind. After all, there was no one around to steal them back. From there, in spite of how weary and tired everyone was, they made the short hike/walk to the very top of the hill they were on, and the walls of the citadel.
Both Twilight and Sunset exhaled slowly on facing it, hesitating momentarily. Floods of memories were washing over both of them now. Even standing there before the walls had struck them both greatly. Twilight only slowly reached out her hand and touched them at one point, as if afraid that they weren’t real and were going to vanish. Yet after a time, they found a posthurn entrance that Luna knew about. She led them all single file through the formidable walls and to the other side. As a result, both Twilight and Sunset were able to stop in the courtyard and look about while waiting for the others.
It was like a trip back in time. Where the city had shown mild signs of wear and tear, there was none of that here. It was just like when they were children. Everything was still there. The entire grounds enclosed by the walls were intact, and in the light of the rising sun it was just like any other morning in which they had gone to class. The Harmonium Chapel still stood in the center. The headmistress’ hall/palace was still on one side. The old dormitory still was still slightly to the west. Even the gardens and fountains were still there, not overgrown and still running. It was all there.
Right down to the Northern Keep.
Gradually, the others gathered around them, only growing in amazement. Spike soon began to run around happily barking, and even Angel was set down and left to romp in the cool, soft grass.
“Goodness me…this place is lovely!” Rarity remarked.
“I’ll be… I ain’t never seen the like…” Applejack muttered.
“And here I thought the old Cloudsdale architecture was something,” Dash added. “Well…it was, of course. But this place isn’t bad either.”
“Teehee! It’s like we’re in a fairy tale! Do you think there’s a sleeping princess or a frog prince or a young woman who really, really needs a haircut around here?” Pinkie asked. “Oh! Or a gingerbread house! Mmm…gingerbread…”
Fluttershy herself was silent until she spotted some bees buzzing around some of the flowers. “Oh…this place is so nice. I just wish there were a few more creatures living here…”
As the last person entered, Luna stepped forward. She looked around the grounds herself silently for a few moments. Twilight looked at her, and saw even her own expression wasn’t immune. A change came over it. A mixture of nostalgia…and sorrow.
Yet the look was gone soon after as she began to hobble forward. “Very well. If any of you need me, I’ll be in the palace.”
This prompted several of them to look up at her in confusion. “Um…excuse me?”
“I brought you all inside. You can do what you like where you like, so long as you remember the rule I gave you. Feel free to settle in.” She said all this without turning, still walking away. Soon after, however, her tone dropped. “It’s not like any of this place will do its former residents any good…”
Twilight nearly pressed her for more, but soon stopped herself. She turned and looked back, and saw everyone was now looking expectantly at her. Sunset included. She glanced back at Luna one more time, and then back to the others.
“…Right. We have daylight right now, so let’s make the most of it.”
The massive moans of satisfaction and comfort were so loud that Twilight and Sunset could hear them all the way from the commons area. It was honestly a little unnerving, especially considering everyone else on the floor. It didn’t help either of them as both of them were still feeling uncertain to be there. Staring at the empty fireplace, looking at the pictures on the walls…even sitting chairs that they had once sat in years ago. The fact that this was their old residence hall made everything seem more bizarre and eerie rather than provided much comfort.
Pinkie Pie was nearby, poking through the various books on the communal shelf, although she didn’t seem to be understanding many of them. Fluttershy was in another chair, petting Angel, while Spike lay on the rug in the center of the room. As they sat there, they heard a door open and shut. Soon after, frowning a little, Applejack walked down the hall and into the room.
“Well…looks like all the kinfolk are set up real nice. All the beddin’ was dirty and dusty but didn’t take much to beat out the clean linens and make things up. Apple Bumpkin already passed right out and Florina Tart ain’t far behind. Last I checked, my brother headed down to try and scare up some vittles.” She frowned and glanced back over her shoulder. “But landsakes…I ain’t never seen someone so glad to be back in a bed.”
Sunset couldn’t help but smirk. “I kind of missed it myself by now…”
Applejack gave her a look for a moment, although her frown wasn’t as deep as before. She looked back up to Twilight. “Yeah, ‘bout that… Twilight, I’m fine with shackin’ up with Rarity, Rainbow Dash, and Fluttershy, but sure you’re ok sharing a room with her?” She jabbed a finger at Sunset Shimmer.
Twilight sighed and nodded. “It’ll be fine. Besides, Starlight Glimmer and Spike will be there too.”
The cowgirl sighed and leaned against the wall. “Don’t know whether to be happy or sad that dark-haired woman ain’t roomin’ with us… The further I can get from her, the better, but…” She looked up and around. “This place is nice, but…it just feels kinda off, y’know? Like it’s a bit too nice. Nicer than it should be. Can’t believe it ain’t overgrown or runnin’ wild with Nighttouched.”
Twilight grimaced, but didn’t get a chance to say anymore as another door shut, and soon Rarity, looking far more energetic, ran in. “Twilight, I had no idea your private school could be so luxurious! The plumbing is actually intact! Can you believe it? Running water at last!”
“Um…” Fluttershy meekly spoke up. “Wouldn’t that water be…a little dirty? And rusty?”
“You would think, darling, but I tried it myself. It’s running clear.” She sighed dreamily. “Oh, if only we could get the hot water running. Then this would feel like paradise…”
With that, the sound of clicking footsteps up the stairwell began to ring out. The group turned to the doors leading to the stairs, just in time to see Rainbow Dash walk through them. She was a little out of breath and stained with a touch of oil and soot, but she wiped her brow and looked at them.
“Ok…looks like the boiler in the basement is still in good shape. I was able to get it working, so we’ll have hot water soon.”
At once, Rarity made an excited squeal of delight before she fell backward onto the common area couch. “I’ve died and gone to heaven!”
Sunset frowned. “That might be a bit premature. Most of this place is in one piece, but we have no idea how safe we are from Nighttouched around here. Or that thing that Shining Armor was talking about. Not to mention we still have no food and a hundred bellies to fill, plus we’re not sure if we can get the train back to Manehattan just yet. It’s going to take a lot for us all to run a roundabout station by ourselves.”
Rarity waved her hand at her. “Trifles, dear, trifles… We’ll all feel ready to conquer the world after sleeping in soft beds for the first time in weeks…”
“Ok, everyone. We’re back.”
Again everyone looked to the stairs. This time, they saw Starlight Glimmer, likewise wiping her brow, walking in. She was followed closely behind by Shining Armor, who looked far more winded but also more alert. They approached the commons and stood among the others.
“What did you find?” Twilight asked.
“That roundabout station is down the hill about two miles away, based on the local maps,” Starlight explained. “It took us so long to move everyone inside that I’m not even wanting to bother with it today, but if we don’t want to stay longer than we have to then we’ll need to get the engine down there tomorrow and start working on setting us on the right track. Although…”
She looked up and around a little.
“Now that I’m here…I honestly don’t mind staying a while. This place is incredible in terms of its technology. I can only imagine what else they have in here. Like I’ve been trying to get the gaslights going, only there aren’t any gaslights here. It’s more of those finely coiled metal pieces, just like in that chamber I found. I just wish I could figure a way to get them to turn on…”
“I ran into Big Macintosh heading back upstairs, Twily,” Shining Armor spoke up. “He said he found the old kitchen areas. There’s still some canned food there. Some of the old vegetable gardens and orchards in town are still putting out fruit too. Enough to keep us going at least for a while.” He looked up and motioned around. “If there are any ground-based Nighttouched around, the big walls that go around here should help keep them out. Not so sure about the flying ones, though… And it’s going to be hard to guard an area this big with only around a hundred people all together. It’s safer than anywhere else around here, though. I think we need to make a schedule for a watch.”
“We might not need to.”
Again, Sunset had spoken up and gotten everyone’s attention. This time, she only winced a little at everyone looking at her before she shrugged.
“I mean…we’re in Canterlot. The palace probably still has a good number of materials lying around in it.”
“Ooo! Materials!” Pinkie spoke up excitedly, before looking confused. “Wait…materials for what?”
“Well…materials for making another Morning Glory.”
That caught the rest of the ladies. They actually looked a bit surprised. Sunset, however, just glanced about at all of them and shrugged again.
“I mean, once we have one of those, we won’t have to worry about any Nighttouched. It might even keep back that shadow thing that Shining Armor talked about.”
Again, everyone was silent. Not so much at the suggestion, which was a rather good one. It was more that Sunset had so readily offered help in that regard. The only one who looked a bit baffled was Shining Armor. “What’s a Morning Glory?”
“Are you sure you can make one, Sunset?” Twilight asked.
“I…I should be able to,” she answered somewhat hesitantly. “I mean, I can’t use any magic for the fine parts. You’d have to help me with that. But I built all the others. So long as we have the right materials and the tools to work them with. We’ll need some sort of metalworking workshop and hopefully some hands with experience with this sort of thing. And it’s still going to take me a couple days. But…I don’t see why not.”
“You mean…you can make one of those things that keeps all the Nighttouched away?” Fluttershy asked hopefully. “Goodness…that would be helpful.”
Dash gave Sunset the stink eye for a moment, but then shrugged. “I’ll admit, I wouldn’t mind it myself. And I know you’re being honest about this one because it’s your neck too.”
“If it keeps us from being swarmed by a horrid flood of those beasts like we were in Fillydelphia, then there’s no question on my end,” Rarity added.
Twilight whistled. “Well, alright then. I guess we know what we’re doing.” She turned back to Starlight and Shining Armor. “We’ll head to the palace and start looking around in some of the old classrooms right away. Of course…this means we still need to hold this place for a few days.”
Shining Armor nodded back. “Right. I think we got another six or so hours of daylight. I’ll see what we can set up before then. Then I think we all need to make sure we keep the lights doused and stay indoors and as quiet as possible.”
“Ok, I’d really like to see the process for how you make one of the Morning Glories,” Starlight spoke up. “But…I’m not as good with metalworking as I am with engines… I’ll still want to watch, though. In the meantime, I’ll see who we got who might be able to help out.”
Twilight nodded back. “Thank you. Both of you.”
Shining Armor smiled back before turning to head back to the stairwell. Starlight, on her part, nodded before turning to head down the hallway. Soon, the seven ladies were being left behind. Twilight began to get up and Sunset followed soon after.
“Ok everyone, let’s get a move on over to the palace and the old schoolrooms.”
This caused a bit of confusion among the group. “Uh…all of us?”
She nodded back, before looking squarely at Sunset. It was enough to leave her surprised.
“I think it’s time we started learning what you can teach us.”
“And here we are.”
While Twilight and Sunset readily walked into the wall that had revealed itself to be a doorway, the rest of the ladies held back. In truth, they seemed like they had been walking on eggshells ever since the two of them had taken them to the headmistress’ palace, and not simply because they knew Luna was there. They had looked that way ever since they had passed through the massive, solid, oaken front doors plated with precious metals, emerging into the grand hall beyond with a massive set of stained glass emblazoned with the emblem of Harmonium intertwined with that of Equestria shining down on them with refracted sunlight for all to see. It was, after all, by all accounts, a place fit for royalty and quite majestic to behold. Not a place any of them would have ever been allowed if this was still a functioning nation.
Inside it was even more intimidating, with its grand, spacious halls, ornamentation of gold, silver, and brass, further stained glass windows stretching up to a ceiling that caused resounding echoes, and just a general sense of impressiveness. It seemed less like a school or even a traditional palace and more like something meant for the divine.
They had initially gone to the classrooms and, especially, the workshops along with them. The other ladies had no idea what to make of them. Only that they looked like a mixture of a schoolroom for princes and princesses and an old alchemist laboratory. Twilight and Sunset busied themselves going about, sifting through a few books before picking up several pieces from around the chamber (some in bins or jars to one side and some right off the walls), and then headed out again. Fortunately, it seemed there was a place in the palace for on site metalworking toward the basements for the servants’ quarters. There was a furnace there that they lit up with coal, but then left to start warming. They had other things to do first.
Now they were halfway up one of the spires and walking into the round chambers where Celestia had apparently trained them both. Much to their pleasant surprise (and the unease of the others), the lamps inside immediately lit up on their own to fill it with illumination. Whatever charm or spell Celestia had used over seven years ago was still in effect.
As they walked in, Sunset glanced to Twilight again. “Pretty impressive.”
“Hmm?”
“I never figured out how to open the secret door here. Looks like you had one edge on me. Of course…” She turned her head down, frowning a little. “When I did any ‘independent study’, I preferred that it wouldn’t be in a place Celestia would know to look for me…”
Twilight grimaced but said nothing.
Soon, all of the ladies were inside. The five jumped a bit when they heard the door automatically shut behind them, looking back at it and clearly unnerved. Especially since there was no trace a door had ever been there at all.
“Don’t worry,” Twilight reassured. “I know this place is a little strange, but you get used to it. This is one of the training areas Celestia would take me for more individual practice. It’s nice because something about this room recaptures all mana expended in it, which means you can practice with as much energy as much as you want and never get worn out. Now…” She took in a deep breath. “Let’s get busy.” She turned to Sunset. “You’re on.”
The woman swallowed, looking a bit anxious to be put on the spot. However, she steadied herself, looked back, blanched under the stares of five former enemies for a moment, and then finally folded her hands.
“Right…right… Ok…uh…um… Let’s see… Where to start…”
She glanced over them a bit longer, still hesitant, before she finally cleared her throat.
“Ok, obviously for this to work out, we’re going to need someone who has more than one Anima Viri…so…Twilight? Would you-”
“Er, sorry…” Twilight apologized. “I don’t know how to call this one, remember?”
“Oh…right…um… Rainbow Dash?”
She immediately crossed her arms. “Actually…I’d rather take a raincheck on that myself for now.”
This made Sunset a little puzzled, and Twilight along with her. “Really? I mean, it’s not like-”
“Look,” she stated almost sharply, “I hate using the one Anima Viri I got already. I don’t want to use Soarin’s too if I can avoid it. Ok?”
“But…for this plan to work, you’re going to have to-”
“Yeah, yeah! I’ll do it when and if I have to! Just drop it!”
Now she sounded almost angry, making Sunset recoil. “Alright, alright…” She turned to the last one. “Um…in that case…Fluttershy?”
“Oh my…” she half-muttered, immediately shrinking in on herself and beginning to take a step backward. However, Applejack and Rarity both looked at each other, sighed, and quickly put their hands on her shoulders to stop her. They also not-so-gently nudged her back forward, even as she swallowed and shook. While keeping her head bowed and her hair over her face, she very reluctantly stepped forward. In addition to her normal nervousness, even taking a step closer to Sunset seemed to be pushing her to her limit. Yet somehow she managed to move a distance from the others.
Sunset exhaled. “Alright. You’ve probably all noticed this by now, but you’ve seen that summoning an Anima Viri to equip requires an actual proclamation, but once they’re there you can dismiss them with just a thought, right?”
There was a pause for realization, but then nods from the group.
“Basically, every time you try and call more than one, that’s what you’re doing. You just don’t know it. That’s because you’re all probably used to the normal feeling of an Anima Viri and how it goes on. Each time you try and call a second one out, you’re unconsciously ‘putting the other one away’. Fluttershy, put on your first Anima Viri now.”
“Oh…ok…” she softly answered. Swallowing, she held up her hand. “Member of my house, I command you to come to me! Little Sunshine—Philomena!”
An eruption of an aura later, and Fluttershy was in her familiar role of the Healer, complete with a hooded white robe.
“Now like you all saw before, one of the nice things about putting on different Anima Viris is that you can do the other base roles,” Sunset continued, getting a bit more at ease. “But doing that is like ‘changing clothes’ normally. If you want to do two at a time, it’s more like…like…putting on a set of clothes over the ones you already put on. Fluttershy…what I want you to do right now is suppress Philomena, but don’t dismiss her.”
Fluttershy blinked, looking a little confused. “Um…how do I do that?”
She sighed. “I can’t really describe it. You just have to feel it. Try to suppress her now. Try to make her weaker or have less influence.”
“Ok.”
Fluttershy tightened her jaw a bit, made her hands into fists, and focused.
A moment later, her aura went out all together, and her clothes reverted to normal.
Sunset grimaced. “That was too much. You dismissed her all together.”
“Oh…sorry.”
“Try again.”
“Ok. Member of my house, I command you to come to me! Little Sunshine—Philomena!”
An eruption later, and she was once again in the role of the Healer.
“Ok, remember, just try to suppress her this time. Not dismiss her.”
She nodded. She concentrated again, focused hard ahead of her…
…And, once again, her aura went out and she reverted to normal.
Sunset let out a groan. “Too much again, Fluttershy.”
“Oh…I’m sorry. Um…ok… Member of my house, I command you to come to me! Little Sunshine—Philomena!”
As she turned on a third time, Sunset sighed. “Ok…now very gentle. Just a little.”
She nodded back. She concentrated again. This time, she held that position. Her aura continued to blaze and her clothes remained. After a moment, she looked up at Sunset. “How’s that?”
“Um…now you’re not suppressing it at all.”
“Oh, sorry… I was just trying to be gentle like you said-”
“Ok, ok…just try it again. Just a little bit more force.”
She nodded. “Right.” She concentrated a little bit harder…and her aura immediately died out.
Sunset couldn’t help it. She smacked her palm against her face and slowly pushed it down. Twilight was beginning to look uncomfortable along with the others, and she smirked and chuckled. “Heh…good thing we’re in this room, eh? Otherwise all these transformations in rapid succession would have probably already exhausted Fluttershy into a coma by now…”
Hearing that made Fluttershy’s pupils shrink. “C-C-Coma…?”
“Let’s try again…” Sunset interjected sharply, sending a glare to Twilight that she hadn’t shown in a very long time.
It took an entire hour of trying to get Fluttershy to not only suppress the power but hold in that position. Sunset and Twilight began to worry that the furnace would already be burning over by the time they got it right. The others gradually began to get bored and sat on the floor or leaned against the wall. Finally, however, sweating, quivering, and struggling to concentrate, Fluttershy stood in the center in her Healer form but with a very dim, almost imperceptible, aura.
“Alright!” Sunset announced. “Now…hold it just like that. Don’t move it at all. Keep holding onto it as you summon your second Anima Viri.”
“O…k…” Fluttershy managed to stammer out. Even talking seemed to nearly break her concentration. It took her several seconds to hold up her hand with her one blazing rune up, and even longer to compose herself afterward. Finally, however, after taking three deep breaths, she managed to speak again. “Member of my house, I command you to come to me! The King of the Ring—Melvin!”
Everyone was immediately snapped awake as they felt a gale push into them hard. Rarity and Pinkie on the floor were pushed down while Applejack and Rainbow Dash were pressed into the wall. Twilight and Sunset both had to dig their feet in to keep themselves from being bowled over, but had to look away as the light around Fluttershy doubled in intensity. As before, streams of light shot into the air and traced out another emblem before feeding back into her, and they actually heard Fluttershy cry out not only in alarm but in a bit of pain as it happened.
Yet in the end, the light dimmed again, and the aura that was left behind, although blazing far more strongly than it had been previously, was dim enough to look. The others slowly recovered and looked up again, and they gazed in amazement.
Fluttershy was on the ground now, looking a mixture of shocked and panting hard. However, both of her runes were now blazing together and she had changed. Her white robe was gone. Instead, a wide brimmed yet more angled hat than the Magician was on her head with a long plume in it. A shorter cape, more for fashion than practicality, was around her neck and shoulders. She was dressed in more “billowing” sleeves with a fashionable vest and multi-colored pants with elaborate sashes and jewelry. She seemed more akin to a carnival entertainer now.
She also seemed to be the last to recognize it, looking dizzy and even a bit groggy. She looked over herself, blinking as if in a daze. “Oh…my…”
Twilight lit up in amazement. “It worked! That’s a new role! You did it, Fluttershy!”
“Um…yay…?” she distantly echoed back, as if she was almost inebriated.
The others quickly looked up and marveled as well. Pinkie let out an excited squeal. “Wow, Fluttershy! Look at you! You’re a…a…a…” She froze, and looked confused, scratching her head. “Um, what is she, exactly?”
Sunset blinked twice, but then moved in closer to Fluttershy. She looked at her Promethian Sigil for a moment before looking back. “She’s the role of the Minstrel.”
Dash gave her an odd look. “Did you say ‘Minstrel’?” She let out a scoff. “Uh…how exactly is that any good?”
“All of the roles are good in their own way. They just have different strengths and weaknesses,” Twilight spoke up.
Sunset nodded. “She’s right. I couldn’t become that role myself, but I looked it up. Apparently, the Minstrel can attune themselves with the will of those around them and address it directly, whether they be ally or enemy. They can drive, beguile, charm, and even control others to make them-”
Suddenly, the light dimmed. Sunset and Twilight both looked, and saw that Fluttershy had abrupted returned to normal. Not only that, a moment later she gave an exhausted sigh before she spilled backward onto the floor. Her eyes went half-lidded as she simply lay there breathing hard and deep.
Sunset and Twilight ran to her side while the others quickly got up and bent down next to her. Twilight looked up at Sunset. “What just happened?”
She blinked and stammered. “I…I don’t know! That never happened to me! Mana is supposed to be unlimited in here!”
Tensing up, Twilight looked down at her friend. “Fluttershy! Are you alright?”
“Oh…” she weakly answered. “Just…just really tired…Twilight…”
“Obviously.”
Everyone save Fluttershy, who seemed too out of it to know any better, went rigid. They turned around and looked to see the entrance open again. Standing there in the doorway was Luna.
Applejack and Dash actually tightened up for physical action, and Rarity inched closer to Fluttershy, but Twilight, Sunset, and (relatively speaking) Pinkie managed to remain calm. “What did you say?”
“You two wouldn’t know any better because Celestia spent years teaching you both the basics and building your endurance, but there are other tolls on one who uses an Anima Viri. Spiritual ones.” She looked up and around the room. “How long have most of you ever used your Anima Viris at a time?”
Everyone paused. They looked to one another. After a while, Dash shrugged. “I dunno. An hour? Maybe two?”
“I tried keepin’ mine on for as long as I could in Appleloosa,” Applejack spoke up. “But…come to think of it…if I made it go any longer than three hours I was too tuckered out to do much…”
“Um…I believe 40 minutes for me,” Rarity suggested. “I was watching the clock when Twilight had us practicing.”
“Precisely,” Luna answered. “Right now, you’re finding the experience exhausting. You can’t even keep your Anima Viris on for a full day. That’s not physical or mental fatigue. It’s spiritual fatigue. So long as that’s the best you can do, it won’t matter if you have two, three, or even six Anima Viris.” She pointed down at Fluttershy. “That will be the result. Your new roles will be worthless to you.”
The others frowned at Luna’s almost dismissive tone of Fluttershy, but Twilight began to look uneasy. “That…actually makes sense.” She turned to Sunset. “It’s how we were able to beat you before. The more Anima Viris you put on, the more exhausted and out of breath you became. I don’t think you were even able to use your more advanced roles as strongly as your weaker ones.”
Dash frowned, looking back up to Luna. “Ok Miss Night God…how exactly are we supposed to get better at it, then? I don’t think we can take our ‘spirits’ out running or lifting weights.”
“Your spirits are already strong enough,” Luna simply answered. “The issue is they’re out of balance. Too chaotic. Too unfocused. Overwrought with emotions and impulses. That’s why I said only Twilight Sparkle among you had the slightest hint of true control over her own Anima Viri when I fought you. You’re letting your spirits run wild and clash with the spirits that you’re adding into your body. They’re fighting and opposed to one another. To correct this, you have two choices. You can let the Anima Viris assume greater control over your thoughts and actions. ‘Let them have the reins’, so to speak. In doing so, you’ll no longer have to rely on bumbling incantations and improvising. The souls themselves will grant you access to memory and abilities to produce more potent spells and techniques. Far more than you ever would have on your own or learning secondhand. You’ll become far more potent combatants as a result.”
This actually made the ladies perk up a bit. Yet they didn’t get a chance to enjoy it long. Twilight looked at her curiously. “Wait…I thought you said that was a bad thing earlier. Letting another soul have control of your body?”
“It is,” she simply responded. “In fact, relying on that for your power will result in you eventually losing yourselves to your Anima Viris.”
Now the group frowned. “So how does that help us?” Sunset grumbled.
“The second way,” Luna went on without a change, “is to learn to still and concentrate your spirit and will. To basically tell the spirits inside you to ‘follow your tune’, like a conductor for an orchestra. Celestia did that for you two. She taught you to master spells so that you wouldn’t have to rely on letting your Anima Viri take control to perform the magic, and trained you to still your spirits. If she hadn’t…” She glanced at Sunset Shimmer. “Summoning even four Anima Viris at once, let alone five, would have killed you instantly.”
Sunset frowned, looking to the ground but saying nothing.
“I’m not saying either approach is best at your stage. In fact, you should do both,” Luna continued. “You need to do the first method to allow the souls to ‘train’ you and pass on their knowledge and skills. Then you must master the second method so that you’ll remain in control. Fortunately,” Here, she rose up from the doorway and stepped back into the hall. “You have some time to practice so long as you are here.”
She turned to depart down the hall again on saying this, letting the door shut and seal once again.
Rarity frowned. “I must say, she’s quite condescending and more than a tad rude.”
“She’s ticking me off is what she’s doing,” Dash grumbled. “Coming in here after all she did and acting like we should listen to her.”
Twilight grimaced. “She actually has a point with what she’s been telling us. All of it makes sense to me. And if we’re going to go forward with that plan we talked about on the train, we can’t afford to ignore it. We all need to be at our best.”
“Yup! You got it, Twilight!” Pinkie happily answered as Fluttershy moaned, finally seeming to come out of it. “There’s just one problem…”
Twilight turned to her. “Yes?”
Pinkie held a hand to her chin, looking thoughtful for a moment. “Do you really think we can get as good as you and Sunset in just a couple days when you two had years and years?”
Both Twilight and Sunset paused before beginning to look rather uncomfortable. They glanced at one another, but had nothing but unease to greet each other with. Sunset coughed once. Twilight swallowed.
“What do you say we all practice as much as we can before dark?”
Twilight and Sunset were both a bit surprised with Luna’s revelation, but nevertheless tried using it on the next round of practice they went through. And surprisingly enough, it seemed to work. For the next hour, Applejack and Rainbow Dash both seemed to learn new moves, Rarity’s fencing ability increased along with her mastery of spells, and Fluttershy’s repertoire of both white magic as well as her talent in the Rogue role increased. Pinkie Pie was about the only one who seemed to stay the same, and Rainbow Dash, for whatever reason, not only still tried to avoid using Soarin’s Anima Viri but hated continuously using Spitfire’s. Nevertheless, everyone worked on increasing their endurance as had been suggested on the chance that they all would potentially get an additional Anima Viri. They wouldn’t have time to do it “on the fly” later, after all.
After an hour passed, Twilight and Sunset went to the work area just as Starlight brought around Igneous and Apple Split—both of whom had some experience with metalworking in private. With their help, Sunset managed to get a crude mold built for the bell and started melting down materials for it.
“How this works is we’re basically making a continuous chime, with the clapper being enchanted to cause a tone that affects time and space to simulate the sensations of daylight,” Sunset explained.
“It’s basically like Celestia’s charmed lamps, only we’re making the effect spill over an area, right?” Twilight answered.
Sunset looked at her, a bit surprised she understood, but nodded back. “Yeah, that’s right. You know metals don’t hold charms well. That’s why we’re going to work it into some of these woods and sinews and then have them forged into the clapper, and we’ll reinforce them by having the sound bow inlaid with other charms that cause a multiplicative effect.”
“Of course… By bringing the two metals together, we cause the charm to activate and spill out. Then we only need to compact enough treated ash and crystals into it to result in a continuous magical reaction, so that it will keep going endlessly.”
“You get to work on the incantations. I’ll start preparing the components for enchantment.”
They worked as long as they could, managing to get everything to a “cooling phase” before it got too late. At that point, everyone had to head back and, true to Sunset’s word, they still had another two days of work ahead of them. With that in mind, everyone went to the old dining hall of the residential area. It had been cleaned up and was actually rather warm and cozy now, with the cooking fires providing some ambient crackling and everyone able to eat a decent meal from semi-wild vegetables and canned meats for a change—courtesy of the Apples and the Gaitian families working together. Everyone had a full belly afterward, and the children with them actually had their spirits lifted enough to start laughing and playing again, now that they had roofs over their heads and beds to sleep in.
The adults, of course, knew things were just getting started, and they had hardly set some of them on clean-up duty when the more able-bodied people among them gathered together to discuss plans for the watch. Among them were included the Apple family, the Huntsmen, and the hardier ex-soldiers from the Northwestern provinces.
“The whole citadel area is vaguely rectangular, so we should have at least six people at all times,” Shining Armor instructed them. “All on the walls. Two on the north, two on the south, and one each for east and west. There’s bells all over the walls. They must have used them for alerts. All we have to do is sound one if there’s an emergency. Remember…just an emergency. We can’t ring them if we simply see a Nighttouched. Only if they’re attacking. I think if we all chip in, we’ll only have to take two hour shifts tonight. If anyone hears the bells, everyone needs to start ringing at once. Then everyone in the residence hall heads to the basement.”
That said, he took a deep breath and exhaled.
“Who wants to go first?”
“I will,” Twilight immediately spoke up.
Shining Armor looked at her, a bit surprised, and he nearly opened his mouth to counter her.
“I’ll be fine. It’s only two hours. Besides, with my Anima Viri, I can handle myself better than most of you.”
He grimaced, realizing he couldn’t argue with that, and finally nodded. “Alright.” He looked around again. “Who else?”
In addition to the volunteers for the walls, two people elected to stay awake in the common areas to listen for the sounds of the bells. With that settled and the shifts established, everyone went to quickly get ready as the sun neared the horizon. The Huntsmen brought in part of their cache of stolen weapons and distributed them to those who had no way of defending themselves. Two stayed awake in the common area while the rest of the first watch, Twilight included, headed for the walls. She had actually never been on them before, although she had seen them patrolled countless times. She was led to one part of the wall where there was a tower built into it, allowing a stairwell to reach the top parapets. From there, she and the other spread out and took their positions. Fortunately, even with the sun setting there was light enough to see for her to fumble her way to her own bell. Once there, she pulled up an old crate as a seat, sat down, and looked out to the grounds below to begin her watch.
Fortunately, it was still late summer, so even with the mountain breezes and higher latitudes it wasn’t too uncomfortable yet. Darkness fell rapidly, but the moon was partially full still and so there was light enough to see. From Twilight’s own position, she was overlooking mostly surrounding forest and countryside with just an old mill and a farmhouse near the outskirts along a river running through the valley about the citadel.
For the first hour, all was quiet. Nothing but the night noises of crickets and the occasional moth. By the end of it, it almost appeared as if, miraculously, Canterlot was in the clear. That somehow the Nighttouched had missed it completely.
Yet no sooner had Twilight considered this possibility than she spotted it. Flickers of yellow light moving through the bushes around the river. At first she thought she imagined it, but eventually she saw a monstrous shape emerge with twisted antlers and gleaming black eyes. Definitely a Nighttouched. She nearly went for the bell right there, but then remembered to be patient. Instead, she stayed still and waited. Fortunately, the monster never suspected a thing. It was too silent, especially with the stream acting as ambient noise nearby, and simply looked around a few moments before it turned and gradually moved on.
By the time it had finally moved away, the shift was up, and she nearly sounded a cry of alarm on hearing the soft footsteps of the next shift coming up the stairs near her. Soon after she saw Rainbow Dash’s familiar hairstyle poke up over the opening before she came up to her level. She turned to her and walked over.
Leaning down next to her side, she whispered. “What’s up?”
“Nothing,” Twilight whispered back. “I saw one out there, but they don’t know we’re here. Hopefully it’ll stay that way.”
She nodded. “I’ll take it from here. Go back and get some sleep. You’ll need to be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed if they do smell us out.”
That wasn’t exactly a thought to help her have “sweet dreams”, but Twilight merely made a weak smile and nodded as she got up from her box. Soon after, she started to head down the stairwell, leaving Dash behind to take her place.
Only halfway down the stairs, Twilight paused. She stood there for a moment, looking at the ground, showing nothing and clearly lost in thought. After a time, she began to walk again, and this time slowly made her way to the bottom. Once there, she stepped out of the tower and back onto the courtyard. Once again she paused. She looked around for a moment. She saw the old familiar fountains still flowing day and night. She saw the wind ripple the ornamental flowers. Aside from the lack of light and people, it was all as she remembered it. And yet, the lack of both of those things made the place seem strangely hollow. Strangely unfamiliar. Desolate in its own way.
Slowly her eyes went over each building, especially the ones she had seen many times before. She looked at the palace, and her eyes traced up it right to where Celestia’s own room overlooking the courtyard had been. She stared at that for a long time, but finally looked away.
When she did, though, her eyes didn’t return to the courtyard or the residence hall.
They turned to the Northern Keep.
She froze there, staring at it. Gradually, she began to look cold. She shook a little in the next passing breeze. Her breathing became a bit more rapid and the sound of her heartbeat became audible over the fountains. She swallowed. She finally did glance at the residence hall, but soon after she moistened her lips and looked back.
Finally, she inhaled deeply, and steeled herself. Forcing her feet forward, she began to walk toward it. She felt her resolve waver more with each step but she finally made it to the door. She swallowed again, looking behind her and around her, before finally reaching out with a trembling hand, grasping the door handle, and after a momentary pause pulling it open and slipping inside.
As soon as the door shut behind her, it immediately grew close and quiet inside. It was completely pitch black, and the only sound was her rapid breathing. It brought a fearful look over her, causing her to tremble nervously. There was nothing to see, obviously. Even the windows had been blacked out, leaving her in utter gloom. Nevertheless, she reached in front of her and stepped forward, trying to rely on her memory as her arms swept around.
It took her a short while, but eventually she bumped into some of the old furniture. Steeling herself as best as she could, for she was growing more scared every moment, she felt around until she found the doorway leading out of the main foyer. Once she reached it, she passed through and kept feeling around, shifting her hands to the wall. Eventually, she hit something that rattled. Realizing it was one of the lamps, she pulled it off and held it in front of her. She fumbled over it a bit before opening it up and finding the wick and small oil well. Immediately, she reached out again and felt until she found a table she could set it down upon. Once there, she reached into her pocket and fished out a box of matches. It took a bit of work, but she got one out, struck it, and moved it into the lamp to light it. Soon it was gleaming and she put out the match before grasping the lantern and holding it up.
“Ah!”
She instantly almost dropped it again, for no sooner had she held it up than she found herself illuminating a face standing across from her. She recoiled in alarm and fright, only to immediately see the other person across from her shriek and do much the same. Yet both of them froze a moment later, and Twilight blinked at her.
“Sun…Sunset Shimmer?”
The woman cringed, like a criminal caught in the act, but then smiled weakly. “Uh…hey there. Funny seeing you here.”
Twilight blinked as she straightened up again. “What are you doing in here?”
“Wha…wha…me?” she answered, looking put on the spot. She glanced about a moment, before she spun back to her. “I could say the same thing about you. Why aren’t you on your shift?”
“Dash just switched with me.”
“Then…how come you aren’t heading back to the residence hall?”
“How come you’re not at the residence hall?”
Both women looked at each other silently for a moment. Their expressions made it clear that both of them didn’t like being caught there, while being equally suspicious of the other person being there. It also soon became clear that both of them were trying to figure out an explanation and trying to buy time by getting an explanation out of the other one. The result was neither knew what to do or say.
Finally, Sunset eyed her and crossed her arms. “Didn’t Celestia tell you never to come in here?”
Twilight winced, but tried to deflect it. “Then…then what are you doing in here?”
“Well…you should know by now that I never did what Celestia told me toward the end. So what’s your excuse?”
Twilight realized she was caught. She tried to backpedal and think of something else to say for a moment, but in the end she sighed and broke. She looked around as if to make sure no one else could see or hear, but finally looked back at Sunset.
“Alright. The headmistress did tell me to stay out of here. And normally I’d do whatever the headmistress told me to do. But…but…” She cringed, moistening her lips. “The truth is…one night… I don’t know why I did it…I don’t know what possessed me or why I got so curious, but… One night I came here.”
Sunset’s eyes widened. “…Seriously?”
“I really don’t know why. Something…just made me want to come here.”
“And…did you see what Celestia had here?”
Twilight looked up and at Sunset, seeing her now intensely staring at her. “Not exactly… Have you?”
Sunset froze a moment, but then shook her head. “No…not exactly. Do you…do you know what she was keeping here?”
Twilight hesitated. She kept her mouth clamped shut for several seconds, definitely appearing unwilling to say anything.
Seeing her hesitation, Sunset pursed her own lips and paused, but finally blurted it out. “Look…I know how you are about obeying Celestia’s rules. And to be honest…the secret she had here is probably the only rule of hers I never wanted to break. I know there’s something here. Something that she didn’t want anyone to find out about, talk about, or even think about. I know it’s here, though. And I can’t forget that it’s here. So…” She looked at her more intently. “Is what I’m talking about what you have in mind…?”
Twilight clenched her hands and continued to look uneasy. However, she finally exhaled again. She shut her eyes and spoke in a quieter voice than before.
“I knew Celestia had a secret here. I don’t know why it was so important to me that I know about it. I usually just waited for her to tell me things rather than tried to find them on my own. For whatever reason, I wanted to know what it was. I found my way in here, and then I started finding secret doors. I opened one into another part of the keep, and I found another secret door that led there to another part. And then another door that led to another part. Eventually, I finally found a place where the keep went underground. Then it became more of…of a dungeon. Nothing but cold stone and mortar and everything forgotten. And I kept going and…”
She shivered.
“And…I finally found my way to a stairwell leading down. There was a flickering light down there. I heard Celestia talking to someone…or some thing. It sounded insane…twisted…horrible… Like it was mad to break free and it wanted to tear everything apart once it got out. And…”
Twilight trailed off here. She was looking at Sunset, and saw the woman’s eyes had widened in a mixture of a fearful memory and astonishment. And seeing that made Twilight’s own look soon mimic it.
“You…you know what I’m talking about, don’t you? You heard…you heard it too, didn’t you?”
Sunset was left frozen a moment longer, looking suddenly like a much younger, weaker, and more helpless child. Yet she blinked and snapped out of it soon after, looking to the floor. She exhaled as if a weight had been on her chest. “I used to think we were so different… But we both disobeyed Celestia over the same thing. And we both made it that far… Did you ever…see it?”
She shook her head. “Never. I never was brave enough to get that close.”
“Me neither,” Sunset sighed. “So…we both know what’s here. We both know what Celestia told us too, didn’t we?”
Twilight grimly nodded. “Don’t talk about it. Don’t think about it.”
“And yet, here you are.”
“And here you are.”
“And we still haven’t explained what either one of us are doing here.”
The two stood silently and looked to one another again.
Sunset, however, sighed after only a few moments. “Alright…I let you break first last time, so it’s only fair. The truth is…whatever this thing in the basement is, it’s been gnawing on my mind ever since I was a child. The only time I’ve ever really felt completely terrified was when I heard that thing’s voice. I still have nightmares about it every once in a while to this day. However…I know Celestia was who was keeping it bound down there. She told me it couldn’t ever get out, but as the years went by I kept telling myself if that was true then she wouldn’t have had to check on it so often.” She looked up and around. “I never really expected to be back in Canterlot again…but I made myself a little promise. If I ever did get back, I was going to make sure it was still down there. Of course…I kind of hoped that I would have had six Anima Viris when that day came. How about you?”
“To tell the truth, that’s pretty much why I’m here. I wanted to make sure it was still there as well. Especially considering what Celestia warned me about it… If what she said was true, then it needs to stay locked up here forever. And if she’s not here to make sure it stays, and Luna apparently doesn’t know about it…then I guess that leaves it to me.” A pause. “I guess we’re both here for the same thing.”
“Yeah…I guess we are.”
Both stared at each other silently again.
“Well…” Twilight finally spoke up. “In that case, would you…um…well…uh…”
“Well what?”
“I was just…er…wondering…um…if…”
“What?”
“Would you like to…go down together?”
Sunset looked a bit surprised. Seeing that, Twilight grasped her arm and winced.
“The truth is…even being here is bringing back every terrifying memory I had from the last time I was there. I’m…actually getting more scared with every step I’d take and I think if I go much farther I’m not going to be able to go at all. So if someone else is here who knows what I’m going to do…I really wouldn’t mind the company.”
Sunset hesitated, but not for too long. She actually gave a weak smile back. “S-S-Sure….no problem.”
Twilight looked a bit surprised that she had accepted, but soon she was able to smile as well. “Great! Um…well…let’s go! I, uh…have the light, so…I guess I’ll take the lead…”
After another moment of hesitation, she began to walk forward again with the lamp. As she moved past Sunset, however, she readily fell in alongside her, and soon the two were continuing through the Northern Keep.
“You…you remember the way?”
“Not exactly, but…I think we start off going this way… I know we pretty much just keep looking for the secret doors…”
As the two continued, they did find the first secret door not long after, and began to worm their way through the deathly silent structure. They seemed to grow a bit slower and more fearful with each secret door they passed through. They stayed almost completely silent, not due for lack of anything to say so much as a desire to keep quiet. Their footsteps, while well insulated from the outside, grew quieter and smaller with each new step.
Both of them visibly slowed when they finally crossed through the door that changed the décor of the Northern Keep. The normal walls with wooden paneling were replaced with bare stone and mortar, and the place grew colder and danker.
Twilight stopped at one point. Sunset froze as well, and looked back at her. It took her several moments before she spoke, but when she did she whispered as quietly as she could. “Is something wrong?”
“I…I just…”
Sunset stood there and waited, but Twilight swallowed and shook her head.
“I just…felt very, very scared just now. Like I really don’t want to be here. If you weren’t here, I think I would have just turned around now.”
Sunset couldn’t even manage a weak smile at that. However, she was able to put her hand on her shoulder and give a squeeze, and with that both of them were able to go further.
It seemed to take another hour to reach their destination though it couldn’t have been more than ten minutes, even with walking slowly. At last, however, both of them turned one final corner…and stopped again.
There it was.
Sunset let out a cold shiver as she saw the narrow, stone-walled staircase leading straight down. There was no light down there this time—only more darkness. Darkness and silence.
Neither moved, and neither wanted to. Movement meant sound, and they didn’t want to make the slightest. They must have stood there for five minutes, but at last Sunset moistened her lips. Suddenly, she scraped her foot against the ground, producing a loud noise.
Twilight snapped to Sunset in alarm, and Sunset herself went rigid, but didn’t move.
Nothing happened. No other sound came from below.
Sunset blinked and slowly exhaled. Twilight, realizing what the purpose of that was, did the same. She looked down again, swallowing, and grasping the lantern more tightly.
“You ok?” Sunset finally asked.
Twilight nodded. “It’s just…this is…this is pretty much the farthest I’ve ever come.”
“Same here. Let’s…take it one step at a time.”
Twilight nodded again. Together, the two slowly inched forward and, as slowly and carefully as they dared, steeled themselves enough to step down on the first step. Once that happened, it was easier for them to slowly go down the next few, although they slowed down before the bottom. Yet with each new step, nothing changed. Everything remained dark and silent.
At long last, both now sweating finally reached the bottom for the first time. Twilight, shaking a little, held up her lantern and shone it in front of them. As it turned out, there was only a short stone hallway in front of them, and only a single room on the side. The door was old, heavy, and oaken, with an iron-barred window. Nothing but darkness inside.
Before she could lose her resolve again, Twilight stepped forward to the front of it. Sunset, following suit, quickly did the same. As Twilight was holding the lantern, she reached out and grasped the handle. They both looked at each other, nodded, and then Sunset swallowed and opened it up.
An old, musty, and yet foul stench greeted them. Not quite enough to gag but it made them both recoil at first. Other than that, nothing. After the initial shock wore off, Twilight risked venturing forward and shone her lantern inside.
The room was reasonably large and square, but mostly empty. However, there were traces of a very large and intricate runic symbol that took up most of the room and even went up the walls. There looked to be remains of where torches or braziers had once been, although they were long gone. There was also scoring from some form of heat or energy staining the floor in the center of the symbol. Aside from that, there was an aperture in the back, although neither one of them looked to that at first.
Both slowly stepped inside, realizing that the place was uninhabited, and as a result lost a touch of their anxiety. Once in, Twilight brought the lantern closer and both looked over the floor.
“Celestia conducted a ritual in here…” Twilight murmured after a while. “Or at least someone did…”
Sunset glanced over the rune, but shook her head. “It doesn’t match anything in any of the books of hers I read. Do you understand it?”
She shook her own head. “No. Not even the structure or the points on the symbol. This was something she never even came close to teaching me.”
She held up the lantern soon after, this time shining it on the aperture. Sunset looked up after it, and both began to approach.
They made out a gated door overlain on it, although the bars were neither rusted nor tarnished but forged of something gleaming and new in the faint light. Looking inside, they saw a dismal stone cell that looked to be about the size of a deep closet. The stench was stronger here, coming from a hole on the floor that they assumed had been a latrine. Shattered plates and dishes that had never been cleaned up were against the back wall. There were chains made of the same gleaming metal in there. These ones were stained with very old blood, especially around the manacles and, what looked like to the two of them, special pieces shaped like gloves and boots as well as a muzzle.
The reason for that soon became clear. There were bloody marks around where the chains were mounted into the wall with the same metal, along with scratches in the stone. Much to their revulsion, the remains of fingernails were embedded in the rock in a few places.
Twilight swallowed a gag and looked to the door. She examined the metal momentarily before making a realization. “Adamantine…”
“Adamantine chains can bind even a god…” Sunset quietly echoed. “That’s what Celestia told me.”
Twilight looked more uncomfortable as she shone her light back into the cell. She studied the chains and the damage before wincing. “What…whatever was in here…was desperate to get out… That’s why the hands and feet were covered…and the teeth… It was trying to claw or…or bite its way free…”
“I guess it succeeded…”
Twilight looked up to Sunset, who was looking more uneasy now as she stared at the cell. After a moment, a weak smile followed by a soft chuckle came from her lips.
“I mean…it’s not here now, is it?” she said somewhat wistfully. “Heh…something else Celestia was wrong about. She told me it couldn’t get out…”
In spite of her face and tone, it was clear that Sunset was rapidly growing more fearful. Twilight herself didn’t much like the sound of that either, but she took a deep breath and steadied herself. “Maybe…but if it was still here, I think we would have known that by now. Whatever it was it’s long gone. This place hasn’t had anyone in it for years.”
“It was it.”
Twilight again looked up to Sunset. Her smile was gone as she turned to Twilight.
“It all makes sense. It’s what Luna was trying to say. She said that the…the you-know-what…was a natural phenomenon. That means it must have been naturally born. That’s why neither Celestia or Luna tried to destroy it. If they did, it would just be born again in some other way.”
The realization came to Twilight of what Sunset was saying. “You mean…this cell… She actually had it trapped? Right here?” She turned back to the empty cell, staring at it a moment longer, but then frowned. “But then Celestia died…and it figured a way out. Maybe it got thin enough to slip through the chains. I mean…” She pointed at the dishes. “Celestia was feeding it. Keeping it alive…”
“And keeping the Anima Viris it needed away from it,” Sunset added. “But that’s over now. It got loose. And now it’s looking for them… I can’t believe it. This whole time, Celestia had it right here. We were sleeping right next door to it…” She let out a noise of disgust. “All of our lives were constantly in danger. If the apocalypse hit, it was going to start right here in Canterlot. How could she be so…”
Twilight looked up to her, but Sunset cut herself off. She frowned and her own face fell.
“Nevermind. I have no room to talk. It’s not like I took what she taught me and did anything responsible with it…”
Twilight glanced back at the cell one last time, then exhaled and turned back to her. “There’s nothing left for us here now. We better get back to the others before anyone wonders where we went.”
She turned and began to head for the entrance.
“Twilight.”
She froze and turned back to her. Sunset was looking up again.
“Until now, I didn’t really fully believe Luna about that thing. And I guess since I just threw its name around, I didn’t really believe Celestia either… But I do now. I’m remembering every horrible thing Celestia said about it and everything I saw with my own eyes. And now it’s loose… It could be anywhere. It could be hiding in this city right now. It could-”
“Sunset.”
The word snapped her out of it. She looked up to Twilight. Although the woman still looked fearful, she solidified herself.
“I’ll stop it. We’ll stop it. It’s what Celestia would have wanted and what she trusted me to do.”
Sunset didn’t answer. She simply stared back silently.
Twilight motioned onward. “Come on.” With that, she turned and began to head out again.
Sunset let the shadows fall over her a moment. She did finally move, but when she did it was with a slow, nervous exhale.
“Maybe if I could still use Anima Viris, I’d feel braver too…” she muttered under her breath.
“Alright, we’ll need each of the indentations for the individual pieces to fit it snugly. It’s got to be seamless along the inside of the bell and tight once they’re inside. Contact is key. So as soon as each piece is fitted, we’ll need to fill it with solder. Not too much, though, or it’ll ruin the charm.”
“Ok. Are we ready for the larger pieces yet?”
“Yes. We should try to cast them all at the same time.”
“We’ll have to file those down once we’re done.”
“Do we have the tools?”
“Er…we’ve got one or two fine files. The others are rusted.”
“Alright then, let’s focus on-”
The sound of the door flying open interrupted Sunset and Twilight’s discussion with the metalworkers over the large, partially-completed Morning Glory in the middle of the shop floor. Both of them looked up and spotted Luna in the door frame. She was glaring at both of them rather sternly.
“You two. Over here. Now.”
Without another word, she turned and walked out of the door. Sunset and Twilight looked to each other, both of them exchanging an uneasy glance. They took deep breaths at the same time as they rose from their position. Sunset proceeded but Twilight paused long enough to look back at everyone else. “Keep finishing the current pieces while we’re gone. It’s important that we get this running as soon as possible.”
With that, she turned and followed after Sunset. Both of them arrived in the hall just in time to see Luna duck into the nearby adjoining room. They both walked over to it and inside. Once in there, they saw Luna was acting hurriedly, and quickly shut the door after them. She wheeled on both angrily, enough to make them recoil.
“You were in the Northern Keep last night, weren’t you?”
Silence hung in the room, and both were frozen for a moment on realizing they had been caught. In the end, Twilight grimaced but nodded. “We were.”
She stared at them crossly in silence. She remained that way for several seconds before her eyes narrowed.
“You already knew what was in there, didn’t you?” She looked between the two of them. “Both of you did.”
Sunset winced, but shrugged. “Well, not exactly…”
“It was that thing, wasn’t it? The thing that you said was going to bring the end of the world?” Twilight mentioned.
Luna was quiet, but sneered and looked to one side, putting her hand on her forehead. “If Celestia was still alive, I’d kill her… She let not one but two people know about that…”
“So it was that thing,” Sunset answered.
Luna looked back at them. “Very well, here’s another question. Why did you go there, knowing it was there?”
“Did anyone else besides you, Sunset, me, and Celestia know about it being down there?” Twilight asked.
Luna paused, but then shook her head.
“That’s what I thought. We had to check to see if it was still down there. With Celestia gone, we were afraid it might have somehow gotten out. Especially after what you told us. And it looks like we were right…”
“That…thing is not your responsibility,” Luna retorted. “I already told you that you can’t stop it. Leave well enough alone.”
“I can’t do that,” Twilight answered. “Celestia is gone, your powers are sealed, and Sunset can’t use Anima Viris anymore. My friends and I are the only ones who can do something about it now. Celestia managed to lock it in the Northern Keep for years.”
“Only because she got the better of it. Only because it didn’t have any of its Anima Viris.”
“Be that as it may, she trapped it once. That means it can be trapped. We have to at least try. We can work on a new prison. One even it can’t get out of.”
Luna let out a sigh. “Celestia-”
She suddenly caught herself. For a brief moment, both Twilight and Sunset saw her blanch, actually looking tense, before she eased again.
“As I told you, it’s a wasted effort. You won’t be able to stop it.”
“She might,” Sunset spoke up. “Her and her friends work pretty well as a team together. If they train with their Anima Viris, they’ll be even stronger. Maybe they can’t win outright, but they don’t plan on doing it that way. Twilight already has one of the Anima Viris it needs. If they can find the others and get them, then they’ll be able to keep it in a weakened state.”
“We have to at least try, Luna,” Twilight stated more imploringly. “We can’t just sit back and let this world end. And I know, deep down, you agree with me.”
Luna softened a little. She still seemed cross, but what she heard seemed to get to her. Enough to at least make her sigh tiredly. She looked up at them again, this time gazing straight in their eyes.
“This isn’t going to go the way you two want. I’m telling you…this will end in a disaster for both of you. I appreciate how you want to honor my sister’s final act…but my sister was foolish for ever even keeping it down here to begin with. I told her on multiple occasions to destroy it. That it would be easier for her to use her power to track it down and destroy it each time it reincarnated if she truly wanted to stop it. She wouldn’t listen…any more than you two are doing right now. Do you really wish to share her fate?”
The coldness with which she said that last portion made both women pause. Sunset herself shook uneasily and bowed her head. Twilight, though, would not be deterred. “I’ve got to risk it. Please, Luna…if there’s anything you can let us know to help us…anything at all…please tell us. We’re going to try either way, but if you would help us we’d have a greater chance…”
Luna looked back at her. In spite of her earlier demeanor and disgust for their intentions, she did hesitate for several seconds. However, she never broke. She finally turned away and began to walk to the door.
“Abandon this. I’m warning you.” She grasped the handle, turned it, and began to step outside. “And if I learn of the two of you going where you don’t belong again, I’ll banish you from Canterlot.”
She entered the hall, turned, and walked down…just in time to push right past Starlight Glimmer rather brusquely as she came the other way. She actually let out a yelp and went to one side, watched her storm past, and then uneasily stepped forward. She looked into the room and spotted both women.
“Um…hello. We got to the roundabout station. Is this a bad time?”
“She said the station was in good shape. A little out of order, but nothing that we can’t get working again. This afternoon she’ll move the train down there, and then we’ll set it on the right track for Manehattan.”
Rarity, in her full form of the Magician, darted in with a few more rapid thrusts in the air, before practicing her footwork a little. “I had no idea that Ms. Cheerilee had taken more advancing fencing back in her higher education…” she mused aloud, before turning to Twilight. “Oh, you should see if she can route through Ponyville, darling. That’s reasonably northeast in through Manehattan, and I’m sure they’ll be happy to take in the refugees.”
“Yeah…like Mount Aris took them in…” Applejack grumbled from nearby as she practiced some of the drills that she had learned from Bright Macintosh. After taking a few more swings, she looked to one side. “Hey Pinkie Pie? How long have I been in so far?”
“Two hours, Applejack!”
“Two…fer the love of… I swear time don’t move as fast in here!”
Pinkie Pie, however, was already lighting up to Twilight. “You know, I was kind of thinking that everyone could stay here! There’s plenty of nice buildings no one’s using, farms, and kitchens loaded with baking goods! Since no one lives in Equestria, why don’t we make a new home right here? I’m sure they even have nice rocks around here for Maud and the family to dig for! Even Limestone almost smiled at the cathedral’s stone!”
“Been kind of nice sleeping in a bed under a roof again,” Dash shrugged before resuming her own fighting drills.
Sunset frowned. “Don’t forget that we’re still in the heart of Nighttouched country. We were ok last night, but for all we know as soon as one spots us we’ll have thousands attacking. We don’t even have enough manpower and weapons to defend this courtyard.”
Twilight nodded. “So long as we’re still without a Morning Glory, we need to keep to the plan of getting in and getting out as soon as possible. Until then, we’ve got to be ready for action. We have to be ready to leave at a moment’s notice.”
“And keep training,” Sunset threw in.
“I have to say, Luna’s pointers were much appreciated,” Rarity said as she paused to wipe some sweat from her brow, before dismissing her Anima Viri. As her rapier turned back into an umbrella, she balanced on it while fanning herself with one hand. “I feel much more at ease now about combat, ghastly as it is. I only wish we had a few more of those Anima Viris between us.” She turned her head to one side. “Rainbow Dash, I don’t suppose you might give it a try, would you? I must say, as avante garde as it will be, I’m a bit curious to see what new Role you’ll end up with.”
Dash merely frowned as she threw a few more punches. “I’ll do it when I have to,” she practically muttered. “Stop bugging me about it…”
Rarity sighed before turning to Pinkie Pie. “How long was I that time, Pinkie?”
“A new record, Rarity! Thirty-three minutes!”
The designer looked rather pleased with herself. Sunset struggled not to palm herself in the face. Twilight took a deep breath, and turned over to the other member of the group.
There Fluttershy stood in her Rogue role. In spite of Luna’s advice, she had barely seemed to get any better at combat…likely due to her timid nature. Now, underneath Twilight’s gaze, she swallowed a lump and trembled slightly. Shaking in both of her hands was her dagger.
“Fluttershy…you ready?”
“I…I g-g-guess so…”
“Let’s give it a try. See if you can do it for a whole song.”
“Ok…”
Fluttershy took in a deep breath, before holding her hand up and calling forth her second Anima Viri. Soon after, her aura doubled, and those in the room turned their attention to her as the wind and glow picked up. Once more, she was in the form of the Minstrel, with one difference from her first transformation. Her dagger had turned into an elegantly-crafted lute made of heartwood.
Once in this form, she took a deep breath, and then put it up to her side. “Well…here it goes…”
She closed her eyes, steadied herself, and then moved her fingers over the strings. At once, a very beautiful, soft melody came forth. One far more lovely, potent, and flowing than any other tune that they had ever heard before. It immediately attracted their attention with how it sounded, and soon they found themselves not only focusing their hearing on it but even feeling their minds dwelling on nothing but the song.
As she continued playing, she began to sing.
“Hush now, quiet now,
It’s time to lay your sleepy head…
Hush now, quiet now,
It’s time to go to bed…”
As Fluttershy kept singing, the ladies were only drawn more to her voice and song. And as they kept listening to it, and devoting more attention to it, they began to relax and become more at ease. They either sat more comfortably or leaned against the walls to listen just to her…
“Drifting off to sleep,
Exciting day behind you…
Drifting off to sleep,
Let the joy of dreamland find you…”
The ladies kept listening to her. As they did, Applejack let out a yawn as her head started to nod. Rainbow Dash stretched a bit before crossing her arms. Rarity did a much more “lady-like” hand cover over her mouth to mask her own yawn, and Twilight’s eyelids began to flutter. Sunset’s head nodded a bit, and Pinkie herself actually leaned back on the floor and put her hands behind her head.
“Hush now, quiet now,
It’s time to lay your sleepy head…”
Fluttershy let out an exhale, as if getting a bit winded.
“Hush now…quiet now…”
Her own eyes began to blink as she looked rather weary.
“It’s time to…go to…b…b…”
Finally, she let out a tired sigh, and her Anima Viris were dismissed. Once again, she was in her regular clothes, and her lute transformed back into the hairbrush she had brought with her earlier. She wobbled a bit and had to steady herself, but managed to keep her balance this time.
The others remained in a daze a moment longer before they realized the song was over, and all of them began to grow alert again as if just waking up. Twilight blinked a few times as she realized what happened, then finally turned to Fluttershy. “That was great for only two days! You almost made it through the whole song!”
“Heh…yay…” she weakly muttered.
“I must say, these doubled Anima Viris are quite fantastic,” Rarity added. “These current Roles are good and all, but with an ability like that to influence everyone around her?”
“I thought that myself,” Sunset spoke up. “The Archer was nice for a combat role, but the Minstrel might be more beneficial to dealing with swarms of creatures like the Nighttouched. Fluttershy might be able to be a mobile ‘Morning Glory’ if she can master it.”
“Doesn’t that sound great, Fluttershy?” Dash called out.
“Um…yay…” she weakly muttered again.
Twilight exhaled as she began to get up. “Well, I’m pretty glad with the progress we’ve made so far, but we’ve got a long way to go. Let’s break for lunch.”
“Yay!” Pinkie cheered as she leapt up. “That’s another good thing about living in Canterlot! Three meals a day!”
The rest of the ladies began to rise and get their things together, although Pinkie bounded over to Fluttershy and offered an arm to lean on as she made her way out. Dash readily dismissed her own Anima Viri as she turned to leave, but Applejack called out to her. “Don’t ya’ even wanna try it to start buildin’ your endurance?”
“Relax,” Dash retorted as she walked out. “I’ll do it when I have to.”
Twilight and Sunset soon followed behind, but Applejack frowned as she dismissed her own Anima Viri and tucked her hammer in her side. When it was just her and Rarity left she started to mutter aloud. “She’s the toughest one of us next to me. She’d probably turn out somethin’ real strong. With all her boastin’ and braggin’ all the time, you’d think she’d be head over heels trying out two Anima Viris.”
“Dash has been like that since I met her,” Rarity sighed, leaning on her parasol a little. “I suppose I can’t blame her. She must have had terrible ‘survivor guilt’ over what happened to her old captain. Having another member of her old team on her hand only made it worse.”
“Well shucks…I’d think she’d be happy that her old crew was ‘fightin’ alongside’ her…” Applejack frowned as she looked at her hand. “Goodness knows I feel good knowin’ my old man’s right here…”
Rarity’s face fell a little. She looked down to her own hand, her eyes going to the emblem there. Remembering how she obtained it. She stared at it for a moment, before she reached into her pocket. Applejack noticed her doing this and turned to look, just in time to see her pull out a wilted, dead flower. Nevertheless, she stared at it intently enough.
“What’s that?”
“Just a reminder…” Rarity said soberly. “A reminder of just how much we’ve all lost. I plucked this flower the very same day I watched Ms. Cheerilee die. It was from my first major client. She passed away and I was so wrapped up in my work I never even knew. Sometimes I wonder if I would have known if I had paid a bit more attention…or if I just wanted to wrap myself so much in my work that I wouldn’t stop to think about it.” She sighed as she put it away. “Many things about me had to change when my parents died. And many other things changed once my sister was gone.”
Applejack frowned, lowering her own hat. “I can imagine that. I’ve lost more’n I care to count. My whole family has. Taught me to cling as hard as I could to keep what I could. To make sure I didn’t lose that too.” She grimaced a little. “Toughened me up in more ways than one…” she nearly muttered. She dug her boot into the ground and exhaled. She moistened her lips and stayed there a moment, before she finally said a little more. “I’ve…kinda done my share of things I ain’t to proud of either…”
Rarity looked back up and at her for a moment, nearly asking more, but stopping herself. After a second, she smiled a bit. “Well…don’t dwell on it, darling. We all had to make rough decisions when the Light Eaters came. The important thing is you did it for the right reasons. For your family…your homestead. Things far less selfish and desperate than many of us.”
Applejack still looked down, but she finally let out a small exhale. “I s’pose you’re right… Although you’re in the same boat too. Helpin’ out your hometown and all that?”
Rarity hesitated, but shrugged. “I suppose so…”
“Probably why you’re so eager to get back and see how it’s doin’, right?”
“Well…well yes. I haven’t been back in a long time, and I would like to see how it’s doing. Knowing my business helped it…”
Applejack forced a smile. “Then I reckon we ain’t got much reason for mopin’. ‘Specially not now when we still got a job to do.” She smirked. “So let’s quit all this lollygaggin’ and enjoy some of them three meals a day while we still can, a’right?”
Rarity looked up after a moment, and her own smile became more genuine. “I think that sounds like a wonderful idea.”
Applejack turned to leave. Rarity paused, looking back at the dead flower in her hands. She thought about it silently for a few moments before following the farmer.
“Lower it…lower it…nice and easy…there.”
Igneous and Apple Split, with a bit of grit and elbow grease, finished lowering the chains and pullies to put the top half of the emerging Morning Glory onto its bottom half—joining them into one piece with a clang. Sunset exhaled and looked over it a moment, studying it to make sure that all was well and intact. After giving it an inspection, she nodded her head.
“Alright, looks pretty good. We’re making better progress than I hoped. On to the next piece…” She paused momentarily, looking around the workshop. Aside from Igneous and Apple Split, there were a few other people working on some of the cruder bits, but they would be done soon and everything left would be the fine metalwork. However, she noticed that they were all that was there.
“Where’s Twilight? I need her for the next part.”
“Verily, she hath been summoned posthaste by our ghostly host,” Igneous replied.
“Excuse me?”
“That dark-lookin’ woman who had the funny key to get in here pulled her aside while you were in the back,” Apple Split ‘translated’. “Said she wanted to talk to her ‘bout a few things in private.”
Sunset paused. She failed to notice or appreciate the fact that she had been left on her own with other individuals for once and hadn’t felt the slightest bit of anxiety and fear. Instead, she focused on the fact that Luna had pulled her aside without bringing her along too. She frowned a little in response.
“Did you see where they went?”
“Reckon they headed down the hall a ways, is all.”
She nodded. “Thank you. You two can take five.” With that, she turned and went out the door to the classroom.
As spacious as the academy was, it wasn’t terribly hard to find someone that was missing considering how empty it was. Most of it along with the courtyard was so quiet and still that it was impossible to miss anyone making any sort of noise. As a result, Sunset didn’t have to walk down the halls that far before she heard the sounds of a bit of talking far on the other end. She picked up her pace to get down there faster, but as it turned out it was unnecessary.
Halfway to the room, Twilight stepped out and turned to face her, a bit surprised at her coming. Luna emerged soon after, but she was walking rapidly and paid neither woman either mind as she went the opposite way. She soon hit the stairwell and went right up.
Sunset glanced after her a moment before looking at Twilight. “What was that?”
Twilight sighed a little as she approached. “Luna was just asking me more about what all I had seen in the Northern Keep. Is the next phase of the Morning Glory ready? I can get to work on it now.”
Sunset, however, didn’t let it slide so easily and planted her feet. “Well why didn’t you tell me you were stepping out? You just snuck away without saying anything.”
Twilight stopped. She hesitated a moment before she grimaced. “Well…er…the reason is Luna told me she wanted to hear in private, without you around.”
Sunset, in spite of everything she had been through and how her demeanor had changed, actually looked a little disgusted. “And…why is that?”
“I don’t know. But what does it matter?”
“Why am I being left out of the loop all of the sudden? It’s bad enough that she clearly has secrets she’s keeping from all of us. We’re already keeping some of this behind the backs of the others. Now we’ve got to keep things behind each other’s backs?”
“I think she was just trying to make sure we weren’t making up a story…” She paused, frowning a little. “And please don’t take this the wrong way, Sunset…but after everything you kept behind our backs and everything you did, I don’t think you’re really in a position to criticize.”
Sunset’s eyes widened, and for a moment a flash of anger went over her face. “I’m not? After everything she-” However, she cut herself off soon after. She took a moment to close her eyes and take a deep breath, and slowly let it out. After that, her expression slumped again and she sighed. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. I’m hardly one to call out anyone on anything… I suppose I should get used to that from now on...”
Twilight looked a bit uneasy herself at Sunset’s response, a bit in spite of herself and their past. She exhaled again as she looked to one side. “At any rate, it wasn’t anything big. She just wanted to know why I went to the Northern Keep the second time.”
Sunset frowned a bit. “She knows that full well. We told her yesterday.”
This made Twilight nervously cringe. “Er…that’s…not what I was talking about.”
Sunset was quiet for a moment, staring at Twilight, until what she said clicked. Her eyes widened. “You snuck out to the Northern Keep a second time when you were still a student?”
She blushed in embarrassment.
“Sheesh, and I thought I was disobedient… So why did you?”
Twilight sighed and bowed her head. “To tell the truth, I don’t really know. It had been…well, a stressful day. Things went a bit wrong in class and I ended up getting a talking-to by Celestia. I almost got in trouble with Professor Inkwell, and…well…when I was in my room thinking about everything, I thought back to the Northern Keep. And I got curious about what was down there, and wondering if the reason Celestia was so stressed out when I spoke to her was because of what was down there. So…so I went back.” She exhaled nervously. “But when I got there, it was laughing horribly. Hideously even. And when I got close enough…I only had to hear it once to go back to my room. I never had the courage to go down there again.”
Sunset stared back silently. She didn’t move or show anything.
Twilight noticed her silence. “Is something wrong?”
Sunset’s look grew somewhat puzzled. “Twilight…why exactly went wrong in your class?”
She turned red again. “Oh…um… I…er…sort of broke the rules. Celestia told me she wanted me to be in the lower level classes even though I was mastering the more advanced magic. One of my classmates was reading ahead along with me, so I…um…kinda, sorta thought it was ok to try out a Level VI Gradual Petrification curse on her. I got a bit carried away and…well…the professor had to step in. But she was pretty mad at me for that. Celestia had to talk her in to letting me back into her class after that.”
Sunset stared back at Twilight with wide-eyes. “Did…you say a Level VI Gradual Petrification curse?” Her voice had lowered.
Twilight looked confused, but also a bit unnerved at Sunset’s change. “Yes…why?”
Sunset stared on at her a little longer. She looked at the ground, her surprise turning to disbelief, confusion, and even uncertainty.
“Sunset?”
She blinked twice and exhaled. “Nothing…nothing, I guess. Probably nothing.”
Twilight didn’t look entirely convinced by that, but then began to walk again. “Come on. I think if we push it, we might have that Morning Glory finished before dusk.” She walked past the woman and began to make her way toward the workshop.
“Twilight.”
She stopped and looked back. Sunset looked up at her uncertainly.
“Do you…remember the name of the student you performed that curse on?”
“Oh…” She winced a moment in further embarrassment. “I used to be so buried in books that I was terrible with names… Hers was…um… Moon…Moonprancer, no…Moondancer! I’m almost certain that was it, Moondancer!”
She turned about and kept going down the hall.
Sunset, however, was left staring silently after her. It was some time before she was able to only slowly and silently follow after her. And for the rest of the day, her mind was ablaze with so many new thoughts that she could barely say a word to anyone.
Starlight let out a bit of an uneasy sigh as she drew back her sheets. “One more night… Just one more night of having to sleep on edge…”
Sunset looked up a bit from her own bed. While she had eased down from earlier, she still looked rather uncertain and had been quiet for the rest of the day. However, Twilight spoke up for her as she arranged her own bed neatly before getting in. “It might be sooner than that. We’re just letting some of the components cool right now. But after that, we just need to fix the reinforcement rods into place and mount it, and we should be able to test it out. Right, Sunset?”
“Huh?” she spoke up, distracted from her thoughts. “Oh yeah…right…”
“Of course…” Twilight admitted as she leaned down to pet Spike, causing him to curl up on a rug on the floor. “We don’t necessarily know if it will work just yet… On that note, how is the train coming?”
“I’d feel better if we had someone who was a true engineer of these things, but it’s looking pretty good. Train’s all in working order. We finally managed to get the roundabout station to run, but we haven’t figured out how to start up the steam engines at the station yet. So we had to hand crank the tracks to get everything moved. It took most of the day but we finally got it on the right track. We should be ready to go tomorrow. We just have to hope the tracks are clear all the way back to Manehattan… It’s almost a shame. We just figured out how to get the lights in the lower floors of the school to work.”
“Well, the sooner we get out of here the better, so long as we don’t know for sure we can defend this place,” Twilight sighed as she went to her own bed. “None of the Nighttouched have spotted us yet, but they’re still running around in the city, and there’s been more of them. I don’t know if they smell something or what but I don’t want to find out. We’ll all be gone soon.”
As Starlight settled into her own bed, she paused and glanced back at Twilight. “Are you sure you want to do that so soon?”
Twilight just began to pull back her own sheets before she looked at her in confusion. “What do you mean?”
“Well…we’ve got a mixture of refugees, fugitives, escapees, and AWOL soldiers. Not to mention a number of people with Anima Viris in a world that’s increasingly militarizing them… And I’m still wanting to get you out to that hidden facility I found, and, at the moment, the Manehattan government still thinks that I’m just a reclaimer for roadways. So…maybe we should think a bit hard about how we want to go there?”
Twilight paused, thinking about that halfway into her own bed. She grimaced a bit at the thought. “You might have a point… Maybe we should-”
She cut herself off. At that moment, she had gone rigid, along with Starlight and Sunset. Spike had just been starting to lay down when he held his head up, letting out a whine. As they went silent, they heard the sound more clearly from outside, and it was unmistakable.
One of the warning bells.
Twilight hesitated only a moment longer, then called out. “Let’s go!”
At once, all three shot back out of bed and raced for their clothes, throwing them on as fast as they could. By the time they were dressed and bursting out of their room, some of the older refugees were already escorting the children down into the basement while everyone else was still clambering into their clothes and taking up their weapons. The three of them, on the other hand, rushed straight for the stairwell, all while the bell continued to ring. Along the way, Twilight’s group ran alongside Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy.
“Hey Twilight! You heard the bell too?” Pinkie smiled, seeming oblivious to the danger.
“What’s going on?” Starlight shot back to both of them.
“I don’t know!” Fluttershy remarked fearfully, driving herself forward out of panic more than boldness. “I just heard the bell start to ring! We didn’t see or hear anything else! I told Angel Bunny to stay put and came running!”
“Do you have something you can use for a weapon?”
“You got it!” Pinkie cheered, holding up a spatual from the kitchen. Fluttershy meekly held up her hairbrush.
“Hold on tight! Be ready for anything!”
The group finished descending the stairs and ran to the entrance, bursting out into the courtyard. Once there, Starlight looked around for a moment, her eyes darting to the various walls. At the moment, things still looked calm. Most of the area was dark and there were no signs of any Nighttouched or other foes. Aside from the clanging bell, the courtyard was still safe.
Starlight finally pointed. “There! On the northwest side!”
The group turned and looked. Sure enough, they could barely make out the shadow of one of the guards ringing the bell, and the other people assigned to the watch were rapidly running over along the wall. Soon after, Twilight led the way as their own gathering ran across the courtyard to the nearest embedded tower. They quickly shot up the stairs, taking them two at a time, as the bell kept ringing, and although the whole excursion left them rather winded they made it to the top.
Almost immediately, they ran into Applejack and Rainbow Dash standing there waiting for them. “Glad you came runnin’ so quick!” The former shouted to them as they hit the top.
Twilight, panting a bit, steadied herself a moment. “Where’s Shining Armor?”
“Over yonder! He’s the one ringin’ the bell!”
“Where’s Rarity?” Dash immediately asked.
“We’re the first ones up here!” Sunset shouted back. “Everyone else is right behind!”
“Normally I’d say I could take this all by myself…but I think we’re going to need everyone we got for this!”
None of the women liked the sound of that very much. “What do you mean?”
She pointed out beyond the wall. “See for yourself!”
Twilight, Starlight, and Sunset looked.
It may have been night already, but in spite of that they could make out the shape of a very large, very dark, and ominous shadow looming over part of the city. It wasn’t like fog or even a storm cloud. More like nothing but pure darkness, somehow given a tangible, voluminous form. It was slowly moving through the main road of the town, up the hill, right for the citadel.
And it wasn’t alone.
As it drew closer, they could see something within the shadow…advancing underneath its darkness and shade. Lights. Dozens of them. Hundreds of them. It was hard to make out what they were at first. They weren’t the normal lights of Nighttouched swarms, although they were gathered together strongly enough and moving in synchronization enough to be mistaken for them on pattern alone.
Yet looking a bit closer, it was possible at last to make out what they were. Green lights coming from what looked like masks or helmets. A vivid and yet putrid hue, like rot or decay. And positioned right over the position of where the eyes should be. And since they were masks and helmets, they testified to the hundreds of individuals walking in unison under them. Individuals dressed in twisted, noxious costumes studded with spikes and tufts of hair. All in dark colors and composed of metal and leather. Like they were barbarians or savages. Indeed, most of them were wielding crude battle axes, hammers, cleavers, and other handmade weapons.
Beyond them, however, were another set of glowing lights. These ones were far more widespread, spilling out beyond and behind the shadow to flood out into the surrounding streets and homes and moving through and around them as they advanced. These ones were Nighttouched. Thousands of them. Only their eyes weren’t the same as normal Nighttouched. They were the same sickly green with red pupils now, and seemed to be giving off a purplish haze.
Finally, as the shadow cleared the last row of houses and was left with nothing but the road to the citadel, from within the darkness, lights began to emerge. A pair of dark, burning, malevolent eyes…the same sickly green with blood red pupils and issuing forth purple smoke…emerged from within.
Twilight turned pale.
“It’s here. That thing that conquered my home and drove out Shining Armor…it’s here.”
It didn’t take long for the others to finish running up the stairs and rush over to the wall where the others were standing patrol, but on seeing what Twilight and the group had spotted they froze in their tracks. A few of them, mostly those who had escaped the shadow once, paled and went as still as statues. Two of them turned and ran back down the stairs, one of them beginning to babble hysterically. Everyone else who remained was soon stricken with terror.
Twilight couldn’t be sure, but she almost swore she could see the dark cloud twisting when people ran. Like it was…smiling.
“Twily!”
Snapping out of it, she turned to the voice of Shining Armor. He was still poised at the bell, but he had stopped ringing by now, and was now radiating with his own aura in the Healer role.
“What are you waiting for? Come on!”
Twilight hesitated a moment, but then nodded back. She quickly held up her hand and drew on Starswirl and her own aura lit up. Seeing that light ignite shook the others out of their terror. Where until now they had been stuck staring at the cloud with increasing dread, they now looked to Twilight as she assumed the role of the Caster. And seeing her looking powerful with her new blazing aura emboldened them. The rest of the women quickly donned their own Roles one after another, and by the time six auras were perched on the wall, it served enough to quickly stir the others out of their own fear. They were able to muster their courage and continue all the way to the parapet, taking cover and leveling their weapons at the approaching foes.
Twilight, Applejack, Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, and Pinkie Pie all moved up near Shining Armor. Sunset nearly followed, but hesitated on realizing she couldn’t help. Starlight stayed at her side, taking up a rifle and ammunition clip nearby. After a moment of seeing her loading it up and getting it ready, Sunset reluctantly began to do the same.
“So…” Twilight exhaled nervously. “How do we fight this thing?”
“I was kind of hoping you had an idea…” Shining Armor spoke back uneasily. “I can only help people like this. I can’t fight back against it. And…I honestly don’t know how you go about fighting a shadow.”
“You reckon it works like the Tantabus thing did?” Applejack suggested. “Like maybe we can hurt it like it’s some normal Light Eater?”
“Maybe…but it’s huge just like the Tantabus. It’ll take us all time to fight it, and it has minions helping it.”
“It…it looks a bit…scarier…than the Tantabus did…” Fluttershy muttered.
“Yeah! The Tantabus didn’t have big bloody eyes that looked like they’re burning!” Pinkie offered. “You don’t think he’s going to be harder than it, do you?”
“To hell with it…” Dash retorted, putting her fist in her hand. “Let’s just get out there and start attacking! Where’s Rarity? We need her for this!”
“Hold up, y’all…” Applejack cut in, holding her hand out to them while pointing with her other. “It’s doin’ somethin’!”
Everyone focused on it again. Sure enough, the situation had changed. All of the Nighttouched and barbarians that were walking with it suddenly halted. The shadow over them, however, had begun to churn over itself and billow like a growing storm cloud. And as it did, it raised itself up and over its followers, spreading its black, inky tendrils through the air and blazing its blood red eyes forth with greater intensity and power.
Then, as if the wind had changed, it suddenly swept forward and began to roll over the remaining distance…right for the wall where everyone was gathered.
“No…”
Twilight turned to Shining Armor, seeing his own eyes widening with panic. The rest of the people with them from Hoofheim began to tremble and break. They lowered their weapons and shrank back with growing fear.
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s doing what it did before!” he shouted back. He quickly spun to the group. “Everyone hang on! Brace yourselves! Don’t give into it!”
“What’re you-”
Twilight cut herself off. The shadow was moving too fast. Already, it was looming over them. She could see the lights within it and, indeed, they looked just like hideous eyes glaring down at them all. Malevolent…greedy…hungry… She could almost hear it on the air as it rushed in on them like a storm front, or even an avalanche.
Heh…heh…heh…
Twilight went rigid, immobilized by shock…and fear. Her mind couldn’t work. She didn’t know what to do. As she stared at it, Shining Armor whipped around to her. He ran up to her as fast as he could, and just as the shadow spilled over them and everyone else on the wall he put his arms around her as if he was trying to be a human shield. Moments later, both of their auras were snuffed out along with everything else…swallowed in darkness.
Within the blackness, it was impossible to see anyone or anything. The wall had vanished, as had the citadel and the city of Canterlot. Everything was now nothing but darkness—vast, empty, and stretching infinitely everywhere. Eternal nothingness in all directions. Twilight couldn’t see her own body, let alone that of Shining Armor or anyone else around her. However, she didn’t have anything but blackness to look at long.
Inside her mind, she began to see things. Images of her family coldly turning their back on her as a stranger. Not just in the present, but in the past. Seeing the crying child on their doorstep and throwing her out to slam the door in her face. Leaving her horrified and agonized. It felt like icy knives were being driven into her heart with each uncaring look and gesture.
That wasn’t all, though. When she turned away, she saw the carriage on fire again. Only this time, there was no flaming oblivion. There were the twisted, malformed remains of her students roasted alive. Reaching out as if they had struggled to escape but had been left to burn.
And through it all, rising like a demon from a pyre, was Celestia’s roasted corpse. Her bony, blackened fingers pointed out accusatory at her while her drying lips revealed a mouth full of charred teeth. As parts of her scalp and skull crumbled to dust, she could hear her voice.
You failed me… You failed all of us…
Her eyes widened in horror. Feelings of dread…of terror…of failure…of hopelessness…all washed in on her like a deluge. Weighing down on her like an elephant on her chest. Blackening out any good thought or happiness she ever had. Wiping it out of her memory, as if feeling joy had never been anything but a childish dream or fantasy… Smothering her…drowning out any light…any life…any will inside of her…
I never should have made you my student… I hate you…
Her jaw slackened as her retinas began to turn red. The corneas started to turn a putrid green. Bleakness…sadness…despair… That was all she could think now. All that there was. All that there would ever be in the world…
“Twily!”
From out of the smothering darkness and despair, a faint, weak voice sounded. It barely reached her, nothing more than the faintest glow. But in the world of blackness and despair, it was a glow. A warm one. A hopeful one. And weak as it was, her mind gravitated toward it. Enough to where she was able to look away from the flaming bodies, the cold rejection, and the misery she was feeling. She kept looking at it, and she struggled to reach it. It grew brighter as a result, and banished away the images and terror. It grew stronger and so did the voice with it.
“Twily!”
Twilight let out a gasp within the endless blackness, like she had nearly drowned but broke the surface just in time. Although she was surrounded by darkness, she felt Shining Armor holding onto her. She heard his voice. He was here in the darkness with her.
“Shining Armor!”
She heard him gasp in relief. “You’re out! You broke free!”
Twilight blinked a few times, still taking deep breaths, but then looked around. In spite of Shining Armor’s hopeful voice, they were still immersed in darkness. And while he sounded like he was here and alright, she quickly realized they might be alone in that. All around them, embedded in the endless gloom, there were lights coming on. Blood red lights with green corneas. On seeing them, she began to hear voices around her.
“Why…why?! Why was I even born?!”
“Come back! Come back! Don’t leave me!”
“Go…go away! I had to! I had to take care of them!”
“You…you hate me, don’t you? For what I did? I couldn’t stop myself!”
“No! I did my duty! I saved lives!”
“Let me die… Just…just please let me die…”
It took Twilight a moment to realize it was the voices of the ladies. Yet in as an agonized, twisted, broken cacophony. Everyone making noise at once and impossible to sort it out. And soon, they vanished as more voices joined them from everyone else on the wall. She even heard Spike’s whining over it.
The shadow was taking them. Invading their minds. Crushing them with their own fears and despair. And unlike her, no one was there to pull them all out. She wasn’t sure she could help any of them…let alone pull them all back…
Yet just as her fears began to surface, a voice…powerful and resonant…stronger than all of the darkness and piercing it through and through…spoke two words.
“Be…still!”
Twilight almost heard an angry snarl on the wind as, with a tremendous gust, the gloom was blown back and away. It receded and the night sky and the wall was once again revealed. She once more saw Shining Armor holding onto her, and both of them were glowing with their Anima Viris. They stared at each other in bewilderment, then looked around.
Everyone was about them, twisted in expressions of pain and horror. Their eyes had nearly turned. Yet now free from the darkness, they held those positions only a bit, and then began to blink and ease. The blood and green vanished from their eyes again, restoring them to normal, and their looks turned to anxious bewilderment, like they were awakening from a nightmare. Fluttershy continued to cringe, but slowly peeked out from her hair. Spike shook his head and got up before trotting over to Twilight. Applejack let out a few gasps and rubbed her brow. Rainbow Dash looked like she had been primed for a fight she was going to lose when she eased. Pinkie simply blinked a few times before hopping up, seeming confused by the whole thing. Starlight looked around tensely for a moment before rising. Sunset clutched her chest and let out a long exhale to steady herself. They slowly eased and looked around, and saw that the shadow was retreating; resuming its place above the attacking barbarians and monsters.
Twilight looked around, trying to spot their savior, and soon let out a gasp on seeing her in their midst.
Luna was standing there now, and she was clad from head to toe in ornate, Equestrian armor looking like it was made of silver and etched with emblems of the moon. Her helmet enclosed around her eyes and mouth, but one could still make her face out and her eyes from within. A long spear was in her hand and against the ground with a gleaming tri-bladed tip, and her hair had been let loose to flutter behind her almost like a cape or banner. In the dim night light, it seemed to gleam like a sky of stars. Her hard eyes looked boldly and without fear into the eyes of the monstrosity as it retreated.
And with that, the eyes developed a new look.
Anger.
As everyone slowly recovered, Shining Armor let Twilight go as he, and most of the others, now looked at Luna in awe. She never broke or regarded them, however. Twilight swallowed. “Luna…th-thank y-”
“Save your gratitude. This is far from over,” she coldly cut off. “I’m doing my best to bluff Sombra at the moment. All I have left to me is the power of my voice, and while it might have been enough to command him to release you so long as he relies on such power to be tangible to the living world, it’s far from enough to defeat him. The moment he realizes I’ve lost my power he’ll destroy you all and raze Canterlot to the ground.”
“Wha…what?” Twilight half-stammered. The others around her looked to her in shock and confusion.
“What are you talking about? Sombra? ‘Such power’?” Sunset echoed back.
“There is no time for questions,” Luna retorted, still not looking away. “You’re outmanned and overpowered. You have one hope now: the Morning Glory. It’s the only thing that can drive him away.”
“The Morning Glory?”
“Did I not just say there’s no time for questions?”
Twilight stammered a moment. Sunset, however, jumped in. “It isn’t ready yet! We were still waiting for the final pieces to cool!”
“Then finish it now! And bring it out here while you have time! I’m not sure how long we’ll be able to keep him at bay!”
Now Twilight not only looked stunned, but everyone else on the wall with her. They anxiously turned and looked at Luna. “Hang on a sec!” Rainbow Dash protested. “Twilight’s the best at her Anima Viri! We need her to defend the wall!”
“Do any of you know how to finish a Morning Glory?”
The group was quiet for a moment. Dash herself winced. “Uh…no.”
“Then keep quiet! Sunset Shimmer, Twilight Sparkle, do as I say! Take anyone you need with you! The rest of you, we will hold the gates of Canterlot as long as necessary for them to complete their task! Understand?”
There was a moment of hesitation from the group. Many of them looked fearful and uneasy. Twilight herself was uncertain, looking back to the shadow that was halting its retreat and then back to the academy. Yet after a moment, she swallowed, and reached out and took Sunset’s hand.
“Right. We’ll need Igneous Pie and Apple Split to help us finish, and then Big Macintosh to help us haul it. Everyone else, stay here and stand your ground!”
Shining Armor took one deep inhale, but then nodded back. “Right. Everyone, you heard that! Stand your ground! We’ll keep them out of the walls no matter what!”
Sunset was hesitant a moment longer, but soon Twilight began to pull her along. When that happened, she exhaled but then quickly fell in step behind her. Igneous Rock Pie soon followed after, having not even taken up a firearm to begin with, while Big Macintosh hesitated, looking anxiously back at Applejack.
“We’ll be fine! Just git so you can get back quick!”
He cast her one more long, anxious look before he finally made the turn and left. The remaining people who were armed quickly took their places on the wall and got their weapons at the ready. That left the four remaining girls, already in their Anima Viris. Dash and Applejack took one look at Luna in her current form, not really sure how to take this recent turn of events, but ending up resigning themselves to stepping forward. Pinkie quickly hopped up at their side.
“Wasn’t there supposed to be five of you?” she mused aloud. “Well, no matter. We’ll have to hold them with what we have.”
“You, uh…really think we can take out a guy who’s nothing but a big shadow?” Dash asked.
“You’re about to find out.”
At that point, the shadow was no longer idle. While it stayed behind and the eyes reformed, still looking angrier than ever, there was a new unified movement going on. The barbarians were beginning to advance in ranks toward the gates. They brandished their weapons menacingly, even if their faces were obscured from view.
However, that wasn’t all the group noticed. They heard a crackling sound through the air. Like a frozen river or lake would make during the spring thaw, echoing up and down through the valley. It took them a moment to wonder what it would be before one of those on the wall, who turned out to be the Huntsman Celaeno, looked up from her own position and spotted it. She immediately pointed. “Look down there!”
The others did so and saw the area alongside the path advancing to the gates. The ground was fracturing around it. And in its wake, shards like obsidian were emerging from the ground in razor sharp clustered formations. They seemed to be forming a crystal palisade along either side of the pathway, as fearsome and menacing as it was. It was almost trying to seal off the potential battlefield against any escape as the barbarians advanced…
Applejack stared at a bit longer, but then exhaled. “Well, it ain’t gettin’ any safer down there.” She hefted her hammer. “Let’s go!”
To the surprise of the others gathered, she simply vaulted right over the parapet. She sailed downward for the three stories before she landed on the ground before the gate with a loud connection.
Rainbow Dash glanced back up at Pinkie and Fluttershy, but then simply shrugged and threw herself over the edge as well. She landed just as Applejack got up and began to menacingly ready her hammer.
Fluttershy blinked a few times. “Oh my…”
“Whoo-hoo!” Pinkie cheered, quickly bounding up on top of the parapet, and motioning toward her. “Come on, Fluttershy! Beat you down there!” And, with that, she nimbly hopped off the wall herself.
“I’ll, um…take the stairs…” she half-muttered before quickly turning and rushing for the stairwell down to the ground level.
As for Pinkie, she landed right behind the first two girls soon after, springing back to her feet even faster than the two of them had done. However, Applejack and Dash were already advancing, with the former smacking the shaft of his hammer in one palm while Dash slapped her fists together and cracked her neck. All around them, the crinkling sound of crystal continued to emit as the obsidian shards grew on either side of them, but their attention was fully toward the approaching barbarians and their glowing eyes.
Suddenly, the front line shifted weight, aimed their weapons forward, and barreled forward in a charge. The second line soon formed behind them and came as well. Not waiting to be reached, Applejack and Dash quickly leaned down and rushed in to meet them, and in moments the two connected.
Applejack’s opening smash into the first barbarian struck the helmet so hard it was half dented in and swiveled around before the impact cast its wearer aside. She wasted no time but quickly swung her hammer around and back in either way, catching two more barbarians on either side of her before they could close in on her with each swing. All four were battered away. Not relenting for a moment, she charged right in, ducked under a swing of a hasty cleaver for her head, and then lunged forward and seized the barbarian by the neck. Crying out, she spun around and flung him into three of his companions coming at one side, right before hefting her hammer again and pivoting around to the claw portion. With a mighty cry, she swung out and caught it against three of their weapons as they tried to stab her from the side, ripping them out of their hands or breaking the shafts, then swung the hammer up and around to bring it down on another’s head with a loud crack before snapping her head out and smashing it into another.
Dash easily dodged the first stab for her own torso with a pitchfork fashioned into a crude spear and drove her first fist into her opponent’s side before a follow up palm to the face sent him tumbling back head over heads. She dashed forward into the next incoming soldiers; dodging a slice for her leg and countering with a kick with her opposite leg, evading a swipe for her shoulder and retorting with a right hook, and outright deflecting the third strike with one leg before countering with a follow-up kick from her other. Another came from behind her with an axe to try and cut her down, but she quickly answered by spinning around, blocking with one arm, grasping the shaft of the axe with the other, and ripping it clean out of the barbarian’s hands. She followed up by shooting forward with her opposite arm, seizing the person, and then leveraged her weight up and against her to hoist her over her head, flip her over, and drive her down headfirst onto another coming from her other side. Both went down in a heap, and she followed up by vaulting over two more slashes for her legs as she leapt into the air and delivered a finishing kick to them both.
Pinkie’s own approach was far different. Laughing all the way, she charged into the midst of an entire line of the attackers, nimbly dodging stabs and swipes and emerging on the other side of them. At once, five of them had their pants fall down to their ankles, tripping them as they struggled to turn around. Others quickly moved in and stabbed out with pitchforks and hastily-made spears. She giggled again as she spun and pivoted about them, swinging out with her dagger. The head of one of their weapons fell right off, while a pitchfork’s end was carved off its shaft, and a third’s weapon fell into pieces. They kept coming at her from behind as well as in front, but she twisted and turned through each one, removing weapons and armor with each pass.
By the time Fluttershy reached the gate and the defenders risked opening it enough to let her quickly slip out, the three were knee deep in the barbarians. Applejack and Rainbow Dash continued to flatten one after another as soon as they were striking range, and in spite of both being rather warmed up at this point they managed to keep up with the onslaught.
“Ha!” Dash yelled as she drove a fist into the next nearest one, sending her flying back into her companions. “These guys are all show! They go down easy!”
“Yeah, but they ain’t stayin’ down!” Applejack shouted back as she batted away two trying to grab for her hammer arm.
“Huh?” Dash retorted as she paused for just a moment. More attackers were still running at her, but as she noticed them coming she realized some of them were ones that had already been hit. In fact, no sooner had the force of her impact ceased to be felt by her opponents than they immediately sprang back up and at her with undiminished vigor. Even the one she had stomped on, which should have broken no less than four ribs, was coming at her again just as readily as the others. And considering the fact that Applejack’s own blows had to be breaking bones and skulls, that was no small matter. Even Pinkie’s antics were only stalling them briefly, for they reached and clutched for the three even without weapons to hold them back long enough to get hit.
One managed to grab her ankle when she stalled, and as she grit her teeth and yanked her leg free, she felt the attacker’s nails dig into her skin and leave a bloody scratch in its wake.
Applejack brought her heavy hammerhead down on another attacker, this one causing an audible crunching noise, and yet after looking like her neck had been crushed inward she continued to attack her. “We might be in a pickle!”
Another chorus of tramping came out from the enemy line. In the midst of their battling, the three looked back out over their attackers. In spite of the fact they were already swarmed and struggling to bat away the painless barbarians, a fresh line was moving down to join the others.
“Ready!” a voice called from the parapet wall. The three glanced skyward briefly, and saw Shining Armor was rallying those with firearms. Most of them weren’t nearly marksmen enough to risk firing among the ladies, but this new line was still at a good distance away.
“Aim!” he shouted, causing them all to quickly put their weapons to shoulder and eye them in their sights. “Fire!”
A chorus of bullet noises rang out, and blood erupted across the entire line. The impacts of the rifle bullets stalled over half of them if nothing else, and while most of them forced their bodies to lurch forward, not only were many of them moving more slowly now but five of them fell to the ground and stayed there.
“Alright!” Dash yelled as she pumped a fist. “Looks like they do stay down if you hit ‘em right!”
Those on the walls ejected their spent cartridges and took aim again. Yet no sooner had they done so when Shining Armor cried out a second time.
“Wait, stop! Don’t shoot!”
Applejack snapped her head skyward. “Say what now?!”
At the same time, they heard a loud gasp from behind them. Fluttershy had just taken a few steps forward only to cup her mouth. “Oh no!”
“Look!” Pinkie joined in.
Both Dash and Applejack looked to two of the fallen bodies. On landing, the impact had knocked their helmets off of their heads.
And in their wake, they saw two people. Haggard…thin…pale…but definitely not warriors. One of them was overweight, balding, and with a mustache and beard. The other was a young woman no older than sixteen. For a moment, the same green and red light was in their eyes. But it slowly faded out, and when it did, their eyes were pale and glassy. Like they were blind.
“Those are people from Hoofheim!” Shining Armor shouted. “It’s them! That shadow brought them all the way down here! It’s using them!”
Dash stared blankly for a moment, before her look turned to anger. “Are you kidding me? Well what are we supposed to do now, then?”
“I don’t know!” Applejack began to shout back. “But…AUGH!”
As she had been calling out, one of the barbarians lurched forward, seized her by the arm with one hand, brushed her own helmet back, and used her exposed mouth to bite into her forearm. Blood gushed up around the wound as Applejack arched in pain. She quickly spun around to the attacker, and tried to lift her hammer up to knock her back, only for two more of the formerly beaten barbarians to reach out and seize her limb. They dug their nails in as well, drawing blood, like they were trying to tear her apart. Another came up with a hatchet, bringing it back to bury it in her neck, while still another came from her side meaning to slash her throat with a sickle. Crying out in pain and fervor, she twisted the bodies of the two clutching her arm in front of her to guard, but the barbarians simply drove their weapons into their companions. If anything, they tried to hack through them to get to her.
Dash noticed this and nearly went after Applejack, only to feel herself halted as two of the barbarians she had knocked to the ground reached out and seized her by the ankles. They began to furiously drag her back while trying to bring their heads up to bite at her as well. Two others reached out and seized her limbs, grabbing them and yanking them backward. With her torso open, two more with crude spears advanced and tried to drive them into her belly. She twisted out of the way of one, but she couldn’t wrench herself free of the other before the spear came forward. Instead, as she tried to pivot herself to one side, the blade shot forward and sliced along her midriff.
Pinkie exclaimed in shock, just as one of the barbarians came up behind her and smashed her in the back of the head with a solid club. She only faltered a little at it, but an entire wave of the disarmed attackers used the moment to surge at her, push her back off of her feet, fling her to the ground, and mass on top of her. They were soon dogpiling on her body with progressively more throwing themselves on top. Even she found herself unable to wiggle free. And she only had to struggle for a moment or two before she spotted one coming up to her brandishing a rather large axe. He was clearly aiming for her neck to sever her head from her body.
“Fluttershy!” Dash yelled between grit teeth as she tried to pry loose. “I think now might be a good time to sing your song!”
“B-B-But…but I don’t know if I can! And I don’t know if I can make it so just they’re affected!”
“Just do it!”
The woman gulped, but on seeing the attackers only continue to relentlessly pour on top of the others, she finally forced herself to step forward. Holding her hand high, she once again performed the call for her second Anima Viri, and a moment later her garb changed from the Healer to that of the Minstrel. Exhaling again, she put her lyre up to her side and soon began to play on it.
Even when she only hit the opening chords, the music alone was enough to make the attackers slow. Dash was able to yank her arms free a moment later while Applejack was able to throw her own backward. The barbarians hardly seemed to notice. They turned their attention to Fluttershy.
“Hush now, quiet now,
It’s time to lay your sleepy head…”
As soon as she started singing, they went still all together. Somehow, Pinkie was now able to slip her way out from under them while Dash and Applejack quickly extracted themselves the rest of the way. None of the attackers came after them as they stepped back.
“Yay, it worked!” Pinkie cheered.
“Back up, everyone!” Applejack called. “Get the wall between us an’ them!”
“Hush now, quiet now,
It’s time to go to-”
Fluttershy’s song was cut off as she let out a scream. The others, who had just been starting to back up, snapped around to her in alarm. They got a rather terrible surprise.
The ground in front of the front gates, where Fluttershy was still standing, suddenly erupted into black, razor-sharp crystals. Like a rock pincushion. One of them had stretched out far enough to pierce her right through her leg and skewer her on a needle-like spine. She was faltering now, dropping her lyre and crying out in pain. Worse than that, however, was that with her low experience and endurance with the Minstrel, it took only a moment for her to lose her focus and revert back into her normal body.
Worst of all, no sooner had her song ceased than the mob of attackers immediately started swarming forward again.
“Ugh!” Dash yelled as she quickly belted the first one in the face while backing up further. “That’s just great! Now…wha?!”
She had taken one step back toward the crystal palisades, trying to get more distance on her attackers, only for the wall to suddenly erupt into more massive, jagged, and sharp crystals. She had to quickly leap forward, back into her attackers, to avoid being slashed by them. Applejack was much the same. She had just finished swatting two more when crystals lashed out behind her, one of them sharp enough to cut into one of her bits of armor. And no sooner had she stepped back toward her foes when the ground beneath her erupted in more of the obsidian crystals.
Pinkie herself bounded over to Fluttershy to help her up, but no sooner had she helped her back up to her feet when the ground right in front of the gate was torn apart as even larger crystals cruelly burst forth. Not only did it force them up into the attacking wave, but soon the gate was completely blocked off by them.
The four moved back as far as they could, but in moments they found themselves meeting with each other. While Applejack and Dash quickly aimed themselves forward for the barbarians, who even now were regrouping and readying for another mass movement, Fluttershy and Pinkie looked around and saw the crystals continue to come forth. They were angling themselves now, aiming their razor-sharp tips for the ladies…clearly being intended to force them back. And they kept coming both from the back as well as from either side.
Applejack finally glanced around them and grit her teeth. “Great! They’re herding us in like a bunch o’ cattle!” With that, she swung her hammer around against the nearest, most brittle-looking tip. Unfortunately, it harmlessly dinged off. She didn’t even leave a scratch. She tried hitting another head on, and only yanked her arm back in pain from the jarring blow. She had no time for further, as she had to back up to avoid being pierced by another.
Eventually, the four found themselves pushing themselves back-to-back, surrounded on three sides by spiked crystals reaching so far that they were nearly poking into them. The only place to go was toward the barbarians, who themselves had fully mounted up again and were now advancing once more.
“Wh-what do we do?” Fluttershy called out.
“What do you think?” Dash answered as she grit her teeth and readied herself. “We fight ‘em!”
“But…but what if more of them get killed?” Pinkie said nervously.
“I don’t like that either, but they’re fittin’ to kill us so long as they’re brainwashed!” Applejack shouted back. “All they gotta do is force us back onta these spikes!”
“Well even if we could run for it, I think they’re making the choice for us!” Dash yelled back. “They’re coming in, so get ready!”
Sure enough, the front line was now in a full charge, and there was nowhere else to go or run. The ladies could only brace themselves and wait for the inevitable. Dash and Applejack stepped forward, meaning to take down the first line as best as they could…
The chance never came. Abruptly, the ground in front of them erupted into fresh crystals, creating thick, crude, irregular, “bar-like” barriers. The attackers ran into them, and immediately tried to press their arms, legs, and even heads through the gaps to get through, but each of them were halted and left vainly clutching at air.
The four ladies were stunned, breaking out of their poses and gaping. Moments later, some of the barbarians began to claw on top of each other, stacking their bodies to climb over the top of the new crystalline barrier. However, they merely sprouted again, this time creating an angled overhang on both sides of the barrier that served to prevent any attempt to crawl over it.
“What…?” Dash remarked. “He hems us in, and then he stops them from finishing us off?”
“Did that big scary shadow guy change his mind or something?” Pinkie asked.
“Wait…” Fluttershy spoke up mildly. “Look at these crystals.”
The group did so and soon realized something. These ones weren’t made of black obsidian-like material. Instead they had a blue hue and a more diamond-like appearance, like a mixture of quartz and sapphires.
“I…don’t think he made those…”
“Oh, oh!” Pinkie chirped. “Maybe Rarity did!”
Everyone turned to her. “What makes ya’ say that?”
“Because she’s standing right there!”
She pointed back up to the walls, in particular one of the side parapets nearest the gate tower everyone else was posted at, and as the ladies looked up they got another surprise.
Rarity was indeed standing there against the wall, looking bolder and with more bravado than ever. However, what they immediately noticed was that her attire had changed. Her hat was now more of one suited to a captain of a ship, and her regalia had gone from purely fancy and debonair to looking more suited to an officer’s type role. She had long white boots, but the rest of her vesture, which included a shirt, tie, waistcoat, and larger embroidered coat over it, were all in shades of blue as opposed to red. Her rapier as gone, replaced with a stave with a silver unicorn on the head. Most noticeable of all, however, was that her face was now partially concealed behind a dark blue masquerade mask.
As she smiled confidently and held her stave out at the shadow, the group could see her hand with the Promethian Sigil. It had two symbols on it now, and both were blazing together.
“What the heck…?!” Applejack exclaimed.
“Is…is that really Rarity?” Fluttershy asked.
“How did she get two Anima Viris?!” Applejack shouted. “And how is she making them big rocks herself?”
As for Rarity, she looked boldly on at the shadow and let out a bit of a haughty laugh, before speaking loud enough for all in the area to hear her.
“That’s right, you horrid brute! Let’s see how you like it when someone takes that ghastly technique for yours and gives you a more-refined-and-elegant taste of your own medicine! Now,” She held her stave higher. “I’ll create a fitting fortification to make sure the likes of you and your…your…”
Her stave lowered a little. Her smile ebbed, and she reached up and wiped at her forehead.
“Dear me, I suddenly feel a trifle faint… I know Sunset said that one…needed to build stamina for two at once…but I…” She exhaled loudly. “I didn’t…expect that it…expect…ex…”
Suddenly, she let out a moan, and in an instant collapsed to the roof. At once, her Anima Viris broke, and before she even hit the top of the tower she had reverted back to normal again.
Applejack’s face sank. “Great…”
“Look on the bright side!” Pinkie chirped. “Now those people that big ugly shadow is controlling can’t get us!”
“Um…” Fluttershy spoke up nervously. “Does…does anyone feel scared that he’s not even trying anymore?”
The four looked forward. Sure enough, the barbarians weren’t even trying to squeeze through the crystals at this point. Instead, they backed up and stood tall. Not only that, but the massive shadow was looming closer. From this near, the eyes that it possessed were even more maddening and fearsome. It was enough to make all of them shake in growing fear as it seemed to make the night darker yet. The wind picked up, and they heard a deep, low noise over it. Repeated, but with a malevolent tone to it.
“Is…is he…laughing?” Dash spoke up, actually sounding a little nervous for once.
Applejack stared on at him a moment longer, beginning to sweat a little, before turning to Dash. “Well, it’s your turn now!”
She turned to her. “Huh?”
“Ya’ said you’d use two Anima Viris when ya’ had too! Now’s the time!”
Dash hesitated. Suddenly, she looked even more nervous than she had a second ago. She looked to one side, nearly stammering. “I…well…er…”
“What’s the hold-up?!” Applejack shouted. “Yer all we got left in reserve now!”
“Don’t worry!” Pinkie quickly interjected. “We’re in this cage of crystals right now and he’s nothing but a big shadow! He can’t get us even if he wants to!”
A moment after saying that, her smile faded a little.
“Does…anyone else hear that?”
The others looked up. The deep, booming laugh was still echoing out, but it wasn’t alone. Another noise was coming on with it. A sound that seemed like wind at first, but soon began to break up into something more like rushing. It wasn’t water either, though. It was something louder, and growing louder yet. The four looked up ahead through the crystals, and as they looked back up at the shadow they began to see it.
They gaped in horror.
“Oh no…”
That was all Starlight could manage, which was far more than everyone else. Right now, they were watching the portion of the city below them come to life as hundreds…thousands…tens of thousands of swarming, black, loathsome things, all with the same sickly green and red eyes, were emerging from within it. Clouds of insects like bees, wasps, and flies, legions of vermin like rats and mice, and great flocks of twisted, nightmarish songbirds. All gathering together. All massing into a great cloud of corrupted, vile life. All coming to form one great swarm bigger and larger than the entire gathering below them.
And now, both they and their defenders were gathered into one spot to be blotted out by it.
“We’re in big trouble,” Celaeno muttered as she started to step back.
“We’re here!”
At once, everyone turned around. Hauling up the stairs two at a time, red-faced, sweating, and struggling, the group that had gone to help Twilight and Sunset with the Morning Glory was fiercely yanking it up to their level. As the swarm continued to gather in front of them, Big Mac hauled it to the top step, even as Sunset and Twilight continued to fuss about it and struggle to hastily finish the last few pieces without breaking it all together. They kept working as it was promptly dragged to the parapet of the roof right in front of Luna.
“Set it down gently! Gently!” Sunset shouted. Those with her quickly lowered it as fast as possible as Twilight hurriedly put in two more pieces.
“Is it ready yet?” Luna called to both of them. “Because we are dreadfully short on time…”
“Just about!” Sunset responded as she quickly reached for the side and pulled out a long, thin, metal rod gleaming like brass. “Twilight, are you good?”
The woman didn’t answer. As soon as she had put in the final two pieces, she looked up and gaped at the sight. In particular the menacing shadow and the ever-growing swarm behind it. “Oh no…”
“Twilight!”
That snapped her out of it. Stammering and blinking, she spun back. “Uh…yeah! We’re good!”
“We don’t have time to hook this up to a steam engine! Work the crank!”
“Right!” she answered. Quickly, she moved around behind the apparatus, zeroing in on a manual crank attached to it. She grasped the handle with one hand, braced against it with the other, and began to rotate it around. After getting a momentum going, an audible vibration started to come from it.
The swarm, meanwhile, finished building. Now it began to lurch forward like a cloud of thick, black smoke.
“If that thing’s going to work, use it now!” Shining Armor exclaimed.
“Just a second more!” Sunset stated as she dropped to her knees. She looked over the side for a moment before she found a tiny hole—just the size of the rod diameter. She held it up and aimed it at it. “Here it goes!”
With that, she shoved the long rod inside. The metal shaft slid right through the mooring with the hole, through a pair of the plates on the inside, and straight through to the other side.
It was like connecting a bell. Immediately, a much more loud, resounding, and rhythmic peeling began to belt out. It wasn’t quite like a gong or a true bell, but it produced a characteristic, loud hum. Loud enough for those nearby to cover their ears and stand back, and for Sunset, Twilight, and Luna all to wince, but everyone, including the ladies imprisoned below, turned their attention to the shadow.
The swarm halted in its tracks. The hideous eyes in the black cloud widened slightly, as if it could actually hear the same rhythmic humming. There it held as the noise continued to peel louder, progressively resounding deeper and over more of the landscape, while everyone else watched and waited expectantly.
Gradually, however, a noise began to mingle with it. Odd and unnatural at first, but soon become much stronger and, this time, unmistakable—malevolent laughter.
Twilight began to wince even as she kept cranking. “I…don’t think that’s a good sign…”
Sunset stood up, looking shocked and confused. “But…but how? I don’t know if it would work on the people, but those things are Nighttouched, aren’t they? It should be sending them bolting for it! It should-”
She was cut off by the sound of Spike growling and barking. Everyone turned to him, only to see he wasn’t looking ahead anymore but rather to the side. The others looked up as well, and everyone felt their nerve wither as they paled.
The entire city was coming to life with the hideous black swarming things. They were crawling out of everywhere. From under trees, from out of homes, from within wells…and all gathering together in huge black masses all around them. Their horrible sickly red and green eyes were lighting up clouds of darkness that were billowing greater and stronger all around them, stretching nearly as high as the wall itself. Not just the swarming things, but all manner of twisted and corrupted creatures began to emerge and join with them. Each one snarling, snapping, and full of nothing but malevolence as the shadow continued to laugh louder and stronger.
“We can’t even protect one gate!” Starlight shouted in growing anxiety as she glanced around. “There’s no way we can fight them all off! That’s assuming they even need to worry about the gates!”
Twilight, by now, had stopped bothering with the crank. She had risen to see everything for herself, and it struck her with dread and panic. “We’re completely surrounded! I…I can’t keep them all away!”
“I don’t suppose this citadel has a secret way out, does it?!” Shining Armor nearly shouted.
It was too late for that. No sooner had he said this than the swarms gave out mutual, horrible cries, drowning out the laughter, and all began to surge forward. Twilight’s eyes widened in horror. She looked below, seeing her friends, and seeing that they were now struggling fiercely within their crystalline confines. It took her only moments to realize they’d pour in through the gaps between the crystals and rip them apart without even giving them a chance to defend themselves. Then they’d move on to the citadel and totally overwhelm it from all sides at once…
“You!”
Hearing Luna’s voice caused Twilight and Sunset both to look around, seeing the woman now throwing her spear to the side, standing over the Morning Glory, and pointing at the latter. “Pull that pin out!”
Sunset blinked, surprised for a moment, but she didn’t question it. She bent down and pulled it free. Immediately, Luna hunched over the bell, stretched her hands out, and made them flat. Then she shoved them forward and inserted them in the spaces over the bell between the holes.
“Now shove it in!”
Sunset was aghast. “What?”
“I said shove it in!”
“But…but your hands are in the way! They’ll-”
“Do it now while we yet have time!”
Sunset winced. She looked up at Twilight, who gave her the same look back, but Luna’s impassioned look, combined with her resounding, commanding voice, was not only not to be denied but seemed to push her to obey. Still looking uneasy, she bent down, aimed the rod, looked up one more time to Luna only to see her closing her eyes and concentrating, and then shoved forward.
Luna grit her teeth a moment later. “More! All the way through!”
“But, but…I can’t-”
“All the way! Now!”
The voice was so powerful this time that Sunset’s limbs seemed to move without her will and shoved in more. She felt soft rigidity give way a moment later, but then it grew stuck. Still wincing, she closed her own eyes and twisted and pushed. Luna began to hiss, and finally cried out a little, but the rod continued to go through…piercing through one hand, tracing through the bell, and piercing the other. By now, the rats were beginning to worm their way to the ladies below. Twilight heard them crying out as Applejack and Dash tried to stamp them.
“Now crank it!”
Twilight, a bit aghast at the sight of Luna’s pierced, bleeding hands gushing over the Morning Glory, shut her own eyes as she grasped the handle and began to turn again. As three of the massing hoards slammed into the gates with a thunderous crack and began to work into them, she winced and rotated as hard and as fast as she could. Soon, it began to hum again, at a slightly different pitch now that it was moving through Luna. A moment later it was louder than before. A third time and it began to reverb around the gates, and finally, with the fourth one, it peeled over the entire citadel.
At once, a mutual screech, ear piercing and horrendous enough to make everyone cringe and tremble, came out from the thousands of creatures about to break through. The ones closest fell like they had wandered into clouds of poisonous gas. Those that didn’t immediately spun about and bolted away as fast as they could. To the rush of thousands of wingbeats and claw pats, the entire monstrous assembly was either struck down or put into full retreat, still screaming as they fled off into the night.
The hideous eyes of the cloud widened in alarm as the chime continued to resonate, gaping about and watching as the legions it had under its command were sent fleeing. Only the barbarians remained, and many of them had already been shot or struck down. They seemed indifferent to the chimes, but the shadow was not. Twilight was initially as stunned as everyone else to see the enemy flee, but after getting over her initial shock she began to rotate the Morning Glory crank more readily, and as the chime sounded louder it not only chased away the enemy faster but seemed to make the shadow retreat ever so slightly. Soon, the entire citadel was silent save for its chiming.
The others on the wall recovered and looked out, Sunset among them. She saw the shadow stop glancing about and glare at them. The look in its horrible eyes was full of anger and violence. Purple mist billowed from them like a furnace. However, it made no further move or attempt. What sounded like a low, animal growl echoed once throughout the entire structure.
Then, the remaining barbarians turned and began to move away in the same synchronized manner as before. The shadow’s eyes vanished back into its cloud, and it slowly began to pull back with them. It took a good ten minutes, but eventually they descended the hill and went into the streets. Ten minutes later, and they were gone from there too. However, Twilight kept cranking for another ten minutes afterward while everyone else silently watched before they were willing to accept it was over. When she finally stopped, there was nothing but the quiet and stillness of the night.
A few moments more passed, before everyone turned and looked back to Luna. She was still wincing and bleeding. Sunset actually stared at her dumbfounded for a moment before her mind registered to pull the pin out. She let out another wince as her hands were freed, and she pulled them back and clutched the bleeding limbs to herself.
“How…how did you know that would work?”
“I didn’t,” she answered as soon as she had her composure back, still pressing her hands against her cloth portions of her armor. “At least, not entirely, but I had the hope that since they originated from me that if I put some of ‘myself’ into this device that it would be enough to force them to obey.”
Saying this wasn’t lost on everyone else in the area. Starlight raised an eyebrow and voiced what many were now thinking. “What exactly do you mean by ‘originated’ from you?”
Luna continued to wince, but she closed her eyes and sighed.
“This would come out eventually, and now you’re all a part of it even if Celestia would say you weren’t… You might as well all know now who exactly your host is.”
“So you’re telling us you’re the one who created all those monsters out there, covered half of the continent in perpetual darkness, and killed Harmonium-knows how many millions of people in Greater Everfree either directly or indirectly?!”
“Yes.”
The total nonchalant nature of Luna’s response, even while she was still decked in her rather flamboyant armor (and having, by now, had her hands bandaged), left Shining Armor too stunned to respond. The others nearby were either also left dumbfounded, enraged, or a mixture of both.
Everyone else who either hadn’t heard the big news from Luna or were too preoccupied with other matters to notice were milling about in the main hall of the large residence area. Almost everyone was awake now, including children, as they struggled to recover from the assault and prepare for more if it came. The Morning Glory had been pulled back to one of the upper terraces, from where those on the landing could hear the alarms from those left watching the walls for signs of any further attempt at entry. Everyone else had gradually fallen back into the chamber, being directed around by Starlight Glimmer, although she was keeping her ears forward toward the conversation.
Twilight and Sunset were also nearby, doing their best to mitigate damage. “Look…I know this sounds bad…” She moaned at her own words. “Alright, it is bad…but she’s not…well…uh…crazy anymore and now she’s on our side.”
“After everything she’s done, and everything you told us Nightmare Moon was, you don’t really expect us to trust her, do you Twily?” Shining Armor nearly outburst back.
Luna crossed her arms. “I don’t recall ever asking any of you for your trust. And if you wish to depart, just say the word and I’ll banish you from Canterlot right now.” She pointed in the air. “The road to the nearest national border is that way. Simply follow it through 120 miles of former Nighttouched territory. Although, if you’re willing to be the first to scale the impassible mountain range,” She shifted her hand. “It’s only 80 miles that way, straight as the crow flies.”
Several of those nearby began to grit their teeth at her. Twilight swallowed. “Um, Luna? I…don’t think that helped…”
“Over here, y’all!”
Hearing Applejack’s voice broke the tense moment, causing everyone to look to the front of the chamber as the huge doors were opened. Applejack, Rainbow Dash, Big Macintosh, Fluttershy in her Healer role, and a few of the others were dragging individuals inside.
“We got a few live ones!” Dash threw in.
At once, Twilight, Sunset, and all the others turned and broke to run up to them, although Luna only followed at a slower pace. The group arrived at them first and crowded around as the incoming individuals lay their “cargo” down on the carpet of the foyer.
Who lay there were five of the barbarians…the ones that had not taken fatal blows but had nevertheless not followed after the shadow when it departed. Each one looked ashy, sunken, and pale. Their eyes were practically dead orbs and gazed ahead at nothing. Their mouths hung open and, aside from very shallow breathing, they didn’t move.
Fluttershy had healed both herself and the others up by now, and hunched over one of them. She held her hands out and began to chant, but in spite of the green light radiating over the person, nothing changed. She sighed as she stopped, looking at Twilight and shaking her head.
Applejack crossed her arms. “Don’t know why they got left exactly, but they ain’t got eyes like the others anymore. Don’t matter much, though. They just lay there.”
“And check this out,” Dash threw in as she leaned down to one. She put her fingers over her exposed hand and pinched, hard enough to pierce her nails in and draw a drop of blood. She might as well have been doing it to a corpse for the lack of reaction.
Fluttershy again tried holding her hands out and readying herself for another spell. “I’m…a bit tired…but I can keep trying. It’s just, not seeming to do any good… Maybe I need to rest first-”
“Don’t bother.”
Everyone looked up and behind them as Luna finally walked up, but halted just behind the group. Her face was rather morose as she looked down on the figures.
“It’s too late for them. You can’t help them now.”
A few of those who knew who she was frowned, but Starlight looked puzzled. “Why not?”
“You’ve all seen…and felt…Sombra’s power for yourselves. His eyes pierce flesh and mind. He sees the greatest darkness inside you…the thing which brings you the greatest despair. The thing which breaks you in spirit as well as body. Then he amplifies it a thousand-fold. Makes it so that it’s all you see, all you hear, and all you feel. He ‘smelts’ you with it like ore in a blast furnace, burning off everything.”
Her voice lowered deeper.
“Memories of joy and happiness…feelings of optimism and hope…every moment ever spent with a friend or a loved one, or laughing, or smiling, or even enjoying the warmth of a sunny day… Your life experiences…your hopes and dreams…even your own name. All that’s left is a husk that knows only misery and despair…that is only capable of knowing misery and despair. Anything else that they were is gone.”
“That can’t be true,” Shining Armor retorted. “If that was the case, why didn’t I fall into it? Why were you able to bring the rest of us out of it?”
Luna’s eyes narrowed. “My magical power may be gone, but my voice is still one of command. Enough to where, if I try enough, I can drive off an intangible entity. But you were fortunate, as was I. Had Sombra gone for me first, I wouldn’t have been able to help you. And had I not cried out when I did,” She sighed as she pointed at the woman lying before Fluttershy. “You would now share their fate. Sombra isn’t content with simply seizing control of people. I told you…his power burns away everything else, leaving only a puppet he can use. Everything these people once were is gone. They’re now only his dolls. They won’t even eat or drink on their own without his will now.” She bowed her head slightly. “I’m sorry, but you can’t save them.”
A moment of dark silence passed over the gathering. The weight and gravity of what Luna had said settled upon them all, leaving many of them feeling horror and fear.
Celaeno was the first to speak up. “Alright, I think we’ve seen enough of Equestria. We need to get the hell out of here. If that train is running, we load up and get out.”
“I won’t stop you,” Luna calmly answered as she raised her head again, “but I am staying here.”
The Huntsman gave her a salute. “Fine by me. Have a good life…at least until that shadow or the Nighttouched tear you to pieces.”
“You misunderstand,” she continued. “You are free to go, yes, but if you leave you won’t be coming back.”
Starlight raised an eyebrow at that odd threat. “And why would we want to stay here?”
“Because, as of now, Sombra is the single greatest threat to this world, and this citadel is the safest place in the world from him.”
Again there was silence, although everyone was focusing on Luna now. After a moment, Applejack sighed and stood before pushing her own hat up. “Alright, Luna…come clean. Why?”
“This citadel represents what Sombra wants more than anything. He’ll come back to get it, and he won’t stop until he does.”
Dash blinked. “Uh…and how does that make this place the safest in the world?”
“Because it is the only thing in the world that holds the two things that can combat him: myself and that Morning Glory. So long as we both remain here, it is safe. And this place needs to remain safe. You should all realize after tonight that Sombra is expanding like a plague. He doesn’t want a world covered with eternal night. He wants a world of soulless dolls for him to torment and dominate for his own sadistic amusement for all eternity. And if this citadel falls and he finds what he’s looking for inside of it, he’ll get just that.”
“And what is he looking for inside of here, exactly?” Starlight asked.
“And how do you know who he is?” Sunset threw in, speaking up at last.
“And how do you know what he wants?” Shining Armor finally finished.
Luna stood there silently, looking around herself, faced with individuals and their questions. She was silent for several moments. However, she finally held her head up and looked to Twilight, Applejack, Fluttershy, and Rainbow Dash.
“I will tell you and your friends. No others.”
This caused no small unrest among the others. Many of them looked angry and some began to shout.
“They can feel free to share what I tell them with the rest of you, if they so desire, and if they feel it necessary,” Luna added.
“We’re stuck here with that cloud, tryin’ to defend this place on your word that it’ll mean the end of the world if we don’t,” Apple Brown Betty yelled, “and you’re treatin’ us like we’re a buncha youngin’s who don’t even need to know why?”
Luna was unmiffed. “If you don’t like it, I’m not asking any of you to stay. You came here of your own accord; you can leave it of your own accord.”
She flustered, but said nothing else. For the moment, none of them had anything else to say. Not so long as they couldn’t use the train. For tonight, at least, they were stuck there.
Luna began to walk forward. Despite being angry, knowing who she was and what she had done for them, the group parted as she made her way to the doors. “I’ll be out on the main quad. When you are ready, find me there,” she called out behind her to Twilight. Soon after, she reached the doors, pulled them open, and stepped outside.
As soon as they shut again, Sunset let out a long sigh. “She’s really not making this easy on us, is she?”
“Unfortunately,” Twilight frowned, “she still knows more than the rest of us. We’ve got no choice but to let her give us information at her own pace.”
“Hey everyone! Rarity’s up!”
The ladies looked up and over to the side. On one of the entrance couches, Rarity had been carried and laid down following the incident on the roof. She had been out of it ever since, but as Fluttershy detected she wasn’t in any immediate danger she had focused on the others. Now, however, Pinkie was practically hopping up and down waving her arms to get their attention, and Rarity herself was slowly rolling her head around—eyes open and blinking.
They quickly made their way over to her. Shining Armor continued to stew but finally sighed and went to try and help out with getting the rest of the people organized along with Starlight, while Sunset moved over with the others to her side. As soon as they reached her, Twilight knelt down just as she blinked twice and turned to her.
“Oh…oh dear, darling…” she remarked as she looked about. “We’re all here? I…I take it then that we succeeded against that horrid cloud?”
“More or less…” Fluttershy spoke quietly. “Are you alright?”
“Oh…just have a dreadful headache, dear, but I think it’s nothing that sleeping in a few hours tomorrow won’t cure…”
“Why in tarnation didn’t you tell us you had a second Anima Viri?” Applejack spoke up. “Ya’ should’ve practiced it earlier!”
Rarity exhaled and put a hand to her forehead, inadvertently showing off her two runes. “I’m sorry, everyone…but I didn’t even get the idea until later today that the flower I had from Sapphire Shores’ tribute might have had another Anima Viri within it. But sure enough, when I inspected it this afternoon, it had one of those iridescent gleams to it. It took me until evening, but I remembered her original title when I first made her costume for her was ‘the Seaside Starlet’. I tried that and…well, viola. I just wish I had known how taxing it would be…”
“Uh, correct me if I’m wrong,” Dash spoke up, looking at her in puzzlement. “But out there did you just happen to actually make crystals of your own? Just like that Sombra guy did?”
Rarity blinked a few times, as if remembering, before her eyes widened. “I…I suppose I did, now that I’m remembering it.”
“Really?” Twilight asked in genuine bafflement. “I’ve never even seen a spell like that before. I think it was unique magic…but you looked at it and you just did it the moment you saw it?”
Again Rarity paused and leaned up a little. Just enough to shrug. “Well, all I can say is… I remember looking at it and suddenly thinking to myself ‘that doesn’t seem so hard’. And then, I was able to do it. It really was all that simple. I just looked upon it and…and suddenly I understood everything of how it worked and how it was cast.”
“That sounds like the Prodigy to me.”
The group looked up to Sunset. Her arms were crossed and she was rubbing her chin as she studied Rarity.
“I mean, I didn’t get a good look at the emblem on your hand, obviously, and I’ve never seen anyone actually in the Role, but I remember reading it in Celestia’s books. It’s a Role that’s a special type of magic user. It can’t use spells that you normally study. Instead, it masters unique spells and abilities just from observing them once. When Sombra used that unique spell and you saw it, you learned how to use it yourself.”
Rarity looked a little surprised at the information, before she smiled and looked rather pleased with herself. “Well now! I dare say that’s quite the useful ability! Rather fortunate that I ended up with that role, wouldn’t you say?”
Sunset narrowed her eyes. “Except there’s no guarantee your version of spells will be as strong as the original caster’s. And you still need to build up your stamina if you want to do it more than once.” She sighed. “It’s almost a shame Luna doesn’t have any of her magic anymore. Otherwise you could have mastered a spell or two from her…”
“Speaking of Luna,” Twilight answered as she began to stand again, “Rarity, I hate to rush you so soon, but she just asked us to meet her and I’m hoping this means that we can start relying on her for some help.”
Rarity let out another exhale, but then slowly began to roll up. “Well, I’m feeling a little dreadful, but I think I’ll manage. Now that I’m awake, I’ve had so many starts tonight I don’t think I could sleep again if I wanted.”
Putting her hand out on Pinkie’s shoulder, she began to push herself up, and while she was a bit shaky she managed to get to her feet. With that done, the ladies turned and began to head out to the front doors after Luna. Sunset looked up and took a step toward them…
Only for Twilight to suddenly turn and practically stop her. “Where are you going?”
Sunset hesitated. She looked back at her curiously. “Um…I’m going with you.”
“Luna only wanted to talk to me and the others. You should wait here. See if you can make sure the Morning Glory can run at a moment’s notice.”
Sunset’s jaw actually loosened. She almost stammered a bit. “Ex…excuse me?”
Twilight noticed the change, but after a short time shrugged. “I mean…you’ve been doing stuff without my hanging around you since we got here. You’re not still worried someone around here is going to try something against you, are you?”
Sunset again hesitated, actually caught at that, and seeming to realize her own behavior as of late. “Well…well, no, but…”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“I…I mean, I guess…I thought I was in on this too.”
Twilight herself paused, looking a bit awkward. “Well…I’ll tell you what she said when I get back, but she only wanted to talk to us. I’m guessing it’s because we have the most command over our Anima Viris. If nothing else, she probably thinks we’re the best ones to stop this ‘Sombra’ now. And, well…” She looked Sunset over once, before shrugging. “That is…um…”
Sunset’s face sank and she crossed her arms with a frown. “And I don’t have any, right? So it’s about time that I stayed out of things that didn’t concern me?”
Twilight looked a little taken aback. “…I thought all you wanted to do was get to Manehattan and get a pardon? I didn’t think you’d want to get mixed up in this even if you did still have your powers.”
Sunset’s jaw loosened. She looked genuinely surprised, but even more so at how she had just reacted. She looked away, wincing just a little. “Well…yeah, that’s true…”
“Then…what’s the issue?”
She didn’t respond. She reached up and rubbed the back of her neck. One of her feet dug into the floor. “Nothing…I guess. I just…well…” At length, she sighed and let her arms fall. “Nevermind. I’ll check on the Morning Glory, like you said…”
Without another word, Sunset turned and began to move down the hall. Twilight actually opened her mouth and half-reached her hand toward her, only to catch herself as well, also looking a little taken aback at her own reactions. After a moment more, she gave one final look to Sunset before turning and running to catch up with the others.
The six had hardly reached the quad when, without a word, Luna beckoned to them to follow her. They found themselves tailing her all the way to the main Academic Hall. Although the area was private enough, she didn’t halt once inside but led them onward, immediately taking them up the stairs and through the hallways toward the instructor rooms—the ones where Twilight knew that Celestia had her own offices. She tried to ask what they were doing, but Luna offered no response. She only continued to lead them on. She didn’t even light up a lamp; instead relying upon the large, towering windows to let in moonlight as she walked along.
The area may not have been the Northern Keep and lacked the stillness and stagnation about it, but it was still unsettling. Twilight wasn’t even sure she had ever been to the wing that Luna showed them. They eventually came to a conspicuously wide hall—one mounted with statues and paintings rather than having any side entrances to classrooms or other chambers. Each one seemed to almost be studying them as they moved about, and with each step their feet seemed to echo a bit louder. Fluttershy began to cringe and move slower and even Pinkie lost the normal bounce and spring to her step.
Eventually, however, they came to one painting in particular. It wasn’t terribly remarkable from what Twilight could see in the faint light. A picture of what looked like an opossum of some sort. Luna moved up to it and swung it gently to one side, exposing the wall behind it. A small indentation was revealed, looking like a fissure or break in the wall, but having a triple tip. She proceeded to fit the end of her trident into it and hold a moment. An instant later, it clicked, and, much like with the practice chamber, the walls split and moved aside to reveal an opening. She readily stepped within.
Twilight hesitated a moment. She always suspected there were other hidden rooms inside the building, but she had never actually been in this one. She swallowed and eventually led the way with the other ladies following behind her. As soon as Pinkie brought up the rear, the entrance once again collapsed behind them. Twilight looked behind her a moment, wondering how it had known to close, but in the end looked forward again.
This room was an even larger rotundra than the practice chamber, with a very high arched ceiling—almost three stories high. It looked more like the inner vestibule of a chapel than a room, really. It was so open that an echo was audible from each movement within it.
There were only a few small apertures in the ceiling providing faint moonlight, and as a result almost nothing could be seen. The ladies could only see Luna by the scant few rays of moonlight hitting her armor. She walked all the way to the rear wall, reaching a control of some sort that looked like a crank. She turned and faced the others as she gripped it.
“You wanted to know more about those Anima Viris I possessed? Very well…see for yourself.”
She turned the crank. Immediately, the apertures, apparently connected to some sort of shutters, shifted and opened up. More moonlight spilled into the chamber, and when it did the ladies let out a unified gasp at what was revealed.
There were podiums mounted about the chamber—six in all. Each one carried some sort of metallic emblem on top of them assembled from small spheres, objects, and concentric circles. They looked like some sort of horaries, but also containers of a sort…although each one was empty. While they were somewhat irregular around the room, each one traced back to murals up on the walls that had been etched into the stone.
Twilight had seen many such murals throughout the citadel in the past. Many of them were hidden, but all depicted pleasant, glorious things and people. Sources of beauty and inspiration. These were not the same kind.
They were tall, dark, grotesque, and monstrous. And with the high-vaulted, arched ceiling, they seemed to loom over the ladies like ravenous beasts. In the darkness of the chamber, they seemed almost nightmarish…or even alive.
Luna, on her part, began to stroll back into the center of the chamber. “It was right here where they were held. The Anima Viris that marked the power and ascendency of this world’s scourge. Their likeness is like that of no other Anima Viri you ever witnessed, is it not? Like nothing you ever fathomed or imagined them to be, I trust.”
The six didn’t answer. They kept looking around. Twilight, on her part, started glancing over them. One looked like a twisted, tall, crooked woman who was lording over thousands of tiny, agonized children—presiding over a tide of misery and anguish. Another was a nightmare far more grotesque and twisted than Nightmare Moon had been. It looked to be actually dripping with evil. The land, the creatures, and even the people were twisted and distorted in its wake. The next was a multi-headed demon that seemed like a form of dragon, but it was impossible to tell. Its multiple mouths were open and what came forth from it was images of the most violent, disgusting, and terrible things imaginable. The fourth looked like a great ancient demon’s head hovering over the world, and in its wake came forth miscreated, twisted, horrific, and even unholy abominations. The fifth didn’t even seem to be a figure at all. Just some great fissure wreathed in unnatural black flame that opened up into an endless, lifeless, starless darkness that seemed like a void even in the dark chamber.
Finally, there was the one that gradually drew all their attention. A valley filled with death, languishing, waste, and misery and, above it all, perched on a mountain of obsidian crystals, a great shadow with a burning, curved, red horn and smoldering green and black eyes.
Luna noticed it as she moved to its side. “I take it you’re most intrigued by this one.” She glanced up to it once, then back to them, getting Twilight’s attention along with the others. However, she focused the most on Twilight herself.
“I’m assuming you are already putting it together, Twilight Sparkle, but if not allow me to make it clear. Yes—that aberration that we faced tonight was none other than one of the very Anima Viris that the herald needs.”
Several of the ladies let out a unified gasp. Twilight herself was stunned, left stammering. But before she could say a word, Luna looked up again, and calmly began to walk around the room.
“Admiring the art? It was meant to invoke terror on all levels. That all, no matter from where or when, would fear to even approach these Anima Viris. And for a long time it worked…” She passed the first, and gestured to it. “‘Mistress of the Silver Tongue’…” She passed the second. “‘Rider of Shadows’…” She passed the third. “‘The Unholy Sisterhood’…” She passed the fourth. “‘Father of Monsters’…” She passed the fifth, pausing at it a moment before moving on. “‘The Oblivion’s Gate’…” Finally, she stopped at the original. “And here…‘King of Despair’.”
The six were quiet and still for a moment. Pinkie, seeming the least impacted out of all of them, scratched her head. “Wait…do you mean to tell me that one of the Anima Viris somehow actually came to life or back from the dead and now it’s running around?”
Luna turned to them sternly. “No. I’m saying that all six Anima Viris are currently roaming this world. All six of these abominations…these demons…are living among us as we speak.”
The room was silent again, and now felt colder and more unsettling. Luna, however, looked angrier as she turned fully to them and advanced a step.
“You all thought you were saving this world by defeating me. I was what kept the six of them bound prisoner within me. But when you defeated me, sealed my power, and, finally, Sunset Shimmer stabbed my hand with the Orichalcum dagger, I could no longer hold them back. They went wild all over this world…all save one.”
She pointed a finger to Twilight in such a way that she shrank back as if it was a spear tip.
“The one you already possess. As for the other five, they were free to go where they will.”
Twilight, still stunned and growing increasingly nervous, could only stammer. “Go…where they will?”
“What do you mean ‘go where they will’?” Dash added. “They’re dead! Just ghosts!”
“Did that thing out there look like ‘just a ghost’ to you?” Luna retorted so sharply that even Dash backed down. “These Anima Viris are beyond anything that any of you have ever encountered. Each one is filled with rage…with malice…and with power and potency far beyond any normal Anima Viri. An Anima Viri has the potential to take over its bearer. These six, however, are far beyond that. They don’t wish to merely interact with the physical world through bearers. They want to live again…resume their foul, horrendous lives right where they left off. And they will do anything…anything…to come back to life and to restore their own power. In place of one dark god, you now have the potential for a malevolent six. Ever since the moment you took that Anima Viri, Twilight Sparkle, you have run the risk of becoming host to it. Of becoming a ‘Nightmare Moon’ in and of yourself.”
Twilight’s pupils shrank on hearing that news. She actually let out a small gasp, and looked down at her hand. It was still calm and innocuous enough, but now she looked at the mysterious symbol on it in a whole new light. The others around her glanced toward it, growing increasingly uneasy as well.
Desperate to break this up, Applejack forced herself to frown and looked back at Luna. “Ferget that hogwash, we came here to know ‘bout Sombra! Just who is he, anyway?”
Luna took a moment to calm before turning back to the wall. “Each of these Anima Viris is so potent that they possess a unique ability. One that makes them far deadlier and more destructive than any of the others. However…the reason this world hasn’t already been torn apart by them is that they still are, for all purposes, just spirits. And a spirit alone cannot accomplish anything. They need to find hosts. Hosts that are weak enough to be taken over completely by them…” Her voice lowered. “…Feeble enough to where they can devour the resident spirits and ‘take over management’, so to speak…” Her voice raised again. “…but also strong enough so that their bodies can be of use to them. Then they need to grow. Regain their old power after they find new ways to do it. No doubt, this is what they’ve been up to ever since I was defeated.”
She gestured above. “The King of Despair is different, however. His unique ability is that his spirit itself has power, even without a body. He had no need to find a host, and so it is no surprise that he is the first to make his move. I have no idea what name he would have taken for himself had he managed to find a body to his liking, but the name by which Celestia and I knew him when he was alive was King Sombra. Hence, that’s the name I give him.”
Her fists tightened as she faced the mural.
“Sombra desires but one thing—absolute dominion. He wants it at any cost and at any price. He neither has nor desires friends, allies, or any dreams of a prosperous future or kingdom. He wants only that his will dominates all life. The world and everything in it can either submit to him or rot for all he cares. The struggles of this world mean nothing to him. Its population is only drones for his armies. What you saw tonight was merely him overextending himself. He’ll be back…with true legions under his command. Bearing modern weapons in huge numbers. No doubt, by now he’s realized the world is isolated and broken up following the fall of Equestria. He has free reign to move about in it and build his forces and power.”
Twilight was still rather unsettled at what Luna said earlier, but she leaned forward again. “And…how does he build his power?”
Luna closed her eyes in regret and bowed her head. “It would seem he’s leeching it off of what’s left of my own. A piece of myself was left behind in every last Nighttouched. The Light Eaters are likely dead or in hiding now, but he’s scrambling to find all the Nighttouched that he can. He’s realized my power is something he can absorb from them and use to sustain and strengthen his own spiritual influence. He’ll use it to bring panic, fear, and discord to people. He’ll fill them with terror and despair…making it all the easier to seize them. Then he’ll come back here.”
“W-W-Why here?” Fluttershy asked nervously, already looking about as if he would pop out of the shadows at any moment.
Luna raised her head again and turned to them. “It would insult your intelligence at this point to deny that there are great secrets located within this citadel. Ones that most of the world can only dream of. If I had to guess, I would assume that Sombra seeks the means to return to physical form here.”
This caused a mild look of surprise over the group, including Twilight. “He…he can do that?”
“If he succeeds, at best he will become a far more potent threat. One that isn’t constantly losing power to maintain himself. At worst…he will attract the herald, who will then add all of his power to its own. Know this, however, and say nothing of it to the others…” Her eyes narrowed. “The reason you are all not already his minions now is based on a bluff.”
Yet another round of surprise. “Er…come again?” Applejack asked.
“That Morning Glory drives off the corrupted Nighttouched as they contain some of myself in them. His minions, however, are totally consumed by him and him alone. There was nothing stopping him from having his remaining battalions assault this place. Even if your small group could have stopped them all, the Morning Glory merely irritated him—it did not stop him. He could have kept coming here until you were all taken by him, and then turned on me. The only reason he did not was because I gave him the impression that I still had my own power. In his current state, he knows he can’t combat me at full strength. In short…the moment he learns that I am now powerless is the moment everyone in this citadel dies or suffers a fate worse than death.”
A momentary cold silence pervaded the room. The six began to look very tense indeed. Fluttershy swallowed. Pinkie had stopped smiling and hopping. Rarity looked about for a moment, but then finally smiled and clapped her hands.
“Well! It’s certainly been nice visiting Canterlot, but I believe it’s time to go!”
“Do that, and Sombra will have access to every nation that borders Equestria. He’ll be able to spread corrupted Nighttouched everywhere. He’ll invade each and every town and community, consume who’s there, and leave death and despair in his wake,” Luna coldly responded. “Right now, his gaze is fixed on Canterlot. This city is the prize he wishes to take. All other nations mean nothing to him in terms of what he stands to gain or what is a threat to him besides this one. And if he does take physical form, then he’ll recruit legions by the thousands and wield powers only I at my peak could surpass.” She looked at them challengingly. “Do you really think six young women who don’t even have ten Anima Viris between them are going to stand a chance against him? Unlike myself, he won’t suffer your attempts to destroy him. He’ll simply take your minds and souls and leave you as his newest puppets. Besides…”
She half-smirked coldly as she looked straight at Twilight.
“Were you not the one who had the ‘brilliant plan’ to take all of the Anima Viris the herald needs for yourselves? Well, here’s one ready and waiting for you.”
The unease of the group had only grown at this point. Dash herself was frowning. “And just how are we supposed to beat some guy who’s nothing but a big smoky shadow?”
Luna eased at that, letting out a sigh. “In truth…I don’t know.”
“Well that’s…I mean, what?” Dash nearly retorted, while the others looked likewise shocked.
“Both Celestia and I wielded powers strong enough to damage him even in his current state, but now I’m helpless to use them. The same with the rest of you. None of you command enough power or a Role capable of using a technique that would hurt him. There is, perhaps, some knowledge or tool in the private chambers of the citadel that contains a way to combat him, but for now his assault can only be weathered. One thing I do know is true, however…”
She again looked at Twilight.
“As his spirit has potency no matter how weakened or strong, you have only one way to be sure of being rid of him. You must do exactly as you proposed. One of you must take him as your new Anima Viri.”
That was the most shocking thing yet. So much so that the six could only stand there in growing dread. They looked again to the murals. Saw the monstrous things that were depicted on each of them. Demons and abominations that struck fear in them even now. They seemed to grow larger and darker yet at this time.
Seeing their reaction caused Luna to fold her hands in front of her. “Now, Twilight Sparkle…are you still so sure that you and your friends wish to combat the herald? Is this a path you are willing to take? For one of you to have someone like Sombra bound to you? Constantly angry…constantly wrathful…constantly infuriated at how he is helplessly trapped inside you? Never ceasing to try and find a way out? A way to take control? To work his will through you? For the rest of your natural lives? Is that the sort of thing you wish to endure?”
The six didn’t answer, but by now, none of them were looking anywhere at ease anymore. They could only stare silently back as Luna continued to glare down on them and await an answer.
When the girls finally got back, most of the foyer had cleared. The Morning Glory was still set up, the watch reported no further activity, and the children had been moved to more secure areas for the night while those not too scared to sleep began to do so in shifts. Shining Armor insisted on continuing to hold the watch when they came back and asked for the details later, leaving Sunset and Starlight being the only ones who joined them as they went into the nearest side room—not due to general privacy so much as wanting to not wake anyone else up or give them more to worry about. After that, they broke the news to both of them. Per Twilight’s instruction, they revealed everything except the identity of Sombra as one of the Anima Viris of the thing that had been in the Northern Keep, or the other five Anima Viris. They mentioned only him and the fact that there were four others like him still out there looking for hosts.
The entire room was silent for a long time. It wasn’t so much out of shock or fear as due to being overwhelmed. Everyone sat quietly, mostly on the floor rather than bothering with furniture, and stared wide-eyed and deep in thought.
Starlight herself looked the most uncomfortable. “Well, that’s…disturbing.”
“So much for everything being better after Nightmare Moon was defeated…” Sunset sighed.
Twilight pulled her legs toward her chest and wrapped her arms around them. “For years I thought if the Lunar Fall was undone and I came back to Canterlot, things would finally go ‘back to normal’ and would make sense again. Now all we’ve found is more questions and more trouble…”
“Indeed. Even with this ‘Prodigy’ I’m feeling more overwhelmed than ever before…” Rarity remarked with a sigh. “But…I suppose there’s nothing for it. We need a plan forward. And I propose that, if nothing else, we move the civilians out of here post haste as soon as the train can move.”
“That should be early afternoon tomorrow,” Starlight jumped in, looking uncertain, “but…now we know that this ‘Sombra’ thing is running around in Equestria and controlling the Nighttouched. And if what Luna said is true and he’s watching Canterlot, then he’s probably waiting for us to try and escape… And right now, we aren’t even sure if the track is clear enough to get all the way back to civilization.”
“Then I strongly suggest we test that immediately. Those legions may be foul, Starlight, but we were able to escape a hoard of them by using an armored transport of sufficient speed. I’m sure we can break through them as well.”
“Should…we really abandon Canterlot, though?” Fluttershy meekly spoke up. “If…if what Luna said was true about why he’s attacking here…”
“Yeah, ‘bout that,” Applejack spoke up with a small frown. “I never did hear Luna answer that question directly. She said he thinks he can get himself a new body or somesuch. That’s just a load of hogwash, though. You can’t just go ‘round makin’ new bodies once yer a ghost.”
“Oh, oh!” Pinkie piped up excitedly. “Maybe she meant that Sombra wanted to take the body of someone who’s already here! You know, how she keeps saying the Anima Viris can take over people sometimes?”
That sent another uneasy ripple through the group. Sunset’s look lowered. “In that case, what she could have meant is that he’s looking for a body that would be compatible with him, just like any true Anima Viri is only compatible with the right individual… It doesn’t explain why she wants to stay here, though. Like there’s something here in Canterlot she’s trying to guard…”
“Either way, the point stands,” Twilight spoke up with a sigh. “He wants something in Canterlot, and if he gets it things will get worse, and we can’t let him have it. Plus, Luna seemed to imply the only way we can beat him is by doing some research here and finding a way to damage him in his current form.”
“Well, we can’t just hold up here,” Dash spoke up a little crossly. “We don’t have enough people to fight off a bigger assault than tonight, and even if we did, what’s stopping Sombra from invading all of the other countries? He’s a shadow. It’s not like he’s going to be scared of bullets or cannon shells. We got to at least warn those people he’s coming.”
“I agree with Rainbow Dash,” Fluttershy chimed in. “Right now, they’re getting ready for another major war against Trottingham. We need to let everyone know that they’re not safe from Equestria yet.”
“But…” Starlight uneasily spoke up, “you six are probably the best defense this place has right now. Don’t get me wrong; I’d love to show you what I found back in Manehattan, and we could definitely use more supplies and manpower up here if we’re going to hold out, but I’m not sure you six are the best for it.”
“We did, however, say that we would report in for Manehattan, and we’ve been gone quite some time,” Rarity reminded everyone.
In the end, everyone looked to one another, and then back to Twilight. She looked between them all for a few moments, realizing the burden of decision was being placed on her. It made her sigh and slump a little, but she stared at the ground only for a moment before looking back up again.
“I agree that we probably shouldn’t abandon Canterlot now for a multitude of reasons, but we do need to move the civilians out if we can, and if we can’t make a trip out of Canterlot back to Manehattan soon I don’t think we’re going to be able to later. Right now, no one even knows that we’re here or could need help. So…” She paused a moment, then looked back to Starlight. “I think it’s for the best that at least some of us head back to Manehattan as soon as possible to report in and say what’s going on, and then they bring back as much help as they can.”
Starlight exhaled a little, but shrugged. “Well, ok. Who’s going to go?”
Twilight rubbed her forehead. “We can decide tomorrow. Right now…I think we need to get a little sleep. One thing is for sure. We all need to start practicing a lot harder with our Anima Viris.”
Loud clangs rang out throughout the train car, easily surpassing the sound of the puffing steam engines. Although Dash appeared to be nothing more than flesh and bone, her punches to deflect the incoming blows of Applejack’s warhammer resonated more loudly than they had in a long time. Part of this was due to the fact that Applejack was looking particularly incensed today. She barely got one blow deflected before she immediately hammered down on Dash again. And, in spite of her being the faster of the two, the Disciple was being forced backward and made to sweat from the intensity of the practice session.
Pinkie, on the other hand, was far more casual. She was merrily bouncing around the length of the train car as if it was some sort of indoor running track, singing a variation of “1,000,000 Bottles of Grape Juice on the Wall”. At the moment, she was only to about 987,245, but she didn’t look anywhere near tiring in spite of the fact she had been in the Rogue Role since sunup.
Rarity and Fluttershy, seated on boxes nearby, were something else entirely. Both women were looking slightly dizzy and had been sweating most of the day. Their sole training for now was to try and maintain their current “double-stacked” Anima Viris, with Rarity in the Role of the Prodigy and Fluttershy in the Role of the Minstrel. Fortunately, as exhausting as it was, it was bearing fruit. They were both approaching being able to keep the forms for twenty minutes at a time already, and they were only ten minutes into their current run.
In spite of their respective strains, Fluttershy kept anxiously looking out the side of the train car, into the surrounding thick woods that still loomed large around their engine. Rarity noticed her, and reached over to pat her leg with an encouraging smile. “Don’t fret, darling. We’re going much too fast for anyone to stop us now.”
Fluttershy bowed her head a little. “It’s not that…I’m worried about the others.”
Rarity’s own look faltered and she looked to her feet and sighed. “Well, I can hardly fault you for that. It seems as if we were stuck between a rock and a hard place all along. Frankly, Twilight is the best out of all of us, even with the two of us having command of two Anima Viris to her one. I’d feel nervous enough about leaving her behind with Luna, but I’m honestly not sure whether Sombra would be more likely to attack her at Canterlot or attack her on the train, or which would be preferable. And while I might be more at ease about Sunset Shimmer now that she’s no longer acting so horrid, I’m still not entirely comfortable with leaving her alone with her.”
She paused, but inhaled and exhaled.
“But…there’s nothing for it. Twilight is the one best suited to studying a way of combating that monster, and she does have her estranged brother with her. I’m the one with more connections in Manehattan. This makes sense. We’ll just have to work extremely quickly. Once everyone is aware that there is an open route to reach Canterlot again, I’m sure we’ll have all the manpower and supplies that we need.”
Fluttershy looked up. “I suppose you’re right. At least you’ll be able to look in on your business, Rarity.”
She held a moment, but then waved her hand. “Oh, pish posh, darling. I’m sure Sassy and Coco are doing just fine without me.”
“But…wouldn’t you like to check in on Ponyville?”
Rarity’s lips parted. She hesitated again on hearing that. Before she could form a response, however, a smack rang out from Applejack’s hammer followed by a pained shout. Both of them looked at the center of the car and spotted Dash clutching one of her fingers.
“Hey, would you lay off already! What’s the big deal, anyway?”
Applejack was looking at her crossly. “The ‘big deal’ is we were ‘bout five seconds from bein’ a buncha critter food last night, and apparently that wasn’t a good enough time for ya’ to whip out your second Anima Viri! Maybe if I try an’ break a few bones o’ yours, you’ll put it out already!”
“I said to shut up about it! It’s my Anima Viri, not yours! I’ll use it when I feel like it!”
“Well, that ain’t good enough! If it’s yer own neck on the line, ya’ can do with it whatever ya’ like! But if it’s our necks, then I’d like to think we’re a bit more important than whatever shell shock bull ya’ got goin’ on!”
Dash’s eyes nearly flashed at that, and she stepped forward and brandished her fist in her face. “You don’t know a damn thing about what I’ve been through or what happened to the Wonderbolts! Don’t you tell me what to do or I’ll take that hammer of yours and shove it down your throat, got it?!”
Not one to back down, Applejack immediately hefted her weapon. “You just try it, Ms. Big Shot Huntsman! You won’t be the first mad cow I’ve put to the-”
She was cut off, and both women stepped back as Pinkie, seeming to literally spring up in their midst, suddenly inserted herself between the two of them with a hand up to either one. Her perpetual smile looked a little forced this time.
“Ooook…heh…” she said, trying to be as good natured as possible but, for once, seeming to pick up that things weren’t going that well right now. “I think you two have been at it for a little while now… Maybe it’s a good time to take a tiny break? We can sing the next round or two of the song together for the next thousand bottles? Oh, or maybe we can break into some of the cookies I packed for lunch maybe?”
The two didn’t really seem to notice her, although they went silent. They glared at each other for a moment more before both simply turned around and stormed off. They didn’t release their Anima Viris, but instead proceeded to either rear exit of the train car, opened up the doors, and stepped outside.
Fluttershy shrank back a bit at the exchange she had just seen, while Rarity let out a nervous exhale and wiped at her head. “I suppose, with everything that’s going on, we’re all more than a little on-edge at the moment. Applejack particularly so. She still has family in Appleloosa, and all of her relations are still in Canterlot including her brother…”
“Oh, it’ll be fine, Rarity!” Pinkie chirped as she turned to her and waved her off. “They got my family with them now, and my family has Maud! She always knows what to do! I’ll go get those cookies I packed in case they come back!”
Picking up her song from where she left off, she bounced to the rear entrance of the train, opened it up, and exited as well—temporarily leaving Rarity and Fluttershy as the only ones left behind. However, it took them only a moment for both of them to start growing uncomfortable.
“Some days I don’t know whether to envy Pinkie’s optimism or pity it…” Rarity muttered. “Still, I think it’s not entirely a bad thing to cling to some of it. Goodness knows we could use some at the moment.” She turned to Fluttershy. “Speaking of which, I’ve been wondering something, dear. In keeping with Ms. Pie’s optimism, what do you plan on doing after this is over?”
She looked up curiously. “Ex…excuse me?”
“It doesn’t hurt any of us to have a goal to work toward, Fluttershy. Something to remind us about what all of this is for to begin with. Now, it’s my understanding that you were not living in the best of circumstances when Twilight initially met you. And at the risk of prying or dragging out unwelcome memories, it seemed that you did not have relations at the moment, or accommodations readily available to you. I was somewhat wondering, as you’ve been so kind as to help me with my own matters, if you were interested in a position at Carousel Couture?”
“Who…me?”
“Why, of course, darling. You need not worry about presenting any qualifications. Any woman who could be self-sufficient in the near-wilderness in the ghastliness of this horrid affair I’m sure would be an asset wherever she went. There’s certain to be a position for you.”
Fluttershy didn’t answer. She stared at Rarity for a moment before she bowed her head. “Oh…” she quietly answered, but offered little more than that. She simply stared at a spot on the floor saying nothing else.
Rarity looked a bit puzzled. “I’m sorry, darling, but…did I say something to offend you?”
She shook her head. “No, it’s not that. It’s just…um…well…” She held her hands together and gripped them a bit more tightly.
“Just what?”
“I…well…I suppose I never really thought about anything like that before. I…I always kind of thought…um…” She shrank a bit more, letting her hair fall over her face.
“Thought what?”
Her voice grew quieter yet, almost inaudible over the sounds of the train.
“I’m sorry, what?”
She was still a moment, but then shook her head. “It’s…it’s nothing. I mean…I thought I’d never do anything else again after moving out there. That I’d just…stay there…until…”
“Look, everybody!”
Pinkie’s sudden and unexpected appearance in front of the two women caused both to rear back and look up in alarm at the shock. However, no sooner had they saw her grinning, happy face suddenly manifested in front of them when they realized the train was starting to slow. Not only that, but the light outside the train had gotten brighter—implying they were out of the forest.
At once, both Rarity and Fluttershy got up and to their feet, rushing over to the side car opening and looking out of the train. The forest had indeed given way, not only to a clearing but to cultivated land. They saw the familiar signs of old battlegrounds and barricades that had long since been torn apart, abandoned, and left to deteriorate and rust. As they kept watching, the sights gradually grew newer and “fresher”, proceeding forward in time until not only the barricades and weapons that were in place were newer but were actually still active. As the train kept slowing, they began to see soldiers actively maintaining the lines, although, at the moment, none of them were doing so. They were standing in awe and surprise on seeing the train engine approach.
Rarity looked ahead as their engine began to slow to a stop, and saw, at the head of the tracks, a blockade keeping it from moving any further. All around it were more soldiers, although none of them had their guns out. They were simply approaching and marveling at the sight of the approaching train. Beyond them, stretching for miles, was civilized and cultivated country along with bright, sunny skies. And flying over the final barricade were the colors of Manehattan.
They had arrived.
The arrival of the first train from Equestria in over seven years caused no small amount of buzz among the defenders of the border. It wasn’t long before the entire company in charge of that district began to gather around it, and within thirty minutes afterward every newspaper reporter and local official was swarming on the area. However, the ladies, Double Diamond (who had been delegated by Starlight Glimmer to run the train), and the few civilians familiar with engines who had been sent to assist didn’t have time to get bogged down by explanations. They quickly presented themselves and five presented their identities, and as soon as they were confirmed a wire was rushed out the capitol. Thirty minutes later, a return wire was sent to escort them immediately, and leaving the train behind they were quickly loaded onto steam carriages and sent out.
The sun was on its way down by the time they finally reached the governmental plaza in Canterlot. They were taken to one building in particular and the doors opened. No sooner had the tired ladies stepped out when they were greeted by an entire military accompaniment on the stairs. In the lead and rapidly rushing out to meet them was a familiar face.
Rarity’s eyes widened on seeing him. “Major General!”
Kibitz gave her a nod along with the others as he approached. “Ms. Rarity, Ms. Fluttershy, Ms. Dash, Ms. Applejack, Ms. Pie…it’s good to see you. I was starting to wonder if I’d ever see any of you again after so many weeks, but to have you all not only return but to return on a train that was departing Equestria has caused more than its share of shock and surprise in more people than me.” He faced the group. “I’m not sure if you were expecting me, but, following our initial meetings, the Grand Chancellor has appointed me as your official liaison for the moment. At least until someone better can be found…” He glanced over the group. “I see that Ms. Sparkle is not with you.”
“No, but she’s well-accounted for,” Rarity responded. “In fact, we’re here on behalf of a great many individuals. Major General, I hate to seem somewhat pushy, but we are on a very tight schedule. Both my friends and I have much to relate from our own personal experiences and even more to relate on behalf of others.”
“We all got one helluva pickle up north ta’ deal with,” Applejack added. “So we can’t really be draggin’ our feet around. We need to be headin’ back to Equestria as soon as possible. Hopefully with some guns.”
Kibitz looked rather confused. “I…beg your pardon? You want to go back into Equestria?”
“Look, whiskers,” Dash sighed, “as bad as things are down here, you got much bigger problems up north.”
“Yeah! All of the sugar is gone in Canterlot! All of it! I can’t make so much as a tea cake!” Pinkie shrieked in horror. “Oh…and there’s a big scary set of eyeballs in a black cloud snatching people up to take over the world.”
Kibitz blinked twice. Before he could stumble a response, Rarity let out a sigh and spoke again. “I’m afraid, in spite of the manner in which they said it, my companions are telling the truth. It is imperative that we are put in contact with someone who can appropriate materials and, dare I say, troops as soon as possible. It is also probably in everyone’s best interest that we meet with the Grand Chancellor and his advisors soon.”
The officer seemed to take this more readily, and he nodded after a moment. “Understandable, but you must realize that your very return to Manehattan has caused quite a stir. We weren’t even sure if it would be possible to move on the old rails into Equestria until today, and the fact that a train was able to arrive has shocked many. Both commercial and business heads are in an uproar along with government officials over what it means. Not to mention that we are still dealing with a rather heavy amount of consequences over what’s happened in Greater Everfree over the past few weeks. I’m afraid there’s no way I can arrange a meeting with the Grand Chancellor until tomorrow.”
Rarity looked a little deflated, while Applejack took off her hat and nearly threw it to the ground.
“Of course, that doesn’t mean we should be idle while we wait,” Kibitz continued. “I will arrange for a meeting with the Grand Chancellor as quickly as possible tomorrow morning. In the meantime, I would like to hear an account from each of you. My secretaries are at my disposal and are already waiting within. If you are not too tired from your journey, they would like to accept your dictation whenever you’re ready.”
Rarity nodded back. “Thank you, sir. I’m not so certain I can speak for my companions, but as this information must be shared immediately I will be happy to begin at once before turning in.”
As it turned out, all five ladies were happy to stay up long enough to start recounting their respective stories. They omitted some parts…mostly what they had learned from Maud Pie and the subjects that Twilight warned them to be moot about, which was mainly what had to do with the dark Anima Viris and Luna’s true identity. However, they emphasized what they seen in Equestria and Canterlot, the stories that Shining Armor had told them, and especially their encounter with King Sombra and his minions. It wasn’t until after they had exhausted themselves talking, the secretaries had departed, and they themselves retired to the rooms prepared for them that they realized that they themselves had just as many questions as the government of Manehattan did. Namely, how the world was responding to not only Sombra’s incursions but the threat of Trottingham, and what had become of the Anima Viri bearers who had been registering. Yet it was too late by then, and, tired from the long journey and dictations, they could only go to sleep.
Good news greeted them with breakfast the next morning. They were to convene with the Grand Chancellor and his cabinet in just three hours. The government was wasting little time with the information that had been relayed. Copies had been made that night and distributed to the most pertinent parties and their story was rapidly circulating, although the meeting was still desired to work out the fine, missing details.
As soon as the ladies were fed, washed, and dressed in the first pair of new clothes any of them had worn in a long while, they were off to the very governmental palace where their first interrogation had been. Fortunately, it was far more welcoming this time. The outside was only lightly guarded and supervised to avoid arousing suspicion, but many government officials…including the old agents that had been dispatched to Carousel Couture…were monitoring the inside. They were gestured to the same room as last time, albeit far more cleaned up and pleasant looking, provided with chairs, and told to wait until the Grand Chancellor arrived.
It was eerily similar to before, although now they were trusted with enough privacy to not be watched by anyone other than the two guards at the door. Pinkie had just as much energy as before and was fidgeting in her chair, but the other four were a bit more on edge. They constantly looked to the grandfather clock in the room as the seconds slowly turned into minutes.
“Well,” Rarity spoke up after a time, “I must say, even with the feel of a new, clean dress, I simply can’t be too much at ease at the time.”
“Think we’re all that way,” Applejack muttered, arms crossed. “Wish I was already poundin’ the pavement back up north…or, at least, out east. If I’m not findin’ out how the family’s doin’, I don’t see the point…”
“Let’s just hurry this up and get back there,” Dash retorted as she leaned back in her own chair, propping it up. “If there’s any way to kill that shadow thing, we’re not going to find it in a place like this anyway.”
“Actually, um…” Fluttershy spoke up, “I was thinking they might have more for us to do now that we’re here. I mean…we are supposed to be helping them out as eidolons…”
“That’s another thing. I don’t really care for that. It sounds like I’m…I dunno…something prehistoric…”
“Oh, let’s all try to be civil, at least,” Rarity spoke up. “Keep in mind we are relying on Manehattan for assistance at the moment, and they will find their resources taxed at the present time.”
No one said anything else, although both Dash and Applejack frowned.
A moment later, Pinkie raised her hand.
Applejack frowned even more. “We ain’t in a schoolroom, Pinkie. Ya’ got somethin’ on your mind, just say it.”
“You think if they take much longer, we can go outside for recess? I’d like to join that parade!”
The others looked up at her, rather confused. “Uh…parade?”
“Sure!” she chirped, leaping from her seat, running to the nearest window, and pulling aside the curtain to point. “See for yourself!”
The others, a bit bewildered, nevertheless slowly rose from their chairs and moved over to the window to look outside.
Sure enough, there was a gathering out there—although it was far from the ‘parade’ that Pinkie had mistook it for. At first, the ladies thought it was a gang of protestors. They were people of all shapes, sizes, and even walks of life, chanting and hollering as they walked down the road. There were about two hundred in all, and they were attracting more than their share of stares from the rest of the people along the sides of the road or moving around. Some were actually watching while others were shouting at them, and a few magistrates were beginning to approach as they neared the governmental square.
Most of all, they were all parading signs and large metal symbols on big poles.
“What…is that?” Fluttershy asked timidly.
Applejack leaned in a bit closer. “Are those…Harmonium symbols they’re all carryin’?”
Dash, on realizing that, scoffed and turned to head back to her seat. “Great…more idiots hoping a god’s going to bail ‘em outta this one…”
The others held on a bit longer. This was definitely not a commonplace occurrence, not in Manehattan or anywhere else. Not even in the worst days following the Lunar Fall. Eventually, however, it passed without entering the governmental square and went down another road. With that, all of the ladies returned to their seats.
It wasn’t long after that the doors opened up, allowing the official retinue to enter along with numerous secret servicepeople. Once all were inside, the cabinet officials and Kibitz themselves entered and took their places. It wasn’t until all of that was done that Fancy Pants himself entered.
Fluttershy immediately reacted on seeing him. He didn’t seem nearly as hale or hearty as the last time she had talked with him. Dark circles were under his eyes, which themselves were half-lidded, and he walked a bit slower and stiffer as he made his way to his own seat. He dropped his monocle on sitting down although he readily replaced it, but it still took him a moment to compose himself and look up with a nod.
“Good morning, ladies. I’m glad to see most of you safely back in Manehattan. I wish I could exchange more pleasantries with you but, as you may well be aware, my schedule is rather demanding as of late. Matters of national defense and international relations are quickly coming to the forefront more rapidly than they ever had following the Lunar Fall. Let us begin right away.”
What followed over the next sixty minutes was, more or less, the ladies retelling and elaborating their stories while supporting each other to work out all of the mildly contradictory details. There were numerous finer points to share, but at the end of all of it the picture that they painted showed the dire situation not only in Equestria but also throughout Appleloosa, as well as the fact that they had a boatload of refugees to work with now.
When all was finally said and done, the man sighed tiredly, looking wearier than before, and removed his monocle to polish it a moment before slipping it into his breast pocket. “It seems that even at a time of relative peace, we have more bad news to deal with…”
Applejack couldn’t keep from blurting it out. “Beg yer pardon?”
“Forgive me… The five of you have been away from Manehattan for so long that you haven’t heard the news. As it turns out, shortly after Trottingham seized the capitol seat of Appleloosa, they sent out ambassadors to all eastern countries seeking a declaration of non-aggression on all parties.”
This caused several of them to look up in puzzlement, although it gained Applejack’s ire. “Huh?” Dash echoed back. “What happened? They run out of coal or something?”
“Neither I nor my advisors have any idea, but we were hardly in a shape to refuse. The military victories that Trottingham has secured as of late are, to be honest, astonishing. It was bad enough that they managed to gain a decisive victory over the Dragonlands. But to be able to sweep the entire territory of Appleloosa in such a short war? We were beginning to calculate the chances that they had spread themselves thin enough to be manageable before the news came. They seek a new conference in two months. No doubt…they’ll be the ones dictating far more stringent terms, but so long as we have two months of no more military action we need them as talks with our long-time allies in Fillydelphia are stalling. Sadly, that’s not the extent of our woes. I don’t suppose any of you have seen the state of Manehattan?”
There was a momentary pause before Rarity seemed to get the insinuation. “Do you mean that motley crew who were parading down the street toward the governmental square?”
He nodded. “The Harmonium Faith has been increasing in activity as of late. It had practically dwindled to nothing when the shadow was over Equestria, but it revived ever since it dissipated. At first, we all just thought it was something of a return to normalcy. It’s much more than that, I’m afraid. Potentially much worse than that. That group that we turned away today was half that size yesterday. The day before it was only a few dozen people. Their places of worship aren’t just filling up. Many of their priests are beginning to say more inflammatory sermons.”
“It would seem,” the minister of the interior spoke up, “that the loss of the shadow has inspired a religious revival of sorts, especially coupled with the eidolons appearing. Many people are believing this is a sign from Harmonia, and as more arise and manifest strange abilities, they’re beginning to attract the more fanatical and extreme.”
“Speakin’ o’ that,” Applejack interjected, “how’s that PR campaign of yours goin’ on that had Fluttershy givin’ them talks?”
“Oh, very well, actually,” the public affairs minister answered brightly. “I know it was off to a bit of a rough start, but our coming forth publicly with knowledge and forthrightness to confront the emergence of the eidolons head-on inspired more confidence in the populace. We have had several individuals self report. Better yet, there have been no further incidents of…well…shall we say…‘random outbursts’.” He sighed and folded his hands. “Sadly, we believe that we have identified the majority of eidolons in Manehattan with estimates that only a small number remain fully unaccounted for. It would seem the campaign by Trottingham to assassinate as many as possible was effective across several nations. Nevertheless, we have relocated many toward the capitol. Voluntarily, of course.”
“The eidolons are the least of our priorities at the moment,” another cabinet member, this one a decorated general, spoke up. “International affairs remain the worst. Not just this business with Trottingham and Fillydelphia. It seems we’re being cut off as we speak.”
“I beg your pardon?”
Fancy Pants looked even more tired than before. “Ah yes…I had almost forgotten about that…” he half-muttered. “We have a growing situation with maritime trade, in particular the protectorate of Southern Equestria. The only land-based route to it is the Transaramasti, but we haven’t dispatched a train on that route in three years. Ever since the commerce deal with the Dragonlands fell south. Since then, it’s been only ships, but that’s quickly becoming a problem. We’ve had three of our major cargo vessels and a luxury liner disappear.”
“We first thought it was Trottingham,” the general snorted. “Assumed they were either making a preemptive strike on our commerce or encouraging piracy. They’d have nothing to gain from sinking a luxury liner, though. And they don’t have a strong navy either. Then Fillydelphian, Griffonstone, and Mount Aris ships started to go under as well. Enough to where they put a moratorium on commerce and dispatched their own navies to investigate. Well…three missing warships later and this became everyone’s problem. Finally, one of the patrol boats went off course and wandered too close to the bad side of the Teeth Archipelago. That’s where they spotted the wreckage of at least three of the missing boats. And that doesn’t make sense. Ships know well to steer clear of those by a good fifteen miles.”
He crossed his arms and leaned back.
“We sent a second patrol over. This one disappeared, just like the others…but this one got out a lifeboat. We picked it up and found just one crewman. He said he was on deck doing his job when he heard some sort of song. A song…right out there in the middle of the sea, with no other ships or land in sight. Everyone locked up and just listened to it except for him and the helmsman, and the helmsman immediately changed course right for the rocks. He tried to grab the wheel but the man wouldn’t let go, so he jumped ship while he could. Everyone else went straight for the rocks, broke the hull in two, and let it sink.”
“And here’s the rub,” another cabinet member spoke up. “As it turns out, the sailor happened to have been hiding the fact he had a Promethian Sigil appear on his right hand three weeks earlier.”
The ladies were struck. A moment later, Pinkie let out a loud, long gasp. “Oooooh! That’s just like what happened to Twilight and Sun-”
Dash quickly elbowed her chair, although several of the people in the room seemed to catch that. Rarity, coughing, quickly took control of the conversation before anything could be pressed. “We are very sorry to hear about all of this, Grand Chancellor, as well as to add yet another crisis on top of an already dire situation. However, I must insist that the matter with this ‘King Sombra’ needs to be addressed at once or else we could have another catastrophe on our hands, and our friends are currently alone in Equestria with little means to defend against it.”
He nodded back. “Of course, of course… We will start making plans immediately to requisition any materials you need. And I would very much like to take the opportunity, if I may, to utilize Canterlot as a new relay point for Manehattan into the northern part of Greater Everfree.”
That caused a small amount of discomfort among the group, but they had all assumed this would end up being the case and so they simply went with it.
“I would love if we could install a telegraph line along the way, but that might be a bit too much to hope for at the moment. Now, we are a little ‘tight’ so it will take some time to arrange a proper transport and materials.”
“That being said, we’ve been anticipating your return for some time now, and considering how much you need to be abroad, we’ve made some accommodations,” Kibitz put in. “We are assigning you a special task force at your disposal.”
“A…what?” Dash couldn’t help but blurt out on hearing that.
“A group of special soldiers and operatives to assist you on whatever you might need. Based on what you’ve said, you’ve been frequently going into combat areas or those that require, shall we say, special sets of skills. I believe you’ll also find that they’ll be quite advantageous toward defense of Canterlot until more help can be requisitioned.”
This left the ladies looking even more uncomfortable. Even Rarity had a bit of a time keeping up her own propriety. “Ahem…er, begging your pardon, sir, but I’m afraid that might be ill-advisable considering the nature of the current threat.”
“Oh, that’s the best part. Over half of this unit has Promethian Sigils of their own.”
Rarity’s eyed widened. “…Come again?”
“Most of them are from military personnel who manifested the symbols,” the general spoke up again. “We figured this was the best way they could be of use and learn to use some of those abilities for themselves. In addition, if there are any more incidents of mental compromise, you will be in the best position to deal with them as they’ll be right next to Twilight Sparkle.”
Now the discomfort was starting to become distinctive. Rarity and Fluttershy actually took a moment to look over each other uncertainly. Dash frowned and slumped in her seat and even Applejack looked a bit cross.
“At any rate, we’ll be dispatching them to head back up north before the day is over with,” Fancy Pants spoke up again, looking a bit more tired as he wiped at his head. “The rest will follow as soon as possible. For a while now, it looks as if the only communication we’ll be able to maintain is person-to-person, so it’s important that we start establishing relative commerce.” He reached into his pocket for his monocle and replaced it. “I…believe the rest of the ministers can handle things from here, so I’ll excuse myself.”
That last phrase was almost a bit jarring for the ladies, but Fancy Pants didn’t spend any more time explaining himself. He simply rose from his chair, straightened himself out, and, after some secret service members came up to his side, he turned and exited the room.
As soon as he was gone and the door shut again, Kibitz spoke up. “You’ll have to excuse the Grand Chancellor. He hasn’t been feeling well over the past two days. The constant stress has been wearing him down. At first he was staying late every day, what with all of the matters happening, but he’s been turning in more regular hours since then. Unfortunately, it hasn’t done much to alleviate his health. I’m afraid the Grand Chancellor departed a little too soon, however. There was one more matter we wished to discuss.”
“As related to you, the situation for maritime commerce has turned critical,” the former minister spoke up. “Especially with the seizure of Appleloosa. With Mount Aris currently under a blockade, that leaves only a narrow strip of land with which to ship agricultural goods throughout most of Greater Everfree. A strip of land that runs through Griffonstone, and which they have been imposing rather high tariffs upon. Furthermore, Griffonstone had been leaning toward favoring Trottingham. If they were to enter in an alliance, they could monopolize overland trade. That leaves maritime, which is now under crisis.”
“By all counts,” the general spoke up again, “we’ve determined that, even with their airships and new soldiers, Trottingham has stretched itself as thin as it can afford to. If they try making another military move right now while trying to maintain control over Appleloosa, they’ll hit the breaking point. So we figure they’ll try hurting the rest of the world economically instead through control of their farms.”
“The protectorate in Southern Equestria has gained a great deal more importance. The plantations it supports are going to be critical in the event that Trottingham decides to pursue war, but if this situation continues it won’t be safe to access them. We need to start working out how we will handle this with the local officials by having a conference, but…” He frowned at that, folding his hands. “At the moment, we can’t even guarantee the safety of a messenger, let along an ambassador.”
“Therefore,” Kibitz resumed, “although this is a bit unusual, if any of you could afford to spare the time, well…so long as you’re back here in Manehattan…and we’re still organizing supplies…we were wondering if we could have your assistance in acting as temporary envoys for our commission.”
The five looked a little taken aback, and it didn’t take long for such to be noticed, prompting Kibitz to speak again.
“Yes, I am aware this is unusual, but the one theory we have at the moment about the safety of the passage is that individuals with Promethian Sigils appear to have a resilience to whatever effect is causing ships to ground themselves. This is too serious of a matter for us to wait until we have more details. While we plan on giving the suspect ‘danger zone’ a berth, we would all feel much better if we had individuals who could seize control in time of a crisis to help ensure the ships reach their destination.”
“Ooo!” Pinkie chirped. “I’ve never been to Southern Equestria before! That sounds like fun!”
The others weren’t as ready to agree. “Look…” Dash flatly spoke up. “That sounds like something you need sailors for, not us.”
“Well, normally you would be correct, but we don’t have the luxury of having a spectrum of Promethian Sigil bearing individuals from all walks of life. Yet we understand you, at least, Ms. Dash, are something of a jack-of-all-trades and you have experience with the military.”
Dash frowned a bit more and nearly spoke up again, but was cut off by Applejack.
“Well…give us a bit of time to think about it, and we’ll pick some folks.”
Dash turned to Applejack in surprise, but she got another shock a moment later when Rarity nodded. “Yes. If you would be so kind as to allow us to talk amongst ourselves for, say, twenty minutes?”
Kibitz hesitated only a moment, long enough to exchange a glance with the other attendees, and then coughed and looked back. “Oh…of course. If you wouldn’t mind, there’s a side room just the left of this one. Could you have your discussion there?”
Rarity nodded back. “Yes. Thank you very much, sir.”
“Alright, please try not to overreact to this too much, but…I think we should stay here for the next few weeks.”
By now, the ladies had exited the previous room, entered the smaller side chamber, and, after some requesting and pushing, managed to talk the guards into stepping outside so that they could speak privately. They were now conferring with one another in a small circle. However, Rarity had hardly finished saying her piece when Dash stared at her with a raised eyebrow and a hanging jaw.
“…How am I not supposed to overreact to that?!”
Rarity winced. “Could you keep it down! No need to cause a scene!”
“Uh, hello? Anyone home? You do remember that we left Twilight and a bunch of people up in Canterlot trying to fend off whatever that big shadow monster guy throws at them next, right?”
“Yes, yes, I’m well aware of that…and I will admit that this is rather poor timing…but I don’t know when I’ll receive another opportunity like this and I simply must seize it.”
Dash crossed her arms and sneered. “This isn’t anything to do with that Carousel Couture business of yours, is it?”
“Well, I would be lying if I said I didn’t wish to check on it to see how things are going in my absence, but that alone is not the reason I wish to remain behind. The fact of the matter is I want very much to follow up on that lead I got about the Horned Trip.”
Fluttershy looked up a little. The others were puzzled. “What tip?”
“Just before the horrid business of that flood of Nighttouched attacking where Fluttershy and I were staying, I received a clue about when they’re going to make their next move. If there’s one so-called ‘industry’ that I know thrives off of chaos no matter what form it takes, it’s the black marketeering of human trafficking. I know they’ll try and honor their arrangement. And when they do, I am fully prepared to unleash the sum of my two Anima Viris upon them to shut down their business in Manehattan for good!”
Applejack looked a bit bewildered herself. “Landsakes…never took ya’ for much of the ‘vigilante’ type, Rarity.”
“Well, darling, we received these powers. I feel it’s best that we put them to good use.”
“But ya’ really think yer gonna do much good just bustin’ a few snakes in the grass?”
“I’m expecting it to be much more than that. They wouldn’t have made an arrangement a month in advance if that was the case. They must be planning to move a great number of individuals together. Especially with the borders growing as tight as they are. With any luck, I should be able to take down some people of considerable importance to their illicit little gang, and hopefully get them to spill the beans on the rest of their cohorts.”
“In the middle of everything that’s going on,” Dash interjected, “you’re willing to take all of this time out just to bust a few crum-bum heads?”
Rarity frowned. “To me it is worth far more than just ‘busting a few heads’, as you put it, Ms. Dash,” she retorted, suddenly having much greater passion and conviction in her voice. “I have a personal stake in this. It was despicable people such as this who caused me to lose my Sweetie Belle, and I am more than prepared to make sure that they don’t do the same to anyone else. Perhaps I can’t rid the world of this nefarious practice, but I can definitely make it far harder for it to take place in my city.”
A moment passed among the group. No one immediately tried to counter that last bit. Applejack, at length, let out an exhale as she adjusted her hat.
“Well hell…I’m in, then.”
Dash turned to her in alarm. “Wait, what?”
“Truth be told, I wanna stick around long enough to see what happened to my family, or if any of ‘em got as far as Manehattan or at least Fillydelphia. And I ain’t got no love for big cities myself neither. ‘Specially ones that let this kinda hogwash take place. I may not be into any of this fancy, schmancy high livin’, but I figure I should tag along to make sure the job gets done.” She turned to Rarity. “No offense, but I think you could use someone a bit more rough-and-ready for this job.”
She smiled nevertheless. “Much appreciated. And Fluttershy can help out as well!”
The woman gave a start. “Wh-what…me?”
“Why, yes, darling! You and Angel would be a godsend! I might be a fan of the odd mystery novel, but you could easily have Angel or some of the local pigeons sneak around and relay to us all we need to know! Plus, with that Minstrel Role of yours, you could disable an entire room of hoodlums if need be!”
Fluttershy winced. She started to shrink back. “I-I-I…don’t know about that…”
“Oh, pish-posh, dear!” Rarity laughed as she waved a hand at her. “It will be simple! After everything we’ve been through, a few vagabonds is nothing. Please say you will, dear. It would be ever-so-much of a help to us.”
She only continued to shrink, mumbling a little, but Pinkie seized the moment to grin and start hopping up and down. “I’ll come! Especially if it means I get to hang out at Rarity’s factory! You wouldn’t believe how frustrating it’s been over the past few weeks trying to bake without a drop of vanilla extract!”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Dash exclaimed, throwing her hands up. “Listen, all of you! It’s one thing for all of us to skip on Canterlot, but aren’t you forgetting something? They only want us to stick around to put someone on that boat as guard duty to Southern Equestria! And that’ll be a month long round trip alone! I don’t think you’re going to have time to go on your little slave-freeing crusade! Someone’s going to have to tag along with them if we’re staying!”
There was a moment of silence. The ladies looked to one another briefly, before turning back to Dash.
Her face fell. “…Why are you all looking at me like that?”
Twilight’s exclamation was so loud that Sunset dropped her book and looked up in alarm, which was just as well because, by this point, she was nodding off. Shining Armor spun around from his spot in the dormitory study while Starlight grimaced and recoiled.
She turned to Double Diamond a moment later. “Is…it bad news?”
On his part, he had shrunk back in alarm from Twilight’s outburst, especially now that she was beginning to look both angry as well as outraged, but could only shrug helplessly in response. “I have no idea! They just told me to bring that letter when I came back on the return trip!”
“I don’t believe them!” Twilight nearly screamed. “They’re not coming back right now!”
Sunset’s jaw dropped slightly. “What do you mean ‘they’re not coming back right now’? Like…they decided to take a vacation or something?”
“Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie are going to be going on this mission to Southern Equestria that’s going to take a whole month, while Rarity, Fluttershy, and Applejack are taking time out to try and break some human trafficking ring!”
Starlight, Shining Armor, and Sunset all looked equally surprised, before the latter of the three frowned. “Um…did they happen to forget about the whole big evil shadow in Equestria that could come back here any day now to attack again?”
“In all fairness, at the moment, they might not be much help.”
The four looked to the rear entrance to the study hall. The doors had opened again and, as she had several times now, Luna came walking in pushing a cart. She had long since returned to her normal “civilian” attire and the cart itself, a bit to Sunset’s displeasure, only had five books in it, which she slowly wheeled over to the tables that had already been stacked high with them to unload.
Starlight looked puzzled. “Um, I thought you were the one who said it was so important to defend this citadel against King Sombra?”
“It is, but so long as they only have such ineffective Anima Viris with only marginal control, they can’t really do any better than my voice and the Morning Glory,” she answered as she came to a stop and began to unload the books.
“Well, they’re still the most powerful Promethian Sigil bearers among us!” Twilight retorted. “How are we supposed to fight off a bigger attack wave than the last one without them?”
“Unless we discover a method of damaging or weakening King Sombra, it won’t make much difference. I wish to defend this place, yes, but at the moment I am not sure exactly what is the best way to do so against a foe such as him. However, don’t forget that Sombra is only one foe out of five, and the remainder are still unaccounted for. The world is still changing a great deal, and it won’t stop just from us being here. And the last thing we need is more nations foolishly intruding just to run afoul of him.” She set down the final book and began to turn her cart around. “It’s not as if I truly care for anyone else getting the secrets of Canterlot, either.”
Sunset saw the load she had dropped off and frowned at her. “That’s all you brought up this time?”
“I told you before—I’ll let you research from the books that I know are safe. I think you, for one, already did enough damage poking your nose in books you were forbidden from reading.”
The fiery-headed girl actually looked like she would bluster at that for a moment, but instead simply sighed and slumped again. As for Luna, she soon pushed the cart out through the back of the study and vanished.
Shining Armor frowned at her the whole way out before crossing his arms. “I really don’t get her. She seems to hate one thing only to support it again soon after. It would really help if she’d be more forthcoming…”
Starlight shrugged. “Well, so long as we’re only here by her ‘will’ or whatever, I guess we have to play by her house rules. Maybe we can forge another one of those keys or whatever that lets us stay in here…”
Sunset sighed. “Don’t bother. Even I couldn’t sneak that kind of information out of Celestia…or I would have been back in here long ago.” She turned back to Twilight and shrugged. “Well, then I guess we’re stuck for right now. At least we know the railways are clear, which means you can move the civilians out. I’m not sure I really like the idea of soldiers from a nation I was enemies with moving in here, though. For that matter, I don’t think Luna will either…”
“Er, actually, about that,” Double Diamond spoke up. “I know Manehattan is still trying to organize an official supply train to come back north, but…they…kind of gave us something in advance.”
The group turned to him.
He winced. “And I think it would be faster if you all came out and saw for yourselves. We should probably hurry, before it gets any darker.”
The group, even Luna, was honestly a little put off at the sight in front of them.
They were gathered right outside the invisible barrier around the complex. Even being that far outside of Canterlot was nerve-wracking for all of them, but over the past few days since the ladies had left they had nevertheless deigned to clean up an old boiler filling station to function as something of an impromptu train platform, as there was no where else where they could let a train stop en route to Canterlot.
The same train they had sent out to Manehattan a few days earlier was now idling there, with its somewhat involuntary engineers constantly looking at their wild and overgrown surroundings and wishing they were back in the citadel. The same couldn’t be said for the line up of twelve individuals standing before them. Each one was dressed in a private’s uniform for the Manehattan military, armed, supplied, and at the ready with their shoulders squared and their heads held high. It was honestly like facing off against a military regiment…or would have been if they weren’t so young. The oldest one of them barely looked to be twenty.
Twilight honestly looked unnerved to even be staring at the group. “This…is a bit awkward.”
“Not exactly the best ‘task force’ in the world. Then again, I made sure to hand-pick my own,” Sunset shrugged.
“Well, seeing as we’re losing more hands rather than gaining them, I’d say beggars can’t be choosers,” Starlight threw in. “And right now, seeing as I don’t think we can talk Celaeno and the rest of the Huntsmen into staying, we could use some people who know how to handle their way around weapons and have some decorum.”
Sunset didn’t look too convinced. “I’m pretty sure we’ve been around things at this point that even most veteran soldiers have never seen. If they haven’t even dealt with Light Eaters, they may not be too much of an improvement.”
Realizing that they couldn’t just stand there gaping at each other forever, Twilight finally swallowed and took the initiative, trying to take a few steps closer.
As soon as she did, however, there was some movement among the group. One of them glanced on either side of himself before coughing and taking a few steps forward as well—making sure to move in normal, tight, military lock step. This prompted Twilight to freeze as he came right up to her and halted. Immediately, he put his feet together and saluted. Taken aback, the mage needed a moment before she did a half-hearted gesture of her own to dismiss him.
“Are you Twilight Sparkle?” he asked.
She blinked. “Um…yes, yes I am.”
“I’m Pri…I mean, Corporal Chipcutter. On behalf of the 207th Special Manehattan Task Force, I’m honored to make your acquaintance, and would like to proudly introduce you to your new unit.”
She blinked again, standing there silently, staring at him with the others.
A moment later, his decorum broke again as he withered a little. “Did…did that not sound right? Sorry, but…I was just a private until I got on the train. I got a quick field promotion so I could head up the group until we arrived here in Canterlot, at which point we were supposed to transfer command over.”
“Er…over to who, exactly?”
He looked at her in some confusion. “Um…you?”
Twilight again looked caught. “Oh…um, of course. Er…right.”
Again, she stood there silently. It was more awkward this time, and soon it began to make the other soldiers standing at a distance look uncomfortable.
Finally, he coughed. “I-I-I…I just want to add that it is an honor to make your acquaintance, and we’re very grateful for the opportunity to be here to hopefully learn more about our own powers from the best, as we’ve been told.”
Twilight smiled uneasily. “Uh, the best, eh? Heh-heh…great…”
“From this point on, we are fully at your disposal. We stand ready and at attention to handle whatever issue you have for us.”
“Oh…oh, that’s, um…that’s very nice! I mean good! Great!”
Silence again. The soldiers stared at her…almost expectantly.
“So…”
“So what?”
“So, um, I mean…ma’am, what are your orders?”
“…Orders?”
“Yes! In what way can we assist you?”
“Oh…oh, uh…er…to be honest, I don’t really have anything…at the moment… You see, I honestly wasn’t really expecting to suddenly, uh…be in command of a task force. So…for now, how about you all just do what you’d, um, normally do at a time like this?”
This seemed to unsettle the group more than anything yet. A few withered or looked confused and concerned. Chipcutter was among them. He almost went to rub his neck before stopping himself. “Well…to tell the truth, ma’am, most of us are straight out of basic training. I’ve only had two deployments myself so far, and they were both on the western border.” He turned back to the group and gestured. “Boysenberry and Coronet were on fort detail, and those three were in the ROTC.”
Those called out either managed a salute or blanched before giving weaker ones.
Twilight stared a moment, before she finally turned back to the others.
Luna, who had said nothing this entire time, held her head a bit higher before giving a nod. “Well, if nothing else, if they are so young and inexperienced, I see little danger in admitting them into Canterlot so I’ll allow them inside.”
Shining Armor cleared his throat, stepping forward, “I think it might be best if I take charge of them, Twily. I won’t claim I’m any sort of field marshal, but I at least have some experience acting as an officer. I’m sure once we bring them up to speed, they’ll be a big help.”
Twilight was more than grateful. “Thank you, Shining Armor.” She turned back to the group, let out an exhale, and straightened. “Well then! I guess the first order of business is getting everyone situated. Welcome to Canterlot!”
Fortunately, Shining Armor managed to take things up pretty well. There was still plenty of room in the dormitory, so he led them into a currently unoccupied hall and began to pair them off into three groups to claim their own places. That allowed everyone else to head back to the study.
Twilight tiredly pulled out a chair and took up a fresh book. “Well…I definitely wasn’t expecting that.”
Starlight shrugged. “It might end up being a help. We could use more people here as defenders, and now we have twelve more with military experience.”
Sunset frowned. “Military experience…right. I think some of Applejack’s family makes me feel safer holding guns than them. Some of them barely look like they graduated the trail scouts… But I suppose beggars can’t be choosers…”
“Well, they have Promethian Sigils. That’s got to count for something, right?”
“Sure…it means they could go crazy again at any time. That’s nothing we haven’t had to deal with already, though. It would help if we had some spare Anima Viris lying around to give them… At any rate, if we want them to be any good, someone’s going to have to take out time to train them.” She looked up and over to Twilight.
She let out a tired moan. “Great…something else to do…”
“You might as well. It’s not like we’re making much headwind around here.” She frowned as she closed the cover on her latest book. “Even when I was sneaking into that library, I never found anything outlining any of these special Anima Viris. Celestia must have really wanted them to stay secret. There might be something in the books I wasn’t able to read, though.”
Twilight sighed. “I thought about making a primer based on that fragmented translation we had, but even if that was possible, Luna hasn’t brought up a single book in those characters.”
“Then I guess we’re just stuck here until something better comes up. You could probably use the practice anyway. Who knows? Even if you can’t learn to use that one, you might get another.”
The mage looked rather uncomfortable when she heard that, glancing back to her hand and touching the top of it. “I’m kind of hoping for the latter of the two. After what I heard about this sigil, I think it might be better if I never figure out how to use it…”
The rest of the day went by largely without event. There was a minor unrest closer to the afternoon. By that time, the civilians with children were organizing to load up and move out the next morning, but the Huntsmen were up in arms. Further conversation with them revealed the bad news.
“You mean to say that if we want to get back to civilization, we have to go straight into the main city of Manehattan?” Celaeno had outburst. “Well, that’s just perfect…”
“I…I don’t understand…” Twilight had timidly answered. “I mean, Huntsmen are allowed in Manehattan.”
“Provided they aren’t engaged in illegal activity! We still have a train car full of contraband! Even if they let us off the hook, they’ll confiscate the entire load the moment we set foot there! That’s means we’re stuck here!”
As irate as that made her, Twilight was secretly glad for it. They still needed as many defenders as they could get. Even without any current incidents from Sombra, there were still Nighttouched to worry about…although, granted, neither she nor the others had seen any since Sombra was driven off. Either the Morning Glory was doing its job well or he had exhausted all of the ones in the area. Nevertheless, each night was still a bit unnaturally quiet and, once again, she only slept very light that night.
The next morning, however, she woke up with a shock and alarm when she heard a gunshot out the window. Sunset sprang up even faster, and, while half asleep, had gotten into some sort of martial arts defensive mode. Twilight was too stunned to notice the apparent improvement in her demeanor and bravery, and simply shook her awake, threw on the bare essentials, and then ran out of the building with half of the others while the remaining half took shelter.
They burst out the front doors just in time to hear another gunshot, and this time they saw the source. Across the span of the quad, a few of their new ‘task force’ members had set up what looked like an impromptu target range. A mass of wood and hay was at the far side with a pair of crudely drawn body targets, and they had taken out their rifles and were aiming and firing at them.
However, scarcely had they fired a third shot when they noticed they had a crowd. One of the shooters immediately scrambled up, put the rifle to the side, and saluted. “Good morning, ma’am! Pvt. Coronet, at your service!”
Twilight was left with a dumbfounded expression while several of the others gathered frowned. “Um…Coronet, or…private…can I ask you something?”
“Of course, ma’am!”
“What in the world are you doing firing off gunshots in the middle of the quad at sunrise?!”
The private winced and pulled back, and her companion actually fell on his own rear end. “It’s…it’s just that…we always did target practice back in the fort at sunrise, ma’am… And since we’re in a hostile area, I figured we needed to get in as much as we could…”
Twilight let out a groan and grasped for her nose. Before she could say another word, however, someone moved past her. She looked up and noticed it was Shining Armor. He looked even more upset than her, but managed to keep a level head.
“Private, I understand you’re fairly raw and inexperienced, but since you realize that we’re in a hostile area, I would like you to take a moment to think about what would happen if you were sleeping and you suddenly heard gunshots firing without any warning or prior knowledge. What exactly would you think was going on?”
Coronet paused a moment, the wheels in her head turning, before it clicked. At once, she grimaced and began to cringe.
“Furthermore, while I can appreciate a firing range, this isn’t a fort. It’s a temporary stronghold and you’re in an area full of civilians using a hasty barricade. You didn’t ask anyone whether or not you could erect a firing range, and we really don’t have the bullets to be wasting on practice to begin with, which you also would have known if you had asked someone first.”
Coronet cringed a bit more. Her companion looked away and bowed his head. “Oh…”
“Oh what?”
“Uh, er…I mean…sorry sir!”
He frowned a bit more. “I want this entire place cleaned up in twenty minutes and then I don’t want to see you so much as within five meters of a rifle unless we’re under attack for the duration of your stay here. Is that understood?”
“Yes sir! Sorry, sir!”
She immediately scrambled off to start doing that, while her companion got to his feet and began to follow afterward. In moments, they were already halfway down the field.
Twilight took the moment to step to his side with a small smirk. “You sounded almost like a regular drill sergeant back there.”
He sighed. “Coronet’s one of the ones with experience in a fort… I hate to think what the others might end up doing. Then again…they might end up being too timid to try and do anything independently like this.”
“At least they’ll keep us from resting too easy while in Canterlot…” Sunset muttered as she tiredly turned around to head back for the dorm.
“Alright, now…pass me…the…3/4 crowfoot.”
Big Macintosh’s eyes widened in an impressed look before he looked back in the tool box, rummaged around a bit, and then came back with the desired tool. He passed it to the private, a young man named Crackle Pop, who put it to use at once.
“Now the Phillips head again.”
As Big Macintosh found the tool, Crackle finished pulling out the ratchet, grabbed the other tool as soon as it was done, and inserted it into the tight spot on the machinery. After another minute, he pushed himself out from under it and put the tool back in the box.
“That should do it! Try it!”
Red Delicious threw the main valve, letting the boiler begin to feed the chamber. It took a moment or so, but after a few moments the pistons slowly began to turn. Not long after, they stared to pick up speed and let out some chugging noises as the entire assembly came to life.
The group grinned and Crackle Pop himself leaned back and wiped at his brow. “Alright, that should do it! I think we can take this steam wagon for a test run!”
“Great to hear!” Red Delicious chimed in. “Sure beats going up and down the hill all day…and now we won’t be out in the open after dark.”
“Eeyup!” Big Macintosh added.
The sound of walking approached, and a moment later Starlight Glimmer poked her head around the corner. She looked a little amazed at the sight of the group gathered around the now-functional steam wagon. “Wow…you actually got it to work? I thought with as rusted as those bits and pieces were that it’d never get up enough pressure…”
Red Delicious motioned. “Kid here is magic with a steam engine. What more, he says he can get the gaslights for the dormitory working too. That means we’ll be able to light up the whole place in a wink if we need to!”
Crackle blushed a little. “Heh, I don’t know about that… But I think I can get it running without any fire hazards. I’m going to need a lot of soap and warm water, though. Last thing in the world we need is a gas leak in there.”
Starlight fully rounded the corner. “Wow, you really know your stuff, don’t you?”
He shrugged as he helped clean up the tools. “Well, my family owned their own delivery company. We didn’t make a whole lot. We could only ever afford third or fourth-hand equipment and couldn’t hire any engineers. We kind of had to make do with what we had and learn how to fix it. I did a lot of tinkering growing up. Actually built my own steam carriage once with my big sister.”
“That’s pretty neat. So what made you decide to get into the military?”
Crackle paused in the middle of picking up a heavier pipe wrench. His smile and enthusiasm diminished a little before he slowly resumed. “There was a, uh…big Nighttouched attack on my town about a year ago. The delivery company got destroyed and…as for my family…” He grew quieter. “I’m the only one who made it out of the house.”
Starlight’s own inquisitive look quickly blanched. “Oh…um…yeah…probably should have guessed something like that, considering the world we live in. Er, I’m just going to go find a place somewhere to be embarrassed...”
Crackle looked up and shook his head. “Oh, no ma’am…don’t be. I…don’t like thinking about it, but I know they wouldn’t want me to just…sit around and feel bad. A lot of people lost people they love. It’s not like it’s totally hopeless, either. My older sister switched to being a courier for the Manehattan military before the attack. I figured if I enlisted too, I’m bound to run into her eventually. I tried asking my CO, but he didn’t go high up enough in the chain of command, and my letters haven’t gotten any response yet. I haven’t given up, though. I’m sure they would have sent us a letter if anything bad happened to her. I just got to keep hanging on and looking.”
Starlight looked a little concerned. “Not to…try and diminish any optimism or anything, but…hasn’t your sister tried to keep up with you through the post? Wouldn’t she be sending letters of her own?”
He smirked as he got up. “I’m sure she has, but…you have to know my sister. She’s not the best at making sure letters get where they need to go.”
That left her more confused. “But…she worked for a delivery company.”
“I know. Like I said, we didn’t make a whole lot and couldn’t afford better employees.”
A few smacks of the hammer rained down. As a result, the two shifts of gleaming hot metal were promptly fastened together against the anvil. By the time they were done, the two pieces were turned into a crude iron cross with dull spikes on either end.
“Alright!” Boysenberry grinned with an enthusiastic look. “That was easy! And now the finishing touch!”
She shifted the cross spike down to the tapered end of the anvil and let the hammer go twice, knocking two of the dull spikes down on one side. She flipped it right over and did the same to the other two in the opposite direction. That done, she seized it with her tongs, dipped it in the water, let it hiss for a moment, and then threw it out onto the ground.
“And there you go! That simple!”
Shining Armor took a moment to look down and over it before smiling. “A caltrop. Heh, and I thought I was by the book.” He looked up to the others who had decided to attend the demonstration. “Everyone think that looks pretty easy, right?”
There were murmurs of ascents and head nods.
“Great. Then maybe we could get a couple people to help the privates make as many of these as they can. They’ll really help even the odds against another assault.”
A few folks began to volunteer, and one of the farmers actually stepped forward ready to try it on his own. As they started to gather around, Shining Armor himself walked over to Boysenberry, who looked perfectly pleased with herself as she wiped her head and stepped back.
“That was pretty clever, private. I don’t even remember half the stuff that was in my original field manual. Anything else you can think up that we can use to defend this place better?”
“Oh, tons!” she happily beamed in response. “This is so exciting! I feel like we’re medieval defenders of a last bastion against a dark horde! This whole place is like a castle!”
“Yeah…” he remarked as he looked up and around. “And if we didn’t have to worry about enemies that could fly over the walls, it’d probably be a swell place to hold our ground. As it is, we only have so many bullets we can spare so we’ll need to get creative.”
“Hey!” she asked excitedly. “Can we built a trebuchet? A real, honest-to-goodness one? You know, those things were what everyone used until cannons got big and powerful enough. Unless we’ve got enough gunpowder for those.”
“Heh…I think we’ll start a bit smaller. We could use some more things that hopefully don’t require people to man. We’ve got to somehow make twenty people seem like two-hundred.”
“No problem!”
Twilight half-slumped in her chair, reading her book with a dull expression on her face. Every so often, her eyes would lower and her head would nod, only for her to spring up again as she started reading again from the top. At this point, she had hardly realized that she had read the same page about five times now. Spike had joined her at her side, pawing her leg as if to try and tell her of her mistake, for all the good it did.
Sunset was far less subtle. She let out a muffle snore from her own face buried in her own book, her body twisted into an odd curl over it. Every so often she let out a slight mumble but little more than that. However, her body was gradually sliding down more and more out of the chair, and eventually gravity took full control. When it did, she fell out all together, knocking her knees on the floor and her chin on the table.
The sudden pain caused her to cry out and quickly sit upright again, and the noise, in turn, caused both Twilight and Spike to look up. “Huh? What?”
Sunset winced as she eased back into the chair, rubbing her legs and chin. “Sorry…nodded off for a moment. All these words are running together…”
“Oh…yeah…same here, to be honest…” Twilight sighed as she rubbed her eyes. “We should probably take a break soon. Um…where are we at?”
“Well, we’re through the history books. At least all the ones Luna brought to us. Now we’re looking at the non-fiction for hints.”
“Right…” she responded, a bit glumly and tiredly.
The doors to the study suddenly opened. The two women ignored it for a fraction of a second, before they realized it wasn’t from the back doors, which was where Luna usually came in. Instead they were opening from the side. Spike joined them as they glanced that way.
Moments later two of the privates walked into the chamber. Neither of them looked to be too much the “military type”. One was a young girl who had some muscle and her hair in dark purple braids hanging on either side of her head. The other, however, was a far lankier, scrawnier, and unassuming soldier all together with a bowl cut. He seemed like he would hardly be good enough for target practice, let alone a soldier on the battlefield.
Both of them seemed a little timid as they stepped inside, with neither one initially getting the courage to speak. As a result, it was Twilight who had to address them first.
“May we help you?”
“I don’t mean to intrude,” the boy spoke up after a moment. “We aren’t being of much help in fortifying the citadel and we can’t target practice, so…we were wondering if the two of you could use a hand in whatever you’re researching.”
This caused an amount of puzzlement from both Twilight and Sunset.
“I did most of the bookkeeping back where we were training in ROTC. There wasn’t anyone else qualified for it, so I know my way around places like this,” the girl threw in. “And Stygian here has been a librarian for as long as I can remember.”
“We just want to be useful right now,” he added. “We don’t want to stand around doing nothing.”
Twilight looked back to Sunset. She simply shrugged. She looked back to the two but, after only a moment, realized it couldn’t hurt.
“Sure. We could use a few more eyes. Come on over and I’ll get you started on what we’re looking for.”
“I think the old staff building would probably be best. It’s closer to the wall, it’s only one story, and people can get up and down faster. For starters, why don’t…”
Shining Armor trailed off in the middle of directing the privates in the task force. He noticed that people were coming in through the western gate. Starlight Glimmer was in the lead, but she wasn’t the one that he focused on. It was the fact that a mixture of distraught and nervous looking people were behind her. The same ones that had left yesterday. What was worse was that their children were with them, many of them still looking rather miserable.
He frowned before turning briefly to Chipcutter. “Hold on just a second.” Turning about, he quickly jogged over the quad. Starlight saw him coming and, frowning tiredly, she rushed up after him. They met in the middle soon after.
“What’s going on? Why are they all back?”
“They got turned away.”
“What?!”
“Well…” she winced. “More or less. We were supposed to be all set to bring these people in, but then they found out they were Gaitians.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
She leveled a dull look at him. “You didn’t really forget what happened to Cloudsdale, did you?”
He paused for a moment, before moaning and holding a fist to his forehead tiredly.
“The religious types have crawled out of the woodwork and gone a bit nutty back in Manehattan. They actually got groups doing marching rallies about how the shadow disappearing is the sign of some sort of new age in which the world is going to be purified. None of them have turned violent yet, but they’re getting worse every day, and it looks like some of the local authorities are backing them. They’re not going to risk a group of Gaitian refugees being dropped right in the middle of the capitol city now. They said they’d have to move them to a detainment center first.” She grimaced. “Considering the fact that we just busted them all out of a detainment center, you can guess how that went over with them.”
“Great… I had no idea things would get that bad…”
“We had no choice. We had to bring them back here.”
“That means we have people to protect along with the citadel. I was hoping we could at least get the kids safe… If we’re going to hold this area, then we need a lot more than that task force. They didn’t happen to say anything about how long until we get more reinforcements, did they?”
Starlight frowned. “They said they’re still getting things together, but my own sources managed to get a letter to me and they paint a slightly different picture. They’re relocating most of their reclamation efforts to the train track to Manehattan. I already saw them starting to set up new telegraph towers along the track leading into the woods.” She started to look uneasy. “Something tells me when they get here, they expect to pretty much call the shots instead of Luna…”
“I honestly don’t know if that’d be better,” Shining Armor muttered. “We got to keep in mind Manehattan isn’t helping us ‘for free’. And as much as I hate Luna’s secret-keeping, I’m not sure I’m too happy about them getting ahold of it either when the world is so on edge.”
She shrugged. “What can we do?”
“Nothing for now, I guess. Not unless they give us more to work with, or Twily turns up something…”
Sunset was nodding yet again. Already she was to the point of propping her head up on both arms at once. She looked nearby at a cup of now-cold beverage, and simply grimaced. She really missed the imported coffee beans of Manehattan, even if the beverage of choice in Trottingham was tea. At least she could get them easily through under-the-table connections.
“Found it.”
The sound of the voice shook her awake. “Huh?”
She found herself looking over at the table where Stygian and Little Violet had set up. The latter had also been jostled alert, and she smiled at once. As for Stygian, he left his place, book in hand, and began to walk over to Sunset.
“I found a reference to King Sombra.”
Sunset blinked. “You’re kidding. I thought we scoured every history book there was. Which one had it?”
“None of them, actually. I looked in a book of nursery rhymes.”
The fiery-headed girl looked truly puzzled. “Nursery rhymes?”
“Yes. Most old nursery rhymes that refer to a person in particular have some sort of historical context to them. I figured as you and Twilight had exhausted the normal volumes, it was worth a shot.”
Little Violet giggled. “That’s Stygian for you. Always thinking of something no one else has.” She began to rise from her own spot. “What does it say?”
“Unfortunately…that’s the troubling thing,” he answered grimly, just as he reached Sunset Shimmer. He proceeded to lay the open book down in front of her to get a look. She leaned up and gazed over it.
There was some text in a strange lettering nearby, but being a children’s book the dominant thing on both pages were large pictures. Sunset didn’t have to look at the one on the left very long to recognize it. A huge, billowing, black cloud with purple miasma and monstrous green and red eyes. Even as a child’s illustration there was no mistaking what it was. What was a bit more curious, however, was what was on the opposite side of the page. It seemed to be something that the cloud was approaching at a distance. A kingdom of some sort; a bright, radiant one shining and gleaming as if it was made of gemstones or even crystal. It looked more radiant and spectacular than any fantasy kingdom Sunset had ever heard about before.
Stygian gestured to the lettering. “This text is some sort of older language I’m not familiar with. It looks like it’s a hybrid between the truly older texts in Canterlot and the more modern speech. Maybe it’s a phonetic spelling of the actual words using our characters, but that doesn’t help much as I still can’t make out what they say. This word…” He gestured to one in block letters. “It’s definitely ‘Sombra’, though. For the life of me I can’t make out much else. Not even roots.”
Little Violet came nearby and leaned up to look over the book. “Wow…you caught that name right there? I never would have looked at the book long enough to even spot it… I don’t suppose you can read it, Ms. Sunset Shimmer?”
She frowned and shook her head. “I’m kind of interested that you actually found a book like this. Normally I can’t read the older characters at all. I’m glad we have one that at least has the words rewritten in contemporary characters but, unfortunately, like you said, if we don’t know what the words mean regardless of how they sound that doesn’t help us.”
Her hand traced over the page, slowly going over to the second image.
“Although…”
Both privates looked up as she trailed off. “What is it?”
She held a bit longer, staring at the picture, before she shook her head. “Nothing…probably nothing.”
“Well, we have little else to go on,” Stygian pointed out. “You might as well share it with us.”
Sunset exhaled and tapped her finger against the picture. “Years back, when I was still in school and just starting to spy on Celestia, I overheard her say something one day to open a chamber in her office. I never went in…by the time I started raiding her things behind her back, something else had my interest…but I remember the word she said: Crystal Imperium. A few months later, I asked her what it meant. And I remember…she looked at me a bit tensely for a moment. Not like she was surprised that I knew the phrase so much as I wanted to know about it. Finally, she told me it was a kingdom made of crystal.”
She shrugged.
“Based on the way she said it, I figured it was some sort of ancient word for Heaven or a phrase that you use to refer to…I dunno…utopia or something. I never knew why she would use it for a password, though. And I remember thinking about it a lot and trying to guess what kind of a place it would be.” She tapped the drawing again. “This…kind of looks like what I had in mind.”
She reached for the leaf and turned the page, but frowned on the other side. Totally different drawings were there, completely unrelated.
Stygian frowned and shook his head. “I already looked. The rhyme must only be on those two pages. It would be a rather fearsome poem if that described the whole event, but if I had to guess this is only from the most striking part of the rhyme. It probably has a resolution, just one we’d have to read to get. It looks to me, however, that the shadow means to take that kingdom.”
“That’s great…we finally find something that refers to Sombra and yet it’s nothing we can use.”
The three sat there, staring at the book a little longer, before Stygian turned to Little Violet. “We’ve been at this for a while. You should probably go get some supper now. Once the sun goes down it’ll be too late.”
She pouted at him. “You haven’t eaten either.”
“I can last a little while longer. I’m used to staying up late studying.”
“Ugh…you’re treating me like I’m a little kid again. I’ve been here as long as you. If I’m overworked, you’re overworked.”
He smiled. “I suppose you might be right… But we’ll be done here soon. Neither of us will be able to keep studying once the sun goes down. I just don’t want you to get stuck here if we get wrapped up in this.”
She hesitated a little longer, but finally sighed and pushed her chair back. “Alright, but you know Chipcutter’s only going to get on your case for missing a meal again. I’ll tell him you found something important so you better figure out something neat to say about this.” She pointed out the last part with a smirk.
He nodded back, still smiling. “I’ll be sure to.”
Little Violet gave him a little wave before turning and heading for the study doors. Stygian watched her go all the way out, even if she wasn’t aware of it. Sunset noticed he didn’t turn back until the doors had shut behind her. Scarcely had he looked back at the book, however, then she looked up slightly. “You two seem closer with each other than most of the others.”
Stygian stared a fraction of a second before looking back at the book; his voice being just a hint quieter. “I suppose so…but it only figures. We’ve been together long enough, and we both enlisted in the military at the same time. Our Promethian Sigils even appeared on the same day.”
“Oh. Is she…related? Or an old friend?”
“…You might say that.”
As quiet as Stygian said that made it clear to Sunset that he didn’t wish to elaborate. She soon looked back to the book herself, deciding to turn a second page and see what was on the next. Seeing nothing there, she turned yet another.
“I’ll assume that means it had something to do with the Lunar Fall.”
“And you’d be right,” Stygian quietly answered, looking at the book himself.
“Well, you’re alive now, and so is your friend. That’s about all any of us can hope for, right?”
Stygian half-frowned, glancing to one side. “True, but some of us were hit worse than others. And some of us could have done more than others…”
Sunset stared on at him, but he didn’t get the chance to elaborate. The opposite door to the study opened up, getting the attention of both people. Twilight was there, a book under her arm, and looking more happy and enthusiastic than she had in a while.
“I think I’ve got something!”
Sunset turned to face her as she approached. “Really?”
“Well, it’s not Sombra directly, but I think it’s still a good clue! And it was right under my nose the whole time!”
“Ok…what is it?”
She began to pull the book out from under her arms. “You remember what Starlight Glimmer said, right? About there being that mysterious building hidden away that had what looked like the symbols from Canterlot in it? Well, while I was researching, it suddenly dawned on me. Luna said that Sombra wanted a new body. Well, with all of those bizarre things that Starlight saw, maybe what Sombra really wants is some sort of technology that can give him a new body? That would explain why he wants to come here. He must know that Equestria had more advanced science and secrets than the rest of the world, and he wants to break into Canterlot to get them.”
She set the book down in front of Sunset and Stygian and began to turn to a page. Glancing over it, the two quickly realized it wasn’t a history book either, but rather some sort of atlas of maps of the Equestria country.
“I suppose that makes sense,” Sunset mused. “But how does that help us?”
Twilight turned around and went to her own area, taking up another book from it. It didn’t take long for Sunset to realize it looked like roughly the same book, give or take an edition. “It means that what Sombra is after might be in a location like the one that Starlight found. It might be a stab in the dark, but if we can’t find anything in Canterlot that has a way to deal with him, then maybe one of these other places does. If nothing else, we have to get there to make sure there’s nothing he can use.”
“But how do we find these places?”
“Like this,” she answered as she set the book down, opening it up wide to reveal an identical map. “Look at these two maps. What do you see is the difference between them?”
Sunset and Stygian both leaned over and glanced over them, studying them for a few moments. The latter spoke up before Sunset could. “Other than those handwritten points here and there on this book, nothing.”
“Right,” Twilight answered with a smile. She quickly looked around the room for a moment, seeming to check if anyone was nearby, and then leaned over and pointed. “That’s because this book is my old copy of the topography of the country of Equestria from when I was still in school, and this other one is a newer revision.”
Sunset frowned. “I still don’t see how that helps us.”
“You know why those handwritten notes are in there? Because I brought this book along with me to one of my afternoon teas with Celestia. She always had newer versions of the books than the other students did and even though she’d always get me the newest copies I couldn’t wait. The last time I had come in I noticed Celestia had her own copy open and it had some new weather stations that were being built around the country. At least…I thought they were weather stations at the time. So I went ahead and brought my own copy and penciled them in.”
Both Sunset and Stygian gave her an odd look.
“…What?”
“Just ‘for fun’, you went around updating your own copies of books?”
“…Didn’t you?”
Sunset didn’t answer that. “Like you were saying…”
“Oh, right! Here’s the thing. When I asked Celestia for an updated copy next time, she said there weren’t any new copies. And sure enough, when we did get a new revision next year, the weather stations weren’t in it. They were only ever in Celestia’s copy of the reference material. And look…”
She leaned over and pointed to one that was rather close to the Manehattan border.
“That one right there. I already checked with Starlight Glimmer. She says that’s the spot where they found that weird science building. To me, that means that the rest of these have to be similar spots.”
Sunset smirked a little. “Not bad…something I might have thought of back in school. Alright, so we know where else Equestria had these secret science studios or labs or whatever. So what do we do with that? Even when I perfected the Morning Glories, I wasn’t crazy enough to go poking around too deep in Equestria.” She pointed at the northernmost one. “That one’s practically above the Arctic Circle.”
“Well, that would be a little far, but this one…” Twilight pointed to another. “Isn’t too bad.”
Stygian looked at it more closely. “That’s near the Griffonstone and Mount Aris borders, although Mount Aris would have to go over the Hyperboreans…”
“And the train track to Manehattan runs this way,” Twilight added, tracing her finger along the map. “The closest it comes is this point. There’s supposed to be another road from there. If we could use that steam wagon that got fixed up, we could make it…so long as the road was clear enough, that is.”
Sunset looked uncertain. “I’m not so sure that’s a good idea. I mean…it’s an awful risk. If worst came to worst and something blocked the road, that’s a 60 kilometer trip. Even if Sombra isn’t out there waiting for us, we still have to worry about other Nighttouched. A lot of creatures derived from Light Eaters could still be out there…”
“Maybe…but we can’t just sit here forever. We’re not getting anything out of these books or from Luna. And…honestly, I feel like I’ve wasted enough time not doing anything over the past seven years.”
Sunset was quiet at that, bowing her own head and thinking for a few moments.
“Well, I was having the others build another Morning Glory. I suppose we could bring that once it’s done…”
Twilight looked up when she said that. “We?”
Sunset looked back. “Well…yeah. Wasn’t that what you meant when you said ‘we’ just now?”
“I mean…I was referring to the collective ‘we’, but you’re wanting to come along?”
“…Why not? I’m not doing a whole lot of other good here. And…besides, I kind of want to know more about what Celestia was hiding from us. I’ve found out this much. Might as well know the rest, right?”
Twilight was quiet, looking at Sunset with a touch of hesitation. However, Stygian was the one to break in next. “We could always make the trip.”
Both ladies turned to him. “Huh?”
“I mean, we are a task force assigned to you, aren’t we? This is kind of what we were ordered to do.”
Twilight only exchanged a glance with Sunset before looking back at him. “I appreciate the sentiment, but…I think this is something we have to do for ourselves. At any rate,” She began to shut both books. “We should probably run it by the others before we go. Maybe have them weigh in on this and see what they think.”
“And,” Sunset added, “keep it quiet from Luna. If she catches wind of this, so long as she has the only glyphkey, she can banish us whenever she wants.”
Twilight looked a little uncertain on hearing that; definitely uncomfortable about keeping a secret from someone in Canterlot while being forced to reside there. Especially since it was so similar to what Sunset had done before with Celestia. However, after holding for a long while, and realizing the logic behind it, she was compelled to slowly nod in assent.
When the engine started to slow down, everyone on board noticed it, and they immediately got to attention. Not long after, Shining Armor took in a deep breath, stood up, adjusted his own rifle around his torso, and looked at his small “platoon”.
“Alright everyone. We need to move fast, so let’s get the doors open.”
Chipcutter quickly rose to his own feet, adjusted his own rifle, and turned to the others. “Coronet, Can Can, help us with the door. The rest of you, load up on the wagon and get ready to move.”
Two of the privates arose and went over to the door to the train car, beginning to work with Chipcutter and Shining Armor to open it up. As for the rest of the task force, they quickly adjusted their gear and ran out in tandem to the steam wagon. That left Twilight Sparkle, Sunset Shimmer, and Spike.
Sunset took in a deep breath and got to her feet. “Guess that’s our cue.”
Twilight nodded and rose from her own spot. “You know, you could stay on the engine and head back. We can handle this without you.”
“Like I said, I’m wanting to see just how far this goes myself. Besides, everyone back at Canterlot knows how to run the Morning Glory. I might as well do something to make myself useful as I’m no good there without an Anima Viri…”
Twilight stared at her. Sunset began to walk to the wagon but, on seeing she wasn’t following, she looked back. “Is something wrong?”
She stared a bit longer before she smirked and began to walk up to her.
“…What?”
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but you’ve changed.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re not nearly as timid as you used to be. After you lost your powers, you looked like you were scared of everyone and everything. That’s not all, though. At first you sounded like you just wanted to tag along with us to get a pardon.”
Sunset half-frowned. “Well, yeah. And I still do.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Really? Because to me it kind of looks like you’re trying to be helpful.”
Sunset gave a start. A moment later, she pursed her lips and finally looked away. “I’m just used to being the most important person in the room because of my powers. Now that I don’t have them, I don’t want to feel like I’m worthless is all. Once we finally get this sorted out in Manehattan, we’ll go our separate ways.”
She nearly turned to go, only to double back and snatch something off the ground nearby. The same helmet she had gone after back in Trottingham.
“You’re bringing that?”
“It’s my good luck charm. I got out of Trottingham twice now because of it. Besides, it’s good head protection.”
Turning about, she headed for the steam wagon without stalling any longer. By now, the door to the train was open, and with the overgrown outside revealed Twilight saw they were quickly approaching a paved road; albeit a cracked and deformed one. Shining Armor and the others got ready to deploy the ramp as soon as the engine was at a complete stop.
She hesitated before walking up to him. “Are you sure you want to come on this? You don’t have to…”
“I was able to keep Sombra from taking you last time,” Shining Armor firmly responded. “In spite of what Luna says, that tells me I’m valuable. Who knows? Maybe I have some immunity to him. And if the rest of these kids are here, then someone has to take charge of them. Besides, if all goes well, we’ll be in and out in ten hours at the most.”
“What about the others? Do they really need to come?”
Shining Armor paused, frowning a little. “I thought about that myself…but I saw that map you showed me the other day. There’s an abandoned town nearby. With any luck, if it was taken at the Lunar Fall, there’ll still be ammunition or gunpowder there. And we need that if we’re going to be able to defend Canterlot. That means we need manpower to load it up.”
Twilight sighed. “Alright…it’s just I don’t want to put more people at risk then we have to.”
He formed a half smile. “It’s alright. I talked to all of them and they’re all eager to do something to help. We’re all as reckless as you when it comes to this mission.”
She couldn’t help but smile a little at that.
Not five minutes later, the train had stopped and the ramp had deployed. It would be up to those running the engine to retract it, but for now everyone loaded up the steam wagon, fired it up, and soon rolled out onto the road. Fortunately, this wasn’t anything like the train tracks. While it was overgrown and had more than its share of seven years of debris on the road, at least at the onset, it was clear that this road had been cleared out and more well maintained. The woods had been cut back, leaving much of it still intact. What little debris was there was easily pushed aside by the wagon’s “cow catcher” as it began to chug off down the road.
On board, the group pretty much had standing room only aside from begin able to alternate on one old wooden bench attached to the wall, but they were fine with it. There may not have been as much room as Double Diamond’s Steel Lion, but it was also better built and therefore quieter and smoother. Although it was going to be a multi-hour trip, and things had to be handled carefully with all of the guns, they were soon settled in and waiting.
Chipcutter, Shining Armor, and Crackle Pop ran the engine in the front while Twilight, Sunset, Spike, Little Violet, and Stygian kept to the back. It was the quietest place, allowing her to detail the plan.
“Alright, once we get there, we’re going to let Shining Armor take most of the others to start looking for ammunition and supplies. The four of us…well, five including Spike…are going to head straight for the weather station. That map I copied from Celestia was crude but luckily it had the exact coordinates.” Fidgeting around a bit in the cramped confines, she managed to reach into her light jacket and pull out a folded map. She struggled with it but got it open, revealing a closer map of the target area.
“The main city is right here and that’s as far as the road can take us. The station is a bit of a distance away from it, but if we cut across this field right here we can get there pretty fast without having to weave around the rough country so much.”
“What’s in that field?” Stygian asked.
“A cemetery. There’s some old ruins on the edge of town that have some historic significance.” She smiled a little. “As it turns out, this is going to be something to check off my own bucket list.”
Stygian leaned a little closer. “Oh…this town was the home of Clover the Clever, wasn’t it?”
Twilight’s smile turned into a look of surprise. “Huh?”
“It is, isn’t it?”
“Well…yeah, that’s right. I’m just a bit surprised you knew about that.”
Little Violet giggled. “That’s our Stygian. He loved reading stories about ancient heroes and the like back at home. He still knows them all by heart.”
He smiled in a touch of embarrassment. “Clover the Clever,” he announced. “One of the big historical figures of the medieval period in Equestria. Never actually had a position of real power and yet shaped the course of the kingdom, its diplomatic relations, and even had a hand in its modern founding. He even personally hunted down a few usurpers.”
He looked on at the map, his smile growing a bit wistful.
“We could certainly use more people like him nowadays…”
Twilight noted the change in his tone but decided not to press it. “We’ll want to be in and out of here fairly quick. If we find something that’s rather ‘complicated’, we’ll make a note of it for a return trip. Then we’ll do our best to secure the area and get out. And remember, everyone…any sign of Sombra and we pull back as fast as we can. We have to be back at these train tracks in ten hours, well…” She reached into her clothes, pulled out a pocketwatch, and checked. “Nine hours, forty-two minutes. They’re only going to wait for us for fifteen minutes until heading back for the evening. Then we won’t get a chance until the next day.”
“Let’s just all keep our fingers crossed we don’t have to leave any earlier than that for any reason…” Sunset muttered.
The trip to the township was without incident, but that only figured. The road wasn’t as thickly covered as most of the forested regions of Equestria and it was broad daylight. Combined with the Morning Glory that Sunset had installed and they had little to fear from “standard” Nighttouched, assuming there were still any in the area. Furthermore, there were no signs of Sombra or his controlled legions. Aside from two moments in which they had to dismount to shift tree trunks that had fallen across the road out of the way by cutting them into smaller pieces that the wagon could move, they had no problems on the trip and arrived on schedule.
Much like Canterlot itself, the community was heavily shrouded by old growth trees and forests, and it wasn’t until they were practically in the midst of the township that they were able to make out anything in it. Much like the residential areas around Canterlot, the architecture was almost fairy-tale-esque. The masonry, lanes, stairs, wells, gutters, and lighting systems all seemed to be very similar to the surroundings of the main city if not just a bit simpler and older—the effect of apparently not having as much wealth sunk into them. Also, as it was more embedded in the woods, it had a lot more irregular growth in the wrong places. Tall weeds and bushes grew up in many corners and pathways, making the place far less open and readily habitable.
The town had an old water pump in the city square, so they brought the wagon to a halt there. They couldn’t afford to fully power it down in case they needed to leave in a hurry, so they threw open the relief valve, lowered the boiler heat as much as possible, and then began to dismount. Shining Armor went first, leaving his own Anima Viri off and instead bringing out his rifle, assessing the area before motioning the others to follow. Chipcutter and Boysenberry followed afterward, and the others quickly exited after that.
The place was a ghost town, as expected. No signs of any Nighttouched, although there were more than ample shadows, nooks, crannies, and other hiding places for them to be hidden away in. No sign of Sombra, however.
After a time, Shining Armor moistened his lips and went over to the side of the steam wagon. He raised his weapon, held a moment, and then banged the butt against it—letting out a large metal clang that echoed throughout the square.
The others cringed and watched, listening to the noise slowly reverberate and fade. However, nothing happened. An insect or two, ones that looked “normal”, buzzed around a little loudly, but otherwise silence.
He exhaled and nodded, turning back to Twilight. “I guess that means we’re in the clear for now.” He turned to the others and motioned. “Ok everyone, let’s get going. Let’s start by seeing if there’s a blockhouse or something in this city.”
“Good luck,” she answered, before looking to her own group. They nodded back, and she responded by going into her pocket for a compass. After pulling it out and then holding up the city map, she compared the two for a second before looking forward and motioning. With that, her group went in one direction while the others fell behind Shining Armor and went another.
It felt almost like they were on a battlefield. With the city abandoned, broken in places, and overgrown, the group found themselves very slowly moving through weeds, grasses, and around abandoned goods and machines. It didn’t take long to go into the deeper parts of the town to see it had been hit worse than Canterlot. There were broken windows, doorways, and signs of some destruction that were the more typical aftermaths of Nighttouched attacks. As a result, everyone stayed on the flat and open ground as much as possible, staying far from shadows and constantly on the lookout for trouble.
Stygian himself looked totally ill suited to the situation. As scrawny as he was, he seemed to be struggling under his rifle’s weight and size, and his helm constantly loosened and came over his eyes. He also shook more than any of them—clearly the most nervous.
After a time, Twilight saw Little Violet look at him. Soon after, she stepped closed and put a hand on his shoulder.
“Um, Stygian?” She grasped his rifle and adjusted it slightly. “Remember, keep the barrel in the air. You’re kind of waving it over toward Spike.”
“Oh…oh, um…sorry.”
She smiled back at him, then faced forward and kept walking. However, Twilight saw a change had come over him. As he continued to walk forward it was with a more glum and downcast look.
Sunset apparently noticed as well, because it was enough to make her progressively walk over to him. While their footsteps were loud enough in the grass to make it too quiet to hear for most individuals, Twilight was close enough to overhear the both of them.
“Don’t get so bent out of shape. She was just trying to look out for you.”
He sighed. “She’s always looked out for me. The trouble is I haven’t done much in kind… I’m three years her senior, but whether it’s agility trials, strength exercises, gunnery, drills, or anything else. She’s always been better. Everyone was…”
Sunset looked at him for a moment of silence. “Well…from one person to another who always seemed to ‘be behind’…I’ll let you know it doesn’t pay to nurse jealousy. It just seems to end up making things worse…”
“That’s not it. I wasn’t stupid enough to think that I’d one day be a match for most soldiers. That was obvious on the first day of boot camp. I just would have preferred being strong enough to actually make a difference. But it’s clear that if the two of us every got into a tight spot which one of us would have to rescue the other…”
He stared at the ground for a moment, brooding a little, before looking back up.
“Are you scared of the Light Eaters?”
Sunset was a bit puzzled. “Of…of course. I mean, who isn’t?”
“I know. That’s a pretty obvious question. I was never scared of them. Most people don’t believe me, but it’s true. I didn’t feel terror or dread every time the Nighttouched would appear, or knowing what it would mean. I was angry at them. Angry that I was helpless before them. Angry that I couldn’t do anything to stop them. Angry that I just had to watch people I cared about die in front of me and there wasn’t anything I could do about it.”
He held up his hand, staring at the Promethian Sigil.
“The moment I heard the rumors that these symbols might hold the power to stop them, I was overjoyed. I thought that meant everything would change. That I’d finally be able to fight back and defend people. But I’m still just as weak as before. And now I’m surrounded by people who have those same symbols and can use them better than me…”
Sunset was quiet a moment, before she held out her own hand to him, showing off the blotched remains of her own Promethian Sigil.
“Well,” she half-smiled, “not quite surrounded.”
Stygian looked at the symbol in a bit of surprise before turning to Sunset, but on seeing her expression he hesitantly smiled back. The two eventually parted and the journey resumed.
As they reached the outskirts of the township, the vegetation in the area began to grow wilder and thicker. Especially the grass. While the path ahead seemed to be void of trees and shrubs, the grass and sedges went up to their waists and into a hilly vale. Nevertheless, Twilight kept leading them onward, only occasionally looking back to the map.
After a time, Sunset crept up to her side. “We’re not walking right into the woods, are we?”
“No, we’re right on path. I wanted to cut us across by the most direct route, and this graveyard is it.”
Sunset blinked. “Did you just say…graveyard?”
“Yes! And it’s one of the oldest in all of Equestria! We’re actually getting a bit of history on this trip…”
Sunset looked around a bit uneasily. Twilight noticed it and gave her a critical stare.
“Don’t tell me after everything the two of us have seen over the past seven years that you’re about to be scared off by ghosts.”
She sighed. “Fair point.”
It wasn’t long after that they began to see signs of it. At first, they thought that they simply came across an odd stone in the field, but a second look at it made it clear it was some sort of columnar rock that, for all its weathering, had not been entire natural but partially hewn. There was another a short distance away, and a third soon after that, until they realized they were arranged in somewhat regular rows. Twilight hunched over the fifth they came to, running her hands along it.
“There’s a small impression here,” she spoke up, “like there was lettering that’s been worn away. This was a grave marker.”
“It’s practically just a rock,” Sunset commented. “All of these are. How old was this cemetery?”
“Close to a thousand years, based on the history books.”
Sunset said no more, but only looked around her with more intrigue as they proceeded. The two soldiers with them did much the same. The grass was rather thick in their path, and there seemed to be a few purely innocuous boulders and stones along the way, but they were able to make out bits and pieces of rows here and there hidden behind small slopes or around larger rocks. As they moved out more into the clearing, more abundant sunshine and a steady breeze helped draw greater significance and solemnity to the area than the rest of the abandoned town.
Twilight, at length, looked forward. “There it is.”
The others turned and looked. At the top of one of the larger mounds, rising high above the grass, was the largest boulder of them all. It had been set on its side, indicating its importance and prominence. This one was the most heavily hewn, albeit roughly and a bit haphazardly compared to more modern tools. At least, it did from the side they initially came in on.
However, as they drew nearer, they slowly rounded the stone and saw that a large part of it had been carved out. As a relief, there was a stone figure standing there. It wasn’t anything from the more artistic periods, but for a medieval sculpture it was quite impressive. It depicted a man from the same period almost completely concealed behind a simple hooded robe tied around with a common length of rope.
Twilight drew in front of it and halted. She looked up at the relief and smiled slightly. Spike plodded up to her side and sat down, following his master’s gaze. Sunset soon walked up and looked at her, then to the rock, and back again.
After a moment, she smirked. “Sorry…I shouldn’t be getting nostalgic now. It’s just I read so much about Clover the Clever back in school. I didn’t think too much about the mythological aspects. I was just amazed at how much he was able to do from such a humble start. The one thing I was never really able to do was tour the countryside’s historical sites. I always wanted to come see his grave. It’s one of the oldest still confirmed to exist, you know.”
“It’s great, Twilight, but…didn’t we have a job to do here?”
She sighed but nodded. “Right, right… Well, I didn’t come here just to sightsee. I’m using his grave marker as a waypoint.” She held up the map again as she fished for her compass. “Just give me a minute. We need to be accurate here and walk in a straight line to get to the site. If we aren’t spot on, something tells me we’ll miss it.”
She nodded. “Right, I’ll just-”
She cut herself off. She had been looking back up to address the two soldiers with them, only to see they weren’t there. She glanced around but saw they weren’t nearby either.
Twilight looked over her map and compass for a moment, but then glanced up at the stone. “Alright, we just need to…hmm? What’s that…?”
Sunset didn’t seem to notice her saying that, and neither did Spike. The dog suddenly turned and perked up his ears, as if he had heard something in spite of their environment being rather quiet. A moment later, Sunset stepped away from the mage; slowly rounding the stone pillar.
As she suspected, by doing so, she soon spotted the two soldiers. Both were standing at a short distance away on the slope of the hill. Little Violet was looking around at their route ahead, but Stygian had gone still and was staring out at one point in particular. Sunset, on seeing them, stepped away from the monument and began to head out toward them.
She had nearly reached Stygian when she heard something behind her. She glanced back around and saw that Spike was staring out at the distance. He stood there quietly for a moment, before Sunset heard it again. This time, she recognized it as a small growl from his throat.
She instantly began to feel uneasy and she tensed on turning back to Stygian and walking the rest of the way toward him. He never turned to her once. As she stopped at his side, she leaned in close.
“Hey…Twilight’s plotting out our route from that grave marker. We should probably head over there.”
“We’re not alone.”
It was spoken quietly, but also without the slightest hint of apprehension or suspicion. It was stated as a concrete fact.
“…Excuse me?”
“We’re being watched. All around us.”
Sunset hesitated. The anxious feeling began to grow a bit stronger. “How can you tell?”
“The grass has been flattened in places closer to the grave marker. Someone was moving around it not long ago.”
“Someone? Not something?”
“Only the grass if flattened. There’s no animal tracks on any of the wet dirt portions.”
Sunset stood there a moment longer, wondering if whoever was out there could already see she was tensing up. Stygian was speaking quietly enough, but it had to be getting obvious that they knew something was the matter. At last, trying to stay as casual as possible, she leaned up and turned around. She meant to get back to Twilight, tell her what was going on, and hopefully get them moving before whoever was there was aware they were on to them. Then they needed to plan a way to get back to the others…
She only got a few steps, however, when Spike let out a single bark.
That clenched it. Immediately, the area around them came alive. From behind stones and hills, from within grass and dips in the valley, rose no less than twenty individuals. Each one of them was wearing a drab, yet earthen, uniform, and each one had a rifle in their hands and took aim at the three of them.
Stygian tensed up, but was unable to do anything. He already knew if he tried he’d be shot before he could. Little Violet, on the other hand, raised her weapon to fire at the nearest.
“Stop right there!” one of the people around them shouted, as she and her companion both trained their weapons on her.
“Violet, lower it!” Stygian immediately added, quickly throwing down his own rifle and putting his hands up.
She frowned in a near indignant pout, but realized she was beat. Ruefully, she threw her own rifle down before putting her own hands up. Spike let out a sharp growl, and began to bark loudly. He started to run toward the soldiers surrounding them, and one quickly pivoted their gun around.
Sunset tensed. “Spike! Stop!”
The dog had little reason to listen to her, especially after how she had treated his master. However, the urgency in her voice in a desperate attempt to get him to heel apparently worked. The dog stopped in his tracks, although he continued to growl. Sunset, on her part, was not only surprised that she had actually gotten him to stop…but was a little surprised she had shouted out in the first place. It wasn’t like protecting that dog bought her anything in terms of favors or freedom.
A moment of silence passed, as those who were nearest rose out from their hiding places, guns still aimed, and began to step forward. Looking at them a bit closer, Sunset soon recognized their details in spite of their uniform colors, which were obviously meant for camouflage.
Griffonstone soldiers.
Not long after, one individual in particular rose up, and on seeing who it was, Sunset immediately felt a wave of anxiety come over her.
Gilda practically sneered at her. “Small world, Fire Witch. And here I thought after you managed to slip by me back in Fillydelphia that I’d never see you again.”
Sunset didn’t answer. There was nothing she could say. Considering what happened the last time they had met, she realized she was fortunate enough that they hadn’t been shot on sight. All she could do was raise her own hands in surrender.
A few of the soldiers came out from the grass and advanced on the two members of their task force. Stygian and Little Violet were quickly checked for more weapons before they were shoved around at rifle point and forced to move back toward Sunset. Spike growled the whole time but, fortunately, didn’t give them any reason to shoot other than that.
“What are you all doing out here?” Stygian asked halfway there, only to get a rather hard shove in the back for doing so.
“We’ll ask the questions. Now keep moving before I put a bullet in your lung.”
Stygian frowned but did as he was told, and soon both he and Little Violet were alongside Sunset, and all of them found themselves surrounded by four people with guns. At that point, Gilda shouldered her own rifle and drew a smaller revolver. She approached the group, keeping it aimed on them and never looking away, before she stopped a short distance away.
“Now who else is around here?”
Sunset mentally debated for a moment whether to play innocent, as they seemed to have not caught sight of Twilight yet, or to be honest. Yet before she could say a word, a flash of light erupted from behind them. Enough to where everyone looked back, including the people from Griffonstone. A voice began to call out.
“Valiant spirit, my household opens its doors to you!”
“I, Clover the Clever, the Pastoral Consul, pledge myself to the House of Twilight Sparkle.”
Sunset let out a gasp at what she was hearing, realizing what Twilight was doing right that second. Gilda’s own face turned to surprise and shock. “Get her!” she yelled. “Don’t let her finish!”
A moment of confusion passed among the soldiers, before those not guarding the group began to leave their posts and run for the monument. At that point, Sunset finally got enough of her wits to try and make a move. However, it was too late. She barely twitched in her position before Gilda’s eyes caught her, and at once she wheeled fully back to her and held her gun up right in her face. Wincing, she quickly froze again.
However, it seemed as if Gilda was too slow as well. The soldiers had only run halfway to the monument when Twilight called out again.
“The binding is done; may our souls be as one!”
Another flash of light went out, brighter this time, and it had already died down again by the time the Griffonstone soldiers finally rounded the monument and aimed their weapons at her.
“Hands up!”
“Don’t say another word or we’ll shoot!”
Sunset couldn’t see Twilight, but she assumed she complied because no gunshots went out. Moments later, once six guns were trained on her, two of the soldiers put their weapons aside long enough to advance on her. She saw no more than that, for at that moment she found herself roughly seized from behind and forced forward with a gun barrel digging into her back. Stygian and Little Violet had the same done to them, and soon all three were being shoved forward and closer to Gilda and the rest of the soldiers; who themselves were quickly coming forward and gathering around them.
A moment later, one of the soldiers seized her wrist and yanked it behind her back. Her other, however, was left exposed and grabbed by a soldier in front of her rather painfully. She yanked it up to her face and examined it. Sunset looked nearby and saw that the same was happening to Stygian and Little Violet. Not long after, however, the one seizing her hand looked confused.
“Major? You should take a look at this.”
Gilda, still looking rather upset at what had just happened, came forward. “What is it?”
“Look at her hand. I’ve never seen anything like this before. It’s like her Promethian Sigil got ‘blotted out’.”
She none-too-gently twisted her hand and showed it to Gilda. The woman looked over it for a moment but simply scowled. “This is Trottingham’s Fire Witch. There’s no way she doesn’t have a couple souls along with her Promethian Sigil.”
“Well, I’m not seeing any on her now. And look.” With that, she used her other hand to rub furiously against the back of the woman’s hand. It was actually painful and made her wince and twist, but by the end of it the blotch was still there. “She’s not covering it up with anything. It’s gone.”
She sighed and rolled her eyes. “Fine, whatever. What about those kids with her?”
“They both got one, but no souls,” a different Griffonstone soldier called back.
“Then just tie their hands. But hold off on gagging that other one. I need her tongue for at least a few more minutes…”
Sunset tried to look behind her, but the moment she did she got such a painful thrust in the back that she nearly stumbled forward, and was left wincing as she slowly turned back around. Moments later, her other hand was forcefully wrenched behind her and tied along with the arm already there. She was forced to stand with the other two as the rest of the soldiers surrounded them, and almost all of them pointed their weapons at them. She heard more shifting behind her, and eventually she was able to see why in her peripheral vision. Twilight was shoved up and alongside her. Her own hands were bound and the soldiers nearby looked ready to gag her in an instant.
In spite of that, Sunset glanced at her hand. Three symbols were now on it.
“Gilda…” Twilight remarked on seeing who was leading the group.
“So you losers remembered my name, huh? I guess Dash isn’t with you this time. If she was, she’d have already tried something stupid… Too bad for you.”
“What are you doing here?”
“The same thing you’re doing, of course. Getting every soul we can while the getting’s good.”
Both Sunset and Twilight looked taken aback. “Wait…what?”
She crossed her arms. “Don’t play dumb with me. Promethian Sigils are nice and all, but new ones aren’t popping up as often as they used to. We’ve just about got all we’re going to get, it looks like. And we both know what really matters is how many souls you get bound to them. One person with one soul can beat a hundred soldiers. Two and they can take a thousand. So that means the country that’s going to be the most in charge is the one that reaps the most souls.”
Sunset looked a little stunned. “Wait…that’s why you’re here?”
“Why else do you think Griffonstone has been trying to get into Equestria so badly, nitwit? You think we like fighting off freakish monsters by the hundreds? This place is a smorgasbord of souls. Not accounting for all the people who got killed with the Lunar Fall, graveyards like this and monuments and historical sites are rife with them. They’ve even got notable people from Griffonstone buried on Equestria land.”
“But how did you find out about the An…I mean, the souls binding to your Promethian Sigil?” Twilight cut in.
“That’s none of your business. Just know that our informant not only told us all about how these things work, but they’ve also been pointing out where to get the biggest and juiciest ones. We’ve also been told about these secret buildings loaded with all kinds of inventions and science decades…even centuries…beyond anything we can make right now. Although the one we ransacked around here not too long ago ended up being a dud, this town was still fertile ground.”
She jabbed a finger at the monument. “That one was supposed to have a really nice soul attached to it. We’ve been trying to get it for a week since we can’t find the Well of Shade anywhere around here. Too bad these damn things don’t just pop out to anyone. They’re picky enough to where they want just the right person. We’ve been holding this position for days while we’ve been sending for everyone else who has a Promethian Sigil to try and get it out…”
She glared at Twilight angrily.
“But then you had to show up and just take it out right from underneath us, didn’t you?” She stared her down for a moment after saying that, but then grinned. “Fortunately, our informant also told us an easy way to make a soul available again if someone else takes it first…”
Her handgun went up again, aiming right in between Twilight’s eyes. The mage immediately paled and began to quiver. With this many weapons trained on her, there was no way for her to bring her Anima Viris to bear before she’d get shot, and she couldn’t even risk performing a spell now.
“I wouldn’t feel too bad about it, though,” Gilda went on, her smile turning into an angry scowl once again. “I’ve been wanting to kill you ever since the fort. We were in the middle of a battle zone. There was no way for us to bind the soldiers you drove crazy to get them out of there. We ended up having to put bullets in their heads to get ourselves out of there. I’ll never forgive you for that.”
Twilight shook a little harder, now staring right down the end of the handgun, but didn’t dare protest. The slightest word would only get her killed faster.
“But before that…” Gilda swiveled her arm around, making Sunset jump as soon as she saw the weapon aimed at her. “Normally I’d love to take you back to grill you, but the higher ups say they got all the info they need from our informant. So instead, answer me this—is there anyone else out here with the four of you?”
“No…no one,” Sunset quickly responded.
Apparently, it was a little too quickly, because Gilda looked even angrier after hearing that. “Well, that’s a damn shame, because if you’re out here by yourselves then there’s no reason to keep you alive as a hostage, and there’s definitely no reason to keep those two,” She gestured to Stygian and Little Violet. “Alive either. So I’ll try asking you again…is there anyone else out here with the four of you?”
Sunset stiffened. She choked for a moment, trying to assess their options. Shining Armor and the others might have heard them and they might not have. They were far enough away for it to be touch and go, depending on which way they had started searching. She could try to stall, but if it failed they were dead, and even if it succeeded she wasn’t sure that they’d figure out what happened. Not to mention the longer she tried to think of something the more she’d realize she was trying to trick her…
“What’s the Well of Shade?”
It was Stygian who had abruptly spoken up, surprising Sunset. She turned to him, but he merely looked back at Gilda. She, in turn, spun to him.
“…Excuse me?”
“You said you were looking for the ‘Well of Shade’. What’s that?”
Gilda sneered. “Do I look like a local tour guide of former Equestria to you? It’s none of your business. Why don’t you keep your mouth shut over there? You’ll live longer.”
Stygian looked uncomfortable and did as he was told, but his question caused Sunset to get an idea. It was a bit of a long shot, but she knew if anyone could possibly make the bluff work it would be Twilight. She swallowed once, suppressing her growing nervousness, before she forced herself to speak.
“That’s too bad, because it seems like you can’t find it on your own.”
Gilda, along with a few of the soldiers, snapped back to her in an instant. Her eyes locked with Sunset’s and immediately began to glare angrily.
“Now you have something to say other than what I asked you to tell me?”
“I’m just saying, if you wanted to find that well, you couldn’t do much better than asking her.” She motioned to Twilight with her head.
The gesture was so surprising that, before she could stop herself, Twilight gaped at her and blurted out: “Me?”
Fortunately, none of the soldiers fired at that, and after a moment Sunset quickly nodded. “She used to be a student in Canterlot before all of this went down. She’s had copies of all the detailed maps of the region, including the smaller points of interest. If anyone could find this well of yours, it would be her.” She turned to her. “Isn’t that right, Twilight?”
The woman was caught for a moment, and was even more put on the spot when both Gilda and several others looked to her. Apparently, they were willing to let her speak for this, although she had to choose her words carefully. Luckily, it seemed to click pretty quick. “Well, um…yes, actually. When I was searching the area for this city, I did a look at the surrounding points of interest, including the historical sites. If you could give me a general area this place is supposed to be in, I’m sure I could find it.”
She paused, but then quickly blurted out more.
“I-I-If…you agree not to kill me or my companions.”
Gilda’s eyes narrowed on her. “Right. How do I know you’re not just bluffing for time? Or waiting to use whatever you used back in Fillydelphia on us?”
“That’s wasn’t us!” Sunset protested. “I don’t know who your ‘informant’ is, but they left out an important detail about the Promethian Sigils! Namely that people who get them are at risk of spontaneously losing their minds!”
“That’s a load of crap,” Gilda spat. “Until we ran into you two and Dash, none of our teammates who ever got Promethian Sigils went ballistic like that!”
Twilight looked at them in surprise.
“…Really? No one?”
“What? Did you think we’d form a whole armed forces branch devoted to them if we thought they’d go crazy and kill themselves any moment? You think we’re idiots over here in Griffonstone?”
Twilight didn’t answer. This new revelation had struck her silent. She stared at the ground and said nothing as she thought this over.
Sunset, however, jumped in again after a moment. “Well, the bottom line is that if anyone on your group does go ballistic, it’s not because we did anything to them. But Twilight is the one who can fix it. She’s the only one who can perform the Binding Seal. If she does that, they’ll calm down. It’s already happened with us multiple times and she’s fixed it each time. We could have done it back in the fort if you hadn’t sprung on us.”
She tactfully decided to omit the part about how it would also ruin the Promethian Sigil and eject the Anima Viris. She didn’t need any more suspicion from Gilda than she had already.
The woman glared at Sunset long and hard. She turned to Twilight, getting her to look back up to her, but showed nothing else. She crossed her arms and stood there thinking for several moments. Finally, she jabbed a thumb in Twilight’s direction. “You currently have three souls on your sigil. That means you’re bigger and better than the rest of us.” She held up her own hand.
A bit to their surprise, she showed off two.
“And you expect us to take the chance that you’ll just sit on that the whole time?”
Twilight swallowed, but shrugged. “Well…I might have three, but my companions don’t. And I can’t defend them all.”
“Good point. On that note, why don’t you just tell us how to get to the Well of Shade right now or we’ll kill these three along with your dog?”
Spike let out a growl at that, while Sunset and the others began to tense up. Twilight didn’t look too comfortable either, but after a moment she firmed up, and even managed a bit of a smirk of her own.
“If we do have more friends nearby, I think the last thing you want to do is start firing off gunshots letting them know you’re here. My first deal stands.”
Gilda looked irritated, but said nothing else. She fumed for a moment longer, thinking this over, but finally spoke up.
“Gretel.”
One of the soldiers looked up to her. “Yeah?”
“How far away is that site by Steel Lion from here?”
“Uh…that’d be about a day’s trip.”
“Alright. You take your group, load up in the Steel Lion, and head back toward Forward Three Outpost. I’ll take the others along with these three and start marching toward it.”
Several members of her group turned to her rather incredulously, stunned at what she just said. “What…?”
“You heard me. Your group will act as the diversion for any of their friends that might be around. Lead them on a nice wild goose chase. The rest of us will make for the Well of Shade.”
“But…but you’re wanting us to do it on foot? In Equestria? At night?”
“Don’t be such a yellow belly. I used to be a Huntsman. I’ve spent overnights under Nighttouched swarms before. Besides, that’ll guarantee they’ll go after your group. They’d think we’d be crazy to try and traverse Equestria on foot.” She began to put her gun in her side holster. “Alright, gag that one. And I want a rifle on her head at all times ready to blow her brains out the moment she tries something.”
One of the soldiers moved to do so, but Twilight looked a bit confused. “Wait…don’t you need me to tell you-”
“Hold your horses,” Gilda cut off right as a soldier tied a specially-made gag over her face rather roughly and harshly. “You’ll tell us what we want when we get there, not before. Unless you think I’m dumb enough to let you have us wander aimlessly for days waiting for any of your pals to catch up.” She glanced back over to Sunset. “Well, congratulations, Fire Witch. You earned yourself another three days of life. I don’t really know why you think that gained you anything in the grand scheme of things as I plan to put bullets in your heads the moment we find the Well of Shade, but enjoy.”
Sunset grimaced, but could say nothing else. She looked at Twilight, but apparently Griffonstone had thought about how to restrain people like her before. This wasn’t a normal gag but something designed to fit inside her mouth as well, keeping her from making any sound at all other than a dull, muted noise. And the fact that the soldier was locking it over the back of her head like a pair of shackles would be only made things worse.
Gilda turned around and motioned. “Let’s get moving. And by the way, I won’t shoot that dog now because I don’t want to alert anyone, but if I hear one bark from it I’ll take my chances.”
“You’ve been singing that song ever since you woke up four hours ago. And you sang it all day yesterday. And the day before…” Rainbow Dash sighed tiredly. “Could we give it a rest?”
Pinkie hopped off of the steam ship’s railing and turned to face her, balling her hands up into fists and practically hopping up and down. “I’m just so excited to be here! We’re on the ocean! The big, beautiful, wet ocean! Water, water everywhere! We never had this much water at the quarry in Trottingham! Now I just have to hang my head over the side whenever I get thirsty!”
Dash grimaced. “I…don’t think that would be a good idea.”
“Aw…”
The Huntsman turned and looked behind her. She and Pinkie were currently on the prow of the steam ship. Being from Manehattan, it was one of the larger, cleaner, and more luxurious liners that were available on the open seas, and this was one of the latest and most modern boats. Not that Dash was appreciating it. While the ship would have been suitable for a relaxing cruise for most people, she had spent the entire trip looking uneasy, uncomfortable, and cranky. Including now as she glanced back along the deck.
Being a more “official” voyage for Manehattan, the ship was manned by an official Manehattan Naval crew, and had additional members of the army stationed on it. She hadn’t given them a good look so much as once. As much as she had been reluctant to get on board the ship back in Manehattan, she seemed to only regret her decision more as time went on.
Finally, she looked back in front of her again, only to see Pinkie’s grinning face right in hers.
“Hey Rainbow Dash!”
“Yah!”
Instantly she leaped back, only to trip and fall back to the deck. She grimaced sorely and began to pick herself up again.
“What…?”
“How come you haven’t tried out your new Anima Viri yet? Don’t you want to know what kind of Role you’ll turn into?”
She grunted as she got back to her feet. “Ugh…now you’re going on about it too? What does it matter anyway?” She gestured around them. “We’re taking the long way around the Teeth Archipelago. We aren’t going to be going anywhere near wherever those ships are being smashed or where those things Twilight saw are doing it.” She crossed her arms. “It might actually make this trip kind of fun. I’d rather be beating something up rather than just standing around being stared at by those army guys…”
“Aw…they’re not so bad when they’re not arresting you. Or chasing you. Or shooting you. Or forcing you to move into an internment camp. What’s the problem?”
“I don’t get along with military types too well anymore, is all.”
“Oh? Why not?”
“Let’s just say they’re the second-most disliked group of my list of pet peeves…”
“Really? Who’s first?”
Dash turned back to Pinkie, who looked at her as innocent and oblivious as a lamb.
“…Nevermind.”
“Ms. Dash, Ms. Pie.”
Both women looked up and down the deck. One of the sailors, apparently one of the official bridge crew, was approaching both of them, and stopped a short distance away.
“Based on our current position, we should be in sight of land within the hour, and we’ll be making port at Somnambula before noon.”
“Yipee!” Pinkie cheered.
Rainbow Dash didn’t look as enthused. “Alright, so we got you all here. What exactly do we do while your high muck-a-mucks are out there doing whatever it is you do…like negotiating or whatever?”
“The Embassy for Southern Equestria is a bit low on space and rather basic in terms of facilities. Normally when we send an envoy, we make accommodations with some of the local administrators and officials with whom we have more formal diplomatic ties. You’ll be staying with two such individuals who live near the sugar plantations for the next three days until we are ready to return to Manehattan.”
Pinkie grinned from ear to ear. “Did you say…‘sugar’? Ooo! Maybe they’ll let me take back a few bags!”
“Away from the rest of the army? Sounds good to me,” Dash threw in.
“Very well then. Kindly return to your cabins and get everything you need in order. We’ll want to disembark quickly once we arrive.”
A few hours later, and the steam ship was pulling into Port Somnambula in Southern Equestria. Not long after, both ladies disembarked—the first time either of them had set foot on another continent. The experience was, to say the least, rather shocking.
The first thing that struck them was the heat. The hottest part of summer had come and gone in Greater Everfree, but it was still rather warm and arid down south. Enough to almost be oppressive for both of them. The next shocking thing was the architecture. The port city that they had ended up in was certainly big and bustling enough. Easily a match for a place like Baltimare. And yet, everything about it was far older. Most of the buildings were still made of clay bricks that looked like they had been weather-battered and worn for at least a hundred years. They were no more than two stories and packed together on roads that were mostly packed dirt or stone. Many of the people were dressed in different styles, all of them far different from Greater Everfree and from a far earlier age.
The biggest shock, however, to both of them was in the nature of the people. Even considering the fact that they had gone to a land with a different culture, it was astonishing to see their demeanor. They seemed far louder and more talkative. They had a greater energy about them as they went about their daily tasks, even with such simple things as carrying goods, unloading ships, or setting up stalls in the local markets and streets that seemed everywhere. In general, everything around them seemed livelier.
Even the residents who had clearly descended from Manehattanites had a much more open and casual demeanor about them. When they passed by local cafes or coffee shops, the customers laughed louder and joked more often. When they went through the markets, the people were more eager to buy and the vendors more ready to sell.
That wasn’t to say that everything was positive, however. On the contrary. They had scarcely set foot off the pier, for example, before they saw some of the local magistrates mediating an argument between what looked like two different shipping companies. Just a bit further and what looked like an angry warehouse owner was yelling at another group over what was clearly a broken-into building. Once they got into the streets, they saw no less than three different arguments—one of which came to a fist fight between a pair of men pulling along hand carts.
Worming their way through it all proved to be a bit rough. While most of the people they were escorting were immediately whisked away on a steam carriage to wherever they were meeting, they were given directions to the local official’s house and then left on their own to make their way through the noise and commotion of the city. It wasn’t long before they were knee deep in people traversing markets, bombarded by sights, sounds, and smells of everyone around them.
Smells, in particular, caught Pinkie’s attention. For the third time since they left the boat, Dash suddenly saw her dart to one side. “Ooo! Ooo! They’ve got oranges and grapes over here! And look! Sugar beets and dates over there! Oh, oh, oh! That place has potatoes! …Ok, those aren’t as tasty as the others, but still!”
By now, Dash was keen enough to reach out and seize her by the back of the shirt before she could take off. “Knock it off, Pinkie. We’re not here to shop, and I’d rather get to wherever we’re staying first before we hit any markets.”
She again looked disappointed, but resigned herself to again standing at her side. They walked a little further, with her looking around like an eager child, before she turned her head and hummed. “Hmm…y’know…there’s something weird about the people around here that I can’t quite put my finger on…”
Dash cracked a sly smile. “You mean that there’s so many men around here doing everything?”
Pinkie looked up at that, but did another glance about. “Huh…you know what? There is!”
“Of course. None of the people down in Southern Equestria had to deal with the Lunar Fall. They didn’t have to get their armies torn to pieces followed by all the draftees trying to kill the Nighttouched and Light Eaters. Down here? It was just business as usual the past seven years.” She snickered. “I bet they think we’re a couple of street walkers because we’re going around ‘unescorted’ like this.”
“Oh…but I am a street walker!”
“Huh?”
“See? I’m walking…and it’s a street!”
“…Let’s just get to that house.”
“Okie-dokie-lokie!”
While the streets were initially crowded, they eventually, and quite abruptly, terminated. The reason was clear. One of Southern Equestria’s great rivers was near the port city and, as a result, much of the land around it that was in the flood plain had to be reserved purely for agriculture. The ancient stonework and brick gave way to wide, spacious fields of agriculture. Very neatly arranged, very carefully cultivated using the latest techniques, and spanning up and down the banks of the river as far as the eye could see. Even the road they were on was made as thin as possible to not use up the precious fertile land.
The two still had a ways to walk even then, and passed by a number of fields along the way, but eventually they entered lands that were nothing but sugar cane. Pinkie Pie was happily skipping along all the way, until they reached one of the fields currently being harvested. At that point she watched the laborers at work and noticed something. They didn’t appear to be Manehattan descent, and very few of them looked like they were of native Southern Equestria descent either. Most of them that did seemed to be walking along the rows watching the other laborers at work. It caused Pinkie a bit of puzzlement, especially how each of them kept their heads down and straight to task, but she didn’t question it.
Eventually, however, they came up to a house—a somewhat large and conspicuous one that had been built at the end of their path. It was in the Manehattan style, at least what was popular a century ago, but was clearly very old and very well maintained with a very wide and expansive front porch area.
The three had scarcely approached the front step when the door opened. Pinkie was a bit surprised at the young man who came out. While he was well-dressed enough, the individual was clearly of Griffonstone descent. He went to the top of the steps and halted, giving them a bow of greeting, albeit one that was a tad forced.
“Welcome. I assume I’m talking to Ms. Rainbow Dash and Ms. Pinkamena Diane Pie?”
Both ladies were a bit put off by the formal greeting, especially this far from Greater Everfree, but Dash merely nodded. “Yup, that’s us.”
“We’ve been expecting you. Please, come this way. The master and the mistress are out on the north veranda.”
He immediately turned around and headed inside. The two looked to one another, before heading up the front stairs, crossing the porch, and following after him.
The house was furnished much as one might expect from an older couple from Manehattan. Some of the pictures, the dishes in the cabinets, and a few of the draperies bore more of a signature Southern Equestria style, but all in all it was much like walking into an older style of home from Rarity’s. For as large as it was, it was also rather empty. Many of the rooms were cute, picturesque, and decorated nicely, but also looked totally untouched. They even crossed a dining room with full expensive place settings put out, with half of the utensils being ones the two ladies had never seen before, but they were long unused.
They ended up going all the way to the back door, where the young man led them through. Another long, spacious porch was out that way, this one overlooking the river and, far beyond it, the ocean. An older couple, bordering on elderly, were seated out there along with an old dog—who was lying there with his head on his paws regarding the newcomers with an indifferent look.
As for the old couple, the lady of the two was leaning in a high-backed chair around a round table, using a hand fan to keep away the occasional insect from the river. She seemed casual and amiable enough. The gentleman, on the other hand, was a different sort entirely. He was dressed in a suit, indicating that, in spite of his age, he still had some business he was going about, but he was looking at one of several letters on his side of the table and giving them a rather grumpy and sour look. So much so that he didn’t even seem to notice the young man approach him, even when he stopped just a few feet away.
He glanced over another two lines of the letter. “Yeah, what is it, Gallus?”
“The two Manehattan guests have arrived, sir.”
He let out a bit of a grumble, but took the letter and tossed it aside before looking up at the two of them. He definitely wasn’t the most pleasant fellow to look at. Aside from that, Rainbow Dash had to stifle a smirk on seeing his very obvious toupee.
“So…you’re those two ‘magic women’ from Manehattan, eh?”
Pinkie grinned and hopped forward, right up to Gallus’ side. “Yup! That’s us, Mr….” She trailed off, clearly motioning for him to fill her in.
He ignored it. “Got any luggage?”
“Nope! Just these itty-bitty ones!” Pinkie cheered as she held up her small bag. Rainbow Dash held up her own.
“Good.” He immediately got out of his seat. “Gallus, take the bags up to their rooms, then bring out the tea. I’ll be back this evening.”
With that, he brushed right past both Gallus and Pinkie and began to make his way to the back door. Dash herself raised an eyebrow at how quickly they had been dismissed. Pinkie, on the other hand, was a bit more genteel.
“Oh? Got big, important business in the city, Mr….?”
Again, he didn’t take the bait. He frowned instead. “No…I just like wearing one of these uncomfortable suits in sweltering heat whenever I go walking. Really helps the sinuses.” He sarcastically retorted.
“Really? Great! I’ll tell my dad about that!”
The old man paused in the middle of his walking, rolled his eyes and sighed, and then simply kept going.
“Uh…are we, like, putting you out or something?” Dash asked as he reached the door.
He looked back with a sour frown. “What’s the matter? Don’t care for my hospitality? Fine. Go find somewhere else to stay for free for the next few days.” Without another word, he turned about, went inside, and let the door slam behind him.
Both Dash and Pinkie looked a little out of sorts. Gallus sighed before he walked forward, practically snatched the bags out of the two ladies’ hands, and then turned around to follow after him. Both were nearly dumbfounded until the lady at the table spoke up.
“Oh dear…what am I going to do with that man…?”
Both looked back around, seeing the woman looking at them with a much gentler look as she indicated nearby. “Please, both of you, have a seat. I’m sure you had to walk a long way from the port.”
Pinkie grinned. “Thanks!” she answered, readily hopping into a seat. Dash was a bit more apprehensive but soon did the same.
“I heard you came all the way from Manehattan. I haven’t seen a person from Manehattan in five years, and it’s been even longer since I’ve been there.” She smiled and laughed to herself a little. “The way the world is changing, I doubt I’d even recognize the place. We may be a bit more old-fashioned out here, but never mind old Doodle. Just make yourselves at home.”
“Okie-dokie!” Pinkie chirped up. “First, can I get a little fan like yours, Mrs….?”
The woman smiled back. “Oh, I’m not so much of a stickler on formal titles as the rest of my family, young lady. So long as you’re a guest in my home, you can just call me by my first name: Matilda. And how do you two prefer to be called?”
“I’m Pinkie Pie!”
“Just Dash’ll be fine,” Dash answered back, still not as reciprocal as Pinkie was, although she was easing a little more now. She looked about outside the veranda. “So…you own the sugar fields around here or what?”
She smiled and laughed again. “Oh no. All the fields around here are owned by Knickerbocker Fruit & Cane, or at least their affiliates. My father had a smaller sugar beet plantation. He made an agreement with a rum producer from the Dragonlands that made him a good sized fortune that he passed on to me and my sisters, but this house and property comes from my husband.”
“Pretty nice…and right on the river, too. I’m guessing…a banker?”
She laughed yet again. “Oh-ho…I’d love to see old Doodle trying to run a bank. I think he’d drive away every customer. No, he’s actually the local governor.”
Dash’s eyes widened a little at that. Pinkie looked fascinated, but then again she usually did about everything. “You’re kidding?”
“Well, that’s not how he made his fortune, of course.” Before she could say another word, the back door opened again. Gallus, hardly looking any better than before, walked in bearing a tray with a tea set. He proceeded to set it in their midst, and immediately began setting out the cups and the saucers. No sooner had he done that when he began to pour it for them as well.
“Um…that’s ok, we can handle it,” Dash mentioned when he went that far, noting the look on his face.
“Hey, it’s what I’m not paid to do,” he sighed with a slight shrug.
Dash paused a moment before she understood, frowning a little as she sat back and had her cup finished being filled. Pinkie, on her part, was puzzling over it by the time he moved on to her cup. Matilda, on the other hand, went on with her story. “You might not think to look at him right now, but he used to be fairly well-to-do in the Manehattan Navy. One of the best officers they had, although he was a bit more famous for a different reason.” She smirked. “All the petty officers and sailors couldn’t stand him. They used to call him ‘Cpt. Cranky Doodle’. I give him a bit of grief for it every now and then…both of us know it’s true.”
Gallus had finished filling her own cup, and she reached over to take it. She nodded to him as she did. “Thank you, Gallus. We’ll be alright from here. I’ll call if we need anything else.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He gave a short bow, and then turned to walk back inside.
“Anyway…he became successful enough to finish the house his grandfather started to build, which is where we are today. We were supposed to move in after he retired from the navy, but…”
She was quiet for a moment. She let out an exhale, staring at the table as she put her saucer back down and set her cup in it.
“Well, to make a long story short, everything happened with the Lunar Fall, one thing led to another, and he was moved right from service into the role of governor. I had hoped we would have had a bit more time to ourselves, but at least we’re in the home he always wanted. Really now, it isn’t much of a position. Fifty or sixty years ago it might have been something of some importance, but between the Knickerbocker pretty much handling everything in terms of the port and the active military being stationed here following the Lunar Fall, there’s almost nothing for him to do.”
She smiled again.
“Nothing except entertain out of town guests. I hope you enjoy your stay here. It’s been so long since we’ve had anyone in the house other than Gallus. I’ll admit you may find the place a bit old-fashioned, but if there’s anything that strikes your fancy I’ll be happy to let you use it. Everything will just gather dust, otherwise.”
“Yipee!” Pinkie cheered in between loading sugar cubes and cream into her own teacup. “Do you have any of the local fruits? Because I’d really like to try out making my first lemon meringue pie! Oh, oh! Or orange danish!”
“Y’know, for someone who isn’t that busy, your husband seemed like he had some important business to do,” Dash mentioned as she finally picked up her own teacup, although she didn’t drink it.
“Hmm?” she said, looking up for her tea. Her eyes glanced to the letters. “Oh…yes. Well, I suppose you did come at a time in which he has a little more on his plate than normal. When it comes to the local economy and land rights, the judges and the bigger companies handle those. When it comes to the encroachment of hostile nations or mass migrations, the navy takes care of that. However, when it comes to problems on a more domestic front, then he needs to get more involved.”
“Er…domestic front?”
“It’s nothing too terrible. It’s just a change in the economy. Port Somnambula used to be an important archeological site. Enough to where they brought in a good amount of money for tourism and researchers from Greater Everfree universities.” She sighed. “All of that dried up with the Lunar Fall. The locals that were employed with those kind of jobs had to move to the plantations. That sparked some resentment that flares up every now and then. Doodle tells me it’s nothing to worry about, however. If things got too bad, either the Knickerbocker or the navy would come in and quiet things down, and that would be that.”
“Yeah…” Dash remarked rather flatly. “Guess so.” She stared at her cup a bit longer, but then put it back down without ever having taken a sip. “Anyway, I think I’m pretty tired from the trip. What room are we staying in?”
“Oh,” She sat down her own cup. “Just go right upstairs, turn right, and it’s the second door you come to. I’ll ask Gallus to-”
“No thanks. I can find it myself.” She pushed away from the table, stood up, and turned around to head to the door.
Pinkie watched her go for a few moments, then turned back to Matilda. Although she had finally finished getting her tea the way she liked it, she pushed it away. “Can I see which way to the kitchen? I want to get baking right away!”
Matilda looked a little puzzled. “Well…yes, dear. But aren’t you going to have any of your tea?”
“Er…I think I better not. After seeing Cranky, Gallus, and Dash walk out? I think there’s something in it that might be making everyone grumpy.”
The sun was close to setting by the time Pinkie happily bounded her way up the stairs to her room. True to Matilda’s word, she didn’t leave anything off limits to her. She had inspected several rooms full of things that looked pricey or even to be antiques, but she let her handle them all. Vases, busts, pictures, old clocks… Pinkie was especially interested in one room that appeared to be a form of immaculate baby room, furnished with old toys, mobiles, and furniture all appropriate for an infant. Having never seen any such things, she was fascinated by everything inside of it, inspecting every doll, every picture book, and even practically hopping inside the crib to look around.
However, while Matilda had watched her enter every room prior to that one, she excused herself until Pinkie was done and only talked to her after she came out.
“That was our son’s bedroom, but of course that was when he was a baby. He grew up a long time ago, but we redid it for his own first children, our grandchildren.”
Pinkie had nearly asked about the rest of their family, but before she could Matilda led her on to the kitchen where, much to her delight, a ready supply of sugar, oranges, grapes, and dates were waiting. She soon forgot about the room in her quest to expand her culinary baking talents. She ended up making her fair share of disasters, to say nothing of messes, but Matilda didn’t seem to mind at all. She didn’t even call Gallus to come clean them but did it herself. She seemed to just enjoy having someone else in the kitchen.
Matilda offered them supper before she went up, but she was stuffed from trying out her latest creations, and Dash skipped on the whole thing. In fact, she hadn’t even left the room the entire afternoon. The Gaitian found the room easily enough and walked right in. It was nicely decorated, only old fashioned—like most of the rooms in the house. It connected to its own toilet and washroom too. There were two beds in there, and Dash had already crashed on one with her arms folded behind her head and her legs crossed.
“Hey Rainbow Dash! You should’ve stayed downstairs! I made tons of new cakes and pies you could have tried out!”
“Eh…I’m not that big on pie.”
Pinkie’s eyes widened, freezing in place and letting out an exaggerated gasp. “Whaaaaaat?!”
“Just never really cared for it.”
Pinkie seemed to be stuck in some sort of mental break, unable to process that for a moment. In the end, she had to reach up and smack herself in the side of the head to make herself snap out of it. “Well…maybe tomorrow we can have some of the local pastries when we head out to market.”
Dash looked up, confused. “Uh…why are we going to the market?”
“To buy all the fruit I used baking today, silly!” Pinkie giggled back, making Dash’s eyes roll. “Anyway, Gallus should be up soon to bring us some towels for tomorrow.”
This made the Huntsman frown, crossing her arms in front of her and leaning into her mattress. “Yeah…that’s another reason I want to be out of here as soon as possible…”
Pinkie looked confused. “Huh?”
“I don’t really care for the standard of living here in Southern Equestria.”
“What do you mean?”
Dash leveled a look at her. “Pinkie…you do know what Gallus is, right? What all those people out there working the fields are?”
Pinkie stuck her tongue out and looked to the sky, thinking that over as if Dash had just given her a riddle. In response, Dash merely frowned.
“Slaves, Pinkie. They still have slavery in Southern Equestria.”
The pink-haired woman looked back down, immediately looking uneasy. “Oh…” she said after a moment of silence. “I didn’t know about that…”
Dash sighed. “Well, now you do. That’s who’s been ‘waiting on us’. Who makes sure that these two old fossils get to live the nice life of sipping tea and watching the river.”
Pinkie bowed her head for a moment, silently thinking about everything, but then leaned up again. “Well, in that case, I guess I’ll get ready for bed.”
Dash looked up, a bit puzzled. “Huh? Wait…didn’t you just hear what I said?”
“Yeah.”
“…And don’t you care about it? Why aren’t you ticked off? How can you just roll over and go to sleep in a place like this?”
“Well…” Pinkie said with a rather weak shrug. “It’s…not like we can do anything about it right now, right? And if we start making a big fuss about it right now, it’s not going to help out Gallus or any of the others, but we might make Cranky angry enough to kick us out…”
“So you’re just cool with having a slave wait on us?”
“I didn’t say that! It’s just…well…we’re supposed to be at peace with everyone. At least, that’s what Gaia Everfree tells us.”
This, however, triggered Dash. She immediately formed an angry scowl. “Well thank you for reminding me why I think all you religious types are full of it! I should’ve known… Sure, you run around being nice to everyone and not hurting anybody, but when something like this comes along, you just look the other way! That’s why nothing ever changes no matter how many people like you ‘find faith’! That’s why the world went to Hell after the Lunar Fall! I’d figure at least you’d understand, what with what happened to your family, but no!”
“Hey!” Pinkie protested. “I don’t like it and I know it’s wrong! I just don’t want to go around hating anyone! Nothing good ever comes from hating people!”
Dash snorted. “Yeah right. That’s not the first time I’ve heard-”
Knock-knock. “Um…excuse me.”
The two women looked to the door. That had been Gallus’ voice on the other side.
“You two might want to stop arguing so loud. The master will be home soon and he’ll be pretty angry if you keep him awake.”
The two immediately went quiet. A moment passed.
“May I come in?”
“Uh…sure, go for it.”
The doorknob turned and, sure enough, in walked Gallus along with the towels. He didn’t say a word or look at them—just turned and went straight to the washroom with the load. The two ladies were left silent, both of them looking and feeling awkward.
After a moment or so, Dash decided to chance it. “So, um…did you hear us?”
“Only the parts you yelled…” he half-muttered from the washroom. “Will you be needing anything else tonight?”
“No…I think we’re good,” Pinkie answered with a weak smile.
Dash frowned again. “What about you? You’re not happy having to live like this, are you? Being stuck under a couple of Southern Equestrians?”
“First, it doesn’t really matter if I don’t like it or not—I’m still stuck here,” Gallus somewhat grouchily replied. “Second, I like them a lot better than the people from Griffonstone. They’re the ones who sold me to Southern Equestria as soon as I became a ward of the state when I was five years old. At least here I’m wanted, even if it’s only to do housework. And at least I’m not out all day in the sugar cane fields…”
Dash was a bit surprised at that response, and ended up being stunned until Gallus came out again, facing them both at the entrance to the washroom.
“Now here’s a bit of advice I want to give both of you. The master won’t say this to the mistress, but he’s said it to me, so I’ll say it to you. Watch yourself when you’re heading around town. This country is getting rough, especially right here in Somnambula. The locals are getting more violent. The mistress might try to downplay it, but it’s never been this bad before.”
Pinkie looked a little puzzled. Dash raised an eyebrow. “How so?”
“I don’t leave the property so I don’t know exactly, but the Knickerbocker is apparently getting unreasonable with its local affiliates. Cutting their percentage while demanding more. It’s not like they haven’t done it before, but this time they’re really getting up in arms. They’ve needed the master to rally the local magistrates to put down five fights already. The last one nearly blew into a full scale riot. Bottom line…the streets aren’t safe. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
With that, he gave them both a short bow, and then turned and left the room. As soon as the door swung shut behind him, Pinkie was left looking rather puzzled. Dash, on the other hand, leaned up a little and rubbed her jaw.
“Huh… Maybe this trip won’t be so dull after all…”
The rabbit looked up from Fluttershy’s lap, seeming to give her a neutral stare. The woman herself was smiling, but it was clearly forced. She had been in Rarity’s home before, and hadn’t been the most at ease at that time either. Now, however, it was much worse. She having a very hard time simply sitting still in the easy chair waiting for everyone to come back.
“Just…just like old times, huh?”
The rabbit turned about and rose in her lap, making a few squeaking noises.
She sighed and slumped. “Well…no, I’m not feeling that well.”
The rabbit made some gestures.
“Yes…that’s part of it,” she quietly admitted. “I have this ‘Minstrel’ ability like Twilight said, but…but I can’t do anything for those animals. I can’t turn back any Nighttouched, and I can’t free them from that horrible…big…scary shadow thing either.” She sighed, slumping lower. “I really can’t do anything good at all, can I? I’m about the most useless out of the six of us…”
She paused.
“But…I guess I’d be lying if I said that was the main reason I’m not feeling well.”
The rabbit looked concerned, turning his head. He let out another squeak.
Fluttershy looked up to him, paused, but then nodded. “I should. It would make things a lot easier. Then I could just tell them to leave me behind and they would. But…but…” Her eyes lowered and she slumped again. “I can’t… I want to, but I can’t… Even before this happened I’ve never been that assertive… And now I’m just letting myself be pulled one way and another again… I really am hopeless…”
“Excuse me?”
Fluttershy looked up, giving a little start on realizing someone had overheard who wasn’t Angel. However, she found herself only looking at the entryway to the foyer from the factory side. Coco Pommel was standing there. Embarrassed that she had scared her, she shrank back a little herself.
“Oh, I’m sorry, Ms. Fluttershy. I just thought I heard you talking to someone in here and I didn’t want to interrupt.”
Fluttershy took a moment before she calmed herself. “Oh…um…no, it’s nothing. I was just…talking to Angel.”
“Oh, I see. In that case, have you seen Ms. Rarity?”
She nodded and gestured up the stairwell. “She went up to change a little while ago. She said she wanted to dress in something more ‘appropriate’ for what we would be up to.”
Coco looked a bit regretful. “I still think she should let the authorities handle this… So long as she’s in town, I’d prefer if she ran the business. We’re filling the uniform orders, but if our company is going to keep growing we need the public face of it for relations. Now she’s risking her neck again…” She sighed. “I guess maybe I’d understand if I had one of those…those…Promethian Sigil things. Anyway, thank you, miss.”
With that, she walked forward, up and around the foyer, and headed straight for the stairs. She was soon ascending, but halfway up Fluttershy heard the door open, followed by Rarity humming to herself as she exited. A moment later the two must have ran into each other, for Fluttershy soon overheard them speaking.
“Oh! Miss Pommel! What is it?”
“Begging your pardon, Ms. Rarity, but…” Her voice lowered, but in the silence of the foyer, Fluttershy was just able to make out what she said. “We got a telegram from the Boxers.”
A pause of silence.
“I’m sorry…they must have been waiting for you this whole time. Ever since the agents left, they’ve been hounding the factory. And…I don’t think they’re going to take another raincheck…”
A sigh, before Rarity spoke just as quietly, but still barely audible.
“Very well. Cut them a check now.”
“I thought you wanted to wait until the end of the quarter?”
“I’d rather have the peace of mind of them not harassing the business now. After what they did to Suri, I don’t think they’re to be trifled with, dear.”
Fluttershy looked up a bit more at this, but didn’t get a chance to hear anything else. Rarity soon came downstairs, smiling and beaming once again. What might have had something to do with that was the fact that she had a new ensemble with a wide-brimmed hat adjusted over one eye and a beautiful black and white “business” dress complete with a stole.
As soon as she reached the bottom of the stairs, she gave a twirl and a flourish. “Do you like it, dear? I thought it was the perfect blend of femme mystique along with a degree of deceptive innocence.”
“It’s, um…great…” Fluttershy meekly answered, thinking about what she had overheard. She nearly questioned her about it, but in the end realized there was no way to do so without making it obvious she had been eavesdropping. “Um…are you sure about tonight? I mean…it…it seems…rather scary…”
“Oh-ho, compared to what we’ve been through, darling?” Rarity waved off. “It will be fine. Now…” She looked about from one way to the other. “Where in the world is Applejack? We’ll need to leave in less than two hours to be there on time.”
As if on cue, there was a knock on the front door. Rarity turned around and, after a pause, exhaled and walked up to it. “There’s one thing I miss about those confounded agents not always being around. We had someone to handle the comings and goings.”
She soon reached the door and opened it up. Applejack was standing inside and, with a tired sigh, bowed her head and walked into the foyer. “Sorry I’m late. I’ve been all over this damn city tryin’ ta’ find some way of checkin’ on who’s over at the front line and turnin’ up nothin’. Didn’t help that every street corner had some of them Harmonium worshippers urgin’ me to repent. Shoot…I thought the Gaitians back in Appleloosa were an eyesore back when I was younger…”
Rarity looked a little uncomfortable at all that. “I’m…sorry your outing didn’t go as well as hoped, Applejack…but I hope you didn’t forget the main thing I asked you to do while you were out.”
“Yeah, yeah, keep yer dress on,” she grumbled back. “I checked out the area just like you said. ‘Sides some shady folks about, there weren’t much that stood out. It did have that one alley runnin’ straight into the drainage ditch ya’ told me to look for, though.”
Rarity lit up. “Perfect, darling!”
The farmer crossed her arms. “I ain’t too sure ‘bout that. How d’ya know fer sure that’s how they’ll be coming in?”
“Elementary, my dear Applejack,” she beamed proudly. “The only waterway in Manehattan is going to be closely guarded as will all the railways, but if they’re wanting to engage in a great deal of human trafficking at once, then the Horned Trip’s only option to maintain secrecy will be via steam wagon. And the most secretive way to do that is to bring people in right through that drainage channel. It’s like a self-contained road that bypasses the normal magistrates. Hoodlums and ruffians use it all the time in the bad parts of the city.”
“Alright…then how ‘bout this. How can ya’ be so sure ya’ can get in on the action tonight?”
“I already told you, darling. Following along with the leads I picked up on while Fluttershy and I were on tour, so to speak, it wasn’t that hard to ingratiate myself into the friends in the same circles. After that, it was simply a matter of making the right show of things, and now they believe I’m a prospective client as well.”
“They really think some gal like you is gonna be interested in…in…” She grimaced. “You-know-what? Is that how these things work in Manehattan? Because if they do, then shucks…this town’s a lot worse than I gave it credit for…”
“Well…nothing that drastic. I don’t think even I’d be able to stomach a performance saying that I was in the market for…for ‘Raspberry Tarts’. Yet the whole of this sort of shady industry is devoted to more than that, especially in the years following the Lunar Fall. Everyone…” She trailed off a moment, looking a bit more troubled, but then pressed on. “That is…just about everyone was always looking to undercut everyone else at every turn. Cheap labor seemed to be the way to go, and what cheaper labor could there be than people who you could pay pennies on the dollar for—along with constant threats to turn them into the authorities or cut off their families from their support if they tried to quit?”
“Yeah…” Applejack griped, “sounds about right fer Manehattan…”
“Anyway, that’s the cover story. Carousel Couture is looking for numerous small hands to work on the fine stitching of their new hemlines, and to that end, we would need child workers exempt from the normal rule of labor laws. That way, if nothing else, they’re guaranteed to bring a number of child workers in tonight, so we’ll be able to come to their aid if nothing else.”
“D-D-Did you say…ch-ch-child workers?”
Applejack and Rarity looked to Fluttershy. She was suddenly looking twice if not thrice as nervous as before and was shaking all over like a leaf. Even Angel was a bit disturbed by it.
Rarity, on the other hand, was oblivious. “Why, of course, darling. That’s what this whole mission is about. Making sure children don’t get sold into this horrid trade ever again.”
“But…but…”
“You ain’t nervous, are ya’, sugarcube?” Applejack answered. “Hell…’tween me and Rarity, we already got this just about licked. You’ll just have to make sure none of these yellow-bellied varmints turn tail and run ‘fore we can get ‘em all. And that’ll be a cinch fer you with your two Anima Viris.”
Fluttershy gulped, but shook all over, saying no more. It did puzzle the two women, wondering what brought this sudden change on, but after a time they both looked back to one another.
“Alright…so we got a place ta’ be, but how are we gonna make ‘em pay other than roundin’ up a few of their lackies?”
“This is a big night tonight, Applejack. Especially if they’re indulging such wealthy people from Manehattan. They’ll be guaranteed to have some of their bigger dealers and pushers in attendance. Our goal is not so much to beat them up as to catch them all without escaping. And to do that…we will have to split up.”
Applejack and Fluttershy alike both raised their eyebrows. “Beg yer pardon?”
She held a hand to her own chest. “I will play my part as normal, but you and Fluttershy will be hiding in the shadows and getting ahold of whatever steam carriages they are using to transport individuals. Once you’re on board, and I begin the ruckus, they will no doubt flee on board the vehicles with whatever individuals they still have to try and reach their ‘depot’ points—where the true culprits will be along with more of the same cads who do the dirtier work of their human trafficking enterprise. That is where you and Fluttershy will disable them and we’ll be able to break the entire ring in Manehattan in one go. Hopefully, we’ll even manage to secure the capture of some of the larger players in this group so they’ll rat our their little friends!” She spoke this last part with an almost mystery novel gusto.
Fluttershy’s only answer was to give a small whimper, shaking harder than ever.
Applejack grimaced. “I’m kinda with her, Rarity. I mean…I can take whatever onery sons of bitches they throw at me, but I ain’t too sure ‘bout Fluttershy and you.”
“Oh, pish-posh, darling. As powerful as the three of us are? Remember, these are nothing more than common hoodlums, while Fluttershy has dealt with much larger monsters and even more vicious animals. With two Anima Viris, I doubt she can even be hurt by bullets.”
“Wha…bullets?”
“Oh come on now, ladies,” Rarity restated, more imploringly looking at both of them. “We can’t give up now! Not after how far this has come! We have an opportunity to do a great deal of good here in Manehattan! If not for yourselves, then think about the children’s lives we’ll be saving! Think of the horrible fate from which we’ll rescue them!”
Applejack let out a sigh and finally shrugged. “Well, like I said…I’m in. But what about you, Fluttershy? You feelin’ up to it?”
She nervously looked between the two of them for a few moments. As much as she was shaking, it seemed more than obvious that the answer was no. Rarity began to look a little disappointed.
“Very well… I don’t want to force you into something you’re uncomfortable doing, darling. It’ll just be me and Apple-”
“No!”
The sudden yell caused both women to look up in alarm, and even Fluttershy seemed shocked at her own volume. However, she soon shook her head.
“No…no, I’ll do it. I’m just…just a little nervous is all. I’ve…I’ve never d-d-done anything like this before.”
Rarity smiled back. “Well, neither have we, dear. That’s what makes it so exciting! You won’t regret it. Think of all of those smiling faces who will be ever so grateful to you!”
Fluttershy looked as if she was about to turn green as she slumped in her seat.
Almost two hours later, and the appointed time had almost arrived. Both Applejack and Fluttershy had changed as well. Definitely not as fancy as Rarity and more appropriate to their own respective “styles”. Applejack was dressed in the most austere and “work effective” outfit she could get in Manehattan while Fluttershy was also dressed rather simply and modestly, which was all the better for her as she was still cringing nervously about the entire arrangement.
“It’s about time to depart, ladies,” Rarity announced as she proceeded to hand out several bills to either one of them. “Now, to keep suspicion to a minimum, we should all take separate steam carriages. It wouldn’t do well for all three of us to arrive and two of us to immediately scurry off. Just remember the address.”
“Probably could just walk up there just as well,” Applejack muttered as she accepted the money. “But…gotta get outta there in a hurry too, so fine.”
Fluttershy merely gulped as she accepted her own.
“Alright, if everything is well and set up, we should-”
She was cut off by the sound of the doorbell chime. At once, she frowned and looked up, back through the foyer to the front door. Soon after, she sighed and turned around to walk up to it. “Goodness alive, who is it now? The factory closed operations for the day a half hour ago.”
She soon reached the door, unfastened the lock, and then poked her head toward the corner. She only slowly opened it a slight crack…
And jumped back in alarm a moment later as two men immediately forced their way forward. “Greetings everyone!”
Rarity was stunned. If the two men had pushed themselves in any harder, she would have sworn they were breaking in. She nearly went for her Anima Viri except the two men only stepped just inside the threshold, keeping the door from shutting again, before halting.
They were definitely the “brighter” sort of individual to Manehattan. The type that one would see loudly hawking their wares on every street corner and market stop they could get to. They were twins by the look of them, with the only real difference other than their tone of voice being that one had a large handlebar mustache. Both had boaters hats, striped short-sleeve shirts, and a couple of bow ties. Their hair had a sort of pomade in it that gave it a lustrous sheen—obviously as an attempt to increase their appeal. Rarity would have expected the likes of these individuals to fit right in on the boulevard during carnival season, but seeing them here in her house left her rather astonished.
Even more so when one turned to her. “And I believe I have the honor of being in the presence of the fine proprietor of Carousel Couture, the one and only Miss Rarity!”
“Charmed!” the other chimed in. “Ever so charmed!”
Rarity blinked a few times, still rather taken aback. “Oh, well…um…hello there, sirs. Might I ask-”
“What in tarnation are you two snakes in the grass doin’ here?!”
Rarity and Fluttershy alike both nearly jumped as they wheeled around to Applejack. Her teeth were clenched and she was glaring so hard at the two men that she seemed to be trying to bore a hole into their heads with her vision. Her hands were clenched into fists and Rarity nearly thought she would go for her hammer.
The two men, on the other hand, were as jovial as ever. “Why, could it be?”
“It is, dear brother! It’s Little Miss Applejack of Sweet Apple Acres! And all the way from Appleloosa!”
“What a coincidence, Flim!”
“I got another ‘coincidence’ for ya’…” Applejack said as she stomped forward. “My fist is about to find its way into your thick skulls! I don’t know what you’re doin’ here and I don’t care! Get out right now!”
Fluttershy was cringing in the wake of Applejack’s tirade, but Rarity remained standing there looking puzzled. “Applejack…do you happen to know these gentlemen?”
“‘Gentlemen’?!” Applejack shot back, wheeling to her. “More like ‘gentlepigs’! ‘Gentleweasels’!” She pointed an accusing finger at them. “These couple o’ snake oil salesmen are the lowest-down, no-good welchers and con men in all of Greater Everfree! Made a boatload off of the folks in my county selling crooked insurance and spring water medicine and snatched up half the property with it!” She snorted as she looked back at them. “Actually glad for the ol’ Light Eaters. Didn’t even have time to set up their new canned food plant ‘fore they came in and ran ‘em right out.”
“Ah yes, our great failed venture…” the unnamed one moaned in what sounded like exaggerated lamentation. “The great Flim-Flam Brothers Processed Foods corporation. It would have brought so much tax revenue to your sadly impoverished county…”
“A true tragedy, Flam,” the one named Flim answered, exaggeratedly going for his handkerchief before dabbing his eyes. “Yet another costly loss from those accursed Light Eaters.”
“Impoverished thanks to slimy little roaches like you!” Applejack retorted. “Now get out ‘fore I throw y’all out!”
The two remained mournful a moment longer, but then looked at her innocently. “Dear me, Miss Applejack. I don’t mean to be rude or inopportune, but I don’t believe this is your property to be telling us when and where to go.”
She began to turn red on hearing this, but before she could get out another word, the opposite brother slid up to Rarity, much to her surprise.
“Now, Miss Rarity, it’s true that our business venture in Appleloosa, which would have dutifully employed many of the locals at a steady and reliable income, was waylaid and, perhaps, even a touch short-sighted…although I do believe Miss Applejack tends to exaggerate just a little based on the fact that she decided to avoid being on the ground floor and came out ahead for it. However, as you can see, we have relocated to Manehattan and are now completely honest businessmen just like yourself. We have a new trading company that specializes in all manner of goods.”
“And one day, we hope to rival the great emporiums and establishments of Trottingham, Southern Equestria, and even Manehattan itself!” the other proudly proclaimed.
“And to that end, we wish to extend an offer of a new ground floor to you and your promising new venture.”
Rarity blinked a few times, even as Applejack got redder in the face. “I…beg your pardon, sirs, but this is all a little sudden. And I’m afraid we already have a new contract for my latest venture.”
Flim laughed a little at that. “Oho! Not your uniforms, madame!”
He smiled a bit more, a hint of craftiness in his eyes.
“I mean further north…in Equestria.”
All three ladies’ jaws dropped. “How…how did you…?”
“Oh, if you want to make it as a businessman in Manehattan, you have to keep your ears open and your eyes peeled!” Flam retorted proudly. “We pride ourselves on leaving no stone unturned in our search for a new contract!”
“And when we just happened to spot you along with our former acquaintance leaving the Congressional Square for Carousel Couture, why…we realized our ship might have just come in! After that, and poking around a little, and perhaps offering a few gifts to the right patrons, a little bird just happened to tell us that you have a new community up in Equestria trying to restart things!”
Applejack was fuming again. Rarity, however, tried to play it off as best as she could. “Well…I…wouldn’t quite call it a community, per say…”
“And all growing communities need supplies!” Flam cut off. “Tools! Medicine! Building materials! Imported food! Wagons! Sowing seed! Even, dare I say it, in the act of something unfortunate, weapons and ammunition!”
“And the brand new Flim-Flam Brothers Supply and Seed is ready to give you whatever you need, and ready to brave any and all dangers to bring it to you!” Flim proclaimed. “Whether it be impassible mountains, overgrown forests, or fields rife with the most foulest abominations imaginable, no matter the trek…provided there’s a suitable railway to take…the Flim-Flam Brothers Supply and Seed is ready for you! And at rock-bottom prices, you’re practically stealing from us!”
“Oh?” Fluttershy finally spoke up, looking up a little more. “I don’t suppose you can provide clover and other vegetables for rabbit feed, could you?”
“Only all the clover, carrots, and hay you can shake a stick at!” Flam proudly proclaimed.
Fluttershy looked a bit delighted. Angel seemed to frown at her before slapping himself in the face with his own paw.
“Well, now that you mention it,” Rarity muttered, “as impromptu as your…appearance was, I do know what it means to be hungry for a new business opportunity. And the truth is so long as we have people trapped up north, they could probably use a few things…”
“Well, feel free to hire anyone but these two!” Applejack yelled back, practically indignant that they were even considering it. “They’ll cheat you out of house and home for a nickel!”
“Oh, come now, Applejack!” Flim pressed. “If everyone was considered a down-and-out lout just because of one poor business trade, why, the world itself would grind to a total halt! All we ask is for the opportunity to supply those brave souls so far north struggling to reclaim the world that was taken from all of us with everything they could possibly need! What’s the harm in that?”
She again started to tighten her fists and gnash her teeth.
“Besides!” Flam threw in, smiling a bit wider as he leaned in closer. “We thought you, of all people, would leap at the chance to restore another community that was tragically decimated by the acts of violent miscreants! Especially after the Nighttouched razed half of your old township, right down to the Gaitian Shrine!”
Something changed in Applejack on hearing that. Her eyes suddenly widened. A moment later, they narrowed again, and Rarity saw a new fury in them…one that burned hotter than ever, and yet was also restrained. She spoke through nearly clenched teeth.
“What did you say?”
“I’d gladly repeat myself,” Flam answered with a coy smile, “but I think we’d rather do so in private, wouldn’t you?”
Rarity caught on to this, beginning to look a bit more puzzled. As for Applejack, she stood there silently a moment, still clearly seething with anger, but finally relaxed her jaw. She turned back to the others soon after.
“I’m gonna see these two bits of bull dung out of here personally. Be right back.”
With that, she suddenly swerved around and seized either by the collar. Both of them winced, their smiles vanishing, before they found themselves none-too-gently hauled back out the front door. They were tossed unceremoniously onto the front portico before Applejack reached behind her and yanked the door shut with a resounding slam—leaving the foyer in silence.
The two ladies were rather dumbfounded. They looked to one another, but neither knew what to respond.
“I don’t think Applejack was very happy about those two men…” Fluttershy finally ventured.
“No indeed,” Rarity responded uneasily. “Although I couldn’t help but notice a change in her demeanor when they spoke last. It seemed to make her furious enough to show them the door personally.”
The older woman gulped. “And…she’s still out there. I hope she’s not, um…being too violent…”
Sure enough, the door remained closed for not only several moments but for a full minute. Rarity had begun to wonder what was going on, but just as she began to ponder whether or not to go to the door and see it opened again. Still looking rather cross but nevertheless a bit calmer, the farmer walked back in.
“Is everything alright?”
“Just fine and dandy,” she retorted. “Those two won’t be back ‘round these parts, so let’s not hold up any longer. I’m raring to smack in a few heads more than ever now.”
The journey north was not too pleasant. More like a constant state of fearing for one’s life.
Sunset was quickly growing sore with moments in which she was bound and forced to march at gunpoint at the whims of other individuals, but these soldiers from Griffonstone were the worst yet. They weren’t shy about constantly hitting them with their rifle butts, throwing them their rotten portions of their rations for food, kicking and spitting them whenever they had the chance, and all together showing their constant disdain for them. It didn’t help that neither Sunset nor Twilight dared protest or even show the slightest sign of resistance. Gilda and her group were just itching for a reason to shoot them and, unlike Twilight, Sunset had nothing to offer them in exchange for keeping her alive.
It was funny, however. She figured without any Anima Viris she should have been more scared of them…
I guess after dealing with everything else trying to kill me, even Promethean Sigil bearers with guns aren’t that frightening.
Stygian and Little Violet could do little other than follow after them. Little Violet kept her head down, but Sunset noticed that Stygian looked up every chance he got. He was clearly studying the group—trying to find a means of escape whenever one could be found. It was a good thing Spike was such an obedient dog. At Twilight’s command, he hadn’t barked once on the entire trip. If he had, he probably would have been shot without hesitation.
It had been two days and they were now on the third, but while some of her companions wondered if they were being given the runaround, Gilda had faith in Twilight’s directions and let her continue to lead them on—provided they didn’t stop in any one place too long. Sunset had to admit, after this long, she was losing hope that Shining Armor and the others had picked up on their trail. Surely they would have done something by now. Nevertheless, whether they were behind them or not, she had no choice but to keep going with the rest.
However, as of late, there was something else that drew her attention: the land around them.
It wasn’t quite as overgrown as it had been over the past few days, but that wasn’t exactly cause for comfort. The trees weren’t so much thinning out as dying out, leaving dead trunks behind—many of which were dried and twisted. Some of them were so much so that they seemed impossible to have ever been real trees. The ground itself had lost all grass, sedges, and smaller vegetation; giving way to nothing but dry, wasted ground. It had been a horrible wasted tan at first, but now Sunset could swear it was turning gray.
Their surroundings that were slowly becoming revealed weren’t any more wholesome. As the trees thinned out, it revealed they were walking on a rocky landscape. One that seemed almost bizarre and unnatural. Rather than any gradual formations or even the aftermath of mountains or glaciers, the landscape looked like it was fractured and split; as if it had been some tile floor that a giant had stomped on in a rage. And it only grew more pronounced as the last tree turned into a dried, dead stick.
Sunset thought having an open area with no shadows would actually be a relief due to inability for Nighttouched to hide. Now she wasn’t so sure. Especially since it seemed to actually be getting darker in the middle of the day…
Apparently, her uneasy mood was mutual. Not only did Little Violet and Twilight get more nervous as they went along, but many of the Griffonstone soldiers began to look more uncomfortable. By the time the last of the dead trees had given way to only dead grass and shrubs, all of them did.
At last, one of the soldiers sided up to Gilda. By now it was so quiet due to lack of life and vegetation that everyone could hear when he spoke up. “Um…b-b-begging your pardon, captain…”
She sighed. “What is it, Gareth?”
“I…that is, me and some of the others…are kind of wondering what we hope to find out here in this wasteland.”
“I already told you: the Well of Shade.”
“Yeah, but…what exactly is that?”
She gave him an irritated look, but finally rolled her eyes and gestured around herself. “See all this ‘lovely’ real estate around here? This is the Hollow Shades.”
The moment Sunset heard that name, she looked up in some alarm. Twilight had her back to her and didn’t notice immediately, but Stygian and Little Violet did.
“Our informant from Equestria let us know that this place was where the heathen tribes of the north used to mine for ores and carry out their rituals before the Equestrian dynasty came to power. Apparently, they were pretty big into the whole human sacrifice thing. They killed dozens of people at a time at this place called the Well of Shade as offerings to whatever men in the sky they worshipped. Once the royal family stepped in they had the place covered up, but just by boulders. Nothing we can’t dig through. There’s supposedly the remains of thousands of people down there. With that kind of motherlode of souls, our informant says we’ll pick up dozens of Anima Viris at once. On that note…”
She wheeled fully around to Twilight, making her jump a little.
“Hey you. How much further until we reach that spot you claim you remember?”
Twilight stammered for a moment, for she had focused a lot on what Gilda had just said and, as a result, was left out of sorts. Yet before she could say a word, Sunset broke in.
“Don’t do it.”
Gilda halted, and with her the entire company. It was a good thing the Griffonstone soldiers were taken aback by her outburst, for they forgot to shoot her all together and simply stepped forward and drove their rifle butt into her stomach instead. With a loud “oof”, the wind was knocked out of her and Sunset was cast to the ground. Somehow, she managed to spread her knee and arm out to stop her from collapsing completely, instead being left hunched over and gasping.
Yet she only did so a moment before weakly forcing herself to look back up. “You…can’t go there…”
The soldier nearest her sneered, and raised his rifle to give her a black eye next.
“Hold on.”
The soldier spun to Gilda on hearing her speak up, but her eyes were fully on Sunset. She stepped closer before crossing her arms and looking down her nose at her—still stuck on the ground and recovering her breath.
“Oh we can’t, can we? Why not? Because you want to steal those souls from us first?”
“That place is bad. It’s covered up for a reason.”
“Is that so?” she smirked. “Well, you are the infamous Fire Witch and know so much about things we civilians just aren’t smart enough for, so suppose you tell us why that’s the case? Just so long as you don’t try anything funny.”
The guns immediately went out and aimed at her in unison. Sunset swallowed, finally regaining her breath, but found herself not intimidated into silence. While her voice was quiet and uneasy she managed to speak.
“My…my old instructor…she had books on places like this. She said when so many people died so horribly…their souls can’t possibly cross over ‘pure’.”
“Pure?”
“The book was in a dead language. I couldn’t get the context of all of it. But it said that the souls in the Hollow Shades are…are ‘bad’. ‘Angry’. ‘Sick’. She said you can’t use them for Anima Viris and that they shouldn’t even be disturbed. That’s why this place was covered up to begin with.” A pause. “And I would think that if someone who knew about the Anima Viris to begin with had a place filled with souls covered up that would mean something important.”
Sunset was a little surprised that she had the boldness to say that last part to armed soldiers, but even more surprised when it seemed to have effect. Several of the people around her appeared to take her words to heart, and actually looked a bit hesitant and uneasy.
Gilda, unfortunately, wasn’t one of them. She simply scoffed. “Give me a break.” She looked up to the others. “You’re actually buying these ghost stories? If any of those souls could really rise up and do something, then, last I checked, a ton of rocks wouldn’t be enough to stop one.” She turned back to Sunset. “Start thinking up a better story for the next time I want to hear you speak, Fire Witch. You’re not worth carrying around as baggage unless you can give us something like your friend here. On that note…”
She spun to Twilight. “Lead us on.”
The woman hesitated. “Um…actually…if what Sunset said is true and-”
Gilda’s eyes narrowed. “Shoot her little dog.”
At once, one of the soldiers spun to Spike and cocked his rifle. He took aim right at his head.
Twilight gaped in horror. “W-Wait, don’t--!”
Gilda quickly pushed the barrel to one side right before the soldier could pull the trigger, causing him to stop just in time, but she continued to glare at the mage. “Then shut up and get us to the well! Now!”
“Alright, alright!” she quickly answered. Taking a moment to compose herself, she swallowed before leading the way once again. “Just…just a bit further…”
Sunset was seized and yanked back to her feet rather roughly, but that wasn’t what left her looking and feeling uneasy. She couldn’t even share a look with Twilight before she was forced along once again with the others. However, her expression remained very uncomfortable now, and she kept her eyes on the ground and at her feet for the rest of the trip.
It turned out they didn’t have much farther to go. They couldn’t have walked more than two miles more, just to where the last of the vegetation gave way and where the rocky landscape rose on either side of them in such a way to cast shadows over them. Ones that seemed darker than they should have been for that time of day, even though it was already late afternoon. The end result was their path narrowed almost into a valley or canyon.
Ahead of them, on a broken off piece of land that lay underneath the rest of the ground upon which they stood, was the site. It certainly didn’t look like a well, or much of anything for that matter. It was only a pile of rubble that had long since been sitting there. Long enough to have been battered by the winds and rain, at any rate, although no moss or lichen had grown on it or anywhere else. Nevertheless, considering the location in the middle of the land and away from the rising rock on either side of them, it was clear that it had not been man made.
Gilda led them right onto the broken piece of land before halting. The rest of the company came to a stop around her. She eyed Twilight. “So this is the spot, huh?”
Twilight, who had only grown more uncomfortable looking after Sunset had spoken, nodded back.
“Seems right enough. Alright then…” She motioned behind her. “Digging crew…get up there and get to work. The rest of us will set up camp. Keep an eye on the five of them. I think we’re in the clear at this point, but let’s not jinx it now.” She spun around and eyed Twilight. “As for you…don’t say another word unless I speak to you from now on. This close to the prize I don’t want you pulling something now.” She turned to the others. “Same goes for the rest of you. Not. One. Peep.”
Sunset didn’t even dare sigh as she slumped and did as she was told.
Stygian looked up from his work. While their captors didn’t afford them many amenities, they did allow them to make their own campfire at least…so long as they were carefully watched. The young soldier insisted on the one being in charge of making the fire every time they had stopped, although he hardly seemed that good at it. He could spend several minutes trying to light up a fire with the flint and steel they had been supplied and would make the most irritating sounds while emitting the sparks. And apparently he had once again earned their ire.
“Either get that damn fire going on shove it! We’re trying to sleep over here!”
“Hey!” another shouted. “Keep down that yelling! I’m trying to sleep!”
“But that’s what…gah!”
The angry guard simply fumed and went back to aiming his weapon at Stygian. Fortunately, he didn’t take much longer. A few more sparks and he finally got the fire going, and went about feeding it.
Sunset was a little too far to enjoy it. Gilda wasn’t taking any chances. While half of the soldiers had changed shifts and were continuing to work on excavating the well, the other half were only partially asleep while several of them continued to guard the group. They had made sure to keep them separated too. Sunset was seated on one side. Farther away was Stygian. Still farther was Little Violet. Finally, farthest away, was Twilight Sparkle. Too far away to mouth words to each other, pass messages, or risk whispers. Gilda was making sure they couldn’t make the smallest plan, and with guns in their faces they could barely risk asking to go to the bathroom.
They weren’t going anywhere. Something that Sunset was growing increasingly nervous about.
She could have sworn the air was still when they finally arrived at the well, and yet somehow it had grown more still and quiet the more they dug. Yet in spite of that, there was a cool…almost cold…feeling about them. And while it might have just been nightfall that was making it worse, in any event it was wearing on Sunset’s nerves the more time went on. Everything about this place felt wrong. Even the soldiers in Gilda’s company showed it by constantly looking around or shifting continuously in their attempts to sleep. Those digging were doing so very methodically as opposed to more earnestly tearing into it. They were feeling worse with each shovelful of rubble they moved out of the way too.
Yet there was no way out. Not for any of them. All Sunset had was that dumb helmet that she had been given. Gilda let her keep it as it made her stand out more than her fiery hair already did, but it wasn’t much good for getting them out of there. And she had no magic of her own to defend herself with or aide herself with either.
She almost sighed to herself as she glanced back over to her own guard. Normally he’d scowl at her if she looked at him, but that had been a few hours ago. Now he wasn’t nearly as bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. His eyes were half lidded, his look was bored, and every so often he went ahead and let the rifle lower a bit as his own head nodded. He had tried to keep himself awake at first, but now he was frequently letting his head fall and even letting his eyes rest periodically.
Sure enough, Sunset by now had gotten it almost down to a science. When she looked back at the guard, he had once again lowered his head and let his eyes shut. In about fifteen seconds, she knew he’d jerk awake again and then repeat a new cycle.
Again, not that she could do anything. If she still had her powers, it would be the perfect opportunity for a sleep spell to finish the job. Then, while he was snoozing while sitting up, she could bring forth her fire to quickly deal with everyone else. She had no powers, though. She was helpless. She was the most useless member of the group right now and little more than baggage.
The time passed, and the soldier jerked himself awake, and Sunset turned her head away from him just as he did so. She patiently waited for two more minutes to pass, then looked back at him. He was nodding again and didn’t even notice. Again, the rifle barrel lowered and, again, his eyes shut. That started another, say, thirty seconds. Once again, she sat there and began to count as they passed by.
Only this time, a thought came to her head.
The rifle was lowered, and she was kneeling. She was in a fairly good position and distance to spring forward. If she moved quietly enough, she could actually lunge right at him and, before he knew what had hit him, it might be possible to put her arm around his neck. She had never tried it before herself, but she recalled from Flash Sentry’s own training how to quickly put someone into a sleeper hold. Choke them and pinch off the blood flow to the brain. Granted, she realized she’d likely fail…but this time she imagined herself carrying it out.
And as she imagined on, she pictured her odds of success. Fairly good, if she was fast enough. Most of the surrounding soldiers were asleep, and even the alert sentries were watching their own prisoners. So long as she kept him from making a noise, she could knock him out and it was likely no one would notice. Then she’d have a gun of her own. Of course, there was no way she could affect a rescue. All it would take was one gunshot to get herself shot dead where she stood.
But…with the guards around her lightly sleeping, she might be able to sneak away. There were only two behind her before she could escape to the Hollow Shades, and beyond that back into the forest. Then she could fire shots into the air—the very thing Gilda had been trying to avoid. Then she might attract the attention of Shining Armor or some of the other soldiers if they really had been following them that long, and then they might actually affect a rescue…
If she could only spring on him…if she could only carry out this first part…
She thought that at twenty seconds. Then ten. Then again at five.
Finally, the time came, and the guard jolted himself awake. This time, he found Sunset still staring at him, still hesitant.
He frowned and shoved the gun barrel hard enough to knock against her forehead. “Getting any stupid ideas in that head of yours?”
Sunset stared a moment longer, but finally frowned. Her look was one of resignation…and hopelessness. “…No.”
“Make sure you don’t or I’ll blow them clean out.”
She didn’t answer. She only sighed and turned back. Soon after, she lay down and struggled to get to sleep.
They didn’t have to wait too much longer the next morning.
A good thing too, because the air had changed. In spite of still being so quiet and still, there had to be wind high above them, because it had brought in clouds. Thick and puffy ones, heavy with moisture and rain and quickly expanding into anvil heads. Not long after that, the ones on the horizon began to turn very dark very fast. A true storm was coming in. Yet while it made the air much cooler and everyone could see the clouds racing and churning above them, it was still perfectly quiet and still below. That made everyone uneasy this time. Even Gilda. Yet she was determined to get in and, pushing her soldiers on, they finally brought down a mattock in just the right spot. As a result, a rush of air blasted out that everyone in the area heard.
“We found it! Everyone gather around!”
Soon, Twilight, Sunset, and their three companions found themselves forced to their feet again and marched closer to the well, which was now being pulled at more rigorously to fully excavate the entrance. Apparently, the Griffonstone soldiers had been waiting for this, because they redeployed all around it and all were alert with their weapons, including the ones surrounding the five of them. They could only stand and watch as the sky grew darker yet and the soldiers pulled enough of the loose rubble aside to reveal a dark, cavernous hole leading down into blackness.
Gilda nodded at it. “Looks like a well to me. Alright, we’re going in. Including those two.”
To Twilight and Sunset’s surprise, she had motioned to both of them. “Wha…us?”
“Did I stammer? You knew how to get here, didn’t you? And you tried to tell us to leave? What’s to say you won’t find a way to steal another Anima Viri right out from under us the first chance you get? I want to keep my eye on you.”
The five could do nothing but comply as they were separated, and both Twilight and Sunset had their arms bound behind them. Spike didn’t care for that but, fortunately, the area was unsettling everyone so much that they merely struck him rather than shot him when he barked. Little Violet continued to look anxious, but when Sunset and Twilight glanced at Stygian, they saw he was remaining remarkably calm and composed. They would have thought this a bit odd, but there was little time to dwell on it before they were pushed up to the well entrance.
The opening appeared to go into nothing more than a dark, empty hole, but a simple throwing of a firebrand down into it soon revealed that it extended downward about three stories before terminating. A few more firebrands were flung down to make sure nothing was living there before the Griffonstone soldiers began to lower ropes. Even if Sunset and Twilight were capable of descending on ropes, they were bound in such a way to render that impossible, so two of the bigger soldiers grudgingly tied them to their backs. However, Gilda was down first, and three other soldiers descended before their own finally climbed to the side and began to lower them down.
Even the descent was nerve-wracking. It was nothing but a tight, thin shaft of darkness, into an area that was cold and had a stink to it that Sunset couldn’t describe. It wasn’t necessarily mold or rot, but it was something dank and unwelcome. The trip may have not lasted long but she immediately wanted out of there as soon as they hit the bottom. Unfortunately, as she was untied from the soldier’s back, she didn’t see much in the way of a welcome sight.
The firebrands were still burning and some oil lanterns had been brought down, but the entire area was still covered with shadows and gloom. Mostly that was because of the rather hideous and grotesque images on the walls all around them—stone reliefs untouched by time. They were of many ghastly things and horrendous sights, including people being devoured by large monsters or being hacked to pieces by gruesome figures. Some of them were simply large, monstrous faces. Worst of all was that they found themselves in some sort of central hub area with a grooved floor. Additional hallways opened into more darkness all around them, and the hollow sound that Sunset heard from them was almost like that of monstrous breathing.
She clearly wasn’t alone in her fears. Twilight was practically shivering when she was let down to stand as well, glancing about rather nervously. The soldiers that arrived, including a last two to follow up, quickly turned on all of their lights and spread as much firebrands around as they could, but even when they were done they still shrank from the shadows and looked about nervously. Even Gilda, the boldest of all of them, couldn’t quite hide her own unease as she only slowly looked around and advanced in the hub area.
Sunset herself was forced back against one somewhat roughly, and she was a bit testy as she found herself forced back so hard her hands rubbed against the stone. The reliefs had some sharp edges on them. Almost sharp enough to cut…
Cut…
The thought made her pause. Again, a trace of those thoughts from last night began to come to mind. She told herself again how crazy it would be to try and escape. There was nowhere to go and nothing she could do. She’d be shot in an instant.
And yet, even as she kept telling herself that, she found herself hesitantly moving her bonds up and beginning to rake them along the stone as quietly and subtly as she could.
Gilda took a few steps forward, looked about at the bas reliefs, the channels, and the dark hallways all about them. The area was deathly silent. Foreboding. Unwelcoming.
She took a deep breath. “You know what this place is missing? Bones.”
A few of the soldiers looked a bit unnerved. Twilight and Sunset glanced to each other uncomfortably, even as the latter kept working. One of the Griffonstone soldiers finally spoke. “Um…bones, ma’am?”
“Yes, bones. Our informant said hundreds of people had been killed by throwing them down here. So where are the bones? Or have they got rats down here so big and nasty that they ate them all up, bones at all?”
No one had an answer for that. It was a valid point, but not a terribly welcome one. Especially as the empty, dark halls seemed to howl again in the wake of her statement. Like they were…hungry.
She exhaled at last and then turned back to the others. “Ok. You and you…you’re with me. Let’s start with that passage right there.” She gestured to one, although she didn’t immediately move toward it.
The soldiers looked almost shocked. “P…Pardon me, ma’am?”
She frowned. “You don’t see any bones around here, do you? Any trinkets? Memorial stones? Any remains at all? Nothing here to get any souls from. We got to find some remains. Now hurry up. I don’t want to spend another second down here longer than I have to.”
The feeling seemed to be mutual, even if, so long as they were forced to stay down there, the soldiers would prefer to be where the rope leading back up was. At last, however, they brandished their weapons and began to move toward Gilda. Only when they were at her side did she have enough of her own bravery to turn to start walking…
She paused, however, and looked back. Seeing that, Sunset looked as well, almost thinking she had been caught, but then realized she was staring at Twilight, who had her hand raised.
“…Yes?”
She lowered it, but Sunset saw the look on her face. And in spite of the darkness of the chamber, she could see it was pale.
“We need to leave here now, cover up the entrance, and never come back.”
The grave seriousness of how she practically exhaled these words was enough to unnerve the soldiers again. Even Gilda looked it, which in turn only made her angrier. “Just shut up and stand there.”
“No, you don’t understand,” Twilight said more forcefully. “We need to leave here now, cover up the entrance, and never come back. I’m serious!”
“I told you to keep quiet.”
“Look!” she reached out and pointed ahead of them on the hub. Sunset looked along with the others. To be honest, she was so unnerved by the place that she was trying to avoid looking around it too much by now. Yet on looking back, she noticed that this was of a horrible, dripping visage. Some abomination of shadows that was corrupting everything in its wake. Nothing but tangible evil.
And then it hit her. That’s…just like one of the murals Twilight told me about.
“That…that thing right there? That’s what’s down here! And it’s not something you can command or control! It’s horrible! It’s pure evil!”
This unnerved the Griffonstone soldiers even more, making Gilda frown. “I said shut up!”
“No, you have to listen to me! You had to have felt it when you opened this place up! The air changed! You can actually feel that it’s down here! That it’s exposed now! That means other things are going to know that it’s here too!”
Gilda scowled. “What the hell do you mean ‘other things’?”
Twilight hesitated a moment, once more put on the spot, but then she swallowed and continued. “Listen, that’s not important right now. What is important is that we get out of here as fast as we can before one of us does get that Anima Viri down here. Because if one of us gets it, the result is going to be something just as bad as Nightmare Moon was! Maybe worse!” She pointed again to the mural. “That thing you’re seeing over there? It’s going to be real!”
She grit her teeth and hissed. “I don’t have time for this…” she said as she started to reach for her sidearm.
“You have to listen to me! No one can ever get the Anima Viri that’s down here! That’s why it was covered up to begin with!”
“I should have done this the moment you got us here,” Gilda retorted as she raised her weapon and cocked the barrel, pointing it right at Twilight. She gaped, but only recoiled a little. “I don’t know what game you’re playing at, but you’re the only threat around here! And now you’re trying to freak out me and my soldiers! That makes you a liability! And here’s how I get rid of liabilities…”
Sunset gasped and stammered. Her mind went wild, trying to think of something to do but too panicked to do anything. Instinctively, she only began to rub her hands against the stone harder than before. Twilight could only stand there helplessly, already surrounded by other weapons and looking down a gun barrel.
A gunshot broke the silence. Specifically, multiple gunshots.
The Griffonstone soldiers turned their heads skyward, up to the opening from where the noise had echoed down. Sunset had to admit she was among them, just as stunned as the others. There weren’t too many bullets. Definitely not enough to kill all of the Griffonstone soldiers. What more, a distant thunderclap soon drowned out the rest of it.
Then her mind clicked.
She spun back down, only to see that Twilight had been waiting for this moment far more eagerly than her. She was already completing a sigil behind her back and soon executed it, and Sunset could do nothing except quickly rush over to her side. The Griffonstone soldiers noticed their mistake in taking their eyes off of her a second later, especially when she spoke out, but it was too late. She snapped around just as the sigil burst into a thick mist that quickly billowed out around the area, and which Sunset herself just barely managed to avoid. It quickly stretched out and seeped into the eyes and nostrils of the Griffonstone soldiers, and in moments their eyes were rolling back before they moaned and began to pass out.
All save one, that was. Whether it was due to mental fortitude or luck on covering her mouth with her free hand, Gilda planted her feet and managed to withstand it. However, when it was done, she didn’t bother going for her gun. Instead, her hand raised into the air bearing her Promethian Sigil.
“Member of my house, I command you to come to me!”
Sunset winced…and at the moment, strained so much, that she pulled her hands apart and heard a snap. She realized, much to her shock, that she had successfully freed herself. She glanced at Twilight, but saw that she was just as caught off guard. She struggled to stretch her own hands out so that she could summon her own power, wrenching and pulling at her bonds, but was caught too firmly. Gilda would finish first. Sunset spun back to her as she started to complete the incantation.
“Final Monarch—King-!”
She was cut off as a fist swung out from underneath her head, connected with her chin, and slammed it down on her own tongue.
Gilda cut off with a gagging noise, before quickly reaching for her mouth in shock. Sunset, in the meantime, was white as a sheet. She had no idea how she found the bravery to do that. Gilda was a mercenary who could kill someone like her in an instant, especially powerless. How had she ever managed to bravery to make even a halfway decent, awkward swing at her? She was fortunate it had done as much damage as it had. As it was, Sunset was now breathing heavily and unable to do more.
Fortunately, she didn’t have to. Stunned and in pain, Gilda tried to finish her incantation, but it came out as a half-mumble before Twilight crying out, just managed to twist her hand free and, with a bit of blood, ripped it out of her bond from behind her. Quickly, she finished her own incantation. An explosion of light and energy later, and she was in the form of the Caster. She had no wand, but immediately lifted both of her hands up and aimed them at Gilda. Her fingers were primed to start generating another spell.
“If you try anything, I’ll have a spell off before you can do it.”
Just about recovered, the woman sneered at her, but realized she was stuck. “Bitch…”
“Throw your gun down.”
Gilda glared back at her.
“I mean it.” Her fingertips began to etch symbols in the air.
“Fine, fine…whatever…” She reluctantly tossed it down to the ground.
“Kick it to Sunset.”
She sneered, but did as she was told. It dinged against the woman’s foot and she was left immobile for several more seconds before she finally snapped out of it long enough to bend down and pick it up. Soon after, shaking a bit, she aimed it at the mercenary, making sure to stay too far for her to grab it.
Twilight continued to aim a moment longer, before she glanced back over her shoulder for the entrance. She took a step backward, closer to it, but before she could listen any more she heard a voice calling down.
“Twilight? Sunset? Are you alright?”
It was Stygian’s voice. Sunset glanced back slightly, but never took the gun off of Gilda. Twilight swallowed and backed up enough to be directly under the opening, and finally risked a look upward. She caught just a glimpse of him looking down into the well.
“S…Stygian?”
“Are you two alright?”
She was a bit surprised to hear his nonchalant response, but she managed a nod as she looked back to the Griffonstone soldier. “We’re fine. I knocked out everyone but Gilda but we have a gun on her. What’s going on up there? What happened?”
“We’ve got them pinned for the moment, but we should hurry up and get out of here. Both of you need to get up here as fast as you can.”
Both ladies looked confused. “Wait…‘we’? We who?”
“Shining Armor and the others.”
Both Twilight and Sunset looked amazed. They nearly exchanged a glance with one another, before Twilight knew the obvious…that they were outnumbered and outgunned, thanks to Griffonstone’s Anima Viris. Nevertheless, Stygian looked and sounded completely confident.
“It’s all over. I’ve been passing messages to them this whole time. By now, they have a bead on the heads of every last one of the soldiers up here.”
Twilight opened her mouth to speak, but quickly closed it again. She had nearly ruined it. Sunset understood when she did that. It seemed the shots were either opening fire or warning shots. She knew full well they didn’t have enough people on their side to take out all of them like that, but Stygian and, apparently, Shining Armor were bluffing. The situation was tenuous indeed. Nevertheless, Twilight couldn’t help but call out in curiosity. “But how? We haven’t been able to even mouth things to each other for three days!”
“I used the flint and steel to signal off in telegraph code when I was setting up our nightly campfires, but that’s not important right now. Just hurry up and get out of there! We need to retreat!”
Sunset and Twilight were both honestly stunned for a moment. Neither of them had thought to do that. However, after a moment, the latter swallowed and nodded. “Right.” She glanced toward Sunset briefly before aiming her hands at Gilda again. “Uh…well…who goes first?”
“I-I-I don’t know…”
“Can you climb up a rope?”
“I…think so…”
“Well, I know I can’t, so I guess you better go before me.”
Sunset found herself hesitating. She even nearly protested. However, she couldn’t argue with the simple logic. Grimacing, she reluctantly pulled away the gun and then switched the safety pin back on before tucking it in her pocket. After that, she made her way back over to the rope and grasped it. However, she didn’t pull on it right away. Instead she extended it out and began to wrap it around Twilight’s waist.
She looked confused. “What are you doing?”
“You can’t very well keep her from climbing back out of here while you’re trying to learn to climb it. We’ll pull you up with the end of it.”
Twilight realized that was true and nodded back. After a moment Sunset had her tied, and then took back on the slack. “Just make sure you grip it hard with something between your hands and the rope. We don’t want to cut into you pulling you out.”
“I’ll be fine. Just hurry.”
Taking a deep breath, Sunset looked back up the hole, gripped the rope, and started to climb. If it had just been the rope itself, she wouldn’t have gotten very far. Yet using it as a starting fulcrum, she managed to elevate her legs enough to just start scraping the sides of the overhead entry. It took her a little while, but she found enough purchase to force herself upward and, eventually, she wormed her way up enough to be braced in the tunnel with her legs to the corridor. After that she was able to finally start climbing her way back up. Struggling not to look down the whole way (fortunately her helmet helped with that), she gradually made it back to the opening.
As soon as she was close enough, Stygian reached down and grasped her hand. It took him a bit of effort, but he managed to just pull her back over the lip and out into the open. She used the moment to take a look around. The sky was darker now—punctuated by another thunderclap. The Griffonstone soldiers had all frozen in place. Each one was standing and their weapons were on the ground, as they looked about their surroundings. Desolate as they were, there were plenty of uneven bits of terrain and loose rocks to provide hiding places. They truly had no idea how many people were there.
Little Violet was up and had claimed one of the rifles for her own, holding it to the nearest soldier. Stygian had rearmed himself but wasn’t aiming at the moment. Spike was finally free to growl at everyone around him. Finally, Shining Armor himself was approaching, keeping his own gun out and trained on each soldier as he moved around.
He neared the two of them just as Sunset got back onto terra firma. “Where’s Twily? Is she ok?”
She nodded. “Gilda didn’t fall under her sleep spell, though. She’s holding her back at the moment. We need to pull her up.”
He nodded back. “Right.” He turned and looked around. “Company! If any of them make a move, drop them!”
“You got it!” a voice that sounded like Boysenberry’s yelled back enthusiastically. “Hear that, all of you?! We’ll mow you down like grass if you twitch too much!”
Sunset winced slightly. “…Getting a little into it, isn’t she?” she muttered quietly.
“Just so long as it makes them think we have an army with us.”
The two made it back to the edge of the hole. While Little Violet and Stygian moved to guard duty, Shining Armor quickly grabbed the rope and began to brace himself. “Twily?”
“Shining Armor?”
“Grab onto the rope! We’re pulling you up now!”
“O…ok! Just…be fast!”
Shining Armor didn’t answer but quickly grabbed the rope and positioned himself against the well. He proceeded to plant his feet against the rough side of it, grip the rope tight, and get ready to use his entire body as a lever along with his legs to pull up on it. Spike, now likewise freed, ran over and gripped the end in his teeth for whatever help he could offer. Nevertheless, it was just one rope against the edge of a stone, and Sunset saw it.
A moment later, and she went up behind him, took up the other end of the rope from between him and Spike, and readied herself to pull as well.
He looked up to her and stared; not moving. She looked a little uneasily back, but then shrugged. “I…figured you can act as the ‘ratchet’ while I pull. If…if you don’t mind.”
There was some lingering distrust in the back of his eyes. However, he finally gave a slow nod. Without another word, he looked back to the rope.
With that in mind, both got into position. Sunset herself laced the rope around her arms, planted her feet, and then let herself fall backward, using herself as a lever. Shining Armor winced a bit as the rope ran over his hands, but he managed to grip it, and Sunset’s odd gesture had managed to pull up about half a meter. She quickly twisted the rope up, got into position again, and did it again, more cleanly. This time, she pulled up a whole meter. The third time, it was getting more mechanical and pulled another meter. The fourth time it was getting painful, but also more routine.
That, unfortunately, is when they heard Twilight give a start. A moment later, she called out again. “Uh…pull faster, if you can!”
“What’s wrong?” Shining Armor came back.
“While I was being pulled just now she broke away and ran into a side tunnel! I can hear her chanting right now!”
A clatter was heard nearby. Sunset looked up, seeing Stygian dropped his rifle and quickly got behind Sunset and grabbed the rope behind Spike. “Let’s hurry!”
There was no time to check and see if any of the other Griffonstone soldiers were taking advantage of this. Instead, all four of them shifted and began to pull together. After “ratcheting” the rope again, they didn’t bother feeding it back again but instead all pulled as one. They slowly walked back and away from the well, pulling Twilight up continuously with it. After a few seconds, they finally saw Twilight’s hands reach out and begin to fumble around for the top. She grasped the edge, and Shining Armor responded by loosening the rope and quickly running up to the side. As Sunset and Stygian held, he grasped Twilight’s hand and started to yank her out. Soon, her hat and upper body came over the edge, and the rest of her was soon pulled over the lip…
Just at that moment, however, Gilda’s body in the Role of the Disciple popped out of the top and proceeded to belt Shining Armor in the face.
He was smacked away from the well like chaff; sent flying out and over to Sunset and Stygian. The former winced and ran to one side, but the latter didn’t have the chance to move before he collided with him and took them both to the ground. Twilight herself cried out and spilled onto the ground. Little Violet looked up in alarm, and unfortunately that was all that the surrounding soldiers needed. In a flash, they ducked to the ground, threw themselves down, and took up their weapons again. In moments, three of them had their rifles—with one on Stygian, one on Shining Armor, and one on Sunset.
Gilda herself was perched over the entrance to the well, fists tight and not looking happy at all. She glowered down over Twilight, who just now got enough of her bearings to look up to her—as if daring her to try a spell.
“I could have rappelled my way back out of that tunnel before I had my own Anima Viris,” she scoffed. Without looking up, she held her hand up to the others. “Splatter their brains.”
Shining Armor grunted and looked up, only to find a gun in his face. Stygian winced as he saw much the same was happening to him. Little Violet sweat, having her weapon trained on one soldier but now finding the tides had turned. And Sunset, under her own gun barrel, knew full well that whoever was covering them now had to be panicking about who to hit first. Fortunately, because their opponents didn’t know that, they were hesitating too. As it was, she mentally debated whether or not to reach for her recently-claimed weapon…
“Captain!”
The voice of one of her fellow comrades made Gilda groan in irritation. “Oh, what is it now, Gareth?!”
“Southwest!”
She hissed but looked up from Twilight and glanced in that direction. Yet what she saw seemed to make her forget about the mage, because she was soon glued to it. The other soldiers started to look as well and they likewise went rigid. Not liking the looks of that, Sunset, Twilight, and the others turned and finally looked too.
Twilight gasped. “Oh no…he’s here!”
The surrounding Griffonstone soldiers weren’t able to ask what she meant by that. They were too busy looking at the swarm of Nighttouched creatures with gleaming red, green, and purple eyes coming on top of the nearest hill, numbering in the hundreds, and the great billowing cloud of darkness that filled the air with even more gloom than the coming storm over their heads.
Especially when the cloud itself formed a similar pair of malevolent, red, green, and purple eyes.
“So long as we’re out, can we pick up some fruits to take home with us? I can’t wait to make a strawberry banana cake once we get back to Canterlot!”
The Huntsman rolled her eyes but kept walking. “You’ve already weighed us down with a couple crates, Pinkie.”
“I know, but when will we get another chance to get all of this fresh Southern Equestria fruit?”
Dash glanced around herself, in particular to one of the buildings nearby. It was a Knickerbocker branch office, and she happened to notice that it had two Trottingham soldiers in front of it. Both of them were armed with guns and were rather stone-faced.
“…Probably not for much longer.”
It had been a couple days since they arrived in Southern Equestria, and while their stay at the manor house was pleasant enough, the same couldn’t be said for the rest of Somnambula. While Matilda tried to keep it quiet, between Cranky’s yelling every time he came home and Gallus passing along the info to them every day, they soon realized that things were deteriorating. Every day there were more riots, and for the past two days there had been a progressively growing demonstration outside of the Knickerbocker’s main office. Yesterday, a chant had broken out that had nearly erupted in violence, and in spite of the local authorities attempts to disperse the crowd there had been people camping out all night to start up the clamor fresh the next morning.
The markets weren’t much better. By now, protests and small mobs were moving through them with such regularity and starting so many fights and disturbances that the local government had been forced to impose checkpoints and a curfew. This only made things worse when the locals complained about how it was disrupting their way of life to a largely deaf set of guardsmen.
Needless to say, by now, the roads were much thinner than they had been when they started. And what people were walking along were mostly quiet or looking about tensely, especially whenever a squad of local soldiers would march by.
At least Pinkie seemed fairly oblivious to it. She was hopping and skipping around as merrily as ever. After a bit further it made Dash look at her oddly. “How can you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Be so casual? You’re not at all freaked out by how fast this place is going to martial law?”
“Oh, this is waaaay better than back in Trottingham, Rainbow Dash! At least here I can walk down the street without getting arrested! And I can buy stuff without mysteriously disappearing!”
She grimaced. “Yeah…I suppose when you put it that way, it’s a matter of perspective…”
Suddenly, she let out a gasp. “I almost forgot! I know what we can do today! Let’s go see the Sphinx statue! Matilda told me it’s the biggest sight in Somnambula! We can even pay someone to take our picture!”
Dash shrugged as she kept walking down the road. “Might as well. If we’re just going to be sniffing around looking for more brawls to break out, then I guess that place would be as good as any. Know where it is?”
“Sure! Just head to main road and keep going south! Matilda said you can’t miss it!”
“Alright. Lead the way.”
“Yay!” she chirped, beginning to skip along. Dash followed close behind, though not nearly so brightly.
However, they didn’t get too terribly far. As they approached the next intersection, both of them heard a rush of boots. Dash looked up and saw a group of soldiers coming down the road. There were two other magistrates posted at the corner, and one of the group stayed behind and ran over to them. Dash’s eyes focused on the three as the soldier said something to either of them. Following doing so, she noticed that he made a cutting motion around his neck. Both magistrates looked rather uneasy at that and soon left their own positions to run after the soldier down the road.
Dash frowned, although Pinkie hardly seemed to have noticed it at all.
“Say, uh…why don’t you run on ahead to that statue? I’ll catch up with you in a little bit.”
“Okie-dokie-lokie! Don’t be long! I still want that picture!” Pinkie cheered back, not minding one bit as she kept hopping down the road once they reached the intersection. As for Dash, she turned at the intersection and headed after the soldiers and magistrates.
Matlida was right about the monument. Only about a mile down the street, the road widened and the buildings shifted outward, gradually giving way to a long patch of dirt ground. And rising right in the midst of it all was a very large, old, and conspicuous statue. Pinkie had never seen the like before as she approached, and it immediately caught her awe and attention.
The beast was massive—bigger than a Steel Lion, even. Its head was that of a human wearing an old Southern Equestria headdress, but the body was that of a lion, and it sat crouched in the middle of the plaza for all to see. However, there wasn’t exactly anyone present to see it at the moment. The town was void of tourists. The locals were trying to keep off the streets as much as possible, so no one was using the surrounding area or grounds and only a few pedestrians were passing by. Worst of all, as Pinkie neared, she saw the tent area for photographers had been struck.
“Aw… I really wanted to get a picture with Dash…”
She tried to look around a little, to see if there was anything else she could get to note the trip, and after a short while she noticed there was at least one vendor still there. An old lady, hunched over, withered, and beaten by sun and desert stands, had a very small stall barely big enough for her nearby. Pinkie turned to her and began to hop over. She soon noticed what she was selling—small trinkets in the form of necklaces and bracelets that were made with bright green moonstones.
“Ooo!” she exclaimed as she got near, quickly scooting up to them, leaning in, balling her hands up into fists near her face, and examining them with glee.
“Hmm?” the old lady spoke up, apparently not noticing her until then. “Oh, hello there, young lady. I’m sorry…I’m not used to getting customers anymore. Would you care for some glowpaz jewelry?”
She looked up. “Glowpaz?”
“Yes. Somnambula is famous for it.” She looked down a little, sighing. “At least, we were when there were still tourists coming in regularly… It’s a rare moonstone that glows in the dark after exposing it to light.”
“Really? That sounds neat! How much for a necklace?”
“Only five bits. Two for nine.”
“Wow! That’s cheap!” Pinkie exclaimed as she began to reach into her pocket.
“Well, they were used as money many, many years ago, but they’re only a little rare nowadays. Still…” She sighed. “The price has gone down over the past few years… I’m lucky to even sell one or two some weeks, and I’m one of the fortunate ones. Before the Lunar Fall, there would be twenty vendors selling a hundred a day each day.”
Pinkie managed to get out her bits and started to dole them out. “So how come everyone visits this big statue? Did there used to be big mancats running around out here?”
The old lady chuckled. “Oh no…not outside of fairy tales, young lady. Somnambula was a woman who served as advisor to the Pharaoh and whose advice and spirit enabled him to withstand two famines and three foreign invasions. ‘The Bringer of Hope’, that’s what they called her. She’s so legendary that a lot of myths have arisen about her over the years. One is that one of the famines was caused by a Sphinx that came to the city, and how she drove her off by answering her riddle and then walking a hundred yards while blindfolded over a pit filled with poison. This statue was erected in honor of the legend. As for the glowpaz, she came from a family of glowpaz jewelers, and she donated all of her holdings to help the Pharaoh withstand the first famine.”
Reaching over, she took up the money and, after counting it, put it underneath the stall. “Now, which two would you like?”
“I’ll take…that one and that one!”
The old lady plucked the two from the others and handed them over. Pinkie quickly put one on herself but eagerly stashed the other in her poofy hair. “This is great! Now Dash and I will both have something to remember this trip by even without the photo!”
“This is the third day in a row I’ve made a sale, young lady. Here’s hoping what I saw a couple months ago was a good omen.”
Pinkie looked up curiously. “Huh?”
“Oh, about two months ago, I was out here after a long day holding out for another tourist when the sun went down, and I decided to give up and go home for the day. I was halfway through packing everything when I saw a shooting star. Only it wasn’t like any shooting star I had ever seen before. You know…I’m sure I was just tired now when I think about it, but I almost thought I saw it actually land right there at the base of that Sphinx monument. It must have…”
She trailed off, for she noticed that no sooner had she said that than Pinkie spun around and curiously began to skip toward the monument itself.
“Um…young lady? You aren’t allowed to actually get that close to the monument or touch it…”
Pinkie didn’t seem to hear and, while the place would have been guarded seven years ago by local authorities to make sure no damage came to the precious monument, they had all long since redeployed in the city itself. The old lady’s cries were of no avail as Pinkie hopped up right to the base of the Sphinx itself and looked down in the space right in between its massive forepaws.
“Hmm…I don’t see any shooting stars…”
She bent down, stuck her tongue out, and opened one eye as large as she could to look in closer.
“Maybe I’m just not looking at it right…”
She began to glance upward instead, looking back at the Sphinx statue itself. She looked about the paws on either side of her, the main statue, and even up to the human face for a few seconds, all the while the little old lady was calling to her, but didn’t risk going out to try and grab her and pull her back.
She looked for a few seconds more before something caught her eye. A prismatic gleam shimmered over her face, causing her to look back at the ground again.
“Huh?”
“Keep it moving, folks. There’s nothing to see here.”
That, of course, was the biggest lie that Dash had heard since she arrived in Southern Equestria. There wouldn’t be twenty soldiers and magistrates surrounding a public square with even more civilians crowding around trying to get a look at what it was without there being something up. Fortunately for the Huntsman, she knew her way around pushing into and about crowds of people, and it didn’t take her that long to work her way to the front. There weren’t enough to soldiers to fully block the sight or those investigating it, and so she soon saw the cause.
Based on the skin tone and the facial features, Dash assumed the victim of the incident had been not only someone from Greater Everfree but some sort of local official. From the looks of him, he had been beaten to death, but that appeared to be incidental. The true aim had originally been public humiliation—as evidenced by the fact that he was covered with some sticky, blackened substance and a great deal of feathers. Obviously she wasn’t allowed that close to see more, but Dash had seen incidents of public shaming before and this definitely didn’t look like tar.
She moved up to the nearest soldier. “So…what’s the story here?”
“Nothing that needs to concern civilians. Move along.”
“Might have been someone I was coming down to see. Could you level with me on that?”
“Unless you were headed toward the local custom’s post, then unlikely. Move along.”
Dash backed away soon after. She wasn’t a detective by any means, but the soldier had said all she needed to know. The local custom’s post. In other words, a place that regulated the trade of the area. And someone who had been publicly shamed, not by tar but by something very viscous and likely served up boiling just the same, who worked out of there. No doubt one of the staff. And from the look of the whispers along the periphery of the crowd, someone who had no doubt been meant as a message.
She moved over closer to some of the whisperers, trying to overhear what they were saying. It wasn’t long before she got an answer.
“I’ll bet it’s for those three they arrested last night…”
“Things are getting worse around here every day. We should hit the next boat…”
“Might be too late for that already…”
Dash would have listened in a bit closer, but at that moment something caught the corner of her eye. She turned her head and looked up, just as someone on the edge of the crowd opposite her turned and vanished down the nearest street. Before she did, however, she caught a glimpse of her hair. A style almost as striking and unique as her own.
Eyes narrowing, Dash forgot about the people nearby and began to push through the crowd after her. “Well, well…fancy seeing an old friend around here…”
Dash was only slowed down until she managed to clear the crowd. As soon as she was free, she went into a much faster gait, quickly turning down the same road. She didn’t see the woman right away, but after tearing down in one direction in a run she managed to catch a glimpse of her at the next intersection. Immediately she darted down that way, going into a fast walk instead. Although this allowed her to be much more silent than before, she hardly lost her pace from one of her normal jogs, and when she spotted the woman again she was much closer.
She continued to pursue her a bit farther, until she noticed a flex from the woman. When that happened, she quickly darted down an alleyway, right before she turned around and looked behind her. Not wasting the momentary pause, though, Dash quickly went down the alley and out the other end, then turned up the next street to try and head her off. As she came around the block, she saw her move was a good one. She caught sight of her just as she was emerging from another road. She paused just long enough for her to look her way and see nothing, then sprung out after her.
At long last, she caught up to her just as she was turning down one short roadway leading up to the main street. As she turned the corner, Dash increased her speed and fell in right behind her. The woman heard her at that point, but it was too late. She turned around just in time to have one of Dash’s hands clamp over her mouth and her arm push against her chest. A second later, she pivoted the woman around and slammed her against the nearest wall, out of view of anyone around.
The woman was shocked and nearly tensed up to fight back, until her eyes recognized the face glowering at her. As Dash pulled off her hand, she smirked instead. “Well…as I live and draw breath…if it isn’t ‘honorary Fillydelphian’ Rainbow Dash herself. Funny running into you way out here in the sticks.”
“I was just about to say the same thing, Lightning Dust,” Dash grumbled back as she slowly released her, but stayed positioned in front of her as she leaned up and adjusted her clothing. “I could’ve sworn it was your voice I heard all the way back at Rider’s Island.”
She raised an eyebrow, then smiled even wider. “Oh-ho…so you were the special VIP prisoner they had during that attack? You really get around, don’t you, Dash? Even as a retired veteran.”
“And you get around as an imitation Wonderbolt working for the Fillydelphian military. What are you doing here, Dust?”
“Oh, sorry Dash, I’d love to catch up, but I’m on the clock. Nice seeing you again!” She made a move to push past her.
Dash halted her by placing her palm on her chest and not-too-gently pushed her back against the wall. “Not so fast. Let’s catch up a little first.”
Dust took a moment to compose herself, not looking quite as casual as before. “You really want to risk causing a scene right here? There’s a lot of soldiers around trying to keep the peace…”
“Something tells me you’re the one who’s more worried about being caught by them. Quit beating around the bush and spill it. If you’re some new ace flier, what’re you doing across the ocean?”
“First off, I’m more than ‘some ace flier’. Or don’t you remember how I almost beat several of your records? That was years ago. I’ve been in the air ever since, unlike you. Second,” She shrugged. “What can I say? The life of a pro like me takes me in a lot of different directions. Or didn’t you ever have to do the same back in Cloudsdale?”
Dash grit her teeth but ignored that part. “You were skulking around that customs official who got whacked.”
“Oh yeah, I was, wasn’t I? Well, who wouldn’t be? Even in this part of the world, murder in the middle of the street isn’t business as usual.”
“He had gotten tarred and feathered, but not with tar.”
“Heh, well, syrup is a lot easier to find around these parts, isn’t it? What with the Knickerbocker running it like their own little Sugar Republic, eh?”
Dash’s eyes narrowed. “With molasses.”
Dust went silent.
“The kind you get from sorghum in Fillydelphia?”
She was quiet a second longer, but then smiled again—this time with the kind of look of someone grinning off that the “jig was up”. “Well, well…after all these years, you ended up becoming educated, eh Dash?”
“More like I could never forget the scent of that crud after eating it once. So are you ready to fess up?”
“There’s nothing to fess up to, Dash. Things are just playing out like they were going to. Maybe a bit faster than they would have if not for a thing or two, but they’re still playing out.”
Dash looked angry again. “Fillydelphia is trying to needle the locals into revolting, aren’t they?”
“Pft. We’re needling them into revolting? Oh sure. It couldn’t possibly be the fact that the Knickerbocker relocated to Southern Equestria not just because it could buy up all the land and force the farmers to either work for their sugar plantations or starve, but because they still allow legalized slavery. Like I said, this was all going to happen one way or another. And no one except for some fat cats and politicians on the take is going to miss it in the long run.”
“And what about the short run?”
Dust shrugged. “The Knickerbocker goes out of business and Greater Everfree has to get used to eating bland pastries for a little while as things sort themselves out down here.”
Dash balled her hand into a fist and punched the wall next to Dust’s head, although she didn’t react. “And while that’s going on, the shipping companies go under. The freighters go under. The sugar trade goes under. The bakeries go under. And everyone who still has a fix for sweeteners turns to the next best thing…sorghum from Fillydelphia. Meanwhile, the biggest pusher of the sugar trade, Manehattan, takes a financial beating. And all of this because of Fillydelphian interference.” She snorted. “Why am I not surprised? The Fillydelphian government never misses a trick, does it? And I suppose whichever warlord in Southern Equestria gets control of the sugar cane is going to be ready to make a deal with Fillydephia to distribute it?”
“Heh…that’d make a nice bonus, wouldn’t it?”
“And meanwhile, nothing changes as far as the slave trade or the farmers earning nibbles on the bit either, right?”
She shrugged again. “That’s Southern Equestria business, not ours. If they lived as serfs while under a protectorate for decades just to turn around and sell their own citizens back into slavery once Manehattan is out, who are we to judge? So long as it keeps cheap sugar flowing? No one up north will complain.”
“And I guess the locals that end up getting caught up in the crossfire don’t matter either?” Dash retorted, only to snort. “Of course they don’t. Fillydelphia didn’t care if one whole country got burned to the ground practically overnight. What’s one port city?”
Dust looked at her for a moment before swishing her mouth. “Oh…so that’s what this is all about.”
Dash blustered, but simply looked to the ground.
“Look Dash…things may have gone a bit worse in Cloudsdale than anyone wanted, but at the end of the day everyone else was better off for it. All we needed at the height of the Lunar Fall panic was that murdering nutjob taking over the government. She wasn’t even a native of Cloudsdale, for crying out loud! What? Did you want a repeat of the Cirrus disaster to take place over half of Greater Everfree?”
Dash let out a sigh.
“…Did you?”
“No…”
“Everyone only gets a happy ending in the fairy tales, Dash. You know it, I know it, and everyone else in the world has to know it. In real life, if you want a happy ending, it’s got to come from someone else’s tragedy.”
She looked up and frowned. “I’m blowing the lid off of this right now. I’m heading straight to the governor’s office and letting him know.”
“It’s too late for that.”
“What do you mean?”
“This has been building for weeks. They just sent us in to drop off the last bit of supplies since we can fly in and out easily and see if it was going off, and now it is. As we speak, the local magistrates and army officials are hunting down the families of the ones who killed that customs official. If the past is any indication, they’ll capture or kill the wrong people yet again, and that’ll be the final match in the powder keg. There’s already a mob getting ready to storm the jail. Once they break in, things will escalate until they set fire to the main office of the Knickerbocker itself, and this whole port will turn itself inside out. It’s beyond our control. If I were you, I’d get on a boat out of town right now if I could.”
Dash grit her teeth, tightening her fists in frustration. “Which way is the city jail?!”
Dust frowned back. “Now come on, Dash. You don’t want to get mixed up in a local mob riot, do you? Even you can’t stop them all. And I know you don’t want me running back to Greater Everfree telling them their honorary citizen decided to repay their clemency by betraying our interests…”
She fumed back before she took a step forward and got in Dust’s face. The latter recoiled a little, but then stood firm and stared back.
“I’m going to do something I should have done years ago—renounce my citizenship with Fillydelphia.”
“Think about what you’re saying. Don’t do anything you can’t take back.”
However, she didn’t say another word. Turning about, she made for the main road.
“Dash! Don’t do anything stupid!”
The cry fell on deaf ears. She turned a corner and was gone.
As usual with this sort of thing, Dash had charged into it not exactly knowing where to go or what to do next. She only ran right into the road and immediately began to look around almost aimlessly for the nearest road to the city jail. She didn’t even think to ask anyone as she started running up and down streets with an eager and almost frantic look on her face.
Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, she didn’t have to search for very long.
She never did find the jail itself, but she had only been searching for about ten minutes before she began to hear an echoing murmur on the streets. As it quickly grew louder, she didn’t have much trouble pinpointing where it was coming from, and, sure enough, when she turned toward it and began to run in that direction, she saw that many of the streets had cleared out around it—as if the locals knew what was coming and were either joining in or staying well out of their way. Realizing they wouldn’t bother hiding out on the side streets, she rejoined the main road. Only a few blocks later, she ground to a halt and looked down the street.
Dust wasn’t kidding about the oncoming mob. She almost thought she was seeing another crowd at a marketplace when she spotted them, considering how many were there and how densely packed together. There had to be almost three hundred of them already with more getting whipped up in the growing frenzy and coming out to join them. Many of their faces were tight and angry. They were beginning to whip up chants. Worst of all, many of them had taken up sticks or rocks. And with more joining them all the time, she knew that once they reached the jail one panicked shot would be all it would take to get things to boil over.
With that in mind, she planted her feet, turned around, and cupped her hands to her mouth to shout out to them.
“Hey! Break it up! Clear out of here!”
Of course, that accomplished absolutely nothing. It was unlikely most of them could even hear her, and if any did it was equally unlikely that they could understand her language considering the fact they were beginning to shout and chant in the native tongue. And even if they could, what then? She was just a foreigner. Heck, if she had been a member of the local magistrate or consulate, that probably would have made them angrier. They were approaching fast and only swelling in numbers. They seemed to have grown to four hundred in just the time it was taking them to go down the block.
Realizing there was nothing else for it, Dash sighed. Gritting her teeth, she looked again with reluctance and regret at her hand before, muttering to herself, she held it up. “Member of my house, I command you to come to me! Leader of the Wonderbolts—Captain Spitfire!”
An eruption of aura later, and she was back in the Role of the Disciple. She had a fool’s hope that simply seeing a transformation like that would have been enough to at least slow the crowd, but no such luck. And at this point, even if the local militia showed up, they would be too revved and in too great a number to halt them. It was up to her.
“Alright!” she shouted again, holding her hand out at them. “I’m warning you! Break up now!”
Still no answer or reaction, other than the continuous growth of the chanting.
Groaning one last time, and seeing them nearly in striking range, and that some of them were eyeing her as if assuming she would try to do something…and not liking it…she finally gave in. “Alright, you asked for it!”
Darting forward to meet them, she leaned in, formed a palm, and drove it right into the middle of the nearest member of the mob. It connected solidly and, compared to some of the things she had been dealing with lately, the result was more than pleasing as she effortlessly batted her right off of her feet and sent her crashing into several of the mob members behind her to knock them down as well. Doing so created a “dam” in the mob, and she used the moment to quickly lash out to the left and strike another one down, then pivot back to the right and kick another one aside. Once again, in both cases, the targets were sent crashing into their companions, knocking down more and keeping them back.
Unfortunately, even with her strength and speed, that was the farthest she got unopposed. Seeing they were being struck, the volume raised into an angry roar and soon the people were coming in on her on either side. That was just how Dash liked it, however. Being the new target of their anger. She easily darted under and away from the first attempt to tackle her, and easily leapt over the second from the other side. She caught the fist of a third and, while holding onto her, leaned over and raised up her leg to give another powerful kick to a fourth before yanking her in and striking her down with a headbutt. The next four that came in were very quickly dealt with, as she quickly applied her speed to dart around them and struck as pressure points on each one. Soon she was accumulating a pile of disabled mobbers in front of her.
Yet there were more besides, and they kept coming—filling the entire street. One suddenly lunged at her from behind and jumped onto her back. Before he could get an arm around her throat, she quickly leapt up, arched back, and let herself fall on the ground to smash him underneath her. Yet even that move allowed three more to sweep in on her at all sides, trying to put her down. Her feet quickly shot up and swung out three ways, kicking each one deep in the gut and keeping them back just long enough for her to snap back up to her feet…
A loud cracking went out from her back and she winced slightly. One of the mobbers had smashed her in the back with his own stave hard enough to break it. If not for her Anima Viri, even she would have been hurt from that. As it was, she quickly snapped her arm back, looped around his neck, and got him in a headlock. She yanked him about and started to swing him around, using him to keep the others back as they pressed in on her. One managed to get out a punch that graced across her cheek, but in her enhanced body it was meaningless, and soon she threw the individual into him to knock him down.
Unfortunately, by now, she was surrounded and the crowd was pressing in, grabbing out for her arms and legs to try and hold her back. She was strong enough to pry herself free each time, but they served to deaden the force of her blows as she kept lashing out to try and hit them away. And soon they were crushing in so much that she couldn’t get the leverage to use her kicks. She struck away five more of them before she felt another weight on her back as yet another local jumped onto her. This one was at least smart enough to put his arm around her neck to try and choke her down. She nearly dealt with him, but him as a burden immobilized her long enough for others to run in. Two more with sticks lashed out and tried hitting her in her abdomen and kidneys while others tried to seize her arms and legs again. Gritting her teeth in anger, she snapped her body down and flipped the one on her back off before lashing out with both arms at once, seizing either stick, and then yanking them back to start swinging around her. Soon she was breaking the knuckles of hands reaching for her and driving the mob back a precious few feet.
However, in the midst of this, she noticed that she was now “encapsulated” by part of the mob. The bulk of them were going around her and continuing onward, with more still coming out of the streets and joining them. Just as another mobber struck a useless, yet still slightly painful, blow to the back of her head, she grit her teeth in frustration. Even with her Anima Viri, she couldn’t stop hundreds…assuming they weren’t going to swell to over a thousand. Especially if she was just trying to disable them rather than do some real damage.
She glanced again to her hand, and to her second Anima Viri. Internally she winced. A knot began to form in her stomach. She wasn’t sure if she could hold that form for that long or even what it would be. Nevertheless, she bit down and nearly began to, albeit reluctantly, try speaking the words for the second…
However, as it turned out, she didn’t have to. In the middle of her deliberation, she suddenly realized the crowd wasn’t grabbing for her anymore. What more, the ones she were striking weren’t fighting back or trying to avoid her. She halted right before she could punch another, realizing that he wasn’t even looking at her. His eyes were up ahead, transfixed on the road. A quick glance around revealed it wasn’t just him. The entire mob about her had slowed to a halt. While those in the back were still moving forward, they were as puzzled as Dash to see the crowd had stopped in the middle of the street. They had ceased their chanting, lowered their arms, and, to be honest, were gaping in front of them like a gaggle of idiots.
Dash scrunched her face and looked at this in puzzlement a moment longer, before, over the new silence, she heard a familiar voice.
“Alright, everybody! Keep watching me!”
She perked up in surprise. “…Pinkie?”
It took a moment of looking through the crowd of people, and she ended up wandering forward a bit to get a better look, but what she saw made her jaw drop.
Pinkie had…changed. She now wore nothing on her chest except a top closer to her neck, her arms were clad in ornamental bracelets and sleeves over her forearms with long, graceful, silky trains. That went the same for her waist, which now had an equally colorful and silky-fabric skirt, tied with an ornamental belt and sash. She wore only sandals on her feet, although they were of such thin material they were practically fabric. Most noticeable was her hair and face. The latter had been done up in makeup and jewelry, while her hair was tied back and had tripled in length to a long, waving tail behind her.
While she had her normal, smiling, happy face, she was now dancing in the middle of the street. Rather gracefully and strikingly too. Her skirt billowed up and around along with her silken trails, while her hair swung about one way and the other along with her hips and shoulders. Nothing like her normal happy prances or skips. Enough to be…alluring. Sensual, even. It took Dash a second, but when she found her own eyes glued to it for several moments before she had to force herself to look away, she realized she was the one attracting everyone’s attention.
Dash couldn’t help but still look astonished. “Pinkie? Is that really you?”
Not breaking her stride, although she was sweating a little in the bright sun, Pinkie turned to her and smiled. “Oh! Hi, Rainbow Dash! Um…I’d appreciate it if you didn’t tell ma, pa, Maud, Marble, or Limestone about this. I’m pretty sure dancing like this is something Gaia Everfree doesn’t approve of…”
“What…what are you doing?”
“Well, I just finished putting on my second Anima Viri when I heard all of these big, loud, and angry people coming down the street, and I suddenly thought maybe I can distract them so that they’ll forget about what they’re planning to mob! And all of the sudden, I just felt like dancing like this! And it worked!”
“Wait…‘second Anima Viri’?” Dash glanced down at her hand and, sure enough, two symbols were blazing on it at once now.
“Yeah! I went over to visit the big statue of a sphinx like I said I wanted to, and all of the sudden I saw a rainbow glow at the bottom of it, and so I thought ‘hey, they called Somnambula the Bringer of Hope so why don’t I try and get it’? And it worked! Now I got a brand new Role! What do you think this is? The Dancer?”
Considering how alluring the dance was and the amount of skin exposed, Dash could think of some other choice and not-so-savory names for it, but she decided to let that pass. “How much longer do you think you can do that? Another half a minute if you push it? We really need to calm these people down!”
“Oh, tee-hee! I can keep this up for hours, Dash! I’m feeling bursting with energy after eating all those pies last night!”
Dash’s face fell at that. “Wait…really?”
“Yup! There must be something great in the sugar around here!”
“But…but Fluttershy and Rarity can only hold theirs for a few-”
She wasn’t able to say any more. At that moment, far in the distance, a loud crackling and popping rang out. Loud enough to where some of the people, transfixed on Pinkie’s dance, were able to break out and look up. Fortunately, they didn’t go on with their mob but turned and ran off. Pinkie herself slowed soon after on hearing the noises, and as she stopped her dance the others in the street slowly snapped out of it as well, but it seemed to have done its job. They were indeed calmer and more bewildered that they had been, and had halted at least for the moment.
Dash ignored them on seeing they weren’t resuming the riot and instead focused on the noise. Not long after, she pushed her way through the others and went up to Pinkie’s side, gritting her teeth. “Damnit… I should’ve known.”
“Huh? Should’ve known what?”
“A town this big, there was more than one place where the mob was forming. They were going to converge on the city jail…” Balling her hands into fists, she tapped Pinkie with one before taking off. “Come on!”
“Oh, wait, wait! I can’t run that well in these shoes!” Pinkie protested before taking off after her. “Or this dress! Or these sleeves! Or this jewelry! Or with my hair so long! Where are we going?”
“Up to those gunshots!”
“Sure! I don’t see anything wrong with going that way!”
Naturally, it wasn’t very far into running before Dash pulled considerably ahead of Pinkie, even with her agility and her enhanced body from donning two Anima Viris. The gunshots themselves didn’t last much longer other than when they initially heard them, but by then Dash had the direction and kept heading that way. After closing in a few blocks, she spotted a few people running the other way. Most of them were civilians and looked panicked. A bit closer, and one of them had blood on them.
Two more blocks and Dash was forced to stop. Up ahead was nothing but chaos. A mob that was mostly soldiers and local magistrates were there, along with the remains of debris and crude weapons. The few locals that were still present were either being lined up or were on the ground—some of them looking injured. They appeared to be surrounding the front of a building but Dash really couldn’t tell. She slowed down, allowing Pinkie to catch up at her own skipping rate (which seemed to work better than running), and came to a stop by the time they were only a block away.
“Let’s drop our Anima Viris here. We don’t want to freak people out.”
“Good idea! If mom saw me in this, she’d make be pray ‘Great Gaia’ 300 times!”
Dash quickly returned to her “normal” state along with Pinkie, before resuming running once again. There was more noise and commotion as they got closer, with more soldiers arriving and struggling to get people out of there. However, they only got two thirds of the distance before two of the soldiers, both armed with rifles, stepped out to them with their hands up.
“This road is closed. Move along.”
Dash frowned. “What went on up there?”
“Nothing that need concern you. Move along.”
She sighed. “Look, we’re staying with Governor Doodle, and we’ve got something way important to tell him.”
“Ma’am, I’m asking you one more time to clear the road.”
“Look, could you just tell us where he is? He needs to hear this!”
“You’re not getting through here! Now move along!”
Dash hissed in frustration. “Listen, you-”
“Ms. Dash! Ms. Pie!”
Both ladies turned. Pushing her way through the magistrates, looking rather strained and haggard, was one of the officials that had accompanied them on the ship to Southern Equestria. It took her some struggling, but she managed to get up to the officers. They immediately turned and tried to stop her.
She sighed. “I’m on a diplomatic mission from Manehattan and so are they. They’re with me.”
The two magistrates frowned but reluctantly stood to one side. The way now clear, the official quickly stepped up to both of them. Dash sighed in relief. “Great to see you. Listen, we need to talk to-”
“I’m glad I ran into both of you,” the official cut off. “Alright, you need to head back, gather your things, and get to the docks as soon as possible. You have two hours.”
Both ladies looked rather puzzled. “Uh…say what now?”
“There was a march on the local jail and police station. Even with half the mob being cut off, there were so many rioters that the soldiers guarding the place panicked and opened fire. Seven locals are dead. The rest of the crowds have dispersed, but if they organized for a mob this large then the local government isn’t taking any chances.”
“What do you mean isn’t taking any chances? What’s going on?”
The official exhaled. “Since they can’t get any support from Manehattan with that strait being compromised, they’re putting the city on lockdown. That includes the piers. It’s effective in three hours. If we aren’t on our way back to Manehattan by then there’s no telling when we will be. The talks are aborting. Now hurry back, both of you. I need to get back to the consulate while there’s still time…”
The official turned and began to head back to the officers, but Dash grit her teeth in frustration, reached out, seized her by the shoulder, and spun her back.
“Listen to me for ten seconds. We need to talk to the governor right now! There’s Fillydelphian agents here! They’re spurring these mobs on!”
“That doesn’t matter anymore.”
Dash looked wide-eyed. Her hand jerked back. “Wh…what?”
“The local soldiers have already fired the first shots. Things were getting worse by the day here; now they’re getting worse by the hour. Fillydelphian influence or not, exposing them isn’t going to change anything now. This is happening with or without them. And right now, there’s not enough local law enforcement or military to watch the entire city at once. Any minute now this city is going to explode and the first thing they’ll storm is the local government offices. Two hours might be too much as it is.”
Dash held still for a moment, looking back expressionlessly at the official. Her hand remained extended but she moved no more. A faint, fading look was on her face. “You mean…we can’t do anything?”
The official sighed. “I’ve already given the last word on it. I need to get back. Remember…two hours. Less now.” With that, she turned and headed back into the crowd.
Dash was left standing there. She didn’t say any more and didn’t move. Just had the same faded look on her face as she stood and watched. Finally, she turned around, looking back at Pinkie Pie. On her part, she had a hurt expression on her face—looking on the verge of tears.
The Huntsman sighed. “Pinkie…it’ll be alr-”
“Now I’ll never get the chance to shop for fruit and sugar to bring home!”
Dash grimaced a little at her bawling, but then sighed and turned around. “Come on, we’ve got to get a move on.”
Pinkie sniffled one more time, but then seemed to forget all about it before she bounded after her. “Sure! Where are we going?”
“Where else? Back to the governor’s house!”
“Oh, right! We need to pack, don’t we?”
“We’re not going there to ‘pack’; we’re going there to pick up more passengers for that boat…”
Even without their Anima Viris equipped, at a full speed run, it didn’t take Rainbow Dash more than fifteen minutes to make it back to the house in spite of it being on the outskirts near the river. She realized Pinkie was somehow able to keep up with her that entire time, but considering she now knew her true nature she didn’t dwell on it. Instead, no sooner had she reached the front of the house than she tore up the front step, practically bashed the door in, and ran straight through until she went out the back porch door again.
Much as she had hoped, both Matilda and Gallus were there, with the latter serving the former what looked like afternoon tea. However, he dropped it in alarm when Dash nearly broke through that door as well, and Matilda looked up with some surprise of her own on seeing her sudden appearance. She clutched for her chest a moment later before calming down. “Ms. Dash…you gave me such a start. What in the world-”
Dash cut her off, having only been quiet long enough to look around for Cranky before turning to them. “Both of you. Up and start packing. Make it light and quick. We’ve got to leave the house in twenty minutes.”
Gallus looked rather baffled and Matilda blinked in confusion. “Ex…excuse me?”
“Pinkie and I are moving you out of here. Right now. Now get up. Afternoon tea is over. We’ve got to move.”
Gallus was picking up on the urgency in Dash’s face, but Matilda still hesitated in confusion even as she set her teacup down. “I’m afraid I don’t understand. What’s going on?”
“What’s going on is that Southern Equestria isn’t safe anymore! Especially the port of Somnambula! And it’s going to be suicide for someone like you to be all the way out here in the open once things turn upside down! So come on!”
“Why…what? What’s going on? What happened in town…?”
“Oh, Rainbow Dash!” Pinkie’s voice called from behind her in the house.
The Huntsman rolled her eyes and groaned in frustration. “Not now, Pinkie! I’m trying to convince these two to get a move on!”
“Okie-dokie-lokie! Just tell Gallus that I didn’t let these two men in! I don’t want him to think I’m just opening the door for anybody!”
Her frustration turned to puzzlement. “What?”
She turned around, and a moment later hopped back. She was nearly bowled over as a pair of soldiers, bearing the insignias of the foreign division of Manehattan’s military, practically marched right past her and into the outdoor area. Growing more confused and a bit distraught, Matilda looked at them as they halted in front of her.
“Ms. Matilda?”
She hesitated momentarily. “Y…yes?”
“We’ll have to ask that you come with us immediately. We’ve been sent by the governor himself to bring you and your slave to the embassy at once.”
“The embassy…but…but why? What’s going on?”
“The situation in the city has grown dangerous. For your own protection, he asked that we bring the both of you there immediately. We can bring some personal items and clothing, but please pack quickly. Time is of the essence.”
Dash frowned and stepped forward at this point. “Sorry guys, you’re a bit late to the party. We’ve already got this handled. We’ll get them away on a ship.”
One of the soldiers turned to her. “The port is being closed.”
“Well then, it’s a good thing we got the last ticket, isn’t it? They can get out with us.”
“I don’t understand…” Matilda spoke up. “What do you mean the city has grown dangerous? Where’s my husband?”
“Ma’am, we really don’t have much time to waste.”
Pinkie, at that moment, chose to bound in and answered for him. “There’s a bunch of people in town who are really, really, really mad about the sugar trade and they’ve started arguing and one thing led to another and now there’s a bunch of people who got shot at in town and they’re putting themselves together into a mob that may or may not be thirsty for blood and the first thing they’re probably going to do is show how angry they are at the local officials. And they’re probably not going to use their words but more like use their hands and feet…to break things. Lots of things.”
Matilda, Dash, and all others stared blankly at Pinkie a moment.
“But…maybe they’ll calm down by tomorrow?”
Dash sighed and turned back to Matilda. “More or less what Pinkie said. Now can we please go?”
The older woman still looked befuddled for a moment, but what was being said seemed to be sinking in. She glanced between the soldiers and Dash before she held a hand to her head. “If…if everything you’re saying is true, then…then I’m not leaving without my husband.”
“That’s what we’re here for, ma’am,” the soldier spoke up again. “We’re trying to relocate you to the embassy right now. It’ll be much safer there.”
“The hell it will!” Dash snapped back. “This place is a powder keg ready to blow!”
The soldier frowned and turned to her. “Ma’am, would you please stand aside. We will handle this. We are simply relocating people to the embassy. It will be safer and secure there.”
“Uh, no it won’t! Look, I don’t know what your superior officers told you or whatever, but Fillydelphia is involved in this! Don’t you all get it? This is just what they did to Cloudsdale! They waited until a time like this! You’re cut off from any support from Manehattan! They’ve whipped up the locals into a frenzy! This isn’t some riot, this is a revolution! And they’re going to do to everyone in power what they did back in Cloudsdale! Staying here is suicide!”
The soldiers didn’t say anything. However, they didn’t need to. That last tirade had broken some of their decorum and composure. It was now leaking through on their expressions that they knew more than they were letting on and they were frightened. Dash turned fully to Matilda, who was looking more worried all the time.
“Listen, you need to come with us right now. Pinkie Pie and I have these…ugh, just know that we can get across the ocean! You and Cranky and Gallus need to get out with us now! They’re not going to wait much longer!”
Matilda hesitated. She looked back to the two soldiers anxiously. “Is…is what this lady saying the truth?”
Both of them were silent for a few moments. “Ma’am…we have our orders. This house is not safe.”
That was all the confirmation she needed. “What about my husband? Where is he?”
“He’s holding his ground, ma’am.”
“Wh…what?”
“The governor already stated that he intends to uphold his mandate which is to maintain authority at Somnambula until relieved of duty.”
“Well,” Dash immediately interjected, actually stepping in between the two and putting a hand on Matilda’s shoulder. “I think he’ll be alright if he knew we were taking his wife and slave somewhere a lot safer than the embassy…like back to Manehattan! Now let’s go!”
“No.”
Dash was struck silent. Until a moment ago, Matilda seemed confused and bewildered about all of this. However, all of the sudden, her face had become firm and her voice steady. She looked forward with a new resolution in her eyes.
“Pardon…?”
Matilda took in a deep breath, then turned to the soldiers. “Take me to my husband.”
The men were a bit surprised at her sudden change, but nodded. The older woman composed herself further before she began to rise from her chair. Gallus, after standing stunned for a moment, not looking much better than Dash, moved forward to assist her.
“Haven’t you been listening?” Dash nearly shouted at this point. “You can’t stay here! This is a death trap!”
Gallus began to tense up further himself, but didn’t speak against his mistress as she fully stood. While it was clear she was still trying to accept everything that was happening right now, she forced her head high and tried to look as composed and dignified as possible.
The Huntsman was grinding her teeth at this point in frustration. “Ugh! Why won’t you-”
“Ms. Dash? Ms. Pie?”
In spite of the situation, Matilda was very composed and calm when she spoke, even if she struggled a bit to pull it off.
“I’m so sorry, but I have a request for you, and it’s a rather tall one… Please take Gallus with you back to Manehattan.”
The Griffonstone native turned to her in alarm, looking far more surprised than either woman did. “M…Madame…? What-”
“There’s no need to worry about papers or anything. Slavery is illegal in Greater Everfree. He’ll be a free man as soon as he sets foot on Manehattan soil. It’s just…” She hesitated, a note of fear as well as anxiety creeping over her. “I’d…I’d prefer if he was there. He’s been very good to me in my later years. Dependable and loyal. I know it won’t be easy on him, but I…I feel he has a much better chance at a good life there than here now.”
“Mrs. Donkey…” Gallus began to speak up, his normally ill-mooded or blasé face having changed to concern. “You’re not…?”
“Oh, I’m sure the boat has enough room for all three of you!” Pinkie chimed in happily. “There’s no need for you two to stay behind! Rainbow Dash can just run really, really fast to the embassy, tell Cranky that we’re going, and he can come with!”
Matilda smiled a little at that, but it was only the smile of an older woman humoring a child. “I’m sorry, young lady. I know old Doodle has already decided. And once he has, he’s more stubborn than a mule. He’ll give me an earful for staying behind too once I let him know there was one last boat, but I can be just as stubborn in the right situation. But I know what will make him feel better is knowing Gallus is safe, even if he won’t show it right away.”
The young man’s jaw dropped. He looked like he wanted to say more but he couldn’t.
Dash kept frowning. “Look, ma’am… I’m not kidding. If you stay here, you’re probably going to die.”
The older woman let out a sigh. “If I’m probably going to die, that means that Doodle is definitely going to die, doesn’t it?”
Now it was Dash’s turn to be caught. She didn't answer.
“You’re an old war mare yourself, Ms. Dash. I’m sure you know better than anyone that Doodle would rather die than abandon his post. He knows too many of those people at the embassy. He’d never desert them to save himself even if he knew there was a way out. And I’m sure that the boat ride that you’re offering us doesn’t have enough room for everyone in Somnambula, does it?”
Dash didn’t answer this either. However, she did bow her head and begin to look very uncomfortable. Especially when Matilda spoke of her knowing better.
Matilda forced herself to smile a little more. “It’s…alright, dears. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t scared, but…I had more luck than I should have. When most of Greater Everfree was in crisis I was safe out here, living my life as usual. A lot of younger people died before their time while I lived on. I’ve lived here too long to just pack up everything and try and make it somewhere else. This is my home, and I honestly can’t see myself making a new life anywhere else…and especially one without Doodle.”
She inhaled again, but smiled a bit more genuinely.
“You don’t worry about me. You just take Gallus on out of here. You will…won’t you?”
“Ma’am…” Gallus managed to say, but nothing else.
Pinkie swallowed. “Um, are you sure you won’t reconsider a teeny, tiny-”
“Ok, we will,” Dash interjected. If anything, she looked even more antsy and uncomfortable than before. “But…but think about what you’re saying…”
“I’m afraid my mind is made up. Thank you both for keeping an old woman company for a few days. It means more to me than you know.” She took a step toward the soldiers, who turned to leave, but then stopped again and looked at Pinkie.
“Oh…I’m sorry we didn’t have more time for baking, dear. But you can help yourself to anything in the pantry to take back with you. Or the house, for that matter. I think I’d prefer if they went with you and Gallus back to Manehattan. I dare say they’ll get more use there than they have in the past 20 years here.”
It started again the moment they cast off from shore. It was night by then, and while the city had been on lockdown and blackout, lights began to glow from one street in the distance. Ones that looked like fire. Before they finished pulling away to sea, they began to hear the sounds of voices that were being drowned out by the waves, and one whiff of smoke reached their nostrils before it was overcome by the waters.
Dash and Pinkie were still on the deck at the stern watching as they pulled away. The former had her arms crossed, and was looking to one side and frowning and mumbling. The latter looked out anxiously at the port as it slowly vanished. In addition, their newest charge was standing near the railing and looking out. Gallus had hardly said a word since they had left. He seemed to almost be in a daze when they pulled him away from the house. However, after getting everything sorted out and putting him on board, he still hadn’t said anything. He hadn’t even said goodbye when he left; only stared at his former owner until she had gone.
Pinkie offered a small smile. “I’m sure they’ll be alright! They, um…probably thought Gallus would be safer with us until everything blows over! I mean, this is the home of Somnambula, which means it’s full of hope!”
Dash merely grunted and flicked her fingers over the rail. Pinkie’s face sunk a little at that.
“I, um…better go say a prayer or two…”
“I thought I’d be happier if this ever happened.”
Pinkie and Dash looked up and to Gallus. He was still facing the port, but his head bowed.
“I mean, what slave wouldn’t? But…now that I’m standing here…I realized it wasn’t really that bad. I definitely didn’t have to work as hard as the field slaves. And Mr. and Mrs. Donkey were so neat and tidy already that I barely had to do much for them most of the time other than stand around and wait for me to pour some tea or get them their favorite book. And…”
He exhaled, bowing his head a little.
“And…to be honest…I almost think I kind of liked it. What was I going to do without them? Toil away for sugar beets? Head back to Griffonstone and live in a gutter? I mean, at least with them, I wasn’t living up in Greater Everfree. I didn’t have to worry about starving or being cold. Things were quiet. I may not have ever really liked it, but I never hated it either. Even if they were my owners, they treated me better than anyone else ever did…” He snickered. “How pathetic is that? Then all of the sudden, they free me just like that. I didn’t even know what to say. I couldn’t say anything. And…and I bet I never see them again…”
Neither lady could say much in response to that at first. However, Pinkie eventually brightened up and practically skipped over to him and put a hand on his shoulder, causing him to look up.
“Aw, don’t worry! You’re with us now! And we’ve got a whole bunch of friends who are with us too! You’ll meet all kinds of new people soon from all walks of life! I’m sure that you’ll make lots of friends and find all sorts of new things to do all over Greater Everfree! Plus, all the Light Eaters are gone, so things have got to be better! And we’ve got Gaia Everfree looking out for us, so what could go wrong?”
Dash hesitated a little longer, but then leaned up. “Pinkie’s right. Besides,” She smirked. “Now that you’re not a slave anymore, you need to start thinking like a winner. Defeat’s only temporary. I’m sure in no time flat Manehattan will have a way to get around whatever’s causing all this trouble on the ocean and then we’ll be headed back to Southern Equestria in a heartbeat. And in the meantime, you’ll get to enjoy not being baked by the sun or eaten up by flies. Plus, don’t have to worry about cleaning any bathrooms anymore, eh?”
That did finally prompt a reaction from Gallus. He cracked a small smile at that, however briefly. “Well, I guess that would be a plus. Maybe it won’t be so bad. But where are we going once we get to Greater Everfree anyway?”
“Oh, we’re staying in a big old castle!” Pinkie cheered. “Right smack dab in the middle of Equestria!”
Gallus’ small grin instantly turned to a deadpan stare.
“…Are you two sure we wouldn’t have been better off with the bloodthirsty revolution?”
“Alright ladies, it’s only a few more blocks. Are there any questions?”
Applejack frowned as she raised her hand.
“Yes, dear?”
“Why’n the hell do we hafta wear these ridiculous dresses?”
Rarity, in a rather fetching and stylish red dress with a wide-brimmed hat, which she claimed both acted to conceal her in the Manehattan nights as well as gave her an air of mystery, rolled her eyes and scoffed. “It’s good strategy, darling. If there are any hooligans lingering about on the watch for magistrates or the like, then they’ll certainly be suspicious if two commonly-dressed women step out from the carriage before it arrives at the drop off point. But a pair of stylish and stunning madams? Well, I’m certain there will still be some puzzlement as to what they are doing on this side of town at this time of night, but they certainly won’t expect them to cause any trouble.”
Applejack frowned as she shifted uncomfortably in her own rather elegant ensemble, big and grandiose enough to make even sitting in the coach uneasy. Fluttershy, seated nearby, didn’t seem much better, but as she had been for hours now she seemed to be far more worried about their little operation itself. “Thought I’d be done with this frou-frou Manehattan stuff after that one time…”
“Oh dear!”
Both Applejack and Fluttershy turned up to Rarity, seated across from them. “What’s the matter?”
“I’ve been so wrapped up thinking about this evening and getting our dresses ready that I completely forgot to forward any news of your relatives on to the chancellor!”
The farmer, who had been tensing up before now, immediately relaxed with a touch of a frown. “Nevermind all that. I’d rather you didn’t. I just sent ‘em along back to the train we’ll be takin’ back.”
Fluttershy finally looked up and turned to her. “Oh? But why not? Shouldn’t they know that we’re going to be taking more guests back?”
Applejack crossed her arms. “I reckon they ain’t gotta know any more than they need to. Ain’t none of their business anyway. If they wanted it to be, they shoulda let more refugees in sooner.”
“Now, Applejack,” Rarity spoke up with a hint of crossness, “the Manehattan government has been rather good to us…and generous besides. Especially considering the appalling behavior of almost everywhere else we’ve been… I think we owe them just a touch of courtesy.”
“Well, you can give ‘em all you want, but the Apple family’s never been too much for cozyin’ up to government types. Not when all they’ll do is stab ya’ in the back soon as it suits ‘em,” she retorted with a frown. “Still remember that when they were bootin’ us off our land with one breath and then turnin’ ‘round and resettlin’ folks on…” She trailed off.
“…On what?” Fluttershy asked.
“Nothin’. Forget about it already.”
“I was just asking…”
“I said nevermind!”
Fluttershy cringed at the sudden sharpness of Applejack’s voice. She noticed this and quickly sighed.
“I’m sorry, Fluttershy. I’m just…still more’n a little antsy. I know Braeburn an’ the others can handle ‘emselves, but I’m still not likin’ that I didn’t see him or granny in that group… I’ll feel a lot better when I get to punchin’ out some of these snakes.”
“Oh, on that note…” Rarity spoke up, leaning in a little closer. “When you happened to meet up with your relatives, you did make that request of them I told you to make, didn’t you?”
Now Applejack really did roll her eyes. “For cryin’ out loud, Rarity! I ain’t goin’ ‘round askin’ all my family if they got any mementos I can have like some city-slickin’ moocher when they’re damn lucky to have escaped with the clothes on their backs!”
“Well, you need another Anima Viri if we’re going to confront King Sombra, darling. And the only way I can think of getting you one is requesting memorabilia from your family members.”
“That’s even worse! Now I feel like I’m grave robbin’!”
Rarity rolled her own eyes. “Don’t think of it as grave robbing, Applejack. Think of it as putting old accessories to a new use.”
Before Applejack could respond, the coach came to a halt. A moment later a rapping was heard against the roof. “This is the first stop you told me to make, ladies.”
“Oh! Thank you, ma’am!” Rarity called back, then quickly turned to the others. “Right…I’m counting on you two. Don’t let any of them escape. Don’t worry. You’ll be fantastic with those Anima Viris of yours. These hooligans won’t have a prayer.”
Applejack smirked back a little, as if she knew that all too well, and then opened the side door and headed out. Fluttershy, on the other hand, remained cringed and trembling.
“Don’t stress out, Fluttershy. They’re nothing compared to half the horrors we’ve faced.”
“Ok…”
“You just go out there, bring out that Minstrel of yours, and then put them all to sleep!”
“Ok…”
“I believe in you, darling!”
“Ok…”
Finally, after another few seconds, cringing all the way and walking like she might step on a nail at any second, Fluttershy peeled herself off of the chair and opened the coach door. It was another minute before Rarity cleared her throat, leaned forward, and gave her a little nudge to get her out of it, and another thirty seconds before she gave her a second nudge to go down the stairs. However, she was finally out and, after giving what sounded like one last whimper, moved away enough for Rarity to shut the door behind her.
“Here I really thought Fluttershy would be more confident by now…” Rarity muttered to herself in some puzzlement as she sat back in her seat. Soon after, the coach began again.
It was another fifteen minutes to her final destination. With no one to talk to, Rarity kept her eyes on the outside window, and saw both the surrounding neighborhoods as well as the people who lived there and were out after dark grow progressively more unsavory. It might not have been the industrial sector, but it was still littered with trash and tarnished with coal soot. The smell from the sewers began to waft up to her nostrils and caused her to wrinkle her nose in disgust. A few of the people they passed looked rather muscular and unpleasant. Some met her gaze and followed it as she went on, but she merely kept her head high and showed nothing.
At long last, the coach stopped again. “Final stop, ma’am.”
Rarity took a moment to smooth out her own dress, which was a bit more muted than her usual affair but was still definitely more fashionable than most people on that end of town, and then opened the door. A bit of fog, or perhaps smog, had settled on that end of town. Most of the surrounding people were gone, and the street lamps cast a pale look on the empty roads. Definitely not too pleasant of a place. Nevertheless, she cleared her throat, held her head high, and then stepped out. On shutting the door behind her, the coach pulled away again, and the sound of the steam engine slowly chugging gradually faded away as it slipped into the night. As for Rarity herself, she began to walk once again.
She did eventually spy a few more people leaning against walls or closing up small shops, and she caught the eye of each one. Most of them stared for some time, especially since, in spite of it being dark, she had packed a parasol at her side to function as her weapon when the time was right. However, she ignored them all, keeping her attention fully ahead and toward her destination.
The road she was walking along up ahead came to a termination, splitting in two and going in either direction. However, that wasn’t before it ended in a sizeable gap between two buildings, almost looking like a smaller road rather than an alleyway. It was so large that posts had been erected with a chain to discourage coaches and cabs from moving that way, even though it terminated into nothing but foggy gloom. A single man was standing there. The clothing was new and clean enough, but even from a distance Rarity could see he was one of the more unpleasant individuals she had ever witnessed. His jaw protruded and was covered with a scraggly beard, and his eyes had an unkind and probing look to them from beneath his low-brimmed cap.
Much as she disliked the thought of it, she nevertheless walked up to this individual. She stood a bit shorter than him on arrival, and he emphasized that when he glanced down and looked over her.
“Ahem, I am here to conduct a little business…under the table, as it were. I was informed this was the place to go for raspberry tarts?”
That seemed to puzzle him. He continued to look over her momentarily, seeming to assess whether or not she was for real and, if she was, if this was the right place. However, Rarity anticipated that, and immediately met his look with a disdainful one of her own.
“I will assure you, I know quite well what kind of business you run here, and that is what I am here for. So I would prefer if you would show me to where the sale will be taking place rather than causing me to stand out here any longer waiting for a magistrate to come by and wonder what I’m doing here.”
He still seemed skeptical, but he finally shuffled to one side, allowing her to walk by.
“Thank you, sir,” she answered with a nod, before stepping over the chain in the most lady-like way she could manage and walking past him into the alleyway.
Even knowing the power she had inside her Rarity couldn’t fully suppress her anxiety on stepping into this place. With the fog, limited lighting, and more rough-looking, unsavory fellows posted along the way as some sort of landmarks, she got the impression of walking into a dark, twisted building rather than being out in the open. It didn’t take her very long before she started noticing all were the same nationality as the first one she had run into—a telltale sign of immigrant laborers desperate for work and resorting to a rather unsavory profession as a result. Of course, from the looks of them, that didn’t look like it would stop them from doing whatever they needed to do in order to secure their own livelihoods. And the fact that a woman like her was here without any assistance at all aroused more than a fair bit of curiosity. Nevertheless, she kept her eyes forward and kept walking.
And after weaving her way through what seemed like at least a block’s worth of buildings, she emerged.
It was another opening—one with access to one of the channels leading out to the river, just as she thought it would be. The lighting here wasn’t much better than on the way in, as was no doubt the intention. This was still outdoors even if it was secluded. She also recognized that she wasn’t apparently the only “customer”. There were four other parties already there in addition to several of the rougher-looking types. One of them she recognized as the very same official she had spotted in the café what seemed like a lifetime ago. Unlike here, none of them had come alone. Each had at least one other strong-looking man with them, with plenty of room on their persons to conceal a firearm or two. Furthermore, she realized in short order that she was the only female in the area.
That fact wasn’t lost on the parties as she approached. Two of them seemed to have some sort of underground “decorum” about them which ruled that they didn’t stick their noses in the business of anyone they didn’t want sticking their nose in their own. However, by the time she took her place among the other four, all of them were staring at her. She, however, kept her head held high and her face forward toward the channel.
As luck would have it, she had ended up right next to the official she had tailed. He himself had only one strong-looking figure with him. After a moment, he inched a little closer to her and spoke quietly. “I don’t suppose you’re…lost, are you ma’am? It’s my understanding if you’re looking for cheap labor, that’s on a different night…”
“Oh, I’m right where I need to be, sir,” she simply stated, not turning her head.
The official eyed her a little longer before looking forward, wrinkling his nose in contempt. “Disgusting. What is this world coming to nowadays…?”
“Coming from a man who is out to purchase an underage girl for his personal, private use? A truly biting criticism,” Rarity answered, just managing to restrain her own irritation.
He snorted but said no more.
They didn’t have to wait too much longer. It seemed Rarity’s trait for punctuality served her just as well here as it did in the more professional world. An echoing came down the channel that was clearly the sound of wagon wheels mixed with horse hooves. It made sense, as the sound of a steam engine would be too loud and most steam wagons wouldn’t fit in there. It grew louder until, through the fog, Rarity caught a shadow of what was incoming. Soon after it pulled out all the way up to a maintenance staircase, as if it was some sort of shipping dock or train platform.
The wagon was a carriage, but it seemed to be more suited to conducting executions than passengers. The windows were all boarded up and reinforced with iron bars, and the door looked like it had been refitted from an iron car—complete with a padlock, gated window, and chain to boot. Obviously, no one came out from the inside of the wagon right away. Rather, another score of thuggish individuals climbed out of the channel and onto the platform itself. They quickly spread out to reinforce those already present, and their mere arrival was enough to start upsetting some of their patrons.
Finally, a particularly large man hopped off. He easily stood a head taller than the next tallest individual there, and with muscle to boot. Yet while he definitely had a swagger about him, he also had an air of presentation and a bit of showman’s friendliness, as opposed to outright trying to intimidate anyone present. At least for the moment.
No sooner had he landed than he walked forward with a big grin. “Alright, alright! Seeing lots of new faces here! Well, you’ve all come to right place! Welcome, welcome, welcome!” He began to look over the crowd one person at a time. “Ah, Mr. Kettle! Nice to see you back! Mr. Bucket! Hope your new purchase gives you as much satisfaction as the last one! Representative! Glad you could make it!” Finally, his eyes rested on Rarity. “Oh-ho! We actually have one of the fairer sex tonight! Not to worry! Big Tom sees ‘em all and he makes sure they all get what they need!”
By now, his rather loud and boisterous manner was making many of the new arrivals rather nervous, causing them to continuously look around in case anyone was hearing what was going on. One of the former clients, however, coughed and looked at his watch. “No need for all the theatrics. We’re all here for one purpose, Tom. Let’s get it over with and get out of here before anyone from the local periodicals walks by.”
“Heh, sure, sure.” He turned his head and cupped a hand to his mouth. “Alright, bring ‘em out!”
Several of the thugs moved up to the side of the carriage, producing some keys and undoing the chain and the big padlock. After that was done, they reached inside and began to pull out. One by one, girls ranging from possibly as young as 10 to 16 were produced, and considering that they kept pulling them out, they had to be crammed in there worse than a clown wagon at a circus. Each one was clothed in nothing but sackcloth and rope. They were dirty, underfed, and, most of all, had a listless look about them. They clearly had been drugged in some way. As a result, the much larger and stronger thugs had little problem pulling them down from the carriage, walking them out, and putting them up for display in a row in front of the gathering. By the time they had pulled out the last, there were twelve of them in all. They were all silent, keeping their heads bowed, and wavering a little. From the looks of them, it seemed like they had either been threatened and abused into silence, were too out of it to know what was going on, or a mixture of the two.
“And here we are!” the big man announced, moving in front, holding his arms wide, and gesturing across to them. “The finest lot we have to offer! We got ladies from Appleloosa, Griffonstone…hell, even a few from Fillydelphia! Only the best from Big Tom!”
The crowd didn’t seem as impressed. “Some of them look a little on the young side,” one complained.
The big man gave a start for a moment. “Well…some people prefer it that way, you know? Besides, you know how it is nowadays, with many of the teenage ladies running off to join the military… But to make up for it, Big Tom is offering a special deal! Only 15,000 for 12 and younger!”
“15,000?!” another exclaimed. “I bought a 13 year old off of you for 10,000 three years ago!”
Other murmurs of complaints quickly joined that one, causing the big man to lose more of his bravado. They continued to complain as he tried to give excuses. “Um…you see…the Horned Trip has expanded operations with greater staffing…who have been forced to further extremes due to supply shortages…”
Seeing as this wasn’t pacifying them, he let out a more angry sigh. “Alright. The bottom line is we lost our best Piper three years ago. Take a good look at Big Tom’s coworkers.” He pointed out to some of the rough thugs around him, in particular their ugly, unpleasant faces. “There aren’t many girls who are going to follow guys like these into dark alleys or wagons no matter how hungry and cold they get. My old Piper used to lure in 30 a month. Now Big Tom’s got three replacements who are all drunk and only one doesn’t have a lazy eye, and Big Tom is lucky if he can get 12 a month between the three of ‘em!”
“Well that’s hardly our problem, now is it, Tom?” the first one who spoke up retorted. He looked to his own bodyguards. “Pack it up. If I knew it was going to be this expensive, I’d as soon as hired a cheap hooker…”
“Same here,” another one added. “My office tracks my official expenditures very closely. I can’t just make 15,000 disappear in one night.”
Big Tom let out a loud groan as he saw several making to leave. “And they call Big Tom a criminal… Fine. To reward so many repeat customers, if you buy tonight with cash upfront, Big Tom is ready to offer a 5% discount.”
The people stalled. One of them looked back. “20%.”
He let out a fierce snort. “That’s highway robbery and Big Tom is a highwayman! 10%!”
Another pause, but as the patrons glanced to one another, they seemed pleased with the arrangement. As if the haggling was part of the deal the whole time before they turned back. “Alright, that’s a bit more like it. I’ll take the-”
Before another word could be said, Rarity raised her hand and cleared her throat. “Pardon me, if you would, sir. As one new to this entire affair, I wanted to ask a question or two before I make my own, ahem, selection.”
The one who was cut off gave her a look that was equal parts surprise and disgust, but the big man seemed to think it was cute that she had raised her hand. “Yes, to the young lady with us!”
She smiled wider and lowered her hand. “Thank you, darling. Now then, the young women that you have presented her are all very well and good, but I will have to admit that I am a bit more interested in any of, say, non-Northern Equestria descent.”
There were a few scoffs from the crowd at that, showing even more disgust. Some mutters as well.
“I don’t suppose, after our business today here is concluded, that you have any others readily on hand I could peruse? I will say I’ll make it worth your while. I was looking to make several purchases after all. At least four or five.”
While that elicited even more surprise and sneers from the patrons, Rarity could have sworn she could see the currency symbols in the big man’s eyes as he lit up all aglow. “Why, certainly ma’am! The 12 you see here are merely the ‘market fresh’ ones available! However, if you’re interested in more unusual fare, the Horned Trip has a couple freighter cars on one of the locomotives at the station with a clear cut to this here channel with another 20 or so to choose from!”
“Oh my, an entire locomotive? You must get around quite a bit. Aren’t you worried at all about customs?”
Relishing the chance to boast, he grinned and beat his chest. “Heh…nothing to worry about for the Horned Trip. Big Tom has a steamship of his very own. If customs are a problem in one spot, Big Tom just drives the Iron Will out the nearest bit of international waters and waits it out! Hell, even beauties from Southern Equestria aren’t out of range! Uh…although Big Tom will say that’s kind of dried up at the moment for…other reasons…”
Rarity smiled a bit more subtly, letting her head lower so that the shadow could spill over all but her lips. “A locomotive…a steamship…and even its name… Why, all of that will do just nicely, darling. Thank you ever so much for that information.”
The big man looked a little puzzled. “Uh…you’re welcome. So…about those purchases?”
“Oh, I’ll take the whole lot, darling. I’m afraid I won’t be paying, although you and your patrons might be.”
Both the big man, his lackeys, and the patrons all looked confused. “Er…come again?”
Rarity took in a deep breath. “Well, I need a bit more experience with doing two at a time… Very well.” She raised her head, but only to hold her hand into the air. “Member of my house, I command you to come to me! Inspiration’s Guide—Daisy Cheerilee! Member of my house, I command you to come to me! Seaside Starlet—Sapphire Shores!”
The first equipment of an Anima Viri caused an explosion of light to fill the otherwise dark alleyway—enough to where even the sedated girls raised their heads in some dim reaction. The second one, however, that made it even brighter, was enough to actually make them gasp and recoil. Needless to say, the reaction from everyone who wasn’t drugged was even more shocking. The nearest patrons actually felt themselves brushed back slightly from the explosion of power, but everyone else was close enough to feel the wind rise and whip against them. Even the roughest thugs gaped in shock while many of the other shielded themselves in surprise.
The light dimmed eventually and the gathering looked back to see the former elegant lady now dressed in blue like a debonair avenger, complete with wide-brimmed hat, dark blue mask, and parasol transformed into a rapier. Especially since even now she was radiating a soft light that made her glow apart from her surroundings.
“Wh-wh…what…?!” the big man stammered.
“What the hell…?!” a patron exclaimed.
The nearest one pointed at her as he began to cower up to his bodyguard. “She’s…she’s one of those eidolons the government’s been talking about!”
Rarity exhaled. “Well darlings, I don’t have much time for dilly dally, so I’m afraid my long-winded condemnation of your depraved and atrocious misdeeds will have to be omitted.” She swung the rapier right toward the big man. “Have at you!”
He stammered a call of surprise, but that was all he managed to get out before Rarity took off. Her body enhanced by two Anima Viris allowed her to close the distance in an instant. She drove the rapier tip forward, although she didn’t put it forth enough to drive it into his midsection. That hardly seemed to matter, as the mere force of the blow transmitted into him with the impact of a gut punch. He let out a sharp exhale and doubled over, and Rarity quickly shifted her weapon to one side to step forward and give him a slap across the face. As “lady-like” as it might have been intended, the much larger man was knocked clean off his feet and thrown halfway across the alley by the gesture.
Immediately she took off and shot for the nearest thug. With a flourish and a spin, her rapier flew out again, easily cleaving his club weapon in half before she followed up with a blow against the side of the head to drop him to the ground. She leapt forward afterward to smash her head into the next nearest, sweeping him clean off of his feet and flattening him. She bounded again after that, this time sailing a short distance in the air, and coming down with both feet to drop yet another one. All of this was done within less than the span of five seconds, and as rough and dirty as the men looked, each one crumpled easily under her blows.
At that point, the remaining thugs snapped out of their stupor and began to charge toward her, even as she continued to subdue one after another. The bodyguards held back with their contracted employers, although they began to look nervous as those with guns started to pull them out. As for the patrons, they could only gasp at the power and speed with which Rarity moved for a few moments longer.
They didn’t last, however, especially as the newly arriving thugs quickly began to fall faster than their predecessors. Her rapier went out and rapidly jabbed at each one, piercing them through the arm, through the leg, or anywhere else that inflicted a debilitating wound that made them fall to the ground or otherwise disabled them. In mere seconds, the thugs were starting to pile up around her. And not long after that, those who were still coming or who were holding back began to see the writing on the wall.
The patrons were the first. Some of them merely began to back up and go progressively faster as they did so. Others, like the representative, did much the same, but not before reaching out and tapping the arms of their personal escorts. “What are you waiting for? Shoot her!”
The bodyguard looked up in some alarm, but saw that the representative was already turning to run for it. Whether out of loyalty or merely the fact he didn’t expect to get away, he along with a few others stood their ground and pulled out their firearms as Rarity finished with the last of those bold enough to attack. The others either held back or made a decision to try and run for it. As a result, she was able to look up and see three weapons being pulled on her.
“Well, I’m guessing I would only get a light bruise at this point, but no point in chancing it.”
She quickly traced a sigil in the air and executed it. In response, clear, diamond-shaped crystals erupted from the ground and proceeded to form a semi-circle around her. The bodyguards were a bit perturbed, as were the nearest thugs, but in the end they opened fire anyway. It did them very little good. As glassy and fragile as the crystals looked, they didn’t even chip or fracture from the bullets striking them. In moments the bodyguards were left standing stunned and lowered their weapons. Soon after, they turned and ran for it too.
“This will push me a bit to the proverbial ‘limit’,” Rarity responded as she saw them flee through the transparent crystals, raising her hand and gesturing again. “But I think I can hold it for a bit longer…”
She drew a larger sigil this time and executed it. Just as the first of the patrons was about to reach the alleyway leading back out, the ground thundered in front of them, making him stop in his tracks and soon causing the others to halt behind him. They cried out a moment later when the ground burst and a palisade of crystals erupted in its wake—blocking off the end of the alleyway all together.
Rarity actually faltered at that, looking a little dizzy, but fortunately no one noticed. The patrons were frozen in shock. As for the remaining thugs, they decided it was time to bolt for it. A smaller group of them panicked enough to merely want to get away any way that they could, which meant turning and running for the canal as fast as possible before their mysterious assailant could stop them again.
The others were a bit smarter. They ran back for the carriage and began to load up on it in any way, shape, or form that they could. Some ran inside, some jumped into the seat, and some held onto the sides. Among them was Big Tom. He was still rather dazzled and cross-eyed, but apparently his lackeys had enough loyalty not to leave him behind. Two of them went to either side and helped him to his feet before dragging him to the wagon. Halfway there, his big size belied his stamina as he got his feet underneath him and ran the rest of the way himself; leaping into the main seat (knocking two out to get there) and cracking the reins.
“Vamoose! This auction is cancelled! We’re shipping out!”
Soon after, the horses whinnied and the carriage took off. It picked up speed quickly and carried what thugs were on it away, with others running up behind and struggling to catch up and latch on.
As for Rarity, she heaved a little and nearly dabbed at the sweat on her brow with her white glove, but couldn’t bring herself to do it. She reached into her breast pocket for a convenient handkerchief, drew it out, and used that instead. “Phew, well…that was a bit more tiring than I would have liked. I believe it’s time to dismiss Ms. Shores.”
Holding her hand up, she made a fist, and one of the emblems gleaming on it burst to the sound of a tinkling bell. Only the remaining one stayed there, and as it did Rarity’s mask vanished while her ensemble turned into an alternate red suit and hat. While she felt her strength diminish considerably, she also felt as fresh as a daisy relatively speaking, and was soon standing straight and tall again. She glanced out to either side of the canal, as the sound of the engine fading in the distance rang out, and smirked.
Perfect. The rogues who went right will run straight into Applejack, and the rest will run afoul of Fluttershy. She won’t even need to fight them if she was nervous—they’ll lead her straight back to their outpost and that will be the end of it.
Now to deal with who is left…
She spun around and looked at her aftermath. The remaining thugs were all disabled. That left the rather hapless patrons and their bodyguards, as well as the captives, who were weakly and groggily looking over at her with glazed expressions.
She gave them a sympathetic look. “I do apologize for putting you all through an even greater ordeal than what you’ve already been through, but it will all be over and done with soon. Now then…” She raised her transformed sword and stepped forward. “Let’s deal with those manacles before the authorities arrive to check on the disturbance.”
As she walked over to them to begin shearing through them, the remaining patrons stared dumbfounded for a moment more. Finally one of them spoke up. “Who…what are you?”
She turned and gave them a disdainful look, holding her head up so she could look down her nose at them. “You may think of me as a concerned citizen who has had quite enough of the lewdness and disgusting behavior of so-called ‘gentlemen’ as yourselves, and nothing more.”
One of them grit his teeth, but also sweat nervously—especially when Rarity brought her blade down and easily cut through the iron of one of the chains. “What do you want from us? Are you…you an assassin, or something?”
She gave a snort. “Oh, perish the thought, sir. I wouldn’t soil my gloves laying a hand on such filthy specimens as yourselves. Now if you don’t mind, do be quiet and stand there patiently. You’ll have plenty of opportunity to talk when you try and explain your atrocious attempts at purchase to the local magistrates.”
Realizing what that meant, several of them looked stunned and fearful. The representative, however, mustered his courage and even took a step forward to shake his fist at her. “Do you honestly expect us to simply stand around and wait to be found by the local police?! I’ll not-”
He was drowned out by the sound of a whooshing flame—courtesy of Rarity aiming her rapier at the ground before them and performing a new spell. It wasn’t as good as Twilight’s, but a simple incantation that traced a circle of flame around the patrons, more than enough to make them shriek and back off toward the crystal barrier, sufficed to keep them in line. She leveled a not-so-polite stare at them.
“That is exactly what you all shall do, unless you care to have me practice any more of my spellcraft upon you. If my true objective wasn’t putting an end to those cads who peddled these young women like livestock, I would give you a taste of my blade right now. I will content myself in simply seeing that the law give you all what you deserve. Now then…”
She suddenly pointed her blade tip up and right at them, making them jump a little.
“I would ask you not to distract me in the middle of my removal of these ladies’ restraints again.”
Rarity didn’t consider herself the most intimidating of individuals, and honestly had no desire to be, but her display was more than enough to keep the patrons from risking doing anything else before the magistrates began to draw near. They were initially stopped by the crystal blockade, the same as those she was trying to restrain, which did cause a bit of a dilemma. Fortunately, they ended up coming around and entering the canal from the same way the wagon had left, leaving her an opening. She fled down the right and left the hapless patrons and the girls for them to find shortly after departing.
Her Magician Role held perfectly well to allow her to run a few blocks away, before she approached another group of unconscious thugs. Applejack was standing in their midst in her own Warrior Role, looking rather bored as she had dispatched them long ago before Rarity got there, but she looked up on seeing them.
“Wonderful, darling!” Rarity called. “It looks like you dealt with them all.”
“Weren’t no trouble. They were so spooked they darn near ran into my hammer, but they sure as heck didn’t look like the ones you were lookin’ for.”
“I’m afraid they weren’t. That lot went down the other end of the canal. Do not worry, however. I’m sure Fluttershy would have had no trouble keeping up with them. With any luck, they’ll lead us straight to the ship they’re using to courier their illicit trade. Let us be off!”
Rarity took the initiative and ran again. Applejack, on the other hand, remained standing and frowned before shouting after her. “Don’t ya’ want the police to know ‘bout these guys ‘fore they wake up?”
She immediately slowed to a halt. “Oh…oh yes. Pardon me. A tad overzealous.” With that, she extended her hand to the sky, traced a sigil, and let out an electric bolt. While not nearly as large as Twilight’s, it still sent out a flash and a loud boom to the surrounding area, and not long after there were calls of concern and alarm from the surrounding buildings. However, the two didn’t wait for anyone to come out and notice before taking off.
It seemed as if it would have been difficult to navigate through the roads in such a way to avoid the local law enforcement, especially since more were arriving continuously. However, in spite of it being a bad part of the city, Rarity seemed to know her way through like a duck in water and easily led Applejack down all of the backroads and alleys they needed to circle back around the mess they had left behind. It took a little while, but as both were in their enhanced bodies they made excellent time without leaving so much as a glimpse for any arriving magistrate to spot. Soon they were fully around the road that Rarity had taken to arrive and headed back north toward the canal at a distance. They found a junction point, hopped in, and began to run down it in the same direction the wagon had gone. By the time the locals were sounding the alarms, they were already fading away behind them and the two were in the clear.
They went forward for a few more blocks before Applejack finally raised her head a little. “Look yonder!”
Rarity looked a bit further ahead. It took a moment but she made out a humanoid shape. A bit closer, and they recognized the style of dress Fluttershy had been wearing along with her hair style, confirming her identity. Both immediately found that puzzling. Shouldn’t she have still been wearing her own Anima Viri?
Things only got more peculiar when they neared, for they didn’t see any thugs on the ground around her. She was standing slightly to one side in the canal, hands folded in front of her and head bowed. Definitely looking ashamed.
She only cringed more when the two ladies came up to her, wincing a little as they stopped. Applejack looked around, still confused, but Rarity gave the benefit of the doubt and walked up to her side.
“Fluttershy, there you are. Those hoodlums came right this way. What happened? Did they disembark here? Switch wagons? Well, just say the word and we’ll be after them.”
Fluttershy only cringed a little more. She let out a small mutter, keeping her eyes to the ground. She said nothing more.
Applejack turned to her. “You saw ‘em come this way, right? They did come through here?”
“Um…yes,” she spoke in a voice barely above a whisper.
The Warrior looked around, but saw no signs of a struggle and no signs of their quarry. “Well, where are they then? Where’d they head off to?”
“Fluttershy, what’s wrong, dear?” Rarity threw in.
The woman let out a whimper, cringing a bit more. Her hands gripped the hem of her dress as she winced.
“You…you couldn’t stop them? But…but darling, you had the power of the Minstrel. They didn’t stand a chance against you. They…”
She didn’t answer. She kept looking to one side.
“…Well, which way did they go? Applejack and I can be after them. Come on, which way was it?”
“I’m…I’m sorry, Rarity… I didn’t see that either.”
Rarity was left standing there open-mouthed. Applejack couldn’t help but look confused. “Wait just a minute now… You sayin’ that not only did you not even get in a fight with ‘em, but you didn’t even get to see where they went off to? I mean, I know I’m the toughest one of us, but they weren’t that big of a deal… What happened then?”
“I…I just…I just…” She began to look more and more distressed.
Applejack stared at her a moment longer but finally slapped her hand against her forehead and sighed. “Dagnabbit… All of that fer nothin’. Well…not quite nothin’, at least. We got a good lot o’ ‘em. Plus we saved those girls at least. I know Rarity wanted ‘em all gone, though…”
She looked at Fluttershy again and saw she hadn’t changed. She frowned a little more, but reached out and put her hand on her shoulder.
“Look…don’t sweat it too bad. I know you didn’t really want ta’ come along in the first place. Just got unlucky that it didn’t go my way, is all. And I know you normally stay back when the rest of us move in for fightin’…” She turned away. “Sorry, Rarity… I know you wanted ta’ do a bit more than rough up some of ‘em, but it looks like they got away.”
Rarity, however, didn’t resign herself so quickly. Her face changed. Her brow creased, and for a moment her jaw tightened.
“Do you mean after all of that…after all I went through to get this far… How did you…how could you just let them…?!”
This was a tone of voice neither of the ladies had ever heard from Rarity before. It was true anger. It made Fluttershy cringe and whimper a bit more at it, and it honestly surprised Applejack for a moment. However, it was only a moment before she quickly got in between her and Fluttershy. “Now take it easy, Rarity! It was a honest mistake!”
“Mistake?! She had two Anima Viris and she couldn’t even be bothered to see which way they-”
“Now cut it out!” Applejack snapped back, her own voice growing angry. “It never should’ve been just the three of us to begin with! We never even should’ve tried to handle this ourselves while we’re leavin’ the others high and dry back in Canterlot! We could’ve just talked to the police and had ‘em do this whole thing themselves and you knew full well Fluttershy wasn’t up for it! You know damn right she gets the most antsy out of all of us and she ain’t a fighter! It stinks that it went this way but gettin’ riled up against her ain’t going to help things now!”
Applejack’s own anger seemed to do the trick, breaking Rarity of her own growing ire. She calmed down considerably after that. She still looked sore and rather unhappy, but she did ease up and sighed.
“You’re right, Applejack. I drug the both of you along on this in the first place, and I leapt right into it as if it was one of my Shadow Spade novels rather than thought things through. If something went wrong, I have no right to blame either of you for it when this was half-baked at best from the start.” She finally managed to raise her head enough to look past Applejack again. “Fluttershy…I’m sorry. I…I suppose…no, I was making an unreasonable demand of you. It’s…alright, darling.”
She managed a smile at that, and while it was weak it was still genuine. Fluttershy, however, wasn’t terribly relieved. She kept her head bowed, continued to wring her dress, and still looked on the verge of tears. Applejack relaxed, however, and sighed as she turned and once again patted Fluttershy on the shoulder encouragingly.
Rarity sighed as well, releasing her Anima Viri, and with as much enthusiasm as she could muster looked up. “Well…I was hoping this would be something of a victory celebration, but I would hate that reservation I managed to make go to waste…”
Being in somewhat of the upper levels of the social classes in Manehattan, regardless of whether or not she was someone privately an eidolon, Rarity’s business clout still enabled her to get seats in some of the more high end establishments. And as she had a rather sharp distaste for the food offered by the government when they were staying on their property, she had arranged a spot in one of the nicer places in town both for a ‘victory feast’ as well as a chance to treat her new friends. Light from elaborate chandeliers, genuine silverware and crystal flatware, and even a live chamber orchestra playing off to one side. Even the disguises they had worn on the way to the site had been picked out by Rarity for the occasion and she had timed it so they could make the last evening meal.
Unfortunately no one looked terribly in the mood.
Rarity may have not been angry at Fluttershy any longer, but she seemed to almost have a reveling need to look like she was wallowing in misery. Her head was as downcast as if she was in mourning, she spoke nearly blubbering to the staff, and looked as if she was on the verge of dying each time the waiter came by. Applejack herself didn’t care much for the fancy locale in spite of how much of a treat it was, spending most of her time puzzling over why she needed more than a fork and a knife and giving dirty looks to the various highbrow guests that were still out there finishing their meals.
Fluttershy, however, remained the worst. While she had come, she kept her hands in her lap and her head bowed the entire time. She scarcely looked any better than when they had found her, assuming she was any better at all.
Needless to say, it wasn’t a very eventful night for their waiter. Fluttershy said she wasn’t hungry, Rarity went straight for a double dessert, and Applejack, unable to read half the words on the menu, asked for something that had cow in it and was displeased when she got something back that looked more like a pate than a steak. The end result was her picking at her food glancing between Rarity and Fluttershy’s respective depressions.
Rarity finally looked up with another sigh. “If the waiter comes by, would you be a darling and wave to him? I think I’d like a third torte. With heavy whipping cream.”
“Goodness alive, Rarity…how can ya’ eat all that?”
“Simple, dear. They’re fresh out of tiramisu. I hope you’re enjoying your meal better than I am.”
She frowned and poked at her dish. “Not really. I asked for steak and they gave me what’s left after you cut a steak out. It ain’t even cooked.”
“It’s tartare, darling.”
“…Now I may not be a city folk, but I know what tar is, and raw meat ain’t tar.”
“It was all my fault.”
That was the first thing Fluttershy had said since they had sat down. Rarity looked up at her, but Applejack sighed as she practically tossed her fork on her plate. “Now we’ve been over it, Fluttershy. Stop beatin’ yourself up already.”
“I told you and Twilight to leave me behind. I said I was no good to you…”
“Now what in tarnation is that horse sense? You’ve been plenty ‘o help! You’ve patched us up I don’t know how many times! And you can be an even bigger help now! We just gotta work on toughin’ ya’ up for the bigger fights, is all.”
Fluttershy still kept her head down. “If I ever end up dragging everyone down…when it really matters…” She cringed a bit more and spoke in a near whisper. “I want you to leave me behind.”
Applejack pounded her fist on the table, startling Fluttershy enough to look up at her. “Now I’ve just about heard enough of that swallor! What happened tonight was an accident, that’s all! An accident! No more talk like that or you’re gonna make me mad! We just forget about it and move on! Together! Got it?”
Fluttershy, still looking small, but also intimidated by Applejack’s sudden rise in volume, swallowed. “Ok…”
“And no more talkin’ like that neither, alright?”
“Ok…”
“Good! Now when that fancy schmancy stuffed suit comes by, you get yourself somethin’ off that menu too! Need ta’ start puttin’ more meat on ya’ for next time if ya’ wanna make it up! Ain’t that right, Rarity?”
The woman didn’t answer immediately. She was staring between them.
“Ladies…not to change the subject…but while either of you were in Canterlot, did you ever happen to see the portrait of Twilight’s old headmistress?”
Fluttershy looked puzzled. Applejack was even more so but leaned back in her seat. “Er…hmm…reckon I did once or twice. Looked like a tall gal. Real smooth face. Those eyes were somethin’. And that hair o’ hers? Almost looked like when you shine sunlight through a glass just right. Why you ask?”
“Does that woman leaving over there…remind you of her?”
Both Applejack and Fluttershy were motionless for a moment, then both turned and looked around.
None of the three got a good look at the front of her face. They only caught the tall, properly dressed woman for a moment as she walked by down the large front window of the restaurant. Her hair was up and tied under a rather wide-brimmed hat, and in the darkness it was impossible to see. Yet for a brief moment all three of them caught just a side view of her face before she turned and went down the street.
And while they couldn’t say for sure later whether or not they had imagined it, for just that moment, they swore they saw that same powerful look in that woman’s eye that was in the portrait at Canterlot.
Twilight didn’t explain. She forgot about the impending danger of potentially getting shot and did the only thing she could do. She instinctively began to put on her first Anima Viri. As she did, Shining Armor, still sore from the blow, nevertheless pushed himself up and cried out as loud as he could.
“Everyone! Get down here now! Don’t let them separate us!”
The rest of the unit didn’t need to be told twice. Not long after, the surrounding area came alive as each of the remaining privates broke their position and began to run toward the Well of Shade. Chipcutter at last brought up the rear, actually turning around and popping a few shots off at the Nighttouched legion. However, none of them made a move, and those that were hit that weren’t immediately struck in a fatal spot simply kept standing their with new and grotesque wounds. Meanwhile, the cloud continued to gather thicker and more malevolently. The sky progressively turned darker as the horrible eyes loomed larger and more menacingly.
Finally, the creatures gave a unified growl and began to advance. Chipcutter only risked one last shot before he turned about and quickly ran down after the others. Soon they were fleeing right through the midst of their former targets. A few of them stiffened to raise their weapons at them, but that didn’t last long when they realized the Nighttouched swarm coming at them was a far greater threat.
Seeing them coming, however, Gilda merely sneered. “You idiots! What good is running away going to do?” She turned back to her own unit. “What are you all waiting for? Let’s waste the lot of them! Put on your Anima Viris!”
The commanding tone of Gilda was enough to snap the group out of it. In response, those who had Anima Viris quickly began to don them. Those that didn’t assembled as fast as they could, taking cover behind whatever rocks or rubble that they could manage, and started to open fire. Mere moments after the gunshots began to crackle out, the area lit up with multiple plumes of aura light before the Griffonstone units took off to meet the incoming monsters.
By now, Twilight’s own Anima Viri was on, but as she raised her wand to start casting she saw that the Griffonstone soldiers were already engaging. The ones equipped with the role of Warrior charged right in and instantly cleaved, sliced, or smashed their way into the Nighttouched. And while they seemed to be a bit more resistant and relentless than the type that she and her companions were used to, they still quickly crumpled under overwhelming power. The medium sized ones were cut clean in half by the blades of some of them, and another seemed to shatter half the bones in the bodies of her own targets. Soon, the Caster Roles were firing their own minor spells into the midst, and while they weren’t as sophisticated as Twilight’s they were soon lighting them up with fire and electricity. Combined with the gunshots of their brethren, and in moments two dozen were already dead.
Gilda smirked and snickered as she watched the biggest one of her Warriors run right up a trampling Nighttouched horse, charging for her with all the ferocity and malevolence of a genuine legendary nightmare. She simply met it, ducked alongside, and slashed out with her combat-knife-turned-serrated-sword. With one swipe, she cleaved all four legs from the body of the corrupted beast, leaving it to give a monstrous whinny as it crashed to the ground. “Is that it? They get some new eyeliner and that’s supposed to stop us?”
Twilight, however, kept casting her spell, before sending lighting into their midst…not so much aiming at them but instead sending the thunderbolts into the shadow over their heads. Much to her dismay, the blasts had about as much effect as trying to fight smoke with a bat. Shining Armor, meanwhile, fully rose up and spun to Gilda. “Tell your unit to pull back! Get them away from that thing while they still can!”
“What’s the big deal? They’re kicking his ass.”
At that moment, the Warrior rose up and brandished her blade for the next charging Nighttouched. However, the remaining ones didn’t try to attack her. They ran right past, either trying to gain more ground or go to her companions. She looked bewildered at this for a moment, knowing full well how relentless the creatures were, but on seeing none of them coming about she simply cracked a grin and turned back to the others still charging and shooting. “These things aren’t even as bad as the real deal! They just run away when-”
She didn’t get a chance to say more. A part of the cloud, snaking about like an inky tendril, suddenly shot downward and enveloped her. It wasn’t as thick or opaque as back at Canterlot, but that only meant, much to the horror of everyone watching, that they could see everything. They saw the Warrior arch and spasm like a knife had just been driven into her back. Her expression went flaccid, her jaw loosened, and she dropped her weapon on the ground and gagged. A moment later, to the shock of her nearest comrades, her own eyes took on the same appearance as that of the Nighttouched. Her face twisted—becoming an expression of nothing but fear, dread, misery, and anguish. It painted her like a grotesque sculpture for a brief second…
Then, the legless beast she had felled, wriggling like a giant worm, cracked its mouth open so wide that it split its own lips to open its monstrous jaws wider. With one great spasm, it flung itself up in the air, clamped its teeth around her neck, and with the sound of a crack and an eruption of blood took her to the ground.
The Griffonstone soldiers were horrified, but they soon had their own lives to worry about. The Nighttouched continued to part and stream around the Warriors, headed for the Caster and Magicians in the group instead…but not before snaking straight for the Healers and ripping them apart. They struggled to defend themselves, but they were distracted by further horrors as more tendrils shot out and seized their companions. They too were immobilized with terror, allowing the other monsters to tear them to pieces. And as they saw them being taken apart, they weren’t able to focus. Even when they were, these Nighttouched were more relentless than usual. They rushed like a living flood and swept over them.
Within less than a minute, every last member of Gilda’s unit that had borne an Anima Viri and stepped up to challenge them was dead.
Gilda’s own cocky look melted away like ice in a blast furnace. Her disciplined gunners, seeing themselves now defenseless, broke ranks and began to flee for it. Yet that was when the Nighttouched crowds parted…or, rather, were batted aside…and made way for even greater monstrosities. Things that had been twisted beyond their original forms into unworldly horrors. Swarms of bat-like creatures that looked mostly like mouths with wings moved as a unit and swept over one gunner, eating her alive down to the bone before their eyes. Monkey-like creatures with tentacle tails lashed out, seized those fleeing, and drug them back in to be killed by their companions. Humongous centipedes skittered around with venomous, menacing clacks of their mandibles and skewered Griffonstone soldiers like they were little more than appetizers to yank them toward their waiting jaws as they were still alive and conscious.
Even Twilight was so horrified her spell broke momentarily, before she felt a hand clamp down on her shoulder. She nearly jumped before spinning around to see Sunset looking at her insistently. “What are you waiting for? Bring out that other Anima Viri you got!”
“But…but…I’ve never used it before! I don’t know what it will do!”
“Who cares? Anything we can get now has to help! So long as it’s stronger than them!”
Twilight looked back, but couldn’t argue with the logic. Especially since the swarm was now surging forward so quickly that they were overrunning the gunners all together and starting to approach their own unit. The remaining Griffonstone soldiers had broken and were turning to run for their lives, but they were moments from being overtaken too. Swallowing, she took a step forward, held her hand high, and made the proclamation.
“Member of my house, I command you to come to me! Pastoral Consul—Clover the Clever!”
Her doubly-strong eruption of aura was enough to attract Gilda’s attention along with that of Gareth, Shining Armor, Stygian, Little Violet, and anyone else in the area. Sunset herself was too close and ended up shielding her eyes until it dimmed down again, and she saw Twilight’s new form.
It was a tad underwhelming.
Twilight’s long hair was now put up in a tight bun and a pair of reading spectacles were over her eyes. Her Caster robes had been replaced by the high-collared coat, suit, and ascot of someone in academia. Even her wand was gone and had been replaced by a rather conspicuous, hefty, and leather-bound tome. Renewed aura aside, the fact that she looked like a college professor more than any sort of mage or fighter left everyone around her rather dumbfounded. It didn’t help things when she looked at herself and, purely on reflex, pushed her glasses up on the bridge of her nose.
“Um…” Shining Armor remarked.
“That’s it?!” Gilda shouted. “What are you going to do? Bore them with a chemistry lecture?!”
Twilight looked at herself a bit longer, holding a hand to her head. “Something…feels funny…like…I’m thinking different…”
“Uh…how is a book going to help us?” Little Violet spoke up nervously.
“Wait, everyone!” Sunset finally spoke up. “I remember this Role! It’s the Scholar!”
Twilight looked up and out to the field, seeing the people fleeing in terror. They were still getting picked off one at a time in spite of running, and Chipcutter was frantically reloading his rifle as a large, meaty, one-horned Nighttouched zeroed in on him. He finally got the ammunition in and risked turning around to pop off a shot or two at it, but it totally ignored each bullet that hit it. Coronet, meanwhile, was practically gasping in fright as a swarm of the bat-like ones picked her as their next meal.
“Scholar…great…” Gilda sneered. “Maybe she can study their eating habits while they’re eating us alive!”
“What does it do?” Stygian asked.
“Well, it’s a role that’s suited for when you need to know something…or plan something…or-”
Suddenly, Twilight’s eyes lit up. A moment later she cupped a hand to her mouth.
“Coronet! Stop and duck!”
“What?! Why-”
“Do it now!”
Twilight yelled so insistently, and with such extra power in her voice from two Anima Viris, that the young soldier could do little more than obey. She stopped and dropped down—right as the swarm surged toward her. However, it did so intending to overtake her, and so it remained locked in a forward loop, arching up over her head and where she had been. After a few seconds, the ravenous monsters had passed, and not long after she quickly got up and ran again while she could.
“Chipcutter! Shoot its right ear!”
The private blinked, likewise surprised, but nevertheless stopped where he was, spun around, and took the moment necessary to level a better shot and fire. The bullet sailed through the air and smacked against its relatively tiny ear, shooting it off. It gave an angry roar as it instinctively arched its head down to one side. As a result, its path went askew, and it ended up charging horn first right into its smaller brethren. It pierced one and swept another right off its feet, sending it crashing into its companions.
Twilight pointed straight at one of the fleeing Griffonstone soldiers. “You! Spin and then go left!”
Fortunately, her voice was loud and resounding enough to reach her, and she was too stricken with fear to do anything but comply. She began just as one of the elongated tails reached and began to wrap around her. However, her spin move let her slip right out of it before it could tighten. She immediately went left afterward—narrowly dodging another centipede stabbing inward with its venomous pincers. Instead, it pierced the tail of its companion, causing it to squeal before giving way to a dying gurgle.
Those around Twilight looked to her in amazement, but all she could do was blink in astonishment at her own behavior. She dropped the book and grasped the sides of her head. “It’s…it’s crazy… Just looking at them…I’m knowing more about them every moment. I can plan what they’re going to do…how they’re going to attack…where they’re the weakest… It’s all just flowing into my mind at once!”
The group turned back out. Sure enough, in spite of their mad charge a moment ago, and even the fact that they were poised to attack more of the fleeing soldiers, the Nighttouched were slowing to a halt. They kept staring at their quarry but made no further attempt to go after them. Soon, the last of the privates were away along with the survivors of Gilda’s unit, and both sides were quickly starting to gather back around the group.
“Did Twilight calling out like that scare them?” Little Violet suggested.
Stygian looked a bit longer, but then frowned and shook his head. “No. It’s not that. Look in the sky.”
The three glanced upward. In spite of how gray everything had been when they arrived, there was a momentary lapse in the wind. One that allowed the clouds to part and to let a few rays of sunshine cut a swath of light across the otherwise desolate place. They looked back down and, on the sloped terrain, they were able to see where the sun was landing. While the Nighttouched seemed alright with the dim light and shade, they didn’t care much for the sunlight itself. Apparently, neither did Sombra. The inky blackness seemed to shun and recoil from it.
That wasn’t to say it was content to hide completely. Its eyes were full of anger, and after a moment it seemed to shove the Nighttouched forward. A few of them did lash out and try to advance. However, even under control, their very nature seemed at odds with their master’s will, and they only paced around or shook their heads.
“They can’t stand direct sunlight. If we can get out into the open, away from shade or trees, and the sun comes out, then…”
Shining Armor cut him off with a sigh. “It’s no good. The whole day has been overcast. We’re lucky we got this much. Which means we only have until the clouds cover the sun again…”
“Fine then,” Gilda half-growled, looking to the rest of her comrades. “Everyone knuckle up. We’ll have to make our stand here.”
Neither the privates with Shining Armor nor the Griffonstone soldiers looked that enthused with that idea. Sunset was far more blunt. “We can’t win like that. They’ll circle around us in no time. Even if they didn’t, there isn’t a spell among us that’ll even hurt Sombra. And you just saw what he did to your underlings.”
“I don’t suppose you’ve got any better ideas than waiting for him to do it anyway, do you?”
Sunset clammed up at that. The group was silent for a moment before Stygian looked up again.
“Wait. What time is it?”
“What difference does that make?” Can Can retorted.
“Just someone tell me what time it is!”
Little Violet, a bit flustered, looked around herself for a moment before pulling out what looked like an old, fobless pocketwatch. “Uh…um…half past ten. Why?”
Stygian lit up. “We’re in luck. We still have a chance. The train that’s supposed to come by to check on us arrives at ten-fifteen.”
“Well, yeah…” Boysenberry shrugged. “But that’s a long way away and it was fifteen minutes ago. How does that help us now?”
“Let me see a map!”
The group was again flustered for a moment, before several of them looked to the Griffonstone soldiers. They, in turn, looked to Gilda. She hesitated a moment, but was realizing quickly that they were all currently in the same fix. With a sigh, she motioned impatiently to Gareth, who in turn pulled out his map, unfurled it, and showed it to Stygian. He studied it only for a moment before he reached out and pointed.
“There! Right there! The tracks run by to the north of us!”
“So?”
“Don’t you see? The train is supposed to wait for us for fifteen minutes, but then it’s going to move on! Between the twists in the terrain and the speed, with any luck, if we head for those tracks we might catch them before they pass by!”
Twilight, Sunset, and Shining Armor looked to one another. After a moment, the former shrugged. “Well, I don’t have any better ideas. It might be a long shot, but it sounds like all we’ve got.”
Shining Armor hesitated, then turned to Gilda. “If you agree to a truce, can we help each other get to that train?”
She kept scowling. “So long as there’s a spot for us on that train, no one will such much as turn a gun on you. But once we’re clear of that thing, all bets are off.” She turned to her soldiers. “Got that, everyone?”
They reluctantly grumbled and nodded.
“Only one problem with your brilliant plan, though…aside from the fact there’s a good chance your train will already be gone by the time we get there…” She jabbed her finger at the map. “How far away from here are those tracks?”
Stygian looked a little nervous. A moment later, he exhaled and shrugged. “I don’t know…three…maybe four kilometers?”
“You seriously think we’re going to be able to run three or four kilometers uphill over overgrown terrain with that cloud and its gang of Nighttouched dweebs nipping at our heels every step of the way?”
He didn’t have a good answer for that. None of them did. After a moment or two, however, Shining Armor looked up. “Wait a second…Twily, can that Role of yours help us out again?”
She blinked a little. “Wait, huh?”
“That’s right,” Sunset spoke up. “I never thought much of it because it wasn’t that powerful, but I remember reading that the Scholar is the smartest of all the Roles. So long as it has enough opportunity to study any situation, it can find a way out of it if it exists. Twilight might be able to guide us out of this.”
“Well,” Gilda retorted, turning her attention to her, “can you, Ms. Egghead?”
The mage looked a little put on the spot as everyone’s eyes turned to her. However, after a moment she calmed. “You know…it’s weird, but…when I was just staring at everything a second ago, it did feel like I had a second brain somewhere in here figuring things out automatically. I suppose I could if I had a chance. But…I need time for it.”
“Then start staring at that thing and figuring it out already!”
Twilight swallowed, but then turned and did as she was told. She even adjusted her spectacles as she looked at the field. The Nighttouched continued to rant and rave. The clouds had shifted a little, so they were able to get closer, but they were still at bay as she looked over all of them.
Stygian swallowed as he felt the breeze pick up. “Ms. Twilight, not to rush you, but I don’t think we have much time…”
“Ssh…I need to concentrate… I’m not sure exactly how this works, but I’ve got to focus all my attention on the problem…”
Gilda looked a little impatient, but forced herself to cross her arms and wait. Everyone else nervously watched for a few more seconds. Finally, Twilight looked up.
“Alright, I got it. Someone needs to hurry up, run out there, and mount all of our gunpowder in that little fissure right there.”
The group, both sides, stared at her a bit blankly. “What do you mean ‘all of our gunpowder’?”
She turned back to them. “Everything. Cartridges, powder, grenades, and any other explosives. All of it.”
They were dumbfounded. A few of the Griffonstone soldiers snorted. “You’re crazy,” Gilda flatly stated. “Without gunpowder, how are most of us supposed to fight back?”
“We’re not supposed to fight back. We’re supposed to run and this will make us lighter anyway,” Twilight responded. “Running uphill there’s no way we can outflank a mob this big. Our only chance is to blast them right in the middle and scatter them enough to cut in between. Plus the only physical property Sombra has is vapor. We need a powerful blast to scatter him long enough to get by. Any other way, and there’s no way we can get on the other side of him without someone dying.”
Shining Armor turned to her. “We don’t have enough munitions of our own to pull this off.”
Gilda frowned, clearly upset with the entire idea. But there was no time to debate and she knew it. Finally, she motioned to the others. “Get a sack out here and start throwing everything you can spare into it!”
“Ma’am…”
“You heard me! Melee weapons, small caliber, and spells only from here on in!”
The group reluctantly came forward and started to do as they were told. One of the Griffonstone soldiers already had a sack with some grenades in it, so soon they started to dump any other sources of combustion they could into it—right down to reluctantly emptying their weapons into it. The privates with Twilight’s side didn’t feel much better but they did the same.
Shining Armor exhaled nervously as he emptied his own weapon. “None of our side except Twilight and me have Anima Viris. We won’t be able to defend ourselves.”
“We still have two sidearms, sir,” Coronet spoke up, unholstering her own weapon and showing it. Chipcutter soon pulled out one of his own.
He nodded. “Alright then. Everyone stay as close to those two or me as possible then.”
As the last of the ammunition was dumped, Gilda looked up. “Alright, who’s going out there?”
“I’ll do it,” Boysenberry spoke up; reaching out and taking the sack from the Griffonstone soldier. “I always wanted to set a bomb like this. Be right back.”
As soon as she had it, she ran out onto the field. Everyone else got out whatever weapons they could, with those who had no weapons to spare looking the most nervous, and started to draw together to get ready to run. The only person who didn’t seem to be reacting was Twilight. She was staring at the cloud and the Nighttouched beneath it.
Sunset reached out and patted her on the shoulder. “Hey, let’s get ready.”
“Wait.”
“Wait? Wait for what?”
“I’m…studying him…”
Shining Armor, overhearing this, looked up to Sunset. “What’s going on?”
“I’m looking at him, and…and I’m figuring things out. I know I am…” Twilight muttered. She started to look anxious. “We…we can’t run. I’ve got to have more time.”
“Wait, what?” Sunset nearly shouted.
“No, we got to go right now, Twily. Or we’re all going to die,” Shining Armor threw in.
“But we can’t… You don’t understand… This might be our only chance. I have him right in front of me now! If I keep letting the Scholar study him, maybe I can find a way to kill him!”
Sunset winced to hear that. However, after only hesitating a moment, she shook her head. “No. We’ve got to get out of here.”
“But…”
“It won’t do anyone any good to know how to destroy him if we die before we can tell anyone else!”
Twilight hesitated, looking anxious, but finally sighed and looked away. “I guess you’re right… But we’ve got another problem. It was hard enough for me to see what to do for four people. For everyone here…I don’t know if I can see everyone at once and still have time to call out to them.”
Sunset swished her mouth for a moment, but then pointed. “Hey, why don’t you tie yourself to Shining Armor the same way I was pressing against you?”
“Huh?”
“That way you can keep your back to all of us, and he can carry you out.” She turned to him. “You can run with her on your back, can’t you?”
He seemed a bit put on the spot. “Well, uh…yeah, I should be able to. I’ve run with gear packs before. But that means I have to stay in the lead. And I can’t try and purify anyone else if Sombra makes for us.”
Gilda let out a groan and stepped forward. “There’s no time for arguing about it! Just do it! Gareth, help me!”
Before either could protest any further, the Griffonstone soldiers practically seized a surprised Twilight, drug her up to Shining Armor, slammed her against him, and quickly began to get out any spare belts and ropes they could afford to start strapping her to him. Meanwhile, Boysenberry ran back, having accomplished her task. The clouds shifted overhead, shrinking the sunlight further. Like a horse chomping at the bit, Sombra began to flare up and move in again and brought his horde with him.
The Griffonstone soldiers and privates began to arrange themselves behind Shining Armor and Twilight Sparkle. Stygian was with them, glancing repeatedly to the now-unarmed Little Violet. Soon after, however, he perked his head up as if he had heard something. He turned around and looked straight back at the now-ignored Well of Shade. He continued to stare at it for a moment or two.
He was interrupted when Chipcutter clamped a hand on his shoulder. He gave a bit of a jump and turned to him.
“Stygian, your riflery might not be that great, but I know you’re one of the sharpest with a handgun. So…” He took in a deep breath. “If something knocks me down, you pick up my gun and you keep running. Got it?”
Stygian went a little wide-eyed. He tried to say something but the noise caught in his throat.
“Stygian?”
Snapped out of it, he turned to Little Violet. In spite of how nervous she was, she was giving him her most genuine smile. “We’re going to make it. All of us. We’ll all look out for each other just as always.”
“She’s right,” Boysenberry added as she drew out her own combat knife. “We just keep running until we get to the tracks and stay behind Officer Armor.”
Stygian exhaled and looked forward again, managing only a small nod to Little Violet before he did. Not long after, the clouds shifted to fully obscure the sun at last. When they did, Sombra began to pour down the hillside. The legions of monsters came with them.
“Remember!” Shining Armor called. “These things don’t feel pain or injury! Only take kill shots or what it takes to get by! Focus on running! You’ll need your energy to make it to the tracks!”
Gilda grouchily yanked out a small .22 six shooter in one hand and a knife in the other, in spite of still being in her Disciple Role. “Alright, light it up!”
One of the two surviving Casters in her group quickly generated a fire emblem. By the time Sombra and his monsters began to near the trap, it was done and sent flying. The monsters had already swarmed over the hastily-made bomb by the time the fire touched it, but fortunately for them none of them acted as a living shield in time. The flames made contact and, just as hoped, it ignited immediately.
The Griffonstone soldiers had apparently been packing some rather potent ordinance, no doubt anticipating the possible need to blast their way into the Well of Shade, because the resulting blast was so intense that Shining Armor actually covered his face and recoiled from the shrapnel. However, the effect was as desired. The incoming monsters were split down the middle against their will—the force of the blast shoving those that wouldn’t be driven by the explosion itself. As for Sombra, his monstrous eyes widened in surprise before the resulting blast parted them from each other. While it wasn’t possible to see if the horde had fully been divided, at that moment they had been driven apart as far as could be seen.
That was the best they were going to get. “Now!” Shining Armor yelled.
At once he took off, stunning Twilight as she bounced along behind him. Gilda, Gareth, Sunset, and Spike quickly followed suit, with the rest of the privates and soldiers following behind. They didn’t even have time to wait for all of the dust and debris to die down. They simply plunged right into the divide that had opened and ran for all that they were worth, closing their eyes through the dust and smoke and charging uphill.
The Nighttouched that Sombra had claimed had probably the greatest recovery time of anything any of them had ever witnessed, but even they had some time negating the explosive damage and shrapnel done to them. By the time they were able to start closing in again, the group was already halfway through and still charging. Shining Armor kept leading the way as Twilight frantically looked around, trying to apply her power as soon as she could. They reached the back of the mass but saw that it was already closing up. The other Caster took care of that by firing a fireball into their midst, igniting the one directly in Shining Armor’s path and blowing his limbs off to incinerate his companions. As for the soldier himself, he crossed his arms in front of him and literally bowled the creature over before trampling it down.
The group quickly slipped through the hastily-made gap as quickly as they could while both sides converged on them. They nearly made it through before the final two Griffonstone soldiers were out. At that point, Twilight looked up and pointed at them.
“You! Cut up to the left! You! Drive your knife out to the right parallel to your middle!”
They both obeyed, and as a result the Warrior Role on the left cleaved the head off of a monstrous rat coming in to rip off her shoulder, while the normal soldier on the right drove her knife right into the eyeball of a gigantic viper a moment before it could sink its poisonous fangs into her. Both creatures faltered and the two Griffonstone soldiers were away. They were now in the clear.
Sombra, obviously, wasn’t taking this too well. As the cloud reformed over the mass of monsters, the eyes rematerialized out of the smoke to face them—filled with fury and wrath. The Nighttouched turned as one and quickly began to roar, fume, and rage. It wasn’t long before the faster members of the gathering started to catch up, in the form of a swarm of rats heading to nip at the heels of some of the Griffonstone soldiers.
“You two! Jump now! As soon as they do, throw a fireball at their feet!”
The two soldiers and the Caster did as they were told. While the two got a bit of a hot foot from the result, they managed to evade the controlled rats and left them bathing in fresh flames.
“You three! Move in to the right now! Boysenberry! Coronet! Aim for their eyes!”
Three of the privates quickly darted inward, barely evading a pack of enlarged, maddened dogs snapping out for them. The two members of the group with the sharpest aim quickly leveled their pistols at the eyes of the two nearest ones and fired. Fortunately, they kept pace long enough at close range for both of them to land their respective bullets, and they collapsed at once—bowling over the other members of the pack rushing from behind.
At this point, several of the encroaching monsters were batted aside as something much larger charged through them. Twilight needed only take a glance at it to realize it was one of the cat-scorpion monsters they had encountered back in Griffham City, and it was barreling straight for them. Seeing it incoming, Gilda grit her own teeth and halted in running to put her in between the rest of the group.
Before the two could meet, Twilight shouted. “Gilda! Cut the stinger then go for its elbows!”
She heard the instructions just as the monster got close enough to strike with its poisonous tail. However, she reacted by ducking and letting her knife fly over her head, slicing the stinger right off where it was meant to land. She popped back up only to quickly discharge her pistol into the elbow joint of one of its monstrous paws as it was about to come in for a swipe. The result was only a small plume of blood, but it made it pause long enough to bring its other set of claws up instead. This one she was able to dodge, before delivering a solid blow with her knife hand that audibly cracked bone.
When the creature lowered itself, it no longer had the support of that limb and faltered. Gilda herself cracked a grin before spinning around and using her enhanced stamina to quickly catch back up with the others.
The entire chaotic fight up the hill went the same way. Everyone had to sort through their panic and fear enough to hear the sound of Twilight calling, and there were times her instructions nearly overlapped and some of the group didn’t hear her right, but overall she kept any of them from getting seriously hurt or incapacitated. While the Nighttouched were able to stay on them constantly, her advice kept the group one step ahead. Finally, the hill began to level out as they reached the top, and beyond it the forest started to loom.
Not long after, the group charged into the overgrown woods. They knew that now would be worse than ever. There were more obstacles and the rough terrain would mean they could be split apart, but after having escaped the initial charge alive they all knuckled up and put on as much speed as they could muster; bracing themselves for the worst.
Therefore, it was more than a little peculiar when they saw the monsters behind them rapidly slow to a halt.
Twilight, the only one with a good look at all of it, quirked her brow in confusion. Sunset, panting and running as hard as she could nearby, turned to her. “What’s wrong?”
“They’re stopping…”
“What? They’re giving up?”
“No…Sombra’s cloud is still moving after us. But it’s slowed down…”
“Why?”
Stygian turned his head upward. “Do you…hear that?”
Those around him were making as much noise as possible trudging through the woods and gaining what distance they could while they could, especially since a few had looked behind them and saw they were now running ahead of Sombra as they were getting further in the forest. However, there was a distinct noise of wind rustling overhead, although the trees themselves weren’t shifting. And it seemed to get louder as they went further into the forest.
“Sounds like…laughing…” Little Violet slowly responded.
Shining Armor’s color drained from his face before he shouted. “Everyone look sharp! Something’s not right here!”
A mutual chill ran through everyone’s blood. They all looked around themselves a bit more as they kept running. They heard nothing, but what they saw didn’t bode well. The area still had understory in spite of the thicker canopy, and there were a great many shadows, tree hollows, and irregularities on the ground for things to lurk inside or around. They were surrounded on all sides by it, leaving plenty of vulnerabilities as well. For another forty meters or so, however, nothing more happened.
Then, suddenly, one of the privates let out a scream. Another one soon joined in. “Crackle!”
Everyone spun to the private; getting an eyeful of a ghastly sight. Crackle Pop’s face was gaping in horror and disbelief, but what truly stood out was a long, sharp spike now protruding from his chest. It had struck so suddenly from behind that it had not only pierced through but splashed blood all over his nearest comrade. Yet even as his shirt rapidly soaked it up, he stopped moving and collapsed, vanishing on the forest floor.
Some of the privates began to slow, as if to go back for him, but before they fully had the chance to realize what happened everyone caught a note of a whistle. A moment later, a spike erupted from the back of one of the Griffonstone soldier’s heads through her left eyeball—scattering blood and matter in a disgusting plume. Gilda snapped to her in shock, watching as she fell to the ground. She too nearly doubled back, but froze when her comrade’s killer made their presence known.
A horrible little creature, about knee high in height, leapt out and on top of the body. While it was quadrupedal, it almost immediately reared back on its hind legs and waved its more specialized front limbs at her. It was hard to tell what it was exactly. The fact that its backside was entirely lined with the same spikes that had killed two of them already as if they were quills made it seem like it was related to a porcupine or hedgehog initially, but this was a clear example of another creature that had been distorted beyond anything natural. That was most conspicuous based on its head, which was nothing but a cruel mouth with even crueler teeth and beady eyes gleaming with the same miasma colors. It opened its jaws and hissed at Gilda as if she was trying to steal food from it.
“Little bastard!” she yelled back as soon as she recovered, raising her pistol and firing two shots into it. She fired more, but at that point, snarling, it spun about and ran off. As soon as it vanished back into the brush, she spun around to Twilight. “Why the hell didn’t you say something, you idiot?!”
“I couldn’t see it!” she protested. “I had no way of predicting what it would do!”
“Well why don’t-”
Gilda cut herself off, because the brush had rustled again. Now, three of the creatures had emerged from the understory, and all leapt forward onto the body. Two of them hissed and snapped at Gilda while the third one immediately started to dig into her comrade.
She flared in rage and nearly shot at them again, only for one of them to suddenly give a spasming bow. In response, one of its spike-like quills was thrown from its body like a knife. It was only because she had the Disciple Role that she was able to react in time to fling her arm up and bat it aside.
Unfortunately, that was just the opening salvo. Soon, the brush all around them, including in front of them, began to rustle. Another Griffonstone soldier cried out as she was struck in the arm. Another joined her when she was struck in the neck. Everyone else began to dodge and raise their arms to try and defend themselves as they frantically looked around for the source of the attacks.
“No…everyone, we need to go!” Twilight suddenly outburst.
Shining Armor turned his head. “What?”
“He’s moving again!”
Sunset looked back. The shadow of Sombra was moving again but, far more importantly, so were the monsters beneath him. They were splitting in half and now racing along the forest periphery in both directions.
“They’re going to try and outflank us!”
Shining Armor turned about and shouted. “Everyone, keep moving!”
“But…but…we’re leaving Crackle Pop behind!” one of the private protested.
“We can’t help her now! Go!”
With that, he took off in a run again. The group was a bit reluctant, especially now that they had new reason to fear, but only a few more quills was all it took to get some of them moving again. One of the Griffonstone soldiers ran over to the one who had been struck in the arm just as she yanked it out. Even so, the arm was hanging low and at her side, not moving an inch.
“What’s wrong?”
“It burns…! I can’t move it!”
“Just go!”
Likewise, nearby, one of the soldiers was diving to the side of the one who had been struck in the neck. Although it seemed to avoided any vitals, it had made her face and neck go still, and she was beginning to have a convulsive reaction. He quickly put his knife aside to try and pull her up, only for two more of the spikes to fly out and pierce him in the back. As he fell, four of the monsters leapt on top and began to eat both alive. That horrific sight was enough to cause the others to keep running.
Although everyone fell in behind Shining Armor again soon after, it was no longer the charge that any of them wanted. No matter how far they ran, the quills kept being flung at them. As the one injured among them observed, they had some sort of paralyzing toxin in them as well. Hence, they couldn’t even afford to be grazed by one. Not that the monsters assailing them seemed to have much trouble with aim. They were constantly nipping at their heels and relentlessly throwing in front and behind. Shining Armor and those with Anima Viris were lucky enough to bat away some, but it wasn’t long before a spike from in front caught another Griffonstone soldier in the chest. Another nailed a soldier in the gut. And as soon as they faltered, the monsters would come out of the brush and make a grim feast out of them. Soon, a mob of the things was gathering behind them, hounding them every step of the way.
Twilight called out as best as she could for those at least. She pointed to one of the privates. “Go right! Now!”
She did so, managing to avoid a quill that was flung at her from behind. Unfortunately, she went right into the path of a hidden monster flinging a quill at her head. She saw it coming, gasped, and ducked, only to catch a scrape along the cheek. Feebly, she tried to keep running, but only got a few steps before she started to falter.
Boysenberry caught this, and quickly turned; doubling back and grabbing her by the arm to keep pulling her.
“Wait, no!” Twilight shouted.
It was too late. Boysenberry managed to get her two more steps before two of the monsters leapt out and sank their teeth into her shoulders, yanking her back and to the forest understory. The look on Boysenberry’s face was one of horror, and it paralyzed her momentarily. She managed to recover enough to try and turn and run again, but by that time another of the monsters had stood in front of her with quills out. She ran right into them and stabbed herself in the legs multiple times.
She screamed out, and that was the last anyone ever heard of her before her attacker leapt onto her and carried her down as well.
The privates were white as sheets after that. Shining Armor called out to them again to keep running and, after a pause, some of them turned and obeyd. However, one of them stayed behind. He was stiff as a board and staring out behind them.
Chipcutter, noting he wasn’t coming, turned around and shouted louder. “Come on! Move it!”
This prompted Little Violet and Stygian to look back as well. As the other soldiers ran by, the private continued to stand there. He had locked up. He didn’t even look like he heard his fellow private call out. Soon he was being left behind.
Chipcutter turned around at that, rushing back for him. Little Violet and Stygian continued to hold, with the former reaching out to him. “Chipcutter!”
Stygian himself began to breathe heavily, looking between the crowd running past them, leaving them alone by themselves, and those who were hanging behind. He saw more and more rustling in the brush as the monsters closed in with greater numbers. Chipcutter himself ignored it, and was almost to his fellow private. He reached out to grab him by the shoulder…
One of the things jumped out at his right, hissing and spitting. Chipcutter froze, long enough to spin around and put two bullets into its head. That dropped that one, making it fall to the ground. Instantly, three more of its brethren leapt out with more coming behind it…not going for Chipcutter or the private but for their fallen comrade to begin greedily devouring him. Chipcutter quickly seized the private by the upper arm and yanked with all of his might. In spite of his comrade being practically catatonic, he managed to get his feet to move, and he turned around and started to run back…
Two of the emerging monsters, while going for a bite on their friend, noticed the two, and flung out several quills at both of them. The private in Chipcutter’s arm got one in the chest and two through the head. He quickly became dead weight and fell. Chipcutter tried to hold onto him, only to cry out. Stygian saw why as two of the quills erupted from behind in his upper legs.
“Chipcutter!” Little Violet yelled, before taking off fully for him. Stygian normally would have been too horrified to even move, but on seeing her charge into danger, he was able to quickly dash after her and up to him.
Their fellow private fell to his knees, no longer able to stand. The voracious beasts behind him now leapt onto his fellow private. For a few precious seconds, they were sated with their current meals. But they were attracting more and there clearly wasn’t enough to go around…
He seemed to realize that as he grit his teeth, clenched his handgun as best as he could, and flung it out toward them. Little Violet froze in shock by the gesture, and Stygian kept running forward only for the handgun to hit him in the chest. He was so stunned that he stopped in his tracks and let it practically tumble into his hands.
“Go!”
Little Violet practically gasped. “No, we’ll-”
“I said go! If you fall too far behind you’re dead!”
Stygian could only stammer. He was barely holding the gun in his hands. Now Little Violet was immobilized. As for Chipcutter, his face twisted in agony as he reached down for his legs. He seized one of the quills and, with all the focus he could muster, yanked it out and brandished it as a knife. He forced himself to turn around just as another monster emerged that sized him up. He readied himself for it, but it leapt forward in a tackle, smashing into him, spreading his arms far apart, and taking him down. Four others soon leapt out of the brush and dogpiled on him.
As disgusted and aghast as Stygian was, with a shaky grip he managed to grab the gun in one hand and step forward to place his hand on Little Violet. “We have to go! We have to go now!”
She was still immobilized. Still gaping at the gruesome sight.
“Violet! Come on!”
His insistent yell snapped her out of it. She blinked a few times and looked away. Stygian took her by her own arm and pulled her up and turned her body from the sight. Once he did, adrenaline managed to take over, and soon both of them were running back to catch up with the others.
Things didn’t improve. Only twenty seconds later, the Griffonstone soldier struggling to help her injured comrade was pierced. The injured one was shocked for a moment before trying to move on, but the things seized her ankles and drug her down to her fate. More quills began to rain down, and every so often someone would either fall or be struck with the poison. If they were, the pain and numbness soon slowed them down, and the moment they were away from the group they were as good as dead. The Warrior finally snapped around and stood her ground, intent on killing as many of the monsters as possible. She got through only three before they surrounded her and pierced her with eight quills at once, which was too much even for her. Anyone who tried to look behind them was unfortunate enough to watch her be dismembered.
The group soon shrunk to half of its original size. Then a third.
“Help! Don’t leave me! Please!”
Stygian and Little Violet were again shaken out of their single mindset to run when they heard the cry. It was already far behind them, but they recognized it as the voice of one of their comrades. They turned about and barely caught a glimpse of a hand reaching up from the brush desperately for who was fleeing.
Coronet, who was closer, stopped and turned around. She could see the monsters already closing in, but she turned around regardless. By now, her face was no less panicked or horrified than the rest, but she forced herself back. As one monster leapt for their teammate, she shot it out of the sky. The same with a second a moment later. She reached the teammate, bent down, quickly let her wrap her arms around her neck and shoulders, and got up to take off again.
It was too late. They had fallen too far behind, and the quill monsters had circled in front of her to block her way. Two stopped and snarled at her. She responded by firing a bullet into either of them, driving them off in pain and rage. Another came from her right, and she shot that one as well. Then came two from the left, which she also managed to fire back.
At that point, however, she froze. Stygian knew why, for he had been counting the bullets as both she and Chipcutter had fired. There was only one left. Even if there wasn’t, the monsters were now surrounding them en masse. They were getting doubly thick, and soon they’d converge on them all.
Little Violet saw Coronet trembling. She looked around her on every side. She saw escape was impossible. She saw the private behind her grab her more tightly, crying and continuing to plead for help. Her breathing got hard and heavy. She saw her swallow once before she made a decision.
Beginning to cry herself from sheer terror, she spun the gun around and shot her comrade in the head. Letting her fall to the ground, she closed her eyes and embraced the inevitable as the monsters charged in on her.
Stygian wasn’t sure how he found the strength to reach out and again tear Little Violet away from that sight and push her onward, as she was now crying herself. But his own panic was continuing to rise. He had realized something everyone else was too busy trying to save themselves to notice.
He and Little Violet were the only two of the privates left.
“I see it! I see the tracks!”
Stygian, Little Violet, and everyone else who was still left looked ahead again. A second later, they got near enough to see the woods breaking up ahead. A few steps closer, and they could see gravel base of where the track was laid. They were less than 25 meters away.
“Push for it!” Gilda yelled. “All of you!”
Everyone was already running as fast as they thought was possible, but the hope of salvation drove them on even harder. With the monsters chasing them distracted by their dead, they gained a few more moments of reprieve to gain the last bit of distance. As the forest gave way to underbrush, they heard their cruel cries and yells behind them, but they were nearly out already.
Finally, Shining Armor pulled himself out and rushed right up to the tracks themselves, running up on the gravel base and frantically looking around. Twilight, now finally in the clear and able to see, put her hands together and began to trace outward. “Everyone! Out of the woods! Hurry!”
Sunset and Spike soon ran up to their side. Gilda and the four remaining members of her group (only one of which was toughing through a pair of quills embedded in her limp left arm) quickly began to follow behind. Bringing up the rear end was Stygian and Little Violet. As soon as they were out of the forest, Twilight chanted and brought forth her spell.
It seemed the Scholar made her at least a little more powerful than the Caster, for when she was done a torrent of flame erupted from her open palms like a flamethrower, and she quickly painted the path behind them. The group was able to see the hedgehog-like monsters draw to a halt, massing on the other side of the fire but unable to get any closer. They scowled and spat before retreating before the flames for a moment, then they split in either direction. Quickly, Twilight spread her palms out and started expanding the fire wall along the pathway, trying to keep them back.
Some of them, however, didn’t move but instead shrieked in rage and anger before flinging out their quills once again. Quickly, those who had paused to catch their breath ran away from the wall of fire to try and gain distance on them.
As all of this happened, Shining Armor turned his head to the right, pointed, and yelled. “Over there!”
Sunset, Stygian, Gilda, and the others looked. It was hard to tell exactly what it was Shining Armor had seen at first, but after a moment they noticed a plume of smoke rising above the canopy a short ways in the distance. Not from any normal fire, but rather the signature column of a steam engine.
“We missed it! Hurry, we have to catch up!”
He took one step running in that direction, and Stygian moved to follow.
“Ah!”
Even before he could fully turn around, he saw out of the corner of his eye as Little Violet fell. While the others broke into a full run after Shining Armor, he reached out just in time to catch her before she could collapse all together. Her face was contorted in pain and her teeth were grit. Stygian didn’t even have to ask to see the reason for it. His eyes widened when he saw one of the quills had embedded itself in her lower leg.
“Stygian!”
Hearing Sunset’s voice, he looked back forward and saw she had paused as well and saw what had happened. He stared back, his throat clenching and fear beginning to seize him, but then waved forward. “It’s alright! Keep going!”
Sunset nearly protested, before another volley of quills rained out; threatening to hit all of them. Stygian tried not to think about them as he moved as quickly as he could to get his arm around Little Violet and help her up. The poison was working too fast, however. While she could get her other leg moving, the one that had been struck was already practically lifeless. Nevertheless, he put her other arm around his shoulder and held it. As best as he could to get them into a “three legged race” to compensate for her bad leg, he began to help her hobble along.
Twilight continued to spread fire along the way, but from her position she could only discharge it for so long while the others were running up behind them and avoid hitting them. Not only that, but the monsters were relentless. The more she spread the fires as a barrier, the more they kept running—struggling to get ahead of the flames so they could cut the group off. The forest also wasn’t exactly dry. She had to focus just to start a fire long enough to hold them back or risk them bursting through a gap.
It seemed like they were running for an hour, but it couldn’t have been more than a minute or two before they finally managed to round the bend. There, just visible, and still chugging along at a speed slower than them, was the engine. Finding new strength, Shining Armor charged for it even faster—waving his hands and shouting to desperately try and signal it. If it slowed down, Stygian and the others couldn’t tell. They were too busy trying to escape their situation and catch up while they still could. It didn’t help that, in spite of his best efforts, he soon saw that he and Little Violet were falling behind. It had to be the fastest three-legged race of his life and yet it still wasn’t enough…
Gilda suddenly let out a swear. It caused Stygian and the others to glance to her, but she wasn’t the source of the scream—only what she saw. They looked ahead and saw the forest thinned out to make room for a ravine. It cut all the way to the nearby forest periphery, and right now they could see that the Nighttouched were pouring into it. The steepness didn’t seem to matter to them; only the fact that if offered a quick route into the forest. And based on how it was tracing, they were going to emerge ahead of the train tracks when they came out the other side.
Everyone knew what that meant. The only escape now was to get onto the engine and gun it to full speed in hopes of ramming through. Their time had just gotten even shorter. As much as he could, especially still supporting the gun in one hand, Stygian tried to force Little Violet on faster. She struggled to stay with him, but it was clear from her wound she was driving herself into more pain with each step.
Finally, Shining Armor reached the back and, with a bit of effort, managed to reach out and seize the rail. Grunting and straining, he pulled himself up and on. As soon as he was there, he quickly began to move along the edge, hoping that whoever was driving saw him. Fortunately, it seemed they did. The side door broke and slid open, and two people poked their heads out and beckoned to him. While he had to go over the door to get there, he managed to inch his way along with Twilight still on his back and ducked inside.
There was a brief break in her fire as she was quickly detached from his back, but then she resumed blasting all around the track. The others kept running to catch up, with Sunset panting and gasping as she reached for the back and Gilda running all the way up to the opening on the side car.
“I’ll get up front and tell them to slow down!” Shining Armor shouted.
“Forget that!” Gilda shouted back. “If we don’t get up to full speed, those things will derail us when we smash into them!”
She darted to the side and quickly leapt into the car like a champion high jumper. Two of her comrades pushed past Sunset and reached the car, leaping onto the back before she could grab a rail and beginning to move themselves across. Twilight continued to pour out flames with one hand as she reached out and called. “Spike! Over here!”
While he was panting, Stygian somehow found enough strength to push even harder and, miraculously, he managed to gain a bit more speed. In spite of how much he and Little Violet were weighted down, they were gaining distance on the train. “We’re going to make it! Just a little further! We’re almost-”
A loud screeching behind him cut him off. Both privates wheeled around and saw that one of the creatures had tucked itself into a ball and smashed itself through the flaming barrier. Although several of its quills had gotten singled and it was still smoking and smoldering, and it soon toppled out into a heap on the ground that made it look like it was clearly in pain, it unrolled and turned to the two stragglers of the group. It gnashed its teeth at them before forcing itself up onto all fours and scurried after them. Faster than they were moving.
Stygian nearly gulped. For a split second, he was frozen on seeing them exposed. Then he snapped out of it long enough to stop where he stood and spin around. While one arm struggled under Little Violet’s weight, he held up the handgun and fired.
A horrible shot. Not only was he quivering and shaking, but his firing was wild. It hit the ground well away from it and didn’t even daunt it.
Swallowing, he cocked and fired again.
This one was closer, but he was still shaking all over. It leapt over the shot and picked up its own speed. It was nearly in range to lunge at them and it was clearly making ready to do so.
Clenching his teeth, steadying himself as much as he could, he fired a third time.
The bullet finally hit. Not in the chest or the head, but it did embed in the left calf of the creature. It faltered slightly, and for a heartbeat Stygian thought he had crippled it.
Yet that only lasted until it took off, revealing its true reason for pausing, opened its mouth wide, and landed on Little Violet’s back with its teeth sinking into her shoulder.
She was practically wrenched out of his arm and to the ground, and she screamed in pain as blood frothed around the wound. Stygian was aghast. Again, he froze momentarily before the awareness of what was happening to her fully struck him. In a nearly apoplectic panic, he wheeled the gun on it at point blank range and fired again. His horror doubled as he heard nothing but a clicking from the now-empty chamber, especially when it was mixed in with the thing biting deeper…trying to chew…
It didn’t last. With a snarl, a purple and green mass shot into the monster and tore it off of her. Stygian nearly spasmed as he looked up and saw Spike clamp his jaws around the thing’s throat and wrestle it to the ground. It began to dig in furiously to try and end its life, which wasn’t easy as the thing kept fighting even as blood began to spurt up around from where it had been seized.
Back at the train, Twilight kept fountaining out fire but looked up to where she had sent Spike on seeing the hedgehog-like monster leap through the fire. However, she could do no more, and now Stygian was frozen and Little Violet was on the ground—all three of them falling farther behind.
As for Sunset, she heard the same scream just as she managed to reach forward and seize the rail—this time catching it. As she pulled herself up, however, she turned her head and saw Spike had gone back, but also the two privates; realizing it was down to the two of them for the first time. She saw the one standing and the other lying on the ground, back covered in blood.
For a moment, she hesitated. She looked back to the train, then back behind them, and back to the wall of fire that seemed to be gathering an ever-increasing number of the monsters. She swallowed once.
Then, her hand released as she hopped back to the ground. She pushed past the last two Griffonstone soldiers, who readily took her spot, as she began to run back to the two privates.
Stygian was finally shaken out of his stupor on hearing Little Violet cry out again, turning back to her. Dropping the gun entirely, he bent down to her side. Soon he started to move his arm under her to get her up again, but it was harder this time. Now every move or gesture she made forced her into more agony. In spite of that, somehow he managed to get enough around her, wincing at how much of her blood was getting on him, and started to lift her up.
A crackling sound echoed out behind the both of them, and this time not from fire or burning. It was the sound of tree branches. Stygian looked behind just as Sunset looked past them, and watched as one of the trees near the tracks, its trunk gnawed into splinters, gave a mighty groan before spilling over and falling down…in just such a way to span the fire break that Twilight had made. The monsters now had a “bridge”.
To their horror, it took very little time for the creatures to start hopping across it. So quickly that they were practically pushing each other into the fires to get across first if they couldn’t hop over one another. An entire mob of them were soon along the tracks, turning to the two, and now scampering after them flashing their teeth.
Stygian began to gasp in panic. He was struggling to drag Little Violet, but they weren’t even making half the speed. At this point, the train was getting further away and the monsters were closing. They had maybe fifteen seconds at the most. He looked around. Spike had finished the creature underneath him, but he couldn't fight a whole group of them. Sunset looked as panicked as him, but somehow was able to bite it back and keep coming. Nevertheless, it was futile. The best they could do was reach them at the same time.
He kept pulling as hard as he could but he wasn’t strong enough. And as much as he wanted to deny it, the inevitability was already blaring in his head.
“Stygian…you have to let me go.”
That was the only thing that could have disrupted his panic. He turned to Little Violet. She still looked scared, but she no longer looked in pain. She stared at him fearfully but also with acceptance.
“No…”
“You have to run.”
“No, no! I’m going to-”
“Stygian, you can’t pull me.”
“Yes I can! Come on! Get on your feet!”
“Stygian, they’re going to get both of us!” Her voice grew more insistent as the horrible smacking sounds of the creature’s jaws started to come over her. “You can still make it!”
“No! I’m going to save you!” he shouted, his own voice growing desperate. “Just come on! Don’t give up!”
“Stygian!” Sunset’s voice shouted. She held out her hand to him as she kept running. “Come on! Take my hand!”
“Stygian, let me go! Hurry!”
“She’s almost to us! Just hang on! I’m going to save you! I’ve got to save you!”
“Stygian, please!”
The things began to curl up. The nearest ones were getting ready to leap on both of them. Spike was snarling and growling to try and keep them back, but they were ignoring him and the dog realized he couldn't stop them when they all leapt together. He was forced to back up as well.
“Violet…please! Just trust me! I can help you! I can-”
The nearest hedgehog creatures leapt. As they did, Little Violet, biting her lip, tears forming in her eyes, and with all the strength she had left, twisted her arm loose of Stygian’s grip. He was pulling so hard that the loss of inertia made him fall backward and away, practically leaping out of her hands.
But he still kept his eyes open. As he fell, he saw her there, still lying on the ground, still holding her hand out to him, and looked right into her eyes until the moment she was covered by the ravenous monsters and vanished under their quills and teeth.
Stygian didn’t move. He didn’t blink. He kept staring forward without making another move---stricken with abject horror. In spite of the ghastly sight unfolding before him, he kept seeing the now unseen eyes staring back at him.
Most of the monsters swarmed over Little Violet. One, however, leapt over her and saw another source of fresh meat, but before it could jump on him Spike dove at it and ripped its throat out even more quickly than the last. Between that one’s body as well as the soldier’s, the monsters were distracted long enough for Sunset to reach him and seize his hand. Her own panic was enough to pull him up, although he was practically in an apoplectic state.
As she yanked him back to the train as quickly as she could, eventually some of the hedgehog creatures broke loose and came after them again, but Spike was able to take down the one in the lead and its body once again stalled the others. By the time that one was done, they were close enough to the train for Twilight to throw a few more balls of fire. Dragging all the way, Sunset pulled Stygian to the side, where the remaining survivors quickly grabbed them both and pulled them in. Only then did he try to fight, to keep looking back, as if somehow by doing so there would be a way to go back and undo what happened.
But by now, the track in front of them was swarming with the Nighttouched creatures, and the black cloud with the horrid eyes quickly moving in after them. There was no time left, and as soon as Spike jumped in after them the train quickly began to pick up speed. Stygian was forcefully dragged inside so that the doors could shut, and all on board waited until the fateful moment their engine met the oncoming horde.
However, no collision happened. Moments before they could smash into the stampeding creatures, the eyes twitched, and the possessed creatures simply parted before them. Apparently, it didn’t want to kill them needlessly when it already saw it was futile. The passengers were left to look out the windows…seeing hundreds of creatures standing in motionless unison, staring at them with those same smoldering eyes as if they could burn into their very souls. It was a horrific sight that unsettled everyone, from greatest to least.
It passed in the end, however. The shadow cleared, and the dim cloudy light shone on them again as it started to rain.
The rain was falling at a steady clip an hour later. No one had said much. Everyone was either exhausted or too shaken. Shining Armor stood watch out the back the entire time. He couldn’t do much to fight off anything, but he could break Sombra’s influence if he came back. Yet after not seeing anything for that time, he finally looked back inside the car.
The group…or what was left of it…was a mess. Gilda sat in a corner with her head facing it. She said nothing and hadn’t looked away once. Her last remaining subordinates were worse. One of them had just managed to stop crying. Another held her legs to her chest and kept rocking, mumbling incoherently. Two of the young soldiers, the only ones that had stayed behind to escort the train, were looking at the floor with a thousand-yard stare.
Then there was Stygian.
The look on his face hadn’t changed that entire time. His body was like a puppet whose strings had been clipped, only being held up from being propped against the train wall. It looked as if he was still replaying that moment in his mind.
Shining Armor swallowed and nearly stepped toward him, but ended up stopping. The man honestly didn’t know what, if anything, he could say. Even if he did, the fact was he was only a few pushes from being the same as them. He was able to keep his head on his shoulders only due to training and, unfortunately, experience in similar situations. Instead, he took a deep breath and turned; electing to leave him be a while longer.
He ended up making his way to the other end of the car instead. Twilight had stood outside regardless of the pouring rain, making sure to guard against any more attackers. Sunset, however, was leaning against the wall near the open door, arms crossed and head down. Spike sat nearby, waiting for Twilight. It looked as if, once or twice, Sunset wanted to reach for him, but she had pulled herself back each time. Her face wasn’t any more at ease than the rest of them, but she seemed to be composed at least.
He stopped when he was right next to her and stared for a second or two. “Hey.”
She looked up to him. Her face grew a bit more anxious on seeing him looking at her, but his own face bore no animosity.
“That was pretty brave of you back there. Thanks.”
She flustered slightly, turning her head downward. “Don’t misunderstand it. There’s just so much someone can take of running around with all these people with powers before they start feeling like a fifth wheel. I just…wanted to feel like I brought some value, that’s all.”
“You know…you look a lot different than you used to.”
She sighed. “Well, maybe I’m finally getting used to being a powerless nobody.”
“I think it’s more than that. I think you’ve-”
Shining Armor was cut off by a loud sigh as she held a hand in his face. “Please…do not be about to say ‘you’ve changed’. I haven’t changed one bit. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m running with the side that gives me the best chance of getting through this alive. If it was still Trottingham, nothing would be different. And you better believe that if it would get me my magic back I wouldn’t hesitate to stick a knife in each one of your backs while you were asleep. I use people to get by. I use their lives if I have to. It’s the only way I’ve ever been able to get through life on my own. Or did you forget when I showed up unannounced at your home already?”
He couldn’t answer that, although he did wince. As for Sunset, she sighed, still not looking at him. “Just…go out and talk to your ‘sister’ already.”
He stood there a moment longer, but then sighed as well—this time in resignation—before he walked past her and through the open door.
It was raining hard enough to start soaking him pretty quickly, but he didn’t mind. Sure enough, Twilight was still standing there. What more, although it had been an hour, she was still holding her Scholar Role perfectly. She was staring out into the passing woods, likewise motionless. He came to a stop behind her.
“I think we’re in the clear. Unless they have a trap for us up ahead. We’re going straight back to Canterlot.” He bowed his head. “I guess I’m still not much of the leadership type… Otherwise I’d be saying something to get everyone’s spirits up. But…to tell the truth I’m not really feeling up to much myself. If it wasn’t for Sombra, I’d just as soon lie down like everyone else…”
Twilight didn’t move.
He looked back up to her; his face now regretful. “Twily…don’t blame yourself for anything that happened back there. The truth is we all would have died if not for you. We didn’t know what to expect, and…and sometimes that happens in a war. Then you’re forced to do the best you can… Especially nowadays.”
“Shining Armor?”
“…Yeah, Twily?”
The mage slowly turned around to face him. When she did, he could see her eyes were wide and her face was blank, as if she had come to a realization.
“I stared at him. I stared at him as long as I could when we were passing by his Nighttouched.”
He was puzzled, but Twilight only spoke more insistently.
“I know how to defeat Sombra.”
At long last, Stygian did move from his position.
Almost unconsciously, he slowly raised one hand over to his Promethian Sigil and began to scratch one of the corners.
Double Diamond didn’t even have time to turn to the sound of the lounge door opening before it was followed by a heavy mixture of a sigh and a groan. He spotted Starlight Glimmer walking in, looking tired and half-slumped.
He looked uneasy at that. “Did she say no about the telegraph?”
“I didn’t even get a chance to get that far. She looked at me like she wanted me to get out the moment I walked in as it was. By the time I finished passing along the news I thought I was pushing my luck with just one question.” She ran a hand through her bangs as she reached the table mounded with books that Double Diamond was currently indexing for her. “It’s crazy enough that I’m actually having to ask favors from the woman who tried to kill us all for seven years. I don’t want to risk getting her annoyed enough to follow up on that threat to cast us out…”
He looked a little dejected. “I guess she wouldn’t let us into the academic hall library either, then?”
“You got it. Honestly, if there wasn’t so much to look through from what she was letting us see, I’d be infuriated at the fact we’re living here and over half of it is ‘off limits’. Just the same, I hope Twilight comes back soon. She looks like she’s getting more irritated talking to me every time I come in… About the only thing she is saying is to put out the message that she’ll take in more refugees with Promethian Sigils.” She groaned. “I can’t understand her. First she doesn’t want them around, then when Twilight and Sunset step out she does? What’s with her?”
“I don’t know how long it’s going to take to get the cipher done if we don’t get more books… And we can barely get any messages to Party Favor and Sugar Belle either…”
“That reminds me…what did the last note say? Anymore more from that place we discovered?”
“Just that it looks more like what you thought, but other than that nothing new. What should we write back?”
She thought for a moment, swishing her lips.
“…Nothing right now. Send a message to Team C instead. Tell them to move to the next phase.”
Double Diamond looked a bit surprised. “Right now?”
“Waiting any longer is pointless. Besides-”
“Hey! You two!”
Starlight immediately clammed up, and both she and Double Diamond snapped around to the entryway to the lounge. They saw a short-haired and unpleasant-looking Limestone Pie staring back at them.
“Sheesh, you two are jumpy. Anyway, you better get down to the station. Looks like Twilight Sparkle’s group is back.”
Starlight lit up at that and immediately began to turn about, but Limestone noted her enthusiasm and frowned.
“I wouldn’t look too happy if I were you. From the look of the train, it didn’t go well.”
For once, Sunset didn’t feel too terribly refreshed even after a bath and a change of clothes. She still felt tired. Her mind wandered and she remained seated in the library lounge staring off into space thinking of one thing or another on all that had happened over the past few days as time passed.
It wasn’t until the door clicked that she looked up, along with Starlight Glimmer seated nearby. It swung open enough to allow Big Macintosh to walk in—his face fairly indifferent and not betraying anything immediately. He looked about for a moment, but on seeing they were the only two there he stepped in a bit more and stood to one side—not bothering taking a seat.
His instincts seemed to be right, as a rush of footsteps were heard soon after before the door opened again—this time letting Shining Armor walk in. His face was hurried and grim. It hadn’t brightened up ever since they had been forced to flee Sombra, and if anything it was more serious than ever. On seeing Big Macintosh, however, he immediately turned to him and walked forward.
“Is Stygian settled back in his room?”
“Eeyup.”
“Did he…say anything?”
“Nope.”
Shining Armor paused, frowning a little. “Did Mrs. Pie go and try and tend to him?”
“Eeyup.”
“Do you know if he spoke to her?”
“Nope.”
He sighed.
“What about our ‘guests’?” Sunset threw out. “What are we doing with them?”
He frowned. “I’m having the two privates keep an eye on them, but really I don’t expect any trouble. Gilda doesn’t even want to be anywhere around Twily…or here for that matter. But they’re stuck here so long as Sombra’s out there. They’re holed up in the groundskeeper’s shed. Not the best accommodations but so long as they stay out of things that’s fine by me.”
He turned about and began to head for the door. “I’m going to head back to the wall and see what I can do with those munitions Manehattan sent us. I might as well try to do something useful with this Anima Viri…”
Everyone could hear the sharpness in that last bit, but no one had a chance to say anything else before he was already through the door and gone. The three were left dumbfounded, before Sunset turned to Big Macintosh. “Thanks a lot for the help, Big Mac. We really appreciate it.”
He smiled and nodded before turning and walking out as well. That left just Sunset and Starlight, the latter of which turned to the former in confusion. “What was that all about? He’s been running around like a chicken with its head cut off since he got back.”
“I think he’s feeling useless…or guilty. All those kids were under his unofficial ‘command’, and only Stygian made it back. He held it together pretty well until it was over and…I guess you have to when you’re leading a military unit. But now I think he’s probably got some survivor’s guilt. It doesn’t help that his Anima Viri really doesn’t let him do anything…you know…offensive.”
“Well, from what you told me, it’s lucky that any of you got out of there alive.”
“No kidding. If he had stopped to try and heal any of them he would have just gotten himself killed. And it’s not like any of us could do anything to make the situation better either. It really wasn’t his fault.”
Starlight paused, giving her a bit of a sideways glance.
“Have you…told him that?”
Sunset caught herself, a little surprised at the question. She actually nearly stammered. “Well…no. I mean, why would he want to hear anything like that from me? After what I did to him and his family, I’m lucky he’s even cordial to me now.”
Starlight winced. “Yeah…you got a point.”
She went silent after that, but Sunset paused before looking down at her lap and becoming even more thoughtful than before.
“Stygian will get over it,” Starlight spoke up again after a moment. “Yeah, I know that’s kind of a callous way to put it…but at this point we’ve all seen so much death I think we’ve all had to grow a bit thicker skinned or we wouldn’t be here. He just needs time.” She leaned closer, growing more concerned looking. “I’m more worried about what Twilight said. Do you think she’s serious?”
Sunset exhaled and nodded. “Trust me. Twilight’s always serious about things like this.”
“Well…even if she is, there’s no way we can pull this off on our own. We need the rest of the ladies here.”
Sunset frowned. “Yeah…now that you mention it, I’m feeling a little more ticked that they decided to up and run their own ‘errands’ in the midst of all this. Some friends… Anyway, I don’t suppose you know when they’ll be back, do you?”
“Actually, the last message we got from Manehattan said they should be on tomorrow’s train. Thank goodness. We need more strong backs. Do you know how much of a pain it is to lug all that junk from one train to another over 50 meters?”
“And…no news from Trottingham either?”
“Nothing the government has sent us. The last message I got from Sugar Belle had something, though.”
“What?”
“She just said: ‘something bad’.”
Sunset sardonically smiled as she slumped back. “Oh, that’s no big deal. We’re stuck in the middle of nowhere in an undermanned, hastily-made fortress run by Nightmare Moon surrounded by Nighttouched and a bloodthirsty ghost with five other souls from hell running around out there somewhere, along with someone who wants to collect them all like poker cards to destroy the planet. Plus most of us are fugitives or public freaks. What’s someone starting a war on top of all that?”
Sunset had little reason to be enthusiastic, even if it hadn’t been a severe delay for the others to get back. She might have been getting along better with Twilight but she still felt rather abrasive around the other ladies. It didn’t help that she seemed to be running out there alongside Starlight, yet another person she wasn’t that close to. Therefore her disdain had to be somewhat palpable when the engine finally chugged to a halt in front of the reclaimed platform.
The few people who had been designated the “freight squad” immediately went for the rear cars to see what sorts of things Manehattan had sent them this time, but Sunset and Starlight focused on the first car as it opened up to let the ladies come out.
Their appearances were not exactly the picture of cheerful either, aside from Pinkie Pie, who always gracefully skipped everywhere she went it seemed. Applejack seemed more glad to be back than anything, but annoyed that she hadn’t been able to do anything in so long. Rarity, however, was wearing a new dress that appeared almost appropriate for national mourning or a funeral, and she seemed to be a bit dramatic as she walked. Fluttershy was cringing even more than usual, as if she was nervous about them and their surroundings all over again. Finally, there was Rainbow Dash, who seemed so irritable one would think she was going through alcohol withdrawals.
Starlight, seeing their various temperments, coughed uneasily as they approached. “Well…um…welcome back, everyone.”
“Yeah…” Sunset added as she crossed her arms. “Hope you enjoyed your little ‘vacation’. Don’t mind us. We’ve just been worrying day and night about Sombra coming to kill us all while those recruits they sent us got-”
She cut herself off as Dash, passing her by, held a fist in her face.
“I am not in the mood right now, so if you wanna lose a couple teeth, keep it up.”
Sunset recoiled, secretly having her own temper stoked a bit by that, but wisely realizing she needed to keep her mouth shut. Starlight winced a little at the display herself. “Uh…something go wrong?”
Dash muttered a curse under her breath before pulling her fist back and stomping by. “I’ll be in the kitchen and there better still be something with alcohol in there… I’ve been dry too long…”
Sunset and Starlight both looked after her in puzzlement for a moment, before an unfamiliar voice sighed. “Great. Just leave me behind without even telling me where I’m supposed to sleep.”
The two ladies turned back, only to grow a bit puzzled when they realized there was a Griffonstone boy standing in the midst of everyone else, looking a bit tired and irritable himself.
“Um, who are you?”
“Gallus. Slave, although I think I’ve recently been promoted to ‘indentured servant’ of the rainbow-haired one and the pink-haired one. That’s supposed to be how it works once I set foot in Greater Everfree, right?”
“Wait, wait…” Starlight spoke up. “Slave? As in…they picked you up in Southern Equestria and brought you here?”
“You’re free now, aren’t you? Why are you hanging around them?” Sunset asked.
He frowned as if that was an idiotic question. “Well gee…I wanted to pursue my lifelong dream of being a tosher or chimneysweep and dying of disease before I’m 18, but I just couldn’t bring myself to give up the life of a bed and three meals a day.” Sighing, he pushed past them. “I’ll see if I can get the pink-haired one to show me to where we live before she gets distracted by another cookie…”
Starlight and Sunset were still rather confused-looking as he passed, before turning back and seeing Fluttershy was approaching. Starlight opened her mouth to speak, only to hear her give a small whimper before she could even say a word. She instantly clammed up and the woman ran past as if trying to avoid more ire.
Sunset, at this point, rolled her eyes before turning to the last two. “Can someone say what the hell is going on?”
“Oh…nothing…” Rarity said with a touch of wistfulness. “She’s just still feeling upset after we had a chance at bringing some deplorable hoodlums to justice and ended up leaving them to victimize who knows how many other poor unfortunate souls…”
Sunset gave her an odd look. “…What?” Starlight answered in equal incredulousity.
Applejack let out a massive groan. “We tried to nab a bunch o’ ‘em human traffickers and the big one got away!” she spat out. “And Fluttershy’s upset ‘cause she’s the one they slipped past!”
“Why in the world were you three gone so long trying to stop human traffickers?”
Applejack frowned and jabbed a finger at Rarity. “Ask her. She’s the one who thought it was so goll dang important!”
Rarity scoffed indignantly. “Well, if using our abilities to bring a gang of unsavory, life-ruining wretches to justice is unimportant, then I will wear the title ‘frivolous’ with pride!”
“I don’t suppose you know what Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie, and, uh…Gallus were up to, do you?” Starlight asked.
“Ya’ think we were wastin’ time? We were just keepin’ busy while they went all the way out to Southern Equestria, of all places! And that spot was goin’ ta’ hell! They hardly got outta there ‘fore the whole thing started to fall apart!”
“Wait…what?” Sunset asked. “What do you mean ‘fall apart’?”
Rarity, composing herself a little, began to explain. “It would seem, according to Ms. Dash, that Fillydelphia has been involved in supporting the locals and encouraging them to start a revolution. And what with the ocean becoming impassable, it was the perfect time to-”
“The ocean’s impassable?!” Starlight suddenly cut in. “When did that happen? Ugh, this is what I get when I can only pass along small messages… I don’t have time to ask about the details!”
“Do you mean to say that Fillydelphia is trying to take over Southern Equestria?” Sunset asked. “That’s…honestly unexpected. Sure, I wouldn’t put that past Trottingham. Especially when I was still with them. But I didn’t think they’d go that low… I knew things were tense between them and Manehattan, but still…”
“Anyway, forget that pig swallor, we got big news for Twilight,” Applejack jumped in. “We saw someone when we were back in Manehattan that she’ll just be itchin’ to know about.”
“Well, you may have to wait a bit longer on that,” Starlight answered. “In fact, we were all hoping you’d get back soon so we could give you the news. We need everyone to head to the library. Twilight may know how to stop Sombra.”
“He’s not just going around using Nighttouched. He needs them to live.”
The group was gathered in the library now, which was rather cluttered and disheveled after the sum research of Twilight and Starlight. Twilight herself was near one end of the room and standing near a mobile chalkboard that had apparently been used heavily for note taking. Starlight stood nearby, while the others were seated at the various small tables and chairs. Rarity and Fluttershy looked attentive enough, Pinkie was making a little fort out of some of the piles of discarded books, Applejack’s mouth was already swished in puzzlement, and Dash was already leaning back and falling asleep.
Sunset brought up the rear, still hanging around even though she knew she could help little with this. She was seated against one bookcase in the back.
“Now how in tarnation does that work?” Applejack spoke up. “I thought this fella wasn’t even alive ta’ begin with. He’s just like a big ghost or somethin’ runnin’ around?”
“Yes, that’s true, but I’m theorizing that by basic principle of conservation that whatever psychokinetic energy wavelength he is currently manifesting is somehow fundamentally on a different resonance or physical manifestation than its native innate configuration; somewhat akin to light energy attempting to be captured by transparent glass. As a result, one could logically surmise that there would be a natural dispersion when moving through a medium like ours and that the only thing that could sustain it would be to capture like psychokinetic energy that it can, in turn, assimilate into its own organizational structure. And the most ready supply is the spiritual transformation that appears to have been displaced by Nightmare Moon’s act of magical copying.”
The ladies looked at her with a dumbfounded expression. Applejack’s jaw was hanging slack in an “uh…” expression, while Dash let out a rather audible snore. Starlight coughed.
“Um, Twilight? Perhaps an explanation at the more…elementary school level?”
The mage frowned in a bit of frustration and looked around. Eventually she spotted a pitcher of water that Rarity had brought in. Immediately, and much to her surprise, she ran over to it and snatched it up.
“Oh, um…dear, if you needed a drink, I would have been glad to have poured you-”
She cut off with an exclamation as Twilight went over to the nearest unused table and swept out her foot to knock out the legs on one side, causing it to slam to the floor with a noise loud enough to make Fluttershy wince and Dash to snort and shoot awake.
“I’m up, I’m up!”
A moment later, Twilight grabbed one of the glasses, poured some water, and then proceeded to throw it against the table with a messy splash. It ended up making a wet mess, but also left several large wet spots against it. After that, she got to the higher end of the table with the pitcher, tipped it over, and proceeded to pour out a thin line along the top of it. Soon, droplets of water began to roll down the incline.
“It’s like this. These droplets of water are like him. In order to move down the table, they have to leave something of themselves behind. They keep rolling down and eventually they’ll slow down and run out long before they reach the bottom.”
She pointed out to some of the drops that had done just that, coming to a halt a third or a half down the table.
“Unless they manage to run into these other bits of water. Then, if enough of them gather to it…”
She pointed to one of the wet spots, showing a droplet run into it and join it. She pointed out two others doing the same. On the fourth, however, it became big enough to let another drop start running out the bottom of it.
“It can keep going. That’s what Sombra’s stuck doing now. He looks all big and evil and impossible to stop, but he’s constantly ‘running dry’. Just manifesting himself is draining him. He needs the spirits of others to keep himself going, or he’ll eventually become as inert as the other Anima Viris.”
“I must say, that does raise a few more questions,” Rarity spoke up uneasily. “As dreadful as the thought may be, why would he have not invaded the rest of Greater Everfree as there are plenty of spirits in the cities?”
“That’s what puzzled me for a long time, before I finally realized that’s not good enough for him. We all know that something about the Nighttouched…maybe about Nightmare Moon herself…was ‘tainted’. Different from everything else. That’s why they all turn big and monstrous. I still don’t know what it is exactly, but I think it had something to do with…well…” Twilight winced a little. “Feeling ‘wretched’ or miserable… Being sunk in despair and hopelessness. Maybe what old religions would have called darkness…I don’t know… That’s why he can only primarily use Nighttouched.”
“And…” Fluttershy spoke up meekly, looking nervous at the thought. “Is that why he was trying to make us feel so…bad?”
“Like he’s cleanin’ us up ta’ cook us…” Applejack uneasily added.
Twilight herself grimaced at the idea, but she nodded. “I think that’s exactly what he was trying to do. Our spirits probably are the ‘tastiest’ to him but he can’t ‘eat us raw’, so to speak. I think that’s what happened to the expeditions that were sent north that Shining Armor escaped from. He tried to do the same to them. Fortunately, it looks like he learned something from that. The energy he loses trying to drive even a small group of people into despair is more than what he’ll get back. That’s why he hasn’t tried going after anymore towns or cities in a while.”
Dash blinked, but then shrugged. “So…we’ve got nothing to worry about, right? He’ll eventually burn through all the Nighttouched in Equestria, and then he’ll be toast.”
Pinkie excitedly raised a hand at this. This caught Twilight a bit off guard, as this wasn’t supposed to be a ‘class’, but she pointed at it. “Um, yes Pinkie?”
“But what if he ends up finding this really, really big glass that he can collect his soul in so that it doesn’t run out anymore?”
Dash groaned. “Pinkie, it doesn’t work like that.”
“Actually, I think that’s what he’s been looking for.”
Not only the Huntsman, but the other ladies turned to her incredulously. “Say what?”
“If Sombra could find a way to give himself a body, or even just something to secure his soul to, then I think he can get around the problem of it running out for him to manifest himself. He’ll be able to stabilize it. And when that happens…every new spirit he corrupts and adds to himself will result in a net gain. Then he’ll be able to start going around and really consuming groups of people…”
Her look darkened.
“Then towns…then cities…and finally everything. And when he does, we’ll all wish we were still living under Nightmare Moon.”
The room was quiet for a moment. Sunset herself felt uneasy, especially knowing there was little she could do to help that situation. Twilight exhaled as she set the pitcher down. “Sombra knows what he’s looking for, and it has something to do with the historic monuments of Equestria. He thinks one of them is going to give him what he wants. We have to figure out what he’s looking for and then find it before he can. Not just to stop him, but to bait him.”
“Um…bait?” Fluttershy asked uneasily.
“The original plan hasn’t changed. We can’t just let Sombra fade out into nothing, or the Angra Mainyu will still be able to absorb him. The only way we can beat Sombra is by cornering him and making him use up enough of his own spiritual energy to become capable of being bound to us, but he’s got to be clever enough not to put himself into that sort of position normally. He’ll always leave himself enough energy in reserve to run away and get more Nighttouched…unless it’s what he needs more than anything else. It’s the only thing that will keep him desperate enough to stand his ground and face us.”
Sunset grew even more uncomfortable at that. It wasn’t exactly the most promising-sounding of scenarios, and one that relied on a lot of desperation. She could tell the others didn’t like it that much either. She bowed her head and started to look to one side…
That, however, was when she noticed something. She had been growing so uneasy that she hadn’t noticed that she had subconsciously started petting something. In particular, to her surprise, she found it was Spike. The dog had come over to her and placed his head on her lap, and she had been petting him for at least a minute now.
Immediately she stopped, looking a little bewildered. That dog was fiercely protective of Twilight. Why in the world would he be coming anywhere near her, the biggest threat to her?
Those thoughts were cut off as Applejack sighed. “Ok, Twilight… Ya’ say we need ta’ find this whatever-it-is to bait Sombra. How do we do that?”
Starlight stepped forward. “That may be where I come in. As you all know, I’ve been working hard with Twilight to try and find a way to decipher the older texts in the collection. It’s taken me a while, but I think I’ve finally reached the conclusion that even the older books are written in a language close to one of the older native languages, or at least a precursor version, that used to be used in Equestria. It’s not exactly the easiest language in the world to translate into what we’re speaking, but it is possible. What that means is that if we can hear the language audibly we can translate it, so all we have to do is find a way to crack the alphabet in the older texts and we should be able to read them.”
“And do you think you can do that?” Dash asked.
She sighed. “It’s not like a cryptogram, but more or less it should work on the principle of being a cipher. I’ve got a few characters actually already done thanks to that one illustration in that old book, but all that’s let me do so far is translate a few words. There’s context and the like to worry about.”
“I’ve been trying to help out since I got back, but even when I put on the role of the Scholar, progress has been a little slow,” Twilight admitted. “We’re trying to focus on the maps. That’s our best shot of heading off Sombra right now. As soon as we find something, though, we have to be ready to move.”
Rarity hesitated a moment, but on realizing the mage had concluded she straightened. “Twilight, darling, there’s something we need to tell you. We…encountered a certain individual while we were dining in Manehattan a few days ago. Well…not so much encountered as espied.”
She looked at her in puzzlement. “What do you mean?”
“This person, well…she happened to be tall, fair skinned, and unmistakably had iridescent hair.”
“And she looked just like the lady in the paintin’s of the latest headmistress here,” Applejack chipped in.
Sunset looked upright at that immediately. Twilight herself froze in place. She stared back silently at the two of them for several seconds. “What are you trying to say?”
“I…don’t suppose your old headmistress had any siblings or relatives she neglected to mention, did she? That would explain it…”
“Not to me. That was the gal from the paintin’. I don’t forget faces.”
Twilight was silent again, while Sunset’s own face turned slightly. “…That can’t be.”
“We’re just telling you who we saw, darling. We didn’t have time for more than a glimpse, but Applejack and I both saw her.”
“Um…so did I…” Fluttershy weakly threw in.
Twilight hesitated, looking a little more upset. “I saw what happened to her in front of me. It couldn’t have been her. You had to have seen someone different.”
“Twilight, dear, I have an eye for detail and-”
“Stop calling me a liar!”
Everyone in the room went rigid, recoiling in surprise. Even Spike snapped up. Twilight’s face had suddenly contorted in anger. Sunset could see her teeth bared. The echo from what she said slowly reverberated through the library, and then quietly faded.
The mage eased soon after; relaxing her own face and looking surprised at her own reaction before bowing her head. “I’m…I’m sorry, everyone. But…hearing people claim that Celestia is still alive is the one thing I can’t deal with. No one remembered me when I came back to town. No one believed me when I said I was from there except Shining Armor. Not even my own parents. It got so bad that I started to wonder if I really was crazy. The only thing I had that everyone could agree on was that coach blew up with everyone in it. If it started going around that somehow the headmistress here was still alive, then…then I wouldn’t know what was real anymore.”
There was a few moments of silence longer.
“…Twilight’s right,” Applejack finally spoke up, forcing herself to be firm. “We…we had to have mistaken her for someone else. Right Rarity?”
“Um…er…yes, of course. It must have been mistaken identity. I was rather stressed that evening, after all.”
“Er…I…must have seen someone who just had similar hair…” Fluttershy practically whispered.
Twilight paused, taking a deep breath, and then tried to smooth herself out. “Right… One thing at a time. We need to focus on Sombra. I think I’ll keep lending a hand to Starlight for now to get that cipher finished…”
Sunset still looked uneasy. She had stopped petting Spike at this point, and swished her mouth a little as she leaned back in her seat again. She silently mused this latest revelation before she kicked her head back and looked around…
Only to spot something.
It took only a few seconds, but her eyes fell on the slightly-ajar doors to the library. Doors that she was pretty sure they had closed once everyone was inside. For a brief moment, she caught a glimpse of a vivid green eye and flowing dark hair. Yet it seemed to recognize the moment it was spotted, and promptly turned and disappeared.
Sunset gave a little start at that. She knew full well, out of everyone there, only one individual matched that eye and hair style. And as the door had been closed, the individual in question had definitely been eavesdropping on them. And that put a new wave of unease inside her.
Why did Luna come out from her room? And why was she spying on us?
Even late at night, sleep didn’t come to Sunset. Part of it was due to the fact that Twilight was still in the library long after everyone else had gone to bed. While she was adjusting better to being independent, ever since she had spotted Luna looking in on them…she no longer felt completely safe on her own. She couldn’t say why, but she just didn’t. She might not have if Spike hadn’t gone with her. Oddly enough, ever since that incident escaping from Sombra, she was feeling more and more comfortable around him and the feeling was seemingly true in vice-versa.
It didn’t quiet her thoughts, though. Or her endless tossing and turning on her bunk bed.
Celestia…still alive?
That can’t be true. I confirmed it myself after I heard the news. Sure, they never found a body…not one in one piece, at any rate…but Luna also said she’s dead and, oddly enough, I believe her. Even if everyone was lying or mistaken, she would have done something at this point, right?
So…why am I so anxious?
Ugh…get it together, Sunset. You’re so afraid without your magic that now you’re afraid of ghosts. This world is filling up with more real threats all the time and I’m afraid some undead headmistress is going to come to kill me for betraying her.
Or…am I?
I’ve felt on edge ever since the library, but…I don’t think I’ve really been feeling “scared”. I kind of know what that’s like by now. This…doesn’t really feel like it, even if it is making me feel just as uneasy. So what is it?
It couldn’t be-
Sunset was in the middle of those thoughts when they were shattered by the peeling of a rather loud and resounding bell. Enough to make her shoot up in bed so hard that she bumped her head against the ceiling, prompting a curse. She nearly fumed about what the heck that was all about when her mind clicked in realization.
The alarm.
She instantly paled, before leaping out of bed so fast that she narrowly missed Spike before he was able to get up. She threw on only the minimal amount of clothing and her slippers before rushing out with him into the hallway. Other families and individuals were already pouring out as well, most of them headed to the designate safe areas while the few security volunteers, including Rainbow Dash, Applejack, and Pinkie Pie, began to rush for the exits.
Sunset immediately went toward the latter, as crazy as it might have seemed as much as her heart was starting to race. Even if Twilight wasn’t with them at the moment, she knew they were headed toward her. And she felt far safer with the ones with one or two Anima Viris than holed up hoping for the best.
In moments, they were coming out of the dormitory and headed for the wall. However, they only reached halfway there before the bells stopped. Shining Armor called down to them.
“It’s at the northwest gate!”
The crowd instantly headed that way. It became easier to see as the girls began to light up their Anima Viris one after another—becoming new beacons of light. Yet while Sunset went along, she couldn’t help but look a little puzzled. She supposed attacking near the northwest gate made sense, but that route was near the border of Canterlot itself and up a rocky, narrow pass that nearly went up a cliffside. Why would Sombra attack there when it was much easier to come around from the front?
Nevertheless, she kept running with everyone else, and soon they were reaching the wall. Applejack, already in the role of the Warrior, stepped forward and up to the locked gate. Pinkie Pie soon bounded cheerfully forward in her own role of the Dancer, and Rainbow Dash in her own Monk role soon stepped up after that. Whoever didn’t have an Anima Viri quickly got their guns out and at the ready.
Soon after, Shining Armor arrived at the top of the wall, in his own Healer role, and began to descend.
“How bad is it?” Applejack called out.
“Not bad. I only saw six to ten shapes at most, but we need to nip it in the bud. Be careful. It could be a diversion.”
A scuffling was heard nearby. Sunset suddenly found herself pushed when someone else was shoved into her and she turned her head. A new gleam was joining them or, rather, a few of them. In her own Monk role, Gilda came pushing in along with the other two Griffonstone soldiers.
Dash turned briefly to note her…only to snap around and do a take. “Gilda?!”
She frowned. “You didn’t even know I was here, Dash? You really have gotten slow on the uptake…”
“What are you doing here anyway?”
“Your friends brought me here! Probably hoping I’ll go crazy like everyone else in my group who sticks around you long enough! But if that big ugly shadow thing is trying to break in, then I want to face it head on!”
“Everyone quiet!” Shining Armor shouted back. “This isn’t the time! We’ve got to deal with this first!”
Stepping down, he moved up to the bar of the gate. He held a moment, then tentatively reached out and used his enhanced strength to remove the iron rod, before putting his hands on both doors. Tensing up and sweating a little, he turned back to the others to make sure they were set.
“Get ready for anythin’,” Applejack stated as she hefted her hammer. “He wouldn’t be so dumb ta’ send only a handful unless he had a surprise ready.”
“Ooo! I love surprises!” Pinkie cheered. “Everyone, get ready to shout!”
No one else shared her enthusiasm; least of all Sunset. Shining Armor took a deep breath and tensed up. The last of the guards aimed their weapons outward.
“Ready?”
Everyone tensed and primed themselves.
“…Now!”
With a sharp motion, he shoved forward—his strength quickly flinging the heavy iron doors open wide. At once, some of them giving battle cries, the group advanced for the opening with weapons drawn and ready to fire…
And quickly ground to an abrupt halt.
There were no monsters out there. No Nighttouched. No evil clouds with malevolent, grotesque eyes. There were only four adults and four children—all of which looked pale, dirty, hurt, and tired. One was only semi-aware and leaning on another, who himself had an exhausted child draped on his back. The other two had much the same, although their children looked sick or even unconscious. One final child, a bit older, looked like he would collapse any moment.
Nevertheless, suddenly being surprised by a group of heavily-armed people literally appearing out of nowhere was enough to make one of the adults throw up his hands.
Confused stares responded. Everyone, Sunset included, looked up and around in puzzlement. There was a chance this was some trick of Sombra’s—some way to try and infiltrate them. However, it certainly didn’t seem that way. These people were too scared. Too desperate. Too terrified both for their own lives as well as that of their children. They were ragged and torn as if they had been wandering the violent forest for days and were at the end of their ropes. Whoever wasn’t so weary they looked ready to fall looked on the brink of despair.
“Um…” Pinkie finally spoke up. “Should we still yell ‘surprise’?”
Slowly, the weapons lowered. It took the eight people a bit longer to calm, but they slowly realized they weren’t about to die. The one in the lead kept his hands up and swallowed.
“Can you help us…? We…we haven’t eaten in three days…”
Fortunately, everyone had been awakened by the alarm—including Luna. As a result it didn’t take too long to tend to the new arrivals. She had come down to see them for herself, and by that point there was enough light on all eight of them to show a rather key detail.
Namely that each one had a Promethian Sigil on their back of their hands.
With that ascertained, she allowed them to enter, and they went straight for the cafeteria. There was some leftover bread although the Pie family fired up the gas stoves to make them some stew, and the eight ravenously ate all that was set before them along with a great deal of water. They still looked in miserable shape, but their condition vastly improved as they supped. In the meantime, Gilda and the two with her, after having a brief yet loud exchange with Rainbow Dash, departed back for the groundskeeper’s house while Sunset, the ladies, Shining Armor, Luna, and most of the night watch remained in the cafeteria with the new arrivals.
It wasn’t until four glasses of water and two bowls of stew in that the one in the lead felt enough of his bearings to start to explain.
“We were all in the civil sector months ago. One day, I woke up, and I noticed the itching on the back of my hand. Soon my whole family had the same. We thought it was some sickness at first like a rash or a ringworm but the doctor said that wasn’t it. Then we heard the news from further northeast. How there was someone who was going around trying to find and kill everyone who had these symbols on their hands…”
Sunset looked to her fingers at that, wincing a little, but saying nothing.
“We tried to transfer to the interior along with several other families, including Goldengrape and his family over there. We were still processing when the government came out with that statement on eidolons. We had already spread the news everywhere about our hands when we went to the doctor’s, so management already knew. They said they were going to transfer us to an area where we could service other eidolons exclusively, but it was going to be near the Equestria border. I didn’t like it…none of us did…but it ended up being fine, or so we thought. We lived in a similar house and neighborhood and we kept doing our jobs.
“Then about two weeks ago we got woke up in the middle of the night by someone screaming. Several of the houses were on fire. I ran outside and people were running everywhere. Then this explosion went off and…and I didn’t remember anything else. I came to a couple minutes later and I was bleeding. I was so shaken up that it was all I could do to stay calm as the fire brigade arrived. Chance-A-Lot said what happened later. There was someone…some thing…made of metal with glowing eyes that came into the community. It start ripping up houses and barging inside them, looking for people with these symbols on their hands and shining some sort of light on them. It had done it to me while I was out…”
Several of the girls looked uneasy at this.
“The next day, the Manehattan army showed up. We told them what happened, and they said everyone needed to stay put. More of them arrived as the day went on.” He swallowed. “Armed. And with bigger guns. Some of the people who were more badly hurt the night before needed to head out to the city hospital, but they wouldn’t let anyone leave. We soon found out they were blockading in the whole neighborhood. We all got scared. Rumors started going around about what had been going on in Trottingham and Fillydelphia. Eventually, some of us decided to stay up and watch while others took in the people who were injured. We all settled in and tried to get the kids to sleep.
“Then, around midnight, we heard some people yelling. Then some gunshots went off. And…and everything went to hell. The army moved in on us and they started breaking into every house and dragging the people out. If anyone tried to fight back they started beating them down…or just shooting them.”
He paused to compose himself again, taking another mouthful of water.
“We were far enough away from where they started that we all got the kids up and tried to break for it. There had to be a dozen families. We hit the perimeter and just ran right through, ignoring the guns and just running into the night. We couldn’t go anywhere else. They had fanned out and started searching for us, and the only place left was the forest. I was scared, but…but I just hoped that they were telling the truth that the shadow over Equestria was gone. We all ran in and kept running until we couldn’t go anymore…
“I didn’t sleep that night, but when the sun came up high enough to see I saw my family, Goldengrape’s, and three others. I don’t know what happened to the other families, but we didn’t stay to look. None of us had a compass. None of us knew where to go or how. So we just went into the forest and tried to find a way out somewhere that wasn’t in Manehattan.”
He shuddered and swallowed again.
“There were…still things in the forest. Not as many, but…but I saw their yellow eyes at night. And sometimes they were worse than yellow eyes. Sometimes they looked like animals and sometimes they looked like things from nightmares. The second night they attacked us while they were sleeping. Chance-A-Lot didn’t make it. The next night, they came back and took the rest of his family. There was nothing to eat. Every time someone tried eating anything, it ended up making them sick. We could barely find water. None of us knew what we were doing but we kept moving forward, trying to get away from the border and the monsters.
“Blue Note’s son got bit by a snake on one day. We let him stop, but when the monsters got thick around us that night, we had to leave him behind. Then Orion’s wife got a really bad infection and ran a high fever. We had to leave them too when she couldn’t walk anymore. We were all starving and getting sick, but eventually we found a place where the monsters stopped coming. That’s when Goldengrape said he remembered there used to be a city called Canterlot in Equestria and…and so we tried to get there hoping we could hold up in there at least. And…and here we are.”
He shook his head.
“I don’t know if the others will make it, or if they’ll be able to follow us here. I…I know I probably shouldn’t have left them, but I was scared to death… I…I knew everything horrible that happened seven years ago, but this was the first time where every…every hour…I kept wondering if I was going to live to see the next…”
He trailed off at that point, but the group surrounding the two families was left in silence. Shining Armor himself was frowning. He turned about, putting his back to the families, and walked a short distance away. It was clear to the girls that he wanted to talk more privately and they gathered around him while Sunset and several others got close enough to keep an ear open.
“I thought Manehattan was on our side.”
“It is!” Rarity immediately insisted. “They treated us nothing but cordially when we were there!”
“They had me do a goodwill tour and everything,” Fluttershy added.
“Then what’s up with all of this? This sounds like they’re trying to round up people just like they were in Trottingham and Fillydelphia!”
Dash snorted. “This is why I never trust governments anymore. Say one thing to your face, but behind the scenes? It’s a whole different story.”
“Now hold on, everybody,” Twilight interjected. “Let’s not jump to conclusions. Those military men may have been imposters. We have no idea who they were.”
“And for that matter,” Starlight spoke up tensely, “we have no idea who these people are. Luna has made us keep this place off-limits ever since we got here, and the Manehattan government has wanted in ever since then. Those sigils could be fakes…”
“They’re not fakes.”
The group turned behind them. Luna was still there, although she had kept her distance. She had also apparently overheard them.
“And between their injuries, their dehydration, their starvation, their exposure, and the fact that the children are all sick, they would be some of the most convincing method actors I have ever witnessed.”
The group was silent for a moment, considering that fact, but Applejack finally frowned. “Well, even if that’s the case, then that just brings us back to the first complaint. What the hell is Manehattan up to? And those damn metal soldiers are runnin’ ‘round again… If they’re at the border of Manehattan, what if they come up here?”
“Oh, oh!” Pinkie said excitedly. “I got an idea! Let’s take another rail trip into Manehattan and ask Fancy Pants himself about it! We can get some more butter and eggs while we’re at it!”
“I have to admit, I’d like to know straight from the horse’s mouth myself…” Shining Armor added.
“Out of the question!” Starlight practically cried. “You haven’t already forgotten about Sombra, have you? You’ve already all been gone for weeks!”
Twilight sighed. “Starlight’s right. Right now, Sombra’s the more pressing issue. We really need to get that cipher done and find out what he wants as soon as possible, and we’ll need everyone here for that when that happens.”
“I s’pose you’re right, Twilight…” Applejack sighed, “but I still don’t feel right lettin’ this set either. S’pose these folks are tellin’ the truth. The rest of my family is headed straight for Manehattan ‘cause they thought it was safe.”
“And I, for one, refuse to believe the chancellor would do something so horrid,” Rarity retorted. “I’m sure there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for all of this, and I would like to hear it.”
“I got to admit…if Manehattan has turned crooked on us,” Dash threw in, “I’d want to break his little monocle while he’s still wearing it.”
“Well, considering the fact that Sombra getting a way to stabilize his soul is everyone’s problem and that it will make things a whole lot worse than anything Manehattan, Trottingham, Fillydelphia, or anyone else is doing, we’re going to have to forget all that,” Twilight responded with a bit of an annoyed tone. “I know we don’t like just letting all of that set, but we really don’t have a choice.”
“Well…not necessarily, Twily,” Shining Armor spoke up again. “Whoever said it had to be just you and the ladies going?”
The six turned to him with a touch of surprise. “Wait…what?”
Shining Armor frowned slightly. “Turns out I wasn’t that good at guard duty around here, or heading up a squad of my own…” He shrugged. “Why don’t I go? So long as I’m representing you all here it shouldn’t be a problem, right? I don’t know if I can get in as far as Chancellor Fancy Pants even if I do name drop you, but if such a big deal is going on then they won’t be able to hide it from me.”
Twilight looked uncertain. “I…I don’t know about that, Shining Armor. I mean, you’re not a native from Manehattan and everyone seems to be watching the borders nowadays. They only let us in because we had the Promethian Sigils, and they still practically arrested us.”
“That…actually shouldn’t be a problem,” Starlight spoke up. “I’ve been acting as go-between with Manehattan for a little while now. I’ve gotten back in contact with Party Favor and Sugar Belle, and they know they’re working with us. So all I should need to do is pass the message along and the two of them should be able to sort everything out and get you in touch with Kibitz.”
“There, you see?”
Applejack shrugged. “It’d make me feel a mite more at ease knowing someone was checkin’ in on things while we’re holed up here.”
“Wait, wait…” Twilight interjected again. “What if things really do end up bad? Or those metal warriors show up again? Even we couldn’t take them down, and all you’ve got is the role of the Healer.”
“Hey! I got an idea!” Pinkie cheered. “Why doesn’t Shining Armor get a group of his own friends to come along?”
There was a pause at that from everyone before he frowned. “If things really are bad, I’d rather not endanger anyone else…but I’m also not naïve enough to think I couldn’t use some help.” He looked up and around. “I don’t suppose there’s any volunteers?”
Almost immediately, Big Macintosh stepped forward. “Eeyup.”
Applejack spun on him in an instant. “Now hold on jus’ a minute…”
He closed his eyes and shook his head. “Nope.”
“Don’t you dare, Big Mac! I ain’t gonna stand by and let you walk right inta’ what might be the fire!”
“Um, Applejack…?” Fluttershy tensely spoke up. “Aren’t we always walking right into danger? And Shining Armor is Twilight’s brother…”
“Eeyup.”
“Who’s side are you on, anyhow?” Applejack nearly barked at Fluttershy, but then followed up with a groan. “You get yourself hurt, then you better get yourself killed while you’re at it…or I’m gonna do it when you get back!”
“You know who’d be perfect for this?” Pinkie spoke up with an excited cheer. “Limestone! She’s been saying how she wants to get out to see if there are any better rocks around here!”
A scoff came from behind her. “Get real, sis. With you all chasing that shadow and those two gone, I’m going to have to make sure everyone around here doesn’t fall apart the first time a Nighttouched runs past the gate. Send Marble. She’s been wanting to spend more time with Big Mac anyway.”
The big man’s eyes widened in stunned surprise, but Pinkie mere gave a salute. “Sure thing!”
Big Macintosh began to stammer, but before he could say another word a voice called out from the back of the room. “I’ll…I’ll come too!”
The group turned about and got another shock, especially for Shining Armor. Although he still looked unwashed and that he hadn’t changed his clothes since he had come back, Stygian was coming out of the hall and approaching. Knowing what he had been through, most of the people gathered looked at him uncertainly and uncomfortably. Yet as he came further into the light, he only winced a little before standing before them.
“Stygian…” Shining Armor began uncertainly on seeing him. “I…”
He cut him off with a deep inhale. “I’m…I’m sorry I’ve been so unresponsive, everyone. I mean…I…I…that is…” He swallowed. “I’m…still upset about what happened with…with…Little Violet…but we’ve all seen a lot of death in this world and we can’t afford to let it stop us. I know…I know if…” He quivered a little. “If she was here…she’d want me to keep moving forward. I want to help.”
“Stygian,” Shining Armor spoke more quietly, “you don’t have to come if you don’t want. The three of us can handle this. It might be nothing. I don’t want to-”
“It’s…it’s ok. I’ll be ok. Even if I’m not, then…then I have to learn to be that way. I can’t spend the rest of my life regretting that I wasn’t…wasn’t able to save her.”
Shining Armor clearly didn’t like how he phrased that and he showed it. “Listen…you didn’t do anything wrong back there. So you don’t-”
“Sir,” he was finally able to speak in a firmer voice. “I know what you would say to me, but the fact remains that even if you don’t blame me…I blame myself, and I have to make up for it. So if you really don’t think of me as being too weak or falling short back at the ruins, then you’ll let me accompany you and prove it.”
He was standing straight now, and looking Shining Armor straight in the eye. Hearing him put it on that footing made Shining Armor second guess himself. Although he clearly still had his own regrets to deal with, apparently he would have rather proven himself too. And so, he exhaled and nodded. “Alright then. I’m glad to have you along.”
He smiled faintly at that, but said no more.
Twilight, for all of this, only looked more distressed and sighed. “Look everyone, I appreciate you all volunteering to do this…but I’m still going to have to disagree with it. The fact of the matter is there’s too much going on right now that we don’t know anything about, and all of it is seeming to revolve around the Promethian Sigils and Anima Viris. At the bare minimum, I would rather there be someone more familiar with those things coming along, and I can’t do it and Starlight Glimmer is helping me with the translation.”
“Hey! What about Sunset Shimmer?”
While everyone went quiet, and a few people reacted in surprise to that, none did so much as Sunset herself—who at that moment went rigid and looked up like she had been caught stealing. “Wait…what?”
“Her?!” Dash nearly cried, getting the two families to look up in alarm.
“Ms. Shimmer?” Rarity half-gasped.
“S-Sunset…?” Twilight echoed back incredulously. “I…I don’t think that’s going to happen… I don’t-”
“Um, pardon me, Ms. Sparkle…” Stygian spoke up. “But wasn’t Sunset Shimmer also a student of the school here? Wouldn’t she have as much knowledge as you would?”
“Are you nuts?!” Dash retorted before Twilight could answer. “She’s the…the…” She stopped herself, catching her words right before she could spill the beans. “She can’t be trusted!”
“Well, technically,” Starlight shrugged, “I think it’s pretty clear at this point that Sunset doesn’t have any working Anima Viris or a Promethian Sigil, so if you’re insinuating what I think you are…you probably don’t have to worry about that.”
“But…but…” Sunset started to protest.
“Well if I ain’t cozy ‘bout my big brother going to Manehattan, I sure ain’t cozy ‘bout him going with her,” Applejack snorted. “And I’m sure Shining Armor ain’t neither! Ain’t I right?”
The group turned to him. He looked a bit stern and reserved for a moment, glancing at Sunset and taking a long look at her. However, his face never turned hostile. He was simply quiet and in the end he crossed his arms.
“…I don’t mind.”
Now there really were looks of surprise, especially from Sunset and Twilight alike. “Wha…?”
“Really? Are you sure?”
“I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t still a bit mad after what she did…but she helped you, Twily. And I’m convinced she doesn’t have any more power. Plus, after what she did on the train tracks, I think I can trust her enough to go with her to Manehattan and back. That’d be the last country in Greater Everfree she’d think of pulling something anyway.”
Sunset was speechless. She just stood there with her mouth open. “But…uh…er…”
Twilight, meanwhile, was still looking hesitant. She honestly seemed uncomfortable with the whole idea. “They might have her picture, but…I’m sure Rarity could do something to hide her appearance… Still…I…I don’t know.” Finally, she turned to the woman herself.
“Well…Sunset, what do you think? Do you want to?”
This struck her silent all over again. She honestly trusted her enough to do this? Even without powers and in Manehattan? Yet she hardly had time to think about that before she saw all eyes were on her. Some were neutral, some were unfriendly, but all were checking on what her answer would be to Twilight’s question. And she found herself rooted to the spot.
Even with how much she had grown accustomed to her powerless existence, this was still nerve wracking enough just to make the decision. She actually looked around herself like an animal caught in a trap.
A couple days after their unexpected night visitors, and long after Sunset Shimmer had sat through getting a new wardrobe and hair dye and boarded the train with her new companions, she was still asking herself the same question. Much of her former anxiety had returned now that Twilight was gone, and as she drew closer to Manehattan she felt more exposed and helpless than ever. The old helmet, which by now had become her ‘teddy bear’ of sorts, was being clutched fiercely in her fingers as the steam engine chugged along and she found herself even wishing Spike was there for comfort as she watched the trees slowly start to thin.
Why oh why did I agree to do this? Especially when three of the four people I’m going with have good reason to leave me to rot when something goes wrong? And going back to Manehattan, of all places! I haven’t even been helping out that much with Twilight’s research! The whole reason I wanted to stick with her in the first place was because she was the only one I could count on to keep my head out of a noose! Now I’m shoving it into a guillotine!
I’m losing my mind. That’s all. Why else would I be out here? Why else would I have said yes?
And the craziest thing?
I think I actually miss Twilight…
“Hey.”
Sunset looked away from the car window and behind her. They still didn’t have any true passenger accommodations in their train…just an empty cargo car for people to stand around in. Hence, the group was just loitering about for the most part. Big Macintosh was standing up and at the ready. Marble Pie, looking as shy and anxious as ever, yet occasionally glancing to him, was seated nearby. Stygian was tending to the weapons, of which they had only brought a couple handguns for emergencies, looking like he was doing it just to keep busy. That left Shining Armor, who had approached her.
“We’re nearly there. Only about three more miles.”
“Oh…uh…alright.”
“You should probably stay in the back of the group, just in case. I don’t think they’ll recognize you with your hair dyed black, but you never know.”
“Yeah…no argument here.”
He was quiet for a moment after that, looking her over. In particular, the helmet in her hands. He stared a few seconds before looking up at her. “Are you scared?”
She practically guffawed. “Oh no…I’m perfectly fine with going right back into Manehattan after I went on a bit of a killing spree of its Promethian Sigil bearing citizens while I’m powerless along with a group of people whose family members I also tried to kill.”
A pause. “Do you…regret that now?”
She hesitated, slowly inhaling and exhaling. “I suppose I could tell you I ‘saw the light’. That running around with Twilight made me see the error of my ways and all that. But…that would just be another lie. If you’re asking me if I would have done the same thing today then…then I honestly don’t know.”
She frowned.
“I would have seen what I was doing for what it really was—the act of a coward. Just like everything else I did when I was under Manehattan. Someone craven…and desperate…and willing to do absolutely anything to survive when she was better off than almost anyone else. I guess I can understand now what Celestia was trying to tell me when I said I deserved to be a god…why someone like me never deserved my own power.”
Her head lowered.
“But some things haven’t changed. I didn’t go through most of my life being treated like an unwanted rodent without learning how things work and what really matters. In the end, I was still the only person I could lean on to protect myself. It was true then---it’s true now.”
“You can lean on us. You can lean on me.”
Sunset turned to him in a bit of disbelief. He looked sincere, but she merely snickered. “I’m sorry, but after my incident in your hometown I still find that a tad hard to believe.”
“And I’m not sure I’ve fully forgiven you for that, either. But that’s alright just the same. I may not be you or Twilight. I don’t know why I got this sigil on my hand or what your headmistress was going to tell me if she hadn’t died. I know what I want to do with it though.”
He tightened his fist and looked down to it as he held it up. Sunset glanced at it herself.
“I may have never been born the strongest or the most gifted, but I always knew I wanted to help protect people. Even as a little kid I’d always go around daydreaming I was a knight trying to save people who needed to be saved. I know that all sounds a little corny and cliched, but…but I feel like I got this power for a reason. That now I finally have the power to protect people, and I’ve got a duty to use it. Maybe that’s what Celestia was trying to tell me.”
Sunset looked up and smirked before turning back. "Maybe if you ever get another Anima Viri, you’ll end up being the role of the Knight. It would suit you.”
He half-smiled. “I think it would.”
Sunset was quiet for a moment. “Do you want to know where I got this helmet?”
He glanced down, seeing it in her hands again.
“I got it from using a desperate man who wanted to be a knight in shining armor. He thought it was his duty to be a brave person who had the duty to protect people too. I found him in the remains of a castle surrounded by the mutilated bodies of people he couldn’t save—broken and shattered inside. Seeing everything he had ever loved or valued lying in puddles of blood. He would have killed himself, so I told him if he wanted to protect someone that he could protect me.”
Her smile faded.
“And in the end, he died saving me. Me. A murderer and a coward. He threw his life away protecting me when there were thousands of men, women, and children who deserved life more and who needed him more than I ever would.”
She turned back, now giving him a more critical look.
“That’s what happens to knights, Shining Armor. That’s the end of their honor and devotion. So I’d think a bit harder about what your Promethian Sigil is for before you decide to go the route of the fairy tales.”
She looked outside again after that, but Shining Armor didn’t say any more in the remaining minute before they broke the tree line. At that point, Sunset moved back and made herself scarce as the train slowed down and rolled into Manehattan.
Quite the operation was going on now. The government was clearly upgrading the rail lines to try to make permanent headwind into their old territory and, eventually, Equestria. At the moment, it was still all run by the military—much to Sunset’s chagrin. She only saw one entrenched encampment after another pass them by alongside the serviced rail lines, along with the corpses of what had to have been a great deal of Nighttouched. It looked like they finally had the edge on them. In addition, she saw some signs of the telegraph lines that Starlight had mentioned, and it seemed in spite of Luna’s refusal they were still in the process of setting them up.
Eventually, the train halted at a platform. While it was temporary, it nevertheless had been built up well, and had a new road leading to and away from it to the rest of the city. More military folk were gathered there along with the rail workers and some other administrative officials. Sunset didn’t look at most of them as, by this point, she was trying to keep her face hidden.
The doors eventually opened and, taking a deep breath because he looked tense himself, Shining Armor stepped out. Big Macintosh followed behind, with Stygian and Marble Pie coming up after that. Sunset herself took the rear and, again, tried to look as inconspicuous as possible. There seemed to be some minor Manehattan officials waiting for them on the temporary platform, although they did look just slightly confused on who they saw step out of the train. That did serve to take the focus off of Sunset, which she was glad for.
On coming to a halt on the platform, one of the officials stepped forward. “Welcome back to Manehattan, although…I’m a bit puzzled. Where is Twilight Sparkle or her associates?”
“Twilight’s trying to stop a new threat that’s using the Nighttouched,” Shining Armor answered. “We’re filling in for her and Starlight Glimmer for the moment.”
The officials continued to look confused. “I’m…afraid we weren’t expecting you back so soon. We don’t have any transportation or new supplies arranged for you.”
“Are there any other people who need to be relocated to Canterlot?”
Shining Armor’s voice was a bit sharp at this, which Sunset thought showed a little lack of subtlety. However, she also noticed that they looked caught a moment before answering. “I’m afraid not, sir.”
“Alright. We’ll need to head to the capitol as soon as possible. We have new things to report.”
“Unfortunately…as we said, this visit was unexpected and we don’t have any transportation arranged I’m afraid.”
“That’s alright. I think we have our own ready. Thank you.”
The officials nodded, and then turned and moved aside to let them pass. Shining Armor proceeded to lead the group right by them; Sunset struggling not to cringe or duck her head into her collar as they went. Soon they were descending the platform and making for the road.
Stygian looked about a little as they moved. “They seem to have more soldiers than what one would think they would need around here…”
“It could just be because they’re making inroads into Equestria and expecting a Nighttouched attack at any moment. Or they know about those swarms Sombra’s commanding,” Shining Armor suggested.
Stygian said nothing more. Just continued to walk.
After weaving through a few gun emplacements and platoons, each of which made Sunset sweat when they seemed to be staring at them, they finally came to a barrier on the outskirts for civilians. A pair of individuals were there, a young man and young woman, looking up and around as if they were expecting normal passengers from the train. They spotted the group and were confused for a moment, until Shining Armor reached into his coat pocket and pulled out three envelopes from Starlight Glimmer—each one stamped with her particular seal and colorful wax. He held them up enough for them to see, and as soon as they spotted them their eyes widened, but they simply stood until the group approached. After the soldiers let them pass, they came in front of them.
“Party Favor and Sugar Belle? I’m Shining Armor. I’ve been working with Starlight, Twilight, and the ladies up in Canterlot. I’m sorry none of them are here to tell you this in person but they’re caught up in something very important.” He proceeded to hand the envelopes over. “Starlight wanted me to pass these messages along to you but, more importantly, we need your help.”
They stared at the letters a moment before slowly taking them. Fortunately, Starlight had taken the precaution of addressing one of them: “Read Me First”. They broke the seal on that one, got out the note, and proceeded to squeeze together to read it as one. After a minute or so, they looked a bit troubled, but then nodded. Party Favor took the other two notes while Sugar Belle looked up at him. “Of course. We’ll do anything we can to help. It seems you already know the two of us…Shining Armor, was it?”
He nodded back, and stood to one side. “This is Big Macintosh, Applejack’s older brother.”
He nodded as well.
“Marble Pie, Pinkie Pie’s younger sister.”
She blushed a little before muttering an “mmm-hmm”.
“Stygian, one of Manehattan’s own soldiers.”
He stood at attention for them.
“And…um…Moonshine…Flash.”
Sunset couldn’t help it. She actually looked to him incredulously for a moment in spite of her anxiety, before she quickly straightened. “Uh…yes. Hi.”
Both Party Favor and Sugar Belle looked a bit put off by that name, but in the end rolled with it. “Alright…um…here, right this way! We have a steam wagon waiting.”
The two turned about and began to lead on, and Shining Armor quickly fell in behind. Sunset followed the others after sighing in relief. Fortunately, they didn’t have to go too far out of the perimeter. While it seemed there were a few newshawks and civilian construction workers there, not too many people wanted to be that close.
In only a few moments they began to approach what Sunset realized was the steam wagon. After being used to cruising around in Starlight’s battered, smelly, used Steel Lion, she was a bit stunned to see a much more up-to-date model of a true steam carriage. This one looked so fresh and new that the paint was still shining and the pipes hadn’t had a chance to develop their first full layer of grime.
On arrival, Party Favor went right for the helm while Sugar Belle opened the side door. “Hop aboard, everyone!”
One by one they filed in. The interior was just as nice. The seats were actually cushioned and roomy enough for each one of them to find a place to sit without cramping. Sunset saw the others looking around and wagered this was the nicest steam vehicle they had ever been in. She herself had seen better, but not many.
She couldn’t help but blurt out as Sugar Belle shut the door and made for the passenger side. “A…bit of an upgrade from your last model, huh?”
Party Favor gave a nervous chuckle. “Well, to be honest, until Nightmare Moon disappeared we were mostly a fringe group at best. Now we’re getting new members and donations all the time. It’s really helping our research.”
“And I admit this wagon is a bit…classier than we needed,” Sugar Belle added as she slipped inside and shut the door, prompting Party Favor to fire up the engine. “But we got a great deal on it due to…” She trailed off, looking more uneasy. “You know…all things considered.”
Shining Armor looked confused. “What do you mean?”
“Oh…that’s right. You aren’t getting the news regularly. “Um…Marble Pie, was it? Today’s newspaper should be right to the side of your seat.”
The shy-looking woman looked about on either side of her for a moment, feeling in between her seats, until she finally found the periodical. She gripped it and pulled it out, turning it over for the front page. Everyone leaned in and had a look at the headline.
Shake-Up in the Political Landscape: Southern Equestria Declares Independence and Neutrality.
“Wait…what is this?” Sunset voiced aloud.
“Manehattan just lost its biggest overseas protectorate, although I guess it doesn’t really matter…what with how bad ocean travel’s been getting in the first place. We were lucky to get any ships from there for a while now, and what ones did come were weeks overdue…”
“That’s just half of the problem,” Party Favor added as he engaged the wagon and began to roll down the road. “Fillydelphia declared neutrality at almost the exact same time.”
Sunset quirked her eyebrow at that, then turned to Marble Pie. “Didn’t Pinkie say that she and Dash thought Fillydelphia was encouraging the unrest in Southern Equestria?”
“Mmm-hmm,” she answered with a nod.
“That means this is probably a behind-the-scenes deal with whoever is in power down there,” Shining Armor grimly answered. “But why?”
There was silence for a few moments as they drove along, before Sunset let out an exhale and leaned back in her own seat.
“Well…I guess it’s no secret to everyone around here that I know a thing or two about manipulating people…” she half-muttered. “Fillydelphia has been Manehattan’s sword and shield ever since the Lunar Fall. They absorbed the brunt of the Nighttouched attacks as well as had to deal with countries that invaded when they began to collapse.”
“Not to mention, from a territorial perspective,” Stygian quietly spoke up, “the placement of Fillydelphia has made sure that they always get the brunt of any conflict."
"To say the alliance has been ‘a bit one-sided’ isn't an exaggeration… I guess they finally want a better deal. Especially now that Trottingham is gaining power and territory. The Hyperborean Mountains can’t keep them safe forever. Not if Griffonstone works out a deal to start letting them pass around south…or they simply mass produce their airships.”
Shining Armor frowned. He slumped in his seat and stared out the window. Sugar Belle noticed. “Is something wrong?”
“Just more of what we already knew. The shadow over Equestria is gone but we know full well we could end up with something worse any day now, yet things seem like they’re getting worse than when we were all waiting for the Light Eaters to come for us…”
“Sometimes it seems like whenever we’re all being threatened, we want to beat out fate to annihilation first…” Stygian grimly added.
The wagon was quiet again after that. Almost unsettlingly so. Sunset, of course, had no reply. She had long known this about human nature. Known it and used it. She had no comfort to give.
Finally, Shining Armor put his fist against the door and leaned up again. “I guess the government’s all convening to try and get a response for this right now? Along with the grand chancellor?”
Party Favor nodded. “The capitol was already getting more tense by the day, but now it’s really getting hairy.”
“Well, at least that means the chancellor is somewhere we can talk to him. I don’t suppose you can drive us to the place of a Major General Kibitz, can you?”
He looked a little uneasy, but nodded. “Y-Yeah…but, it might be a bit hard getting there fast…”
“I think they mentioned something about this to Twily, but…sheesh…”
The steam wagon had a hard time moving through to the square. Part of that was due to increased security, almost as much so as what they had passed through on arrival in Manehattan, but mostly it was due to the people.
The periodic demonstrations that Twilight had told Sunset about had swelled to permanent crowds, and they were looking wilder and less civil than before. Some of them were being led by people who looked like religious authorities for Harmonium, but many more so were holding up symbols from it as well as signs that were a bit more extreme. Sunset read many saying: “The Old World’s Death is Nigh”, “The Age of Harmonium is Coming”, “Save Yourselves from This Condemned Generation”, and the like. They became rather hard to avoid as people clustered closer together the nearer they drew, and soon the sounds of their own chanting and processions began to make it hard to even speak over one another and the engine.
“This…is definitely not what Twily told us about…” Shining Armor remarked nervously.
“Don’t I know it,” Party Favor groaned. “I mean, it’s nice that all of this is getting more folks signing up with us, but all those new things that are going on? They’re working people up more than ever. It’s like they think there’s going to be a new Lunar Fall all over the world any day now.”
“And even if you aren’t worried about that, there’s still Trottingham to be afraid of…” Sugar Belle added.
Sunset said nothing, although she wasn’t sure how to feel about it. A part of her, one more akin to the “old” Sunset, wanted to laugh at how easily everyone was losing their heads and flocking to the first thing that gave them some sense of normalcy. However, the more sensible part of her reminded her that everyone had plenty to go into a panic about. Sombra’s new attacks had to be worse than what any of them were accustomed to due to the Nighttouched, the oceans were getting impassible due to what those mysterious entities were, and any day now the Angra Mainyu could manifest itself and start turning the world as they knew it upside down.
Besides…some of this seemed to be more than standard panic. It seemed stronger than that…
At long last, and, unfortunately, near a particularly loud crowd filled with crazier elements of the growing clamor, they managed to pull up to one of the gated buildings. Fortunately, Twilight’s group had maintained enough contact with them that they recognized that Party Favor and Sugar Belle were supporting them, but it still forced them to dismount the steam wagon to get there. Sunset would have hated risking showing her face even at the best of times, but surrounded by a crowd that had countless eyes going who knew where almost petrified her into her seat. Nevertheless, she finally managed to emerge with the rest.
While they had to stay reasonably close together, fortunately the crowds were only demonstrating and it was possible to move through them. The group immediately went up to the gate. Once there, Party Favor and Sugar Belle took Shining Armor up to the front while Sunset, struggling to look inconspicuous, stood behind them with the others.
Party Favor faced the guard and called out over the chanting and commotion. “We’re here to see Major General Kibitz!”
“The major general’s busy! Who wants to see him?”
“Cpl. Shining Armor!” the man in question immediately interjected. “We’re with Twilight Sparkle’s task force and here on her behalf!”
The guard hesitated. He looked to the others around him and spoke too quietly for Sunset to hear. He looked back afterward. “We’ll need to ask you a few questions first!”
The gate was unfastened, and he along with Party Favor was let in, while Sugar Belle stood outside with the others. As soon as it was closed again, the two were led in a bit further, while she turned around back to them. “I’m sure it’ll just be a moment. Everyone just sit tight…er, stand tight!”
Sunset exhaled and risked another look around—more out of lingering anxiety that someone would spot her than anything else. This seemed like the least-likely spot, however. The people in this area looked the most haggard and preoccupied with their chants, and what few people weren't—such as soldiers and government officials—were tiredly milling about trying to get where they needed to go.
One particular figure, however, caught her eye.
A dirty-looking, half-crazed woman dressed in messed up clothing with a series of metal emblems that looked made from junk rather than designed to resemble anything in particular was walking along the crowds. Unlike them, she seemed to be of a different sort all together. Not like she was part of the demonstrators but rather professing her own message among them. She bore a sign of her own, but this one was painted in a dark red. It didn’t stand out as much as the black on white lettering of other signs, but the fact it was so hastily scrawled and in colors that closely resembled blood made it pop to Sunset in a rather unsettling way.
It didn’t help that the message was unique as well.
BEWARE! HE WALKS AMONG US
As she drew nearer, Sunset saw her looking over the crowds…or, perhaps, not looking over them at all. For as she got close enough to see her face, Sunset noticed she was walleyed and didn’t appear to be looking at anything in particular at any moment—just letting her head drift one way or another. However, she chanted continuously to all of them as she rang a handbell in her free hand.
“Cleanse! Cleanse! Cleanse yourselves! Cleanse!”
She kept shouting this as she grew nearer, and her presence and chanting began to unnerve Sunset as she approached. She grimaced and started to turn her head away to avoid making eye contact.
“Cleanse! Cleanse yourselves! Clean-”
Suddenly, Sunset felt her shoulder seized with surprising force, and she was so shocked she couldn’t resist as she felt her body pulled about. To her stunned surprise, she found herself looking right into the walleyes of the woman—who now had leaned in so close she was mere inches from touching noses.
“He wants them, Sunset.”
Her mouth loosened, but she could say nothing. Between the shock of being seized, addressed by name by a woman she had never seen, and the sudden cold quietness with which she had spoken that, she could only stare back in stunned silence.
“The one who was never born and never dies.”
Without another word, she released her, turned away, and continued down her way. A few seconds later, she resumed her cries of “cleanse”.
Sunset was left standing there, still open-mouthed, looking after her for a moment or two before she heard another voice.
“Moonshine!”
She snapped and turned around. The gate was open again, and the others were already heading inside. Shining Armor lingered behind, looking at her. “Come on in!”
Sunset blinked. She looked back to where the woman had gone, but she was already vanishing back into the crowd. Still looking unnerved, she only slowly swallowed before turning around and following after the others through the fence.
“Well, I can certainly see why Ms. Twilight Sparkle or Ms. Rarity didn’t want to deign to give me this news in person…”
Sunset knew of Major General Kibitz only by reputation, having made it a point when she was still with Trottingham to make mental notes of who were all of the higher ups in the Manehattan military. Nevertheless, meeting with him was the most nerve-wracking moment so far. She knew her face wasn’t well known, but if there had been any spy or intelligence who had managed to get her face and pass it up along the ranks to the point where a major officer would recognize her, it would have been him.
However, when Shining Armor had introduced himself, the others, and her under her pseudonym, he seemed somewhat questioning of who this mysterious “eidolon expert” was and why she hadn’t been mentioned before now but ended up rolling with it. She along with the others was introduced to a room where tea and coffee was offered as they were sat down to converse with Kibitz briefly. It mostly went untouched. Big Macintosh didn’t care for the tea, Marble Pie didn’t care for the coffee, and everyone else cared for either. Shining Armor seemed fairly eager to get through the initial report to voice his more pressing concern, while Sunset herself tried to remain as inconspicuous as possible in that small room.
“This would explain why things have gotten so much worse outside. We knew we had to be concerned about those mysterious ‘metal soldiers’ running about, but the attacks from this…this ‘Sombra’ person not only being so horrible but a precursor to something even worse? And to say nothing of all the other bad business as of late…”
“I’m afraid that’s not all, sir,” Shining Armor interjected, his voice growing a bit sharper. “There were people who recently arrived at Canterlot. Fleeing refugees. And they claimed they were fleeing from your government.”
The general gave a start, where until now he had been brooding over all the information. “What was that?”
“They said they belonged to a select community of individuals bearing Promethian Sigils that basically kept entire families in confinement. And they said that community was shut down and relocated through physical force. Via your military. Twily told me that you’re heading up any military affairs that have to do with ‘eidolons’. I was hoping you had an explanation for this.”
Kibitz only flustered a moment before shaking his head. “Well, I’m afraid your ‘refugees’ were either mistaken or lying. No such operation has taken place, and I certainly would never have authorized one.”
Shining Armor didn’t look like he entirely believed that. However, he also didn’t seem to be the type to know when to probe deeper or how to press an issue. As for Kibitz, he didn’t dwell on the matter long but began to straighten up.
“Although in light of what you’ve said, I believe I need to confer with the grand chancellor at once. It sounds as if we’re misappropriating our resources in entirely the wrong direction.”
“What do you mean?”
“By now you’ve read the news, haven’t you? While the crowds outside grow in number and fervor every day, our legislature and grand chancellor have been focusing almost entirely on the situation with Fillydelphia and Manehattan. The power alliance structure of Greater Everfree could be looking at its greatest rearrangement since the Lunar Fall’s early days. I dare say that’s kept everyone’s attention…and what the grand chancellor is addressing the legislature about right this minute. However, in light of what you’ve told me about this ‘Sombra’, I’ll need to confer with him again.” He exhaled as he began to rise from his seat. “I’m only hoping he’ll spare me the time on this occasion… I regret to inform you I was hoping for Ms. Rarity or Ms. Sparkle. I thought they’d get his ear better…”
Shining Armor looked up in some puzzlement and Sunset was much the same. But as he continued to sit silently, she found herself blurting out. “I’m sorry… What was that?”
Kibitz paused, both on hearing Sunset speak up for the first time as well as her interruption. However, he only frowned slightly. “The grand chancellor has been pushing himself harder and harder as of late. I dare say it’s beginning to impact him in more ways than one. Nowadays, even for someone like myself, it’s hard to find time to speak with him.”
“Well…maybe he should find the time. This is kind of important.”
Kibitz again eyed Sunset, who wondered again what drove her to speak up like that, but fortunately Shining Armor stood at this moment and joined in. “Perhaps we should come along, sir. We might get more of his attention if he sees people have arrived from Canterlot.”
The major general hesitated, looking them over and seeming to consider it, before he gave a short nod. “I do not see the harm. Let’s be off. The session should be ending shortly.”
Fortunately, getting to the legislature wasn’t nearly as hard as getting into the governmental square. The demonstrators were allowed to mill about outside the complex, but the roads leading that way were kept clear for the normal day-to-day administrative affairs. Not to mention the entire trip was a short walk to begin with.
That wasn’t to say the area itself wasn’t crowded. Far from it. More representatives of the local papers were there than ever. Everyone that could be admitted into the press commons areas was allowed, and there were still more outside waiting for the latest news. That, of course, necessitated even more security than normal—rendering it impossible to get anywhere near the front doors. As a result, the major general’s own retinue led them around the back.
“We should be able to see him as soon as he finishes speaking,” he explained. “There’s only one entrance the grand chancellor ever takes. Hopefully we’ll get the jump on any more reporters.”
“It seems a bit strange to try and meet him this way,” Stygian spoke up in a half-mutter. “Wouldn’t it make more sense to try and see him when he returns to his office?”
“Normally I would say yes, young man, but nowadays his door is always either closed or filled with other people he’s trying to meet with. Believe me when I say this is the best chance we have at an unscheduled meeting.”
Stygian seemed to note something about that, which Sunset noticed, but said no more.
While it took a bit of wading through guards stationed at the back, as well as the grand chancellor’s own retinue and steam carriage awaiting him, Kibitz managed to lead them until they reached the accompanying crowds gathered outside. Once there, they had to make much slower progress pushing through people up until the doorway, and once inside they had to navigate narrow, thin, unlit halls making their way closer to the main chamber.
Sunset found it rather uncomfortable again, especially crushed in by so many people, but gradually they began to hear the sounds of loud speaking. Sunset had never heard the grand chancellor in person, but as they drew nearer and only one voice was audible, she assumed that was who she was listening to.
At last, they made it to a stairwell chamber. One end of it was blocked off by larger doors with windows, which Sunset assumed led to the main chamber, while they came in via a side door. Realizing this same room had to function as a fire escape for the building, she realized this had to be the spot. Sure enough Kibitz soon drew to a halt and Shining Armor followed suit, causing the rest to follow afterward.
Everyone went quiet and still and, as a result, they were able to hear the loud voice in the next room. It was a bit muffled due to the closed door, but she still made out the words.
“-suggest that our alliance has been slanted is preposterous. The Lunar Fall affected all nations in Greater Everfree and especially those bordering the former Equestria equally, and while our share of combat may be unequal we have more than done our share for Fillydelphia’s economy by forgiving debt after debt, funneling millions in weapons, food, and relief aid, and personally committing to both the resources and manpower to rebuilding their infrastructure not once but thrice now. If Fillydelphia seeks to punish us for these acts of good will and mutual benefits at a time when we are at our most vulnerable, then, as grand chancellor, I feel it is only fair to return the favor and distance Manehattan from any ‘one-sided’ relationships of its own. It is for that reason that, effectively immediately, in concert with the current legislature retabulating the tariff and taxation rates for commerce with Fillydelphia, that all foreign accounts with Fillydelphia are hereby indefinitely frozen.”
Most of those present didn’t react, even though murmurs were heard from through the doors. Stygian, however, looked rather stunned, and Sunset didn’t blame him. Back when she was working with Trottingham, if that had been a move she could have somehow pulled off, it would have been a master-stroke. Practically a governmental double suicide pill. And the grand chancellor had just thrown it out like a ton of bricks.
“When the Fillydelphian president is wishing to discuss more reasonable terms of our alliance, I will be more than willing to revoke this freeze. Until that time, I will consider it due compensation for us to have to strengthen our own military without them. This concludes my address. Thank you all, ladies and gentlemen.”
The murmurs quickly grew into speaking out loud as a rush of noise and clamor came from the other side of the doors. The reporters certainly had something to put out that evening now, after all. However, Kibitz braced himself and waited for the fateful moment when the double doors would open, as did much of the other personnel nearby. Sure enough, after about sixty seconds, it did, and both the grand chancellor and his retinue walked inside.
Sunset had never seen the grand chancellor in person, obviously. Only in the occasional photograph from a periodical from their country or, more often, in an etching for the same. Yet even if she had no idea what he looked like she still would have been a little taken aback. There was no question about it—the man looked tired. Like he had definitely been working long hours lately with sleepless nights. While he managed to keep his hair, mustache, and suit in well enough order, the lines on his face and under his eyes belayed a different story.
However, he only had a fraction of a second to see them standing there before the major general quickly stepped in. “Grand chancellor, I’m sorry to spring this upon you, but I wanted to inform you directly that Twilight Sparkle has sent representatives from Equestria on her behalf as she is unfortunately detained at this time.” He turned and gestured. “May I introduce Shining Armor and company.”
The grand chancellor turned to them, blinking a few times and looking a tad weary, but then drew himself up. “Oh…oh, is that so? Well, welcome to Manehattan, sirs and madams.”
Shining Armor made a curt nod. “Thank you, sir. Now, I don’t mean to-”
“I’m terribly sorry,” he cut off, “I wish we could meet right now, but we’re in the middle of a rather tense political situation and I’m afraid I’ve barely caught a wink of sleep in the past day. You’ve reached me just as I was about to go home. But I assure you the first chance I get I’ll want to speak with you. Until then, I’m sure the major general can see that you and your companions are taken care of.”
Shining Armor was taken aback by the sudden reply, especially with how hurriedly it came out. However, he barely managed to get out a syllable before the grand chancellor gave him another nod, and his retinue began to lead him right past the group and out through the rear exit.
Only once this happened did Shining Armor manage to find his voice enough to try and call out. “Mr. Grand Chancellor?”
It was already too late. The reporters were swarming over him and between their bombardment of questions and his retinue trying to keep them at bay, a din mixed with a crowd to make Fancy Pants both unreachable as well as impossible to alert. Moments later, he was vanishing all together and the crowd soon followed after him. Shining Armor was left standing looking flabbergasted, enough to almost make Sunset smirk.
“Uh…”
“I didn’t think he’d brush us off so quickly…” Stygian finally spoke up.
“Eeyup,” Big Mac answered.
Kibitz sighed. “I wish I could say that was uncommon, but it’s becoming the norm more every day. At least he’s heading home regularly now. He certainly needs it. The last thing we need on top of everything else is for his physical condition to start deteriorating. I’m afraid there’s nothing for it. I certainly hope that you won’t be needed to return to Manehattan soon. Scheduling an impromptu meeting such as this usually requires a day or two notice.”
Shining Armor looked struck at that, but after nearly protesting he closed his mouth and frowned. “I really wanted to get back to Twily and the others as soon as possible, but…this is important too. We really need to speak with the Grand Chancellor in more than just a passing greeting.”
Kibitz nodded. “And I’m certain the Grand Chancellor wishes to speak with you as well. It’s simply a matter of poor timing. However, if you’re committed to staying, we have accommodations prepared for special envoys right here in the Congressional Square all ready for you.”
“I guess we have no other choice… Thank you, sir.”
It didn’t take long for Kibitz to get them relocated, which Sunset was grateful for as she could have sworn some of the people with the Grand Chancellor had glanced at her more than once. Fortunately, where they were staying was right in the Congressional Square, so they had a nice window view of the continuing situation. Even as it grew late and the sun began to go down, the crowds didn’t thin out that much. The entire square remained on high alert. However, Sunset was far more at ease on knowing they didn’t have to worry about any guards monitoring them and that they were on a third floor—well above anyone who could look in and spot her.
As they didn’t have much in the way of luggage, Big Mac handled the bags while Marble Pie went about getting the place organized—something that wasn’t hard considering that the area had already been prepared and furnished. That gave everyone else a chance to idle while the sun kept setting. Shining Armor himself stood near the window, looking on edge as he stared at the ground below. Sunset took the chair in the corner on the wall against the window, just to be safe, while Stygian had silently taken a spot near the fireplace as he began to hide their weapons underneath the frame of the armchair; just in case. Since his one comment in meeting the Grand Chancellor he hadn’t said much, but Sunset wasn’t really thinking of him at the time.
They had only been left alone a little while ago and it had been silent ever since. Shining Armor broke it when he sighed and turned from the window. “Now I’m starting to second-guess myself. I didn’t know we’d be stuck here this long, and Harmonium knows what’s going on with Sombra.”
“Nothing that we can help out with, at any rate.”
Sunset and Shining Armor both looked up at Stygian on having heard him speak up again, but he never looked away from his task. He acted as if he hadn’t said anything.
Sunset stared a moment but then looked back at Shining Armor. “Stygian has a point. You may have an Anima Viri of your own, but the rest of us don't really have a defense...let alone an offense. Besides, we just got here.”
“Yeah, but we can’t really do much from the Congressional Square to find out who ran those people out of Manehattan. I doubt they’d flaunt themselves out in the open.”
“No, but someone in charge around here might know something.”
“You heard the Major General. He doesn’t know anything.”
Sunset burst into a snicker. “Right. And I’m sure that’s the sort of thing he’d be completely honest about when accused. You know how many of my antics Trottingham had to cover up?”
“I guess I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt for now…or maybe just wishful thinking on my part.” He turned back to the window. “It’d be nice if I could believe we have at least one country on our side.”
Sunset paused; her own look turning troubled as well. “That…actually worries me a little.”
He turned back. “What does?”
“What we heard about in the legislature today. Manehattan and Fillydelphia have been allies for years. Now it sounds like tensions are growing and today only escalated it.”
“It did escalate it.”
Again, Sunset and Shining Armor turned to Stygian, who was done hiding the weapons under some of the furniture. This time, he kept talking although he didn’t look up.
“No one has invested more money and resources in combating the threats both of the eastern countries as well as the Nighttouched than Fillydelphia. The reason they weren’t bankrupted and overrun years ago was because Manehattan’s commerce with them has always been at a preferential rate. Fillydelphia may feel like Manehattan benefits from their soldiers spilling their blood, but the grand chancellor was right in what he said. Manehattan has made sure that their nation still has blood to spill for quite some time.”
“This sort of tension is music to the ears of Trottingham,” Sunset added. “Apart from geography and wealth, the main thing that has kept them from pushing west is that they knew they couldn’t attack one without the other one jumping on them. Breaking their alliance apart would be a game changer.” She looked down to one side. “Definitely something I would have done…”
“Except there is little evidence to suggest Trottingham is behind all of this,” Stygian added. “From what I have seen, as ill-timed as all of this is, it is nevertheless purely by the accord of their own respective leaders. Not to mention how senseless it all is.”
“How so?”
“Most nations that turned on each other did so during the heyday of the Lunar Fall. That’s when Fillydelphia turned on Cloudsdale, after all. As much of a crisis as the situation with Trottingham might be, why turn on them now?”
A pause went through the room. Even Big Mac and Marble Pie paused at that. “That…is a good point.”
“Now that I think about it…” Stygian spoke up. “Based on what Rainbow Dash was saying, it seems like part of Fillydelphia’s new stance is to use people with Promethian Sigils, doesn’t it?”
Marble Pie nodded with an “mmm-hmm”.
“Well…is that all too different from what Manehattan is doing? Or, for that matter, what Trottingham was doing? Perhaps their end purposes were more nefarious, but in the end it did amount of identifying everyone with those traits.”
Shining Armor looked a bit unsettled. “And…if what those people who arrived in Canterlot said was true, wouldn’t that mean Manehattan was doing something similar?”
“Eeyup,” Big Mac answered.
Sunset sat rather uncomfortably now. Something definitely wasn’t right about all of this. At the moment, perhaps a bit of it was just conjecture or coincidence, but the whole reason she had been so secretive herself was to try and keep the world from finding out about the potential of everything she had learned and known. However, it was getting out now.
Not to mention, they had this room all ready for who they thought would be Promethian Sigil bearers…in a place of their choosing surrounded by their military.
Even more uncomfortably, she thought again of that woman who had spoken to her at that time, although she had nearly forgotten about her until now. While she tried to immediately tell herself it was simple craziness, it sent a very unwelcome chill down her spine.
Shining Armor sighed. “I guess all of this means is that it was a good idea to come here after all, and we’ve got a lot of questions that need answering. First things first, I need to start writing a letting to Twilight about what’s going on. I’m going to send her at least one a day until we find something out. Hopefully she’ll keep sending letters back too. The moment she finds Sombra, we may need to head back. Let’s just hope they get us a time tomorrow morning.”
“And that those people who showed up in Canterlot were wrong…” Sunset muttered.
“Alright, so we have a partial cipher to the text on the maps.”
“Right…but the cipher is no good because the maps are written in a language we don’t understand. So we need a book to translate.”
“Exactly…except we don’t have one of those because there’s a dozen different languages in here we don’t have any familiarity with. The best we have is this one book that has a partial translation into an unrelated dialect.”
“But that dialect has a key into a different regional tone in this book…”
“And that script has a translation into three similar dialects on this recovered cuneiform from a burial site recorded here…”
“And the third one is only a generation removed from our cipher!”
Starlight smirked at the end of that. “Yeah…‘almost too easy’, huh?”
Twilight gave back a little smile of her own. “That’s alright. I never did mind doing some heavy research. And now we finally have a plan forward. Once this is done we’ll be able to read these maps along with most of the older books.”
She snickered as she looked back down to the book she was working on. “Ancient languages and scripts like this… I like a good bit of research as much as the next scholar. Maybe even more. But you take to this even more readily than I do.”
Twilight shrugged as she looked back to her own book, making a few notes as she spoke. “Well, this is pretty important. Although, to be honest, I kind of enjoy it. It makes me feel like the old days. Especially being in this library. I can almost imagine it’s another research project.”
“That’s right. I keep forgetting you have a more personal stake in this. You used to be a student here.”
Twilight jotted down her current note before pausing and looking up. “What about you?”
“Me?”
“I mean, I appreciate how much you’re in to all of this. You’ve been a big help to all of us. It’s just that I didn’t run into too many people who wanted to research things related to Nighttouched. Most people were too scared. What got you into it?”
“Oh. Um…well…you see-”
Starlight was cut off as the doors to the library were practically flung open, creating such a loud noise on hitting the doorstops that the two ladies snapped up and looked around. However, there was little to be worried about. Rarity and Rainbow Dash were simply walking inside, with the latter looking a bit irritable and the former frowning at her in a scolding manner.
“Really now, Ms. Dash. You could stand to use a bit more couth when trapezing around indoors. This is a library.”
“I wouldn’t be so annoyed if you had just settled on shoving those people into a dorm hall, already!”
“I’ll have you know that proper décor is very important from an aesthetic perspective! We don’t want those people feeling like they’re living like refugees in a hollowed out ruin, after all. Or befouling this establishment’s natural charm.”
Dash merely groaned and rolled her eyes. Starlight raised an eyebrow. “Don’t tell me even more showed up.”
Twilight looked likewise surprised. “Even more? How many this time?”
“The largest group yet. Seven. These ones weren’t even from Manehattan. They had fled all the way from Fillydelphia.”
“I don’t even see how the hell they’re making it here! Shouldn’t they have gotten…I dunno…eaten or something?”
“That’s a rather grim notion, Ms. Dash…although I must say I share some of your sentiments. This place is normally hidden due to Ms. Luna’s influence and yet somehow they all keep finding their way here…”
Dash shrugged. “I guess we shouldn’t complain. We could always use more people to watch the walls for the next Nighttouched swarm…”
Twilight grimaced. “I’d hope we could get them to help in something a bit better than ‘monster fodder’…”
Rarity sighed and walked forward. “That’s not all, darling. The train returned. Your brother wasn’t on board, but we received several letters. One for you and two for Ms. Glimmer.”
Reaching the two ladies, she proceeded to hand over the three envelopes. The two readily accepted them and broke their respective seals. After unfurling the letters, they both read them momentarily while Rarity took a seat and Dash simply leaned against the nearest column.
It wasn’t long before both of them looked rather unwell.
“That doesn’t look like a good sign…”
Twilight sighed. “Well, the good news is Shining Armor hasn’t confirmed our suspicions…yet. The bad news is that things are getting worse in Manehattan. According to this, the grand chancellor is pushing back at Fillydelphia over what they did in Southern Equestria.”
Dash let out a loud chuckle. “Serves ‘em right.”
“I don’t think this is really a matter of ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ at this point…” Twilight answered worriedly. “If this ends up breaking the alliance between those two all together, then there’s not going to be any real force standing between Trottingham and the rest of Greater Everfree. Fillydelphia might be able to fight back but not forever without Manehattan’s supplies. And if they go for Manehattan, they don’t have nearly the military power to last. All of their resources and wealth would be theirs for the taking.”
“And let’s not forget if Sombra decides to exploit the whole thing…” Starlight spoke up uncomfortably.
“…Don’t remind me.”
Starlight folded up her letter and put it away with a sigh. “I got pretty much the same story on this one from Party Favor and Sugar Belle. I wonder what about this one, though…” She broke the seal on her other envelope, pulled out the letter, and read it over for a few moments. Not long after, her own eyes widened, and she suddenly stood up and out of her chair.
The reaction was so sudden it made everyone look to her. “What is it? Something wrong?”
She studied the letter for a few more moments. “You remember that one hidden building we found?”
Twilight nodded.
“It looks like they managed to turn on some of the devices in there, and they may have found something. Something big.”
“Like what?”
Starlight paused a moment, but then hurriedly folded up the note and put it in her vest along with the first one. “I need to go.”
Twilight nearly leapt in her seat, startling Spike nearby. “Wait…wait what? What is it?”
“Maybe nothing…but maybe everything,” she answered as she pulled her bag from the floor onto her chair and began to start closing up her books to shove them inside. “Remember how you thought Sombra needs a way to find a body? Well, based on what they said here, it looks like my people I have poking around that secret room might have found a way for him to get one.”
This nearly made her get up, and got Rarity and Rainbow Dash’s attention as well. “What? Are you sure?”
“I don’t know. The details are hazy, but…I need to take a look.”
“Well…well maybe I should come with you, then. I kind of want to see this place myself…”
“Oh no. I don’t want to yank you away from this. You and your friends are still the one who have to find him and fight him. I’m the one who’s ‘available’ this time. Plus I have a network. I’ll be able to wire to the train depot anything I find and they’ll get it up to you.”
Twilight didn’t look like she quite liked that answer. And not just because it meant missing out on what Starlight was talking about.
“Look, if this letter is right, then whatever is there is long-since broken. The best this will do is give us some clues about what to look for, but we’ll still have to read the maps.”
“About that… I like research as much as the next…um… Well, I like research more than anyone else here, but I think trying to crack this thing all by myself is too much even for me.”
“That’s why I’m packing these,” Starlight answered, waving her latest book in front of her before putting it away. “I don’t plan on just enjoying a nice, leisurely train ride. I’ll be hard at work deciphering the whole time. Everything I crack I’ll make sure gets sent back to you.”
Twilight still seemed rather uncomfortable about the whole arrangement, but she sighed in resignation. “I guess you’re right… We really can’t afford to lose many more people here, but this way impacts us the least… I’ve already been shut up in the library as-is so I guess this wouldn’t be much of a change…”
“Great!” she answered as she flipped her bag flap over, fastened it, and hoisted it up on her back. “I’ll get right to work as soon as I get my things together, and I’ll be back as soon as I can. You just get to work on that key to the regional tone and I’ll have that cuneiform cracked before you know it.”
The mage was still a bit uncertain as Starlight turned about and began to walk out of the library, but she didn’t sound any more protestations. Instead, after a moment she sighed and looked back to the note in her hand. Her look grew a bit more furtive.
“Is something else wrong, dear?” Rarity called.
“Not really, I suppose… Just that Shining Armor and the others will be stuck there for a little while. They need to meet with the grand chancellor and apparently he’s having a hard time fitting them in. I’m just a bit worried about how long it’ll take them to get back…”
Spike inclined his head to her with concern, but she exhaled and set the note to one side.
“I guess there’s no sense worrying about it now. I’ve got plenty to keep busy with until he comes back…”
A small knock rang out on the door. Shining Armor sat bolt upright before coming to a stance, but Sunset Shimmer kept her patience and merely turned a page of the newspaper she was reading. Of the two of them, she soon turned out to be the justified one when the door opened. Keeping her head low and meekly slipping inside came Marble Pie.
Shining Armor sighed and sat back in his chair as Sunset shook her head. “Still thinking there’s going to be news any minute now? I thought you got used to Marble going out for prayers by now.”
“Cut me a little slack,” he responded, wiping a touch of sweat from his forehead, “The major general said he’d be coming by this afternoon to see the grand chancellor. He could be here any minute.”
Sunset sighed and looked at the clock. “It’s only 7 AM. I think Marble will have time for her midday prayers too before we head out.”
Shining Armor nearly relaxed again when the door latch clicked. Again, he shot to his feet, but this time it was Big Mac who walked in; looking a bit sore and grumpy. He again let out a sigh as he slumped as the big man half-slammed the door behind him.
Sunset again regarded this dully, only slightly raising her head. “Kicked you out of the kitchen again?”
“Eeyup.”
“Forgive me if this sounds rude, but I’m kind of glad I didn’t grow up on a farm if it means I don’t get obsessed with doing my own breakfast dishes.”
He merely sulked and moved into the nearest chair, expressing his stir-craziness at having been cooped up on the room for two days with nothing to do yet again.
“It’s more than not being allowed to do our own cleaning,” Stygian spoke up, as he had tended to do over the past two days whenever he had an observation. He was seated at the window at the moment, but other than staring out of it he hadn’t had much reaction all morning. “They’re not allowing us to do much of anything. And what they are letting us do outside of this room is being closely monitored. I’ve noticed it since we got here.”
Sunset grimaced at that, not able to return to the newspaper on that footing. “Normally I’d just say that’s the kind of paranoia I come up with, but seeing as you’re the one noticing it, Stygian, I think there’s some basis in reality.”
Stygian, as usual, did not respond.
“Well, just the same,” Shining Armor announced as he slowly eased back into his seat, “let’s be ready to go as soon as the major general comes back. The sooner we get this cleared up, the sooner we can get back to Twily and the others.”
“No argument there,” Sunset added, trying to look back at her paper. “And the sooner I can stop looking for pastimes that hide my face…”
There were no shortage of private meeting areas on the Congressional Square, but Sunset was nevertheless still rather tense over the venue that ended up being chosen. It wasn’t merely an unused building with a large interior room as Twilight had reported their past meetings had been. It was one of the more obscure and concealed locales within one of the garrisons, of all things; a fact which didn’t exactly set well with any of them. And while the escort was cordial enough, the fact that they ended up shifted into a room with gaslighting as opposed to any windows and only two doors in a building with soldiers normally on standby wasn’t lost on any of them.
Sunset was constantly self-conscious about the state of her dyed hair, wondering if any of the roots were showing by now. However, she didn’t have to worry as much about looking uncomfortable this time as they all were a bit on edge. Marble Pie was cringing while Big Mac glanced about suspiciously every step of the way. Shining Armor showed off his tension with every step he took. About the only one who didn’t seem impacted was Stygian, save for rubbing his Promethian Sigil every now and then, but considering his normally stoic manner since the incident in Equestria that didn’t help much. Even when Kibitz greeted them personally and led them on they didn’t feel much better.
At length, when they did reach the room, there was a seat for each of them at a large table. Cushioned seats, at that, with tea already set out to boot. The grand chancellor’s retinue had already arrived and had their seats, although many of them rose and shook hands to introduce themselves to Shining Armor and anyone else who was willing. (Sunset abstained.) Once Kibitz took his own seat it put them at least at enough ease to sit, in spite of the normal service guards at the doorways; at which point he apologized for the grand chancellor running a bit behind.
The other set of doors opened soon after, allowing the grand chancellor to make his appearance at long last. Sunset found herself having a hard time not staring. It had only been two days since they had seen him, but she could swear he looked even more haggard than before. Paler. Even thinner, if such a thing were possible. And in spite of his demeanor being as cordial as ever, she could tell that it was forced due to tiredness as he reached the table.
“So sorry for being late. I swear time escapes me more than ever nowadays. Please, don’t rise on my account. I’m more than happy to take a seat myself.”
Soon he had pulled a chair and sat at the table along with all the others. He took a moment to exhale, as if catching his breath.
“Now then, major general, I believe I haven’t had the pleasure of a more formal introduction to the rest of the company.”
“Of course, sir. Shining Armor, you already know. I also am pleased to introduce Big Macintosh, Applejack’s older brother,”
He nodded back silently.
“Marble Pie, Pinkie Pie’s younger sister,”
She blushed a little and shrank, barely managing a head nod of her own.
“Stygian, one of our own Manehattan privates,”
“Mr. Chancellor,” he answered with a head bow.
“And Moonshine Flash, Twilight Sparkle’s own appointed expert in eidolons.”
Sunset was rooted to the spot for a moment, before she managed to swallow back enough of her anxiety to give a slight nod. “Hey…I mean, greetings…er…Mr. Chancellor. At your service.”
He nodded back to the group. “At yours. I will admit I wanted to speak with Twilight Sparkle and her…shall we say…somewhat unique company personally, but I am grateful that she has appointed you all to enable us to maintain more regular contact without impeding her great service to Manehattan. You are all most welcome.”
“Thank you, Grand Chancellor,” Shining Armor answered. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to get right into it. We’ve already been delayed two days and what we have to discuss is rather pressing-”
“Of course, of course, and I will be glad to assist you in any way that I can. If I may, however, I was hoping that I might quickly pass along a request to you to present to Twilight and her company as soon as possible before we get started. Forgive me for taxing your patience, but this is a pressing matter and time is of the essence.”
Shining Armor deflated a little, almost letting out a sigh at having been interrupted again. However, he composed himself and ruefully nodded. “Yes sir.”
“Thank you, sir.” With that, the grand chancellor looked up to the doors behind them and gave a nod. Sunset, irked by this, leaned up and looked behind them. The soldiers were indeed moving, but only to make sure the doors were closed and that no one was in the hallway. Once that was done, the grand chancellor folded his hands and leaned forward.
“Now…please understand me when I say that what I am about to tell you is knowledge that only very select individuals are privy to at this time,” he spoke more solemnly. “The official announcement will be made in the days to come, but at the moment this is intended to be a private matter and, as you no doubt have noticed, there are eyes and ears all over the Congressional Square at this time. No doubt, at this moment, you all are well aware that Trottingham has halted its advance but is maintaining control over Appleloosa?”
Big Mac frowned and Sunset swallowed a lump, but they along with the others nodded.
“You may also be aware that we attempted a Continental Summit following the end of the night over Equestria. It was…largely ineffective. The only meaningful thing that came from it was that Trottingham issued an ultimatum to Appleloosa that, by now, you realize they were serious about. Trottingham clearly has greater ambitions and, at the moment, we are not in the best position to be dealing with them. Where things go from here is largely in the hands of Mount Aris and if they decide to break their neutral stance or allow Trottingham to fly over the Hyperboreans.
“It is for that reason that I and the rest of the leaders of Greater Everfree practically leapt at the chance to attend a new summit that Trottingham has offered to hold in an apolitical setting within Mount Aris itself. They announced their intentions just the day before you arrived and we promptly accepted. It seems almost everyone has now.”
“Why do they want to negotiate now?” Stygian suddenly interjected. “Did they request anything special beforehand?”
He shook his head. “Nothing save what manpower we had invested in the effort to reclaim Equestria, as well as where we planned our ‘goodwill’ tours to recruit eidolons prior to the effort being terminated in Fillydelphia. I have no idea exactly what Trottingham intends with this summit…whether it be to threaten us again, argue for legitimizing their Appleloosan occupation, or to try and plan their next move. Yet none of us can afford to ignore it. Any time keeping them in negotiations, regardless of the reasonableness of their demands, is precious to us. And we can’t allow them to persuade Mount Aris unchallenged.”
Shining Armor was quiet momentarily. “That sounds very serious, sir, but what does that have to do with us?”
“Before our relations with Fillydelphia became too openly strained, we managed to share some intelligence with one another, and we believe we have confirmed the identity of the rumored individual known as the ‘Fire Witch’.”
Sunset was glad she wasn’t drinking her tea at that moment, or she may have slipped or choked on it. As it was, she felt a cold lump in her throat. She found herself glancing around the room at the soldiers again and what they were doing.
“It turns out the new regent has a ‘partner-in-crime’, so to speak. A first lieutenant who has been primarily responsible for his successes on most of his battlefields as well as in terms of his latest technology. It took us some time but eventually we managed to confirm her identity: an admiral named Tempest Shadow.”
Sunset felt a wave of relief wash over her, even if that name was one she never cared to hear again. She practically melted into her chair, before getting enough of her wits to start guarding her behavior again.
“Now we haven’t confirmed this yet, but apparently she’s taken to the battlefield personally on several occasions. On each one, she’s demonstrated tremendous power that she seems capable of generating all by herself—leading us to believe she must be an eidolon herself. Apparently, she’s also quite fond of demonstrating this ability as one of her shows of force. Enough to where she’s become the Storm King’s personal ‘negotiator’ to coerce surrender out of his opponents. And we have confirmed that she indeed intends to appear on the Storm King’s behalf at this summit. No doubt to again present more ultimatums…perhaps with a show of force to back it up.”
He leaned in closer, folding his hands.
“We have further learned that, for all intensive purposes, it is not the Storm King who was responsible for the success of Trottingham against the Dragonlands or Appleloosa. It was this mysterious admiral. She’s a master in the realm of aerial combat, her ruthlessness and ingenuity on the battlefield has outdone any of the old commanders she’s been pitted against, and she’s devised what appears to be some sort of new performance enhancement for those under her command that make them proverbial beasts. The Storm King may fashion himself a new ruler of a Trottingham empire, but it is this Tempest Shadow who gives him his scepter. She is, without a doubt, the most important figure in terms of the military of Trottingham.”
A pause. “Again, Mr. Grand Chancellor, I don’t see what that has to do with us.”
Fancy Pants took in a deep breath.
“There are many strict guidelines for this upcoming conference. Mount Aris wasn’t chosen simply due to its neutrality but due to its security. All weapons will be forbidden and strictly controlled. Very few unarmed soldiers allowed within the conference grounds. Everyone closely sequestered. But, as you well know, that would matter little to Tempest Shadow if she was an eidolon. I doubt even she would venture so far as to try a mass execution by herself. She’d never be able to pull it off and escape with her life. However, she still would intend to vent some of her power to get us quaking in our boots if nothing else. And she could easily protect herself from anyone who endeavored to make a move against her.”
He moistened his lips.
“Unless…of course…she was to encounter another eidolon. One with powers that were equally potentially destructive but had the skill to remain…somewhat subtle. An eidolon…or even a group thereof…who could easily be brought inside as diplomats or consultants under the guise of civilian identities.”
Shining Armor went rigid at that. Marble Pie’s eyes widened. Big Mac still didn’t quite connect the dots, but Sunset definitely had.
“The death of Tempest Shadow would serve as a crippling blow to the ambitions of Trottingham. Enough to halt them dead in their tracks. She’s impossible to touch on the battlefield. But in Mount Aris…at this conference…in a place and time in which all attendants are made to feel perfectly secure and at ease no matter what…and carried out by ones who could manage such an…exchange…”
At this, Shining Armor’s eyes narrowed. “I think you mean to say ‘assassination’, grand chancellor.”
“Twilight and company, or similar eidolons, are the only ones who can pull this off without notice. To make it look perfectly like an accident. Any accusations of magic would be dismissed as mere conjecture, as poorly understood as it is. And in the end, thousands…tens of thousands…of lives would be spared. Everyone would benefit. Everyone…save a megalomaniacal despot who would have lost his greatest pawn.”
Shining Armor’s demeanor hadn’t changed. He leaned back and spoke louder, as if he wanted this announced more publicly. “You want my sister and her friends to essentially stab a woman in the back for you, and do it so sneakily that no one ever thinks to blame your country for it.”
The grand chancellor paused, before his own face surprisingly firmed as he sat up. “Twilight Sparkle and company are part of a special task force under Manehattan jurisdiction. This entire operation into Canterlot and their encampment there can be considered part of Manehattan occupation. As members of the Manehattan government, I want them to do a great service to their country.”
“My sister and her friends wanted to help everyone, including Manehattan, to be free of the effects of the Lunar Fall and to make sure no one like Nightmare Moon ever appears again. I doubt when they agreed to your offer they really had carrying our your country’s dirty work for you in mind.”
A cold silence went through the chamber. The individuals on the grand chancellor’s side of the table had become stone-faced at Shining Armor’s rebuke. Sunset felt the chill once again. The mood was definitely no longer warm.
After a time the grand chancellor, still composed, spoke again. “I would hardly consider this ‘dirty work’. Certainly not if it ends up avoiding an almost certainly imminent war on Greater Everfree. However, this message was not intended for you, sir, unless you are of the certain type that Twilight Sparkle can verify is up to carrying out the task. Otherwise, I kindly request that you pass along the message to her directly. The delegation for the summit will depart in three days and I would request a response and envoy as soon as possible.”
“I’ll pass on the message,” Shining Armor retorted, having not changed his tone at all, “but I’ll give you the answer I expect of her right now. Namely that she and her friends are working very hard preparing to go into battle against something big, terrible, and evil that threatens everyone in Greater Everfree and not just Manehattan, and that stopping this monster is a little more important than giving you ‘convenient solutions’ to your political problems. And as for me, I’ll let you know right now that my sister isn’t a hired killer, especially not to anyone who comes to a place under a flag of peace, and I don’t appreciate you or anyone treating her like one.”
No one else in the group dared speak or even show any emotion at that; least of all Sunset. As much as she wanted to slap Shining Armor in the back of the head for basically just spitting in the face of the most powerful man in Manehattan, she didn’t dare balk now and make things any worse.
What she did see, however, was that a shadow had fallen over the grand chancellor’s face as the rest of his officials, Kibitz included, grew visibly uncomfortable. He stared at Shining Armor for several seconds of silence.
“I am very sorry to hear that, although I will say I prefer to hear it from Twilight Sparkle’s own lips or by her own hand. Please pass along the message regardless.”
His expression grew sharper.
“And when you do, I suggest that she…and you for that matter…consider this. Both myself and my administration have been working very hard on behalf of her and the rest of the eidolons, and we have had a very rough time of it considering all that has transpired. There are more than enough rumors circulating about to cause a fair share of paranoia and panic. Both of which could lead to violence as well as governmental opposition if it wasn’t constantly squashed. There are more than a few representatives as well as segments of the populace that consider eidolons to be a liability at best and a threat at worse.”
His own eyes narrowed.
“You would all do well to think on how difficult they would make your situation were I to withdraw my favor from you. To say nothing of how long you would be able to support yourselves and act freely without my provisions and blessing. Now then…did you have something you wished to discuss with me?”
Shining Armor’s face remained defiant, but the way in which Fancy Pants said that made it clear what the situation was. He had been deflated. He sat there a moment, grasping the armrest, looking like he wanted to say more and not just due to his outstanding concerns.
“No,” was all he finally got out. “I’d like to return to our chambers so I can write that message to Twily.”
“Thank you,” the grand chancellor answered, his face not showing the slightest hint of gratitude. “Then if that will be all, I will retire home for the evening. The major general will see you back.”
“Were you trying to get our heads in nooses back there, or what?”
“I wasn’t about to agree to that! Not on Twily’s behalf or anyone’s!”
Sunset rolled her eyes and let out an audible fume, for once not caring if the walls of their rooms were thick enough to block out any outside noise. No sooner had the last of them entered and Stygian shut the door behind them than she blew up. “Haven’t you ever heard of an offer you can’t refuse? That guy is the only person on this planet who is giving you and your sisters any legitimacy and is saving you from the torches and pitchforks, and you just told him to shove it when he asked you for a favor!”
“That wasn’t a favor; it was murder! And Twily’s not an assassin!” He turned to Big Mac. “Is Applejack an assassin?”
He shook his head once. “Nope.”
He turned to Marble Pie. “Is Pinkie Pie an assassin?”
“Mmm-mmm.”
“Then all I did was save him the trouble of asking them!” Shining Armor concluded as he turned back to Sunset. “And I’m sure Rarity, Rainbow Dash, and Fluttershy would have felt the same way!”
Sunset grasped her head and let out a massive groan as she spun about and stomped across the room. “You people drive me absolutely crazy sometimes! It’s not enough that you already got so many people against you—you have to go looking for trouble by pasting more targets on your back!”
“It’s called ‘having principles’. This isn’t self-defense or trying to stop monsters—it’s waiting until someone is lulled into a false sense of security and then murdering her in cold blood.”
She scoffed. “Well, if you think Tempest Shadow is going to give you an ounce of the same courtesy, you’ve got another think coming! You heard what the chancellor said! The world would be better off without her!”
“It’s not Twily’s job to go around ‘getting rid of the bad people’! No one has the right no matter how much power they have!”
“You and your precious ‘principles’… What good do they do you? What good are they going to be if they get you imprisoned or killed? Look around!” She spun to Big Mac and pointed straight at him. “The only thing holding your ground did for your family is get them killed!” She spun to Marble Pie next, pointing so sharply she actually shrunk back. “And you? You might as well have been waiting in a death camp with your family because you couldn’t stifle those prayers of yours!” She turned back to Shining Armor. “I could have had you killed if your parents hadn’t sold out your fake sister because you wouldn’t talk!” She wheeled around one more time.
“And as for…”
Her finger had just gone up, pointing at Stygian. He showed nothing…but she slowly trailed off regardless. Her face softened and she was still for a moment, before she turned and looked back over the room.
Shining Armor showed nothing, but Big Mac’s jaw had tightened as he looked at the floor. Marble Pie was shrinking back. And though Stygian wasn’t showing anything, it was clear what was about to come and he was expecting it.
Sunset stood there silently, before her finger slowly withdrew and her hand fell. Her eyes looked to the floor. She nearly turned away, but after a half-turn she paused and turned back.
“I’m…sorry. To everyone.”
Big Mac and Marble Pie said nothing else, but eased up and went about their tasks. Stygian himself remained silent. Shining Armor inhaled and exhaled before stepping forward. “I suppose I could have used more tact, but…what’s done is done now. But even if I was alright with this, we can’t let Twilight and the others be dragged away now.” He sighed and ran his hand through his hair. “And on top of all that, I got so worked up I didn’t even think to ask about those refugees…”
Sunset grabbed one of her arms and looked to the side. “That was probably for the best. We didn’t need to agitate him any more than he is already. I know Fancy Pants is a stuffed shirt, but…I’m honestly a little surprised at him. First this turn on Fillydelphia and now he practically threatens us. I thought he was more open-minded…” She exhaled. “What do we do now?”
Shining Armor had no answer. He crossed his arms and stared at a spot on the floor. There was nothing from Big Mac or Marble Pie either.
Practically bolting upright in her seat, Twilight snapped off of the tabletop. She instantly heard Spike lift his own head and emit a panicked yelp. She sat there for a moment, taking in how dark the library was and how only her small desk oil lamp was providing any illumination before she realized what had happened. She had to have nodded off again, and this time done so until after nightfall.
She blinked twice before turning to her side, seeing Fluttershy standing nearby. She had shrunk back in surprise at her reaction. Twilight exhaled and eased back.
“Sorry, Fluttershy. I just got a little startled… Phew. I think I was still dreaming about researching…”
“Oh…ok.” Fluttershy meekly righted herself. “Um…how is it going?”
“Really good, actually. I think if I can get Starlight’s next batch of notes, I might actually have it cracked by tomorrow. And not a moment too soon.”
“Oh…um…that reminds me.”
Fluttershy relaxed a bit more, and at that point Twilight realized she had been clutching a couple of envelopes until that point. She proceeded to hand over the far larger of the two, which looked as if it contained multiple sheets of paper in a stack. “This came in on the latest train from Starlight Glimmer. Also, Shining Armor sent another letter.” With that, she passed over the second, smaller envelope.
Twilight accepted both, although she almost immediately set Shining Armor’s down and began to tear into the first. “Perfect…this is just what I’ve been waiting for. Sometimes it amazes me how Starlight is able to multitask so efficiently…” She grasped the papers and pulled them out, flipping past the opening letter and looking beyond it. She flipped through a few of them before smiling. “Terrific!” She nearly put them down and went right back into her work, when she paused and turned back to Fluttershy. “Oh…has there been anything else? Any more arrivals?”
Fluttershy shook her head. “And no sign of King Sombra either…thank goodness.”
“I hope so…that it doesn’t mean he’s found what he’s looking for.”
Fluttershy paled before shrinking a little. “Oh…”
Twilight rifled through the pages a bit longer before she realized what she had said. “Uh, I…I mean, I’m sure he hasn’t. And we’ll be able to get after him soon. I’m sure of it. A-A-Anyway…thanks for the mail. Um, uh…what’s for dinner?”
The woman blinked. “Um…it’s 10 o’clock. I was about to go to bed for the night.”
Twilight paused, then turned to the grandfather clock. Sure enough, it was a few minutes past now. She had gotten so used to the chiming that it hadn’t even roused her. “Oh…uh…yeah. Well, I’m not that hungry anyway. I’ll head to the kitchen if I need anything.”
“Aren’t…you going to head to bed?”
Twilight exhaled. “I know I’ve been really burning the midnight oil lately, but I’m this close. I’ll never be able to sleep if I stop now. But as soon as I have this cracked, I’ll take a break.”
“Alright… Good night, Twilight.”
“Good night.”
Twilight didn’t look up at Fluttershy again, but she heard as she slowly made her way back to the library doors, passed through, and closed them again. She was left in the silence of the chamber as Spike let his head slump again—the only noise being that of the burning oil of the lamps.
Only a little while longer she set the papers down and took up her pen to start transcribing the notes into her own work. After only working for a few minutes she began to smile. Everything was beginning to come clear now. She could already start to make out the more common words like “park”, “woods”, and “hills”. As she got more into her “groove”, she became more alert and worked faster. In a half hour’s time, she had transcribed four pages, although she didn’t pay attention to the clock again after that. She became too absorbed in her work and too focused…
“Grr…”
Twilight looked up, her concentration broken, and puzzled to hear Spike suddenly growling. She glanced down at him, only to see that he had gotten up and was barring his teeth behind her. She instantly thought that was silly, and nearly scolded him for growling at shadows but instinctively turned and looked behind her.
She nearly leapt in her seat again; this time from true surprise.
Luna was there and standing no more than three meters away.
Her appearance alone would have been startling enough, considering how rarely she made an appearance to anyone, and most people would have left it at that. Twilight, however, noticed other things. She had never heard the door to the library open after Fluttershy left and, sure enough, from here she could see it was still closed. She certainly hadn’t heard her approach either.
But what caught Twilight most of all, and she was unsure if she had imagined it, was that she had seen a momentary look of surprise on Luna’s face—as if she had been caught by Spike sounding off.
She also looked as if she quickly pulled one of her hands behind her…or had she imagined that as well?
It lasted only a heartbeat, if it happened at all, and then Luna was again her normal morose and stoic self and staring at her with those pale green eyes.
“Making progress?” she asked after a long silence.
Twilight was quiet for some time in response, for even after sitting there a short while she didn’t feel much more comfortable. “…Yes. I just got Starlight’s notes and I think I about have the cipher cracked. I think this is the last all-nighter I’m going to have to pull before we can read the maps and books.”
“I see.”
There was another pause. Awkward this time, and a little unnerving. Twilight, at length, began to slowly turn back to her work; even though she felt a sense that maybe giving her back to Luna might not have been the best idea…
“I don’t suppose, if I asked you to cease your research now, you would do so?”
The mage paused, puzzled, but moreover further unnerved.
“Of…of course not. We need to do this to stop Sombra. To stop all of this. I need to learn as much as I can to give us a hope of finding all those Anima Viris.”
“Knowledge can be a curse,” Luna answered, finally breaking her own stance to step over to the table alongside her. Twilight halted in her work again but Luna didn’t bother her. She began to idly look over the books she had collected there. “My sister was burdened with more knowledge than anyone. She thought it entailed a responsibility greater than what was already put on her. Enough to where she tried to do the impossible—change everyone’s destiny.”
“What…do you mean?”
Luna didn’t answer. She looked over a few more books, but then glanced back up at Twilight.
“Where life exists, Twilight Sparkle, death is inevitable. As horrible and grotesque as some things are in this world…in this existence…they are inescapable. Some things, in the end, have to be accepted.”
Twilight frowned slightly back. “I appreciate the concern, but I’m not going to sit idly by and just let this happen.” With that, she looked back to her work.
“You must be my sister’s student. She said the same thing to me once…” Luna mused. “And I suppose your friends feel the same way?”
“Of course they do,” she answered, not looking up this time. “We all do. We’re not going to just let the Angra Mainyu destroy this world.”
Luna didn’t answer, or move. She was quiet and still for a long time. Twilight kept trying to work and ignore her, but she could feel her eyes on her. And the fact that she didn’t move or say anything gradually began to unnerve her.
After a couple minutes, she spoke again in a softer, more inquisitive tone.
“Tell me, Twilight Sparkle…just how well do you know your friends?”
She trailed off in her writing. Her face looked a little puzzled as she turned to Luna. “Excuse me?”
“How much do you know about them, exactly?”
Twilight frowned again. “Well…Applejack’s a farmer from Appleloosa, Rarity’s a clothing business owner from Manehattan-”
“Not that. How did they grow up? What were they like as children? How did they get by from day to day before the Lunar Fall?”
Twilight hesitated, a grimace coming over her face. She only knew the answer for one of them, and she had done her best not to think too much of that ever since she learned it. Instead, she turned the question back. “What does it matter?”
Luna let out a “hmph”. “You have put an awful lot of faith and trust in people you know so little about.”
“Well…” she hesitated, looking a little uneasy. “Maybe…but we’ve had each other’s backs for a while now. They came to my rescue on Sunset’s airship. So…so yeah, I trust them. Just like they trust me.”
Luna didn’t seem too moved by that answer, as she stepped away from the table and turned her back to Twilight, walking over to the nearest bookcase.
“Almost as if you were drawn to one another…?”
Twilight was puzzled at that question. “I…don’t know if I ever really thought about it that way before… More like we were all just in the right place at the right time.”
“And did you ever think for a moment that it was somewhat odd that you have never had to use the Binding Seal on any of them?”
Again, Twilight was caught. She had never really thought of that either and looked down a little uncertainly. “Well…I…that is…I mean, it’s not unheard of. There’s a lot of Promethian Sigil bearers I’ve been around who haven’t…you know…gone wild.”
Luna stopped walking. She kept her back to Twilight for a little longer, before she turned slightly toward her. Her voice turned more inquisitive and probing.
“Between you and Sunset…which one of you would you say is older?”
Twilight was indeed struck by this question; partially because of how odd it was, but also partially because Luna sounded very sincere about it. “I haven’t the foggiest idea. I guess Sunset based on what she told about me…how she says she was Celestia’s student first…”
“Yet you two are so close in appearance, one could easily say you were the same age.”
The mage nearly answered that, only to blink. “I…never really thought about it, but it kind of looks like that. It’s…it’s weird, now that I’m considering it. I don’t remember ever seeing Sunset in any grades, higher or lower, but…we couldn’t have been that far apart, could we…?”
On hearing that, Luna turned fully around. Twilight was shaken out of her thoughts, for her face was suddenly insistent as she looked straight into Twilight’s eyes.
“My face, Twilight Sparkle. Can you ever recall seeing my face prior to us meeting in Trottingham?”
Now the woman was truly baffled. “What?”
Yet before she could ask further, Luna went wide-eyed. As if she had done something, or nearly done something, that scared herself. She suddenly looked away and swallowed. “I’ve said too much.” She turned about and began to walk toward the library exit.
“Hey…wait!”
Luna didn’t hesitate. She soon reached the doors, and this time Twilight clearly heard them open and close as she passed through them. As the door shut again, she was once again left in the silence of the library.
Only at that point did Spike relax and lay back down. Twilight picked up on that and was further confused. He had been calm enough around Luna for weeks. Only now did he strongly react. He normally didn’t do that out of the blue.
Only when he picked up on someone with hostile intent.
Twilight was left unnerved for several minutes. A thought entered her mind that somehow Luna would again enter the library unannounced and appear behind her, and she realized that not only did she feel a sense of foreboding at that but had actually felt relief when she left. At last, however, she shook her head and turned back to the table.
She realized she had forgotten completely about the letter from Shining Armor. Quickly, she took it up, broke the seal, and began to look over it.
In spite of being alone in the library, she couldn’t help but remark aloud.
“What…?”
“As welcome of a change as this is, I must say, it is an unexpected one.”
Shining Armor didn’t answer that comment from the grand chancellor. He merely continued to sit alone, looking a bit more tense considering how many people he was surrounded with in the chamber and that he was by himself this time, but nevertheless kept his composure. Most of them regarded him dully, after all—save for Kibitz who showed just the slightest amount of puzzlement. All others that showed any expression were more confused than anything.
Fancy Pants himself, who was still looking unwell and showed it, nevertheless tried to be as critical as possible as he wiped his forehead and leaned in closer, folding his arms in front of him. “As much as I dislike looking a gift horse in the mouth, I would like to know what brought it on.”
“Neither my sister nor I really like the idea of all of this,” Shining Armor retorted. “But…I saw your point last time. We can’t wait for her to target us later. Besides, it’s like you said—we benefit from Manehattan. We can’t afford to break that relationship either. She agreed that as unpleasant as this is, ultimately it’s the best thing to be done.”
“I see. Well, I applaud your sister’s wisdom.” He closed his eyes for a moment, rubbing the bridge of his nose, but then squaring his gaze on Shining Armor again. “However, given our exchange last time, I am still rather curious about why you and your company have accepted this role. Surely Twilight Sparkle and her more intimate companions would be better suited for this.”
“I’m the one who’s the soldier. An officer of Hoofheim. I’m the one who knows how to kill someone in the line of duty. And I’d rather it be me than her. As I said before, she’s currently worrying about the fate of all of us and I don’t want her pulled away from it. Even if she wasn’t, I’d gladly take this for her. If you’re worried about our qualifications, there’s no need.” He held up his hand. “As you can see, I have both a Promethian Sigil and an Anima Viri. I’m more suited than most people in our group up in Canterlot already, and I have three others with me. Two with military experience, if you include the militia.”
A pause. “I suppose I can’t argue with your reasoning. Can I trust your conviction in this manner?”
“I told you, sir: I know how to kill someone in the line of duty. If this has to be done, then I’ll do it. Besides, at this point, it’s too close to the conference to get Twily or her friends down here.”
He let out a half-chuckle as he pulled at his collar, as if warm. “I can’t argue that point at all. I forgot just how long it takes to get messages to and from Canterlot, even by train.”
“I only have one stipulation. I request that Major General Kibitz be appointed as the military liaison for this conference. So that we can continue to confer with him.”
Kibitz looked up at this, but Fancy Pants merely smiled weakly. “Easily done. I had been considering the major general for this position and, while there are others that are more qualified, if it will help this operation to go more smoothly then the decision is as good as made. Very well then. I am glad to have your cooperation. The rail for Mount Aris will be departing early tomorrow, so I won’t detain you any longer. I am sure you and your company have preparations to make.”
“Yes sir,” Shining Armor answered with a nod. He began to rise out of his chair, and Kibitz moved to do the same, when he paused and sat again. “Oh… One other thing, sir.”
“Hmm?”
“Twilight told me to make sure to tell you not to let the admiral know how many Promethian Sigil bearers are in your country.”
There was a lengthy pause. Fancy Pants stared back silently at Shining Armor for a long time, as some looks of puzzlement went over those in the room. He didn’t move a muscle during that time.
“…I’m afraid I don’t follow.”
“One of my group, Stygian…he’s very sharp. When you mentioned last time that they asked about how much manpower was being committed to reclaiming Equestria and where the goodwill tours were planned, they were indirectly probing for how many Promethian Sigil bearers were there. I passed that on to Twilight and she agreed that they can’t have anything good in mind, especially if they’re being secretive about it.”
The grand chancellor showed nothing. After a moment, though, he nodded slowly.
“I see. I shall certainly take that matter under advisement. I had not considered it. Thank your sister for her insight.”
“Of course.”
“Please, retire for the evening. Major general, I’d like a brief word with you before you leave, since you are now the appointed liaison for the upcoming conference.”
He said this just as Kibitz was moving to rise along with Shining Armor. Instead, the old man ended up pausing where he was before sitting down again as the younger man walked to the exit and left. As soon as the door swung shut behind him, the grand chancellor turned his tired gaze over to the major general, but focused on him sharply.
“…Sir?”
“Major general, I am sure you are aware of what is expected of you at an international conference?”
He readily nodded. “Yes sir.”
“I will expect you to do the same here with all due diligence, but also to ensure that not only does Shining Armor’s company have everything they need to stay on task, but that they do remain on task.”
“Of course, sir.”
“Good. Now that this is settled…” His gaze grew a little harder. “Have you been sharing any information with his group that I have strictly informed you is on a need-to-know basis only?”
Kibitz looked slightly taken aback, but immediately shook his head. “No sir.”
“Are you absolutely certain of that? What I just heard gives me some reason to doubt.”
“Of course, sir.”
“Have you perhaps not made it perfectly clear to your subordinates that they too are to keep matters of state to themselves?”
“Absolutely, sir. I trust my men with my life.”
The grand chancellor continued to look at him critically. Certainly not trusting. To the point where even the old officer began to look unnerved at the level of distrust. “I understand that this…operation at the conference is well outside of our normal standards, Major General. Enough to where I’m sure you must have some misgivings. But these are desperate times. To ensure any form of stability for Greater Everfree, Trottingham’s efforts must be halted immediately. And this is the most effective and bloodless way to do so for everyone. Therefore, you will use whatever means necessary to ensure that Shining Armor and company carry it out. Do I make myself clear?”
He nodded. “Yes sir.”
“And I don’t want to hear any more of ‘Stygian’s theories’ until after this operation is complete either. Is that understood?”
“Yes sir.”
“Good. Then you are dismissed as well. Make sure that Shining Armor and company are on the train promptly at 7 o’clock tomorrow.”
“This don’t make any goll durn sense ta’ me.”
Twilight shrugged as she shoved a piece of toast into her mouth; the first meal she had gotten in a while. It was afternoon and she was only getting to breakfast now, but she was pleased with herself and the results of her research. The library was filled. Not only had the other five girls filled in, but they had some additional “guests” along. Fluttershy had Angel in her lap while Gallus, claiming he had nothing better to do, was hanging around Pinkie and Dash although neither seemed to have much use for him at the moment.
If that wasn’t all, Luna had made another appearance, although she was keeping her distance and merely seemed to be putting an ear in on all that was going on.
Twilight swallowed and answered. “I have to admit I think it’s more than a little awkward myself… I figured if there was some sort of meeting that the grand chancellor wanted to have he would have asked us to be there. But…seeing how busy we are trying to stop Sombra, I can’t say I’m too upset about him staying behind.”
Applejack, who Twilight couldn’t recall ever taking a seat since they arrived in Canterlot, was pacing about in light of her recent news. “That Big Mac… He better not stick his foot in his mouth. He may not look it, but once he gets goin’ it’d take a team of mules to get his mouth shut again…”
Dash couldn’t help but burst out laughing. “Big Mac? Seriously? I thought he only knew how to say two words…”
“I’m sure Shining Armor wouldn’t have volunteered for this unless he was sure he could handle it,” Twilight reassured as she put the letter back down. “They probably just want them to commentate on what’s going on in Canterlot or something. Besides, he said they needed more time to ask about the refugees.”
“Aw…” Pinkie moaned. “I hope the conference isn’t a party. It’s been too long since I’ve been to a good party! That can be serious, you know!”
“We’ve got something more serious. I think I found what Sombra wants…and where it’s at.”
The five girls immediately looked intrigued. Luna herself raised her eyebrow. Twilight, on her part, turned about, grasped the atlas she and Starlight had been focused on for days, and showed it to everyone. It was opened to a map of Equestria, and she proceeded to point to one of the northernmost regions.
“Sedes Imperii Crystal.”
It was slight, but Luna stiffened ever so slightly on hearing that name. The others simply looked confused. “Sed-a-what-now?”
“‘The Seat of the Crystal Empire’. I remember years ago that Headmistress Celestia had a special password. I…don’t think it was one I was supposed to know, but I overheard her say it once: Crystal imperium. When I started translating the unknown places on the map, I noticed this one and it stood out to me because of that password.”
“I don’t get it,” Rarity answered. “Why in the world would Sombra want a place with that name and…” She looked at the map, grimacing on seeing that it was at a considerable northern latitude. “…that climate?”
Twilight pivoted around and put the atlas back, only to take up another open book and swivel back around. This one seemed more akin to the picture book that had Nightmare Moon in it, and was perhaps of a similar volume. She had it opened to one page and pointed to it.
“For this.”
The girls leaned in closer, seeing the image of a roughly cut and yet regular gem that appeared to vaguely be in the shape of a giant emerald heart.
“Crystal Cor, or ‘The Crystal Heart’. Normally I wouldn’t put too much faith in fairy tales, but considering everything we’ve been through… This isn’t just a big piece of jewelry. According to the text, it’s both a vessel and beacon of ‘light, warmth, and life’; bringing all three to lands of dark, cold, and death.”
“Do you think that this could let him get a body?” Fluttershy asked timidly.
Twilight grimly bowed her head. “I’m not sure, but even if it can’t, the text also says that it has ‘the flame of over 20,000 souls’ inside it.”
Dash looked uneasy. “So…if I was this big soul-sucking monster running around tried to get all juiced up…”
“Oh, oh! I know this one!” Pinkie chimed in. “Then I’d go straight for the Crystal Heart! Yay! Did I get it right?”
Looking likewise uncomfortable, Rarity winced. “I’m…afraid you might have, Pinkie.”
“Apparently the real place this Crystal Heart is supposed to be used isn’t even in Equestria,” Twilight went on. “It’s all the way down in the Southern Hemisphere—almost at the South Pole. Which means that it’s not in a place Sombra would know where to look for it. At least…not initially. Because this place is so remote, there’s a chance he saved searching for it last.”
Applejack frowned. “Makes sense. He’d burn through all his ‘food’ lookin’ around up there…”
“So that means we need to get there first. Once we have it, we’ll be able to bait him.” She sighed as she let the book fall on her lap. “Now the only question is how to get up there. It’s four hundred miles away…”
“Tiberius will take you.”
Hearing Luna speak up caused all of the girls to spin to her, and even Fluttershy recoiled—still not used to hearing her voice. She was looking at them calmly in response, however.
“Excuse me?”
“One of the custom-built academy engines. It was constructed specifically to be strong enough to smash through most debris on tracks.”
Twilight looked puzzled. “We didn’t see any engine named Tiberius at the station…”
“That’s because it wasn’t at the station. It’s at a private yard located within the mount Canterlot is built upon. I surveyed it shortly after we arrived. Most of the engines were in disrepair, but that one is still intact. It should be readily serviceable enough to get you there.”
Dash glared at her for a moment before groaning. “Are you kidding me? We’ve gone through all the hell of cleaning up the train tracks to get back to Manehattan, and we had a whole other train engine that could have done the job the whole time?!”
Luna calmly arose and began to walk toward Twilight’s table. “It still would have required fixing up the service roundabout for that. It’s not on the same course as the regular tracks. Besides, I wanted to keep it for a true emergency. It sounds like its time has come.”
Dash and Applejack alike both fumed, but Luna didn’t seem to care as she reached the table. She leaned over it, staring at the atlas again, and soon held out a finger to start tracing along it. “There are very few rails north of here. Your best bet is to take that rail to here…then here…then here…and finally here.” She traced her way along several junction points before reaching the northernmost one. She tapped the branch on the right. “This route has been out of service since I was a child and it was too far north to repair.” She tapped the one on the left afterward. “This will be your best chance of making it that far.”
Twilight looked at her pointing on the map, but also gave her a somewhat curious expression; more at her behavior than anything else. However, Pinkie hopped to her feet for joy. “Yay! A new train trip!”
Applejack eyed her a bit warily. “Uh, just the same, we only need that track as I reckon. Why can’t we use our train?”
“It will never make it,” Luna answered, turning away and facing her. “Not with eight years worth of growth and debris on those tracks. Tiberius, on the other hand, was designed to move out of a war zone, if necessary. You’ll spend months clearing out the debris otherwise.”
“Well why don’t we just walk, then?” Dash threw in. “Who needs a train?”
Rarity immediately snapped to her. “Pardon me, but I am not marching 400 miles through rough terrain in a wilderness filled with Nighttouched and vulnerable to Sombra at any moment, Ms. Dash.”
“…Oh yeah. All that.”
“You don’t have to take the engine if you don’t want it,” Luna flatly stated. “I already told you how futile your endeavor was once. You’re the ones who insist on moving forward. If you want to reach the Seat of the Crystal Empire, Tiberius is your best bet. Otherwise, leave it.”
There was a moment of silence around the room, but it didn’t last. Twilight exhaled and put her book aside before standing up. “I’m for it.”
“Are you certain, dear?” Rarity asked.
“We’ve been trying to find a way to stop Sombra for a while now, and the Angra Mainyu is still out there somewhere. I don’t want to give it any more time than we already have. We still have to track down five more after Sombra, you know. At least if we stop him, we’ll know it can never be at full power.”
The others hesitated, but finally Applejack let out a swear. “Damnit, I ain’t about ta’ get cold feet over a train of all things. I’m in.”
“Cold feet…an interesting choice of words,” Rarity grimaced. “I wish I had planned my winter wardrobe in advance…”
“Why not? Getting bored sitting around here anyway…” Dash shrugged.
“Oh, Gallus?”
The boy, who had been busying himself tidying up, suddenly looked up on hearing Fluttershy call to him. He turned around only to see her walking forward and holding her unique rabbit out toward him.
“Angel really doesn’t care for cold weather that much, and I know he doesn’t like it when I take him on long journeys. Could you please watch him for a few days until I get back? He may seem a little rough at first, but he’s really a sweetie when you get to know him.”
Gallus stared at her a moment, then down at Angel. The rabbit already was giving his best rendition of a “death stare” at the boy. He tried holding his hand out partially toward him, and as he did the bunny proceeded to bare his teeth and slick his ears back until he recoiled.
“…Really. I think I’ve seen Nighttouched sweeter than him.”
“Oh, he’s just shy around new people. Isn’t that right, Angel?”
Gallus rolled his eyes and sighed. “I suppose it’s not as dangerous as harvesting sugar cane…although it’s probably got a better chance of me losing fingers…”
It was a bit of a rush for the group, but with help from the Manehattan government ensuring they were properly cleaned and dressed, they reached the Manehattan Central Station the next day to the tune of a crowd of security and demonstrators. With some pushing and struggling, they made it to the cars and joined the procession to enter.
Delegates and representatives were limited, and their small group had taken up five slots on the allowed number, but even so Sunset only had a chance to glimpse Fancy Pants himself getting on board as he was the most photogenic individual for the reporters. He wasn’t alone. His trophy wife was on his arm, appearing to be close and intimate enough but likely helping him move along into the car. She saw no more than that as they were in separate cars, but that suited her fine. It was even more pleasing to her that they were finally in a train with separate riding compartments for her to stay out of sight, although she did think it was a bit unusual that the train itself had far more cars on it than one would have anticipated. She recalled they had been told this would be a limited affair…
Once they were seated, Shining Armor spoke up to the major general. “Who was the woman with the grand chancellor?”
“The first lady, Fleur-de-Lis. It’s a bit unconventional to bring significant others to private conferences such as this, but considering the stress that the grand chancellor has been going through it would likely help things. It’s a bit of an irony, to be honest. Back when this first started, she was the one who was too ill to make many public appearances…”
Neither Sunset nor Shining Armor cared much for it beyond that explanation, and soon after the train was off.
It wasn’t a short journey. They were traveling for two full days and nights. At this point, it was a bizarre experience for Sunset to be sleeping on a bed car on a train as opposed to being huddled in some corner either fearful for what awaited when she arrived somewhere or recovering after fleeing for her life. And while the accommodations were as comfortable as could be expected for a luxury train, most of the momentary comfort she received was from watching the world slowly go by. Their path took them through the more open and rustic country of Fillydelphia, around the grimier and bleaker parts of Griffonstone’s industrialized areas, and finally began to lead them up the hills into the Mount Aris territory. From there, the train went into the mountains and hours were spent weaving around the rocky and towering cliffs and peaks as they slowly rose higher and higher.
Toward the end of the journey, it grew noticeably cooler and Sunset felt her ears pop before they finally reached plateaus that had dwellings and settlements. Even then, they had to weave through two more series of mountains before they finally reached the valley that led to the main seat of Mount Aris itself. The train fell along a river and followed it all the way through the last leg of the journey until the city itself loomed forward—the most populated high elevation city in the world.
And one, Sunset noted, that was surrounded only by other mountains aside from the well-watched and guarded valley. A fact she had noted back when she still worked with Trottingham—no other entrance and no other escape.
Gradually they made their way more toward the main city, where the terraced cliffs on either side began to rise to show off series of vertically climbing streets and buildings. Other tracks began to converge and they gradually began to slow as they reached the station. It was at that point that they all got around the windows and looked outside. Many different trains were already gathered there. Some of which were in colors and styles they had never seen before.
“I recognize the Fillydelphian and Griffonstone trains,” Shining Armor mused as he looked at one particular one. “But I’ve never seen an emblem like that.”
“It looks even more secondhand and ramshackle than the Griffonstone one, though,” Sunset muttered.
“That one would be from Klugtown,” Kibitz spoke up. “This is a rather big event. Not only do we have representatives of the major nations of Greater Everfree present, but the smaller former nations as well and others from around the world.”
“Really?”
“It would seem, even with the shadow over Equestria gone, matters are now involving everyone in the world. We had better get together. They’ll expect all members of the delegation party to make themselves seen on arrival.”
A few minutes later, the train finished pulling in, and not long after that everyone dismounted. Sunset hated this part, but she had to make herself somewhat visible along with everyone else when they assembled to make the trip from the station to the complex where the conference was being held. The people of Mount Aris had cleaned up the station and the pathway there, leaving it clear and even a bit festively arranged with banners and flowers for the occasion. However, the looks on everyone’s faces belayed a different story. All of the guards and soldiers here were stone faced and dark; not making anyone feel particularly welcome. Their eyes were burning into them at all times, and not so much as a word was spoken aloud aside from the basic exchange to go with the envoy. Worst of all was when they all had to be checked. Even the grand chancellor was vigorously patted down to ensure he wasn’t smuggling any weapons on his person, so naturally Marble Pie was far more panicky when they weren’t shy about feeling up her dress.
When this was finally done, they went up a series of narrow walkways, going well away from the main traveled roads, until they emerged in front of a much larger square. Large enough for hundreds of people, and filled with several gathered groups already. All of this was spread out in front of a towering structure—at least eight stories tall, ornate, and spreading all up and along the mountainside.
“That thing’s almost bigger than the fort Twilight, Dash, and I got stuck in…” Sunset muttered.
Kibitz wasn’t close enough to hear but Stygian was. “That’s the central palace—one of the largest man-made structures in the modern world. As I understand it, it’s more than large enough to host the conferences in one wing while boarding all delegates in another.”
“So it’s basically the perfect place to keep us all under watch at all times.”
“Essentially, yes.”
Sunset frowned and kept approaching. It wasn’t much longer before she was able to start making out the groups themselves. Each one seemed to be a different delegation. Even as world-experienced as she was, she didn’t recognize all of them; but many seemed to be of the more ill-tempered and cross variety. She noticed the Dragonlands delegation seemed as if they were as sore as the day they had to surrender to Trottingham, and they were taking it out on anyone unfortunate enough to cross their paths. However, another delegation with long hair, long beards, and large horned headdresses seemed even more cross. Apparently one of the Mount Aris soldiers had done something to offend them and now they were cowering in their wake, as their head diplomat seemed ready to fling him to the ground and stomp him into oblivion.
However, what really caught Sunset’s attention was when her eyes managed to drift over the FIllydelphian delegation by mistake. She spotted Neighsay speaking with their own envoy and nearly winced on spotting him and turned to hide her face. But before she could, her eyes shot away from him and just happened to make contact with a girl at his side—none other than Cozy Glow.
Once their eyes met, both were stunned for a moment as recognition struck both simultaneously. Cozy Glow’s jaw dropped in alarm. Immediately, Sunset made a curt “sshing” motion with her lips. She quickly clammed up, and made a discrete “my lips are sealed” motion to her before turning back to Neighsay.
“Do you know her?”
Sunset heard Stygian’s question, but didn’t turn to him as she kept walking. “Unfortunately, yes…but hopefully she keeps us quiet.”
Fortunately, the group didn’t dwell long on the square. They proceeded straight to the main building. It was in there that Sunset got another touch of unpleasantness. Whoever constructed it must have had a flair for unique engineering, because it would have been almost impossible for her to find her way anywhere had she wandered in alone. Lots of strange turns and abrupt terminating hallways, and floors that seemed to be “half-floors” in between other floors. They barely seemed to be able to proceed in a straight line. Sunset quickly realized that if some sort of crisis arose, and for whatever reason they would need to get somewhere, including out of the palace, in a hurry, there would be no way they would know where to go without walking into more soldiers or dead ends.
At long last, however, they arrived at a hall of doors that bore the likeness either of an extremely high end luxury hotel or an old line of bedrooms from a bygone age. The envoy led them to one door in particular before producing a key and unlocking it, then presented it to Shining Armor.
“I apologize that we only have one key available. Rooms are arranged with one central area and individual bedrooms on the side. It’s four to a chamber, but we were instructed to place five in this one. It will be a little cramped.”
“That’s just fine, thank you,” Shining Armor immediately answered.
“The lavatory is down the hall. Please do not leave this wing unless on diplomatic business.” The envoy turned to the major general and the others. “If you’ll come this way, I’ll show you to your rooms.”
Kibitz nodded, then turned back to Shining Armor. “Go ahead and get situated. We’ll talk in an hour. This side of the hall is reserved for the Manehattan delegation so there should be no issues, but we are in Mount Aris territory at this point so do as they say and keep your time outside of the room to a minimum.”
Shining Armor nodded back. “We will.”
Giving a polite bow to the group, Kibitz turned and left with the others on to the next room. Shining Armor himself led Sunset and the group through the door, and as soon as they were all in locked it behind them.
It was pretty nice-looking accommodations. One side of the chamber was dominated with a rather large window that afforded a lovely view of the mountainous valley outside, and other than that there were all the comforts in décor and furnishing that one would expect of the peak of country living in the highlands. Their luggage was already arranged in the center of the chamber and the doors were open to show the individual bedrooms with one of the male rooms set up for two.
However, none of them looked at ease or ready to relax. They soon began to fan out into the room and take seats, but even this was done deliberately and not to let a load off. Shining Armor himself took in a deep breath and an exhale.
“Well…we’ve only got a few more minutes.” He turned to Stygian. “Are you sure about this?”
“Absolutely,” he answered with perfect confidence. “The only question is how the major general will take it. One way or another, we’ll soon find out if he’s truly on our side or not…”
Shortly after knocking on the door to the room, almost more shortly than he expected, Kibitz saw it open wide and found Big Macintosh looking down at him. His look was a bit stern, but he didn’t get a chance to dwell on it long before he heard Shining Armor.
“Greetings, Major General. Please come in.”
Clearing his throat, he stepped inside. He saw that the others were already in the common area, seated on the various cushioned chairs that were available. In fact, they had ended up taking all of them; leaving only standing room for him.
He ignored that and stood to one side. “Good afternoon, sirs and madams. I’m sorry it took so long for me to get here. I know this isn’t the best-”
Click.
The sound behind Kibitz made him pause. He turned around, just in time to hear the floorboards creak as Big Mac, who had just finished locking the door, stood in front of it with his arms crossed.
He looked back at the room. While Sunset was keeping her own head bowed, Shining Armor, Stygian, and even the normally-shy Marble Pie were looking back at him with rather hard expressions. They let the silence linger for a moment.
“Before we get into anything else, sir, I want you to be honest with us. What do you really know about the refugees that came to Canterlot and why do you want to know about how many Promethian Sigil bearers are here?”
Kibitz, already surprised at this turn in behavior, looked alarmed. “What in the world is this?” He began to look about. “What are you all-”
“Answer my question, Major General. We’ve been led around long enough.”
He turned back to Shining Armor. “I haven’t any idea what you mean. And I do not appreciate this threatening environment in the least.”
“You’re lying,” Stygian flatly answered. “I know that for a fact.”
“How dare you accuse me of-”
“Save your faux indignation. Marble Pie told us everything.”
The officer’s words caught in his throat. He turned to the woman, but she merely nodded with an “mmm-hmm”.
“It was an idea that came to me ever since we arrived in Manehattan,” Stygian explained. “Before I even let everyone in the group in on it. Marble Pie is a woman of few words, but what words she does have are bilingual thanks to her constant forced migrations. I told her simply to make sure that when she went out for her daily prayers to Gaia Everfree that she speak only in Warmblood. That soon led all of the soldiers keeping watch on us to assume she was so quiet because she couldn’t speak Everfreesian. After that, I only had to start asking questions that no one would answer of the local guards and wait for them to explain to the newer recruits why they wouldn’t answer whenever she was around.”
Kibitz didn’t answer, but he didn’t have to. His calm demeanor had broken, and his eyes were now filled with the look of a man caught in a trap.
Shining Armor stood up where he was and took a step forward; his face growing angrier. “There was a colony of Promethian Sigil bearers. And it was emptied by force. Most of all, you knew about it. And you lied to our faces when we asked you about it.”
“Now…” Kibitz began to speak up, his voice not as steady as before. “Hold on one moment…”
“What game are you playing at, Major General? Why is your government resorting to assassinations? And what does that have to do with the rest of the Promethian Sigil bearers unaccounted for in the world?”
“You have this all wrong…”
“Are you planning on doing with them whatever you did with that colony?” Shining Armor spoke more sharply, taking another step forward and making his hands into fists.
“Hold for one moment!” the major general outburst; so loudly and forcefully that Shining Armor stopped. However, both he and the others continued to stare. Looking resigned, Kibitz closed his eyes and sighed.
“Very well…I admit that I did lie to you when you first asked about this. Before we met with Twilight Sparkle, the ‘Fire Witch’ had been active and the Promethian Sigils were starting to appear. Several of them appeared on some of our own military and bureaucratic citizens. A few of them were on people of great importance to the Manehattan government with a lot of clout in their families. We didn’t know what to make of them other than they were getting targeted by whoever the Fire Witch was, and so we relocated them to a settlement under my supervision. As we didn’t want to attract any more attention or complicate matters, we simply left them there when Twilight revealed the news to us.”
“So why did you purge that colony?”
“That’s just it—we didn’t. The orders that I gave were first for protection of the community once we realized they were active targets and then to relocate them peacefully. Nonviolently. All of the correspondence that we received from our personnel situated there indicated that my orders were being carried out. After speaking with you, however, I sent a team to investigate it personally, and…and…”
As he trailed off, Stygian regarded him dully. “It was exactly as we said it was, wasn’t it?”
Kibitz sighed. “Not exactly… Aside from eight or so bodies, there were no signs of the others who had been living in that colony. And there were no signs of my own soldiers, live or dead.”
“Why didn’t you tell us this before?” Shining Armor retorted.
“Because of the exact way you are looking at me right now,” Kibitz responded bitterly. “I knew from the moment you asked that question you were eyeing me with suspicion. You’re still doing it even now. I knew if I told you the truth, you’d never believe me. And even if the Grand Chancellor hadn’t urged me to maintain relations with Twilight’s group no matter what, I didn’t want to give you reason to distrust me. I hoped that my dispatch would have proven your fears to be totally unfounded and then there would have been nothing to worry about. The fact that they were confirmed…well, the only thing left for it at that point was to try and get to the bottom of it before speaking with you again or you’d blame us for everything.”
He looked up and focused on Shining Armor more firmly.
“I know you have little reason to believe me in light of me withholding the truth from you, but I would never give such an order to those people. These are citizens of Manehattan—not prisoners of war or criminals.”
“If we’re to believe all of that,” Stygian interjected, “then why would your men have disobeyed you? Fear? Prejudice? Bribery?”
Kibitz shook his head to all three. “Those men and women were in my most exclusive unit. I picked them myself. They never would have done this willingly. They had to have been replaced by imposters. Spies of Trottingham, if you want my opinion. They’re the ones who keep trying to ascertain how many Promethian Sigil bearers are still in the world.”
“Unlikely.”
Both Sunset and Shining Armor looked to Stygian when he flatly stated that.
“Assuming you are telling the truth this time, and that you saw no bodies, and that they never reached their intended destination, then that can only mean that they were captured instead of relocated. Trottingham has no interest in capturing any more Promethian Sigil bearers—they only want them exterminated. That eliminates Manehattan too…again, assuming you are telling the truth. If you didn’t want to execute everyone in that colony, then why treat them like prisoners when they’re already loyal to your cause and working for you?”
Shining Armor turned back to Kibitz. “You wouldn’t be cooperating with Trottingham, would you? You both seem to have an interest in Promethian Sigil bearers…”
“Preposterous! Trottingham wants nothing but to gain ownership of Greater Everfree and to claim Manehattan’s economy for its own! Even if we did share their barbaric ideas toward eidolons, we would never side with them!”
“I believe that much, if nothing else,” Stygian answered.
“So why does Manehattan want to know how many Promethian Sigil bearers are left?” Shining Armor pressed.
Kibitz looked surprised again. “We don’t!”
“Really,” Stygian calmly answered. “I told Shining Armor to ask that question at his meeting on purpose. I had already deduced what it was that Tempest Shadow really wanted from that information, true, but I wasn’t sure if your government had done the same…or, more importantly, if you didn’t want us to know if your government had done the same. We’re under your jurisdiction. The fact that the Grand Chancellor called you to remain behind when he normally would have released you is all the confirmation I needed.”
Kibitz was silent for a moment before exhaling. “You truly are a clever one, young man. This time, however, I have nothing to give you but the same truth. I do not know. I was truly stunned when the Grand Chancellor accosted me over it.” He frowned as he looked to the floor. “I hadn’t seen him act like that in some time…if ever. Almost like he was possessed of a different mind all together. He looked as if he was ready to throw me into the stockade. I don’t like to admit this, but considering how he reacted, he had to have known more about that matter than he led on. He would never have been so defensive over a lie. That’s all I know. I have no idea what Trottingham wants with that information or why the Grand Chancellor would seemingly be interested in the same, especially since we already have our own eidolons accounted for.”
There was silence in the room for a moment. Shining Armor looked up and to his other companions.
“And normally I’d be inclined to agree with that skepticism,” Stygian added. “But…he has a point. Manehattan already has a good relationship with their eidolons, and there is little reason for them to do anything to jeopardize that relationship when they represent the only real advantage they possess over Trottingham and its would-be allies. Moreover…”
He folded his hands and looked at the others more seriously.
“This is strange timing indeed. I thought it was odd to begin with that, if the Grand Chancellor could somehow manage to sneak individuals in to assassinate Tempest Shadow, that he would rely on eidolons to do so. True, they may have the advantage in a fair fight, but I find it odd to believe that someone who specialized in assassination wouldn’t be better suited if they were to catch her off guard or even sleeping. I’m beginning to wonder if all at this conference is exactly what it seems…”
A moment of silence passed through the room.
“Any ideas?”
“None as of yet. Not without more information. Yet this locale…and this conference…I find it hard to imagine that’s coincidence.”
“A mass assassination?” Sunset asked. “Another situation like the Lunar Fall?”
“Highly improbable,” Kibitz pointed out. “This locale isn’t easily accessible even by airship and all ground routes are guarded. There is no escape for her. Tempest Shadow would have to fight through ever last guard in this palace and I know of none other at this conference who could possibly accomplish the same feat.”
Sunset bowed her head, looking a bit skeptical on hearing all of that, but Stygian shook his head. “I would not put that move past her based on past reports, but if Tempest’s only goal was to remove world leaders in one fell swoop then she’s gone about it wrong. There would be no need to antagonize leaders from off of Greater Everfree when Trottingham isn’t in a position to capitalize on it, and she would be better served by trying for a peace treaty in luring leaders in rather than potentially just ambassadors. My instincts tell me there’s something more pressing at stake than this.”
“Alright,” Shining Armor retorted, “but how do we find out what?”
Stygian paused a moment longer before looking up to Kibitz.
“Major General…exactly how did you plan on us enacting the assassination on Tempest Shadow without the palace security noticing?”
Kibitz took a deep breath, then nodded behind them. “You may have noticed the large window in your room overlooking the valley. This was originally to be the grand chancellor’s room before he brought his wife along and requested the smaller, more private accommodations. You see, there are only four rooms in the entire palace with this view and windows of this kind…not only large but capable of being opened and closed from this side. While it would require a bit of, shall we say, ‘rock climbing’, it’s possible to move from here to the Trottingham delegation’s rooms. Naturally, their windows are too small to enter through, but that would be where your special abilities would come in.”
Shining Armor grimaced a little at that, but Stygian kept pressing. “And it is possible to get to other floors of the castle from there?”
“Well…yes, but-”
Before he could say more, Stygian looked back to Shining Armor. “I think it would do us good if we could have a look around. Find out exactly what sort of other secrets this conference is hiding, if possible.”
Kibitz was aghast. “Wait, what? I can’t allow that! If you were to be caught-”
“We’ll just have to be extra careful. And only send one of us. Peer through the windows and report back.”
Sunset looked back at him wide-eyed. “That’s…a pretty tall order. You can’t just trapeze out there. The walls are a bit sloped but that’s a hell of a long drop… And none of us are good at mountaineering.”
“I admit I’m not terribly strong, even with my Promethian Sigil…” Stygian muttered, almost sounding upset about it, before looking up at the others. “Sir? Could you possibly…?”
Shining Armor let out a regretful exhale. “I’m sorry… Maybe if I used my Anima Viri I could, but then I’d be glowing and give myself away…” He looked up. “But Marble Pie used to work in a quarry. I don’t suppose…”
He didn’t even have to finish the thought before Marble Pie paled and shrank, hiding behind her bangs almost.
“…No, I guess not. Working with rocks isn’t the same as climbing on them… That only leaves…”
He hesitated, beginning to look more hopeful.
“Big Mac, weren’t you the one who patched the roof back at Canterlot?”
The farmer went wide-eyed and started to look nervous afterward. “Uh…uh…”
“Oh yes, he did. When we needed to open another wing of the dormitory,” Stygian spoke up. “And we didn’t have any scaffolding either. He just shinnied up the side with the tools he needed before tossing down a bucket and rope to have others send him the materials.”
He began to sweat a little. “Uh-uh-uh-uh…”
“It might not be the most ideal in the world, but it’s the best we can hope for.”
“How about it, Big Mac? This is like that job, only…you know…bigger.”
“Five stories bigger and much wider, to be exact…” Sunset muttered.
“Do you think you can do it?”
Big Mac’s sweat was beginning to run down his brow now, and his tongue-tiedness had grown so much he wasn’t even making coherent syllables anymore. Having everyone’s eyes on him only seemed to make it worse.
Yet before he could gather enough of his wits to respond, he spotted Marble Pie looking at him. She had poked back out from under her bangs and was now gazing at him rather hopefully. A faint smile of encouragement was on her face.
On seeing that, he coughed and swallowed.
“Uh…um…eeyup,” he finally answered.
“Oh, thanks a lot,” Shining Armor smiled back. “This is really important. We really appreciate it. We just need you to look into any of the windows and see if you can find anything unusual happening.”
“If you intend to do that, it’s not quite so simple,” Kibitz spoke up. “It’s true that we intended for you to use the windows, but Mount Aris isn’t entirely unaware of the possibility of delegates using them. That’s why they survey the walls from up above once an hour. Their reasoning is that none of the delegates will be able bodied enough to move along the sheer walls outside of that time.”
Big Mac’s smile disappeared.
“What more, the Grand Chancellor’s intent was that this would be carried out after the first day of negotiations. That leaves you only three nights in which to do this at the most.”
He began to sweat once again.
“That’s great,” Shining Armor answered. “Three nights. Which means if anything goes wrong tonight, Big Mac can use it as practice for the next night.”
Thud.
Everyone, Kibitz included, turned to Big Mac at that point. As large and formidable as the farmer looked, it seemed his knees had failed him long enough to where only the door he was blockading stopped him from collapsing.
“Wow…is this a train or some kind of death machine?”
Twilight was inclined to agree. They were getting shorthanded around the school mount to be able to handle all of the tasks, especially with Starlight Glimmer gone, but Double Diamond and the more engineer-orientated individuals of their group got led to the private trainyard as Luna had directed them. They found the engine she described and spent the last couple days refurbishing it before bringing it out to the northern tracks. They had been in awe of it, but it wasn’t until now they all saw just what they were in for.
The train itself was straightforward enough, aside from having the look of a passenger train. Coal car, one passenger car, and a caboose. It was the engine that was the menacing part. It didn’t so much as have a “cow catcher” on front of it as some sort of wedge-shaped mechanical “mouth” with spinning, spiked poles dragging into a great bladed set of gears designed to crush and rend before spewing out behind it. And it seemed as if they were linked directly to the engine drive itself the same as the wheels.
Double Diamond ran a hand through his hair and whistled. “She might be a little slower than most engines, but there’s nothing that’s going to stand in her way short of a rockslide.”
Twilight turned to him. “But you can drive it, right?”
He nodded back. “Sure thing. And she has a fresh load of coal and is ready to go.”
“Alright. We’ll leave as soon as we’re loaded. We can’t waste any more time.”
With that, Twilight turned back to the recently refurbished northern train platform. It didn’t look anywhere near as neat and tidy as the first they had touched on, but it did the job. The others were already loading up. Applejack, seeming to hold onto the entire load by herself, was hauling an entire crate of foodstuffs in for them on their trip. With some effort, she managed to push it inside before stepping aside to lean against the train and rub her forehead…only to gawk as she saw Rarity supervising Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy pushing in an even larger crate.
“What the… What the hell is all that? I got our food!”
“Just some wardrobe changes, dear. We are going to the upper limit of Equestria, after all.”
“Wardrobe…?! Damnit, Rarity! Just pack some boots and gloves!”
“First of all, it will be a bit unseasonable just for ‘boots and gloves’. Secondly, even if I was just packing boots and gloves, I would still need to make sure I have the appropriate type. Are we talking a little cold or windy? There’s whether it’s appropriate for snow or rain to account for. And then, of course, if the color clashes with my dress for that day it will simply be too garish to even think about…” Rarity spoke with a hand wave as she climbed on board.
Applejack groaned before simply following her inside, as Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy finished pushing the second crate on board. Pinkie seemed happy enough after they were done with it, but Fluttershy turned back to the school anxiously.
“I just hope we’re back within a week… I…I really don’t want Angel to go longer than that before I can treat him…”
“I’m sure it’ll be fine!” Pinkie answered as she happily bounced back for the passenger entrance. “What’s the worst that could happen?”
“…Angel’s infection could spread over him and turn him into a Nighttouched that runs wild in the dormitory and ends up attacking all of the children in their sleep, everyone ends up getting into a fight with him, and they accidentally set the dormitory on fire and it spreads to the entire mount, and everyone has to run into the forest and Sombra is waiting for them with his own monsters.”
Pinkie slowed, blinked, and thought about that for a moment. She scratched her chin and looked skyward for a moment or two.
“Hmm…hmm…hmm…” Finally, she smiled. “Nope! I can’t think of anything worse than that happening! But don’t worry! I’ll say an extra prayer to Gaia Everfree tonight for him!”
With that, she hopped inside merrily, and Fluttershy let out a nervous whimper as she walked in behind her.
Rainbow Dash, meanwhile, pointed to the front of the train. “This is one trip I’m riding in the engine. I’ve got to see this wood chipper from hell in action.” Snickering a bit, she made her way over.
Double Diamond coughed a little at that, but then began to walk to the engine as well. Twilight and Spike began to follow after him.
“Wait.”
She stopped, turning around on hearing Luna’s voice. She had overseen the Tiberius being brought out front as well as their departure. Now, however, she was walking right up to Twilight. As soon as she was close enough, she reached for her side.
“I still say that you and your friends are on a fool’s errand. However, if you insist on proceeding, then I now have no choice but to entrust you with this.”
Before Twilight could react, Luna produced a chain from her side bearing a large, circular pendant with a lavender and purple colored sparkling emblem in the center, and immediately reached out to fasten it around her neck. She was a bit bewildered, and no sooner had Luna pulled back than she grasped it and held it in front of her face.
“Keep that secret and close,” Luna instructed. “You won’t be able to use Tiberius without it nearby. More importantly, upon your return, it will allow you unfettered access into Canterlot and all of Celestia’s protected records and rooms.”
Twilight went wide-eyed. Before she could ask the inevitable question, Luna continued.
“You will never believe me, but everything I did as Nightmare Moon…while mired in pettiness and jealousy…came from wanting to carry out Celestia’s wish. Now I no longer have the power. Only you do. Any hope this world has of evading its fate now hinges on you and your friends.”
The mage was left stunned, with the object in her hand suddenly seeming much heavier and carrying more physical as well as metaphorical weight. She glanced between it and her.
“Luna…”
That was all she could manage before the woman leaned in closer. She lowered her head toward hers and stared straight in her eye.
“There is only one thing I would ask in return. As soon as you are in possession of the Crystal Cor, you must return here at once. With all haste. Look at nothing. Investigate nothing. Never set foot in that realm again.”
“Wh…what? But why?”
Luna gaze grew stronger yet. When she spoke again, it had a note of the power she had used to repel Sombra.
“Twilight Sparkle…if you claim at all to wish to stop the Angra Mainyu, you will do as I say.”
Even with three Anima Viris, Twilight felt immobile and powerless to repel or argue with Luna when she spoke like this. And she remained that way for several seconds before Luna finally stepped back. She fully retreated although she kept her eyes on her as she pulled away, continuing to give Twilight that stare. It began to unnerve Twilight after a time, causing her to look back down at the odd medallion she had been given. Yet that only made her more uneasy, and soon she turned around to go inside with the others.
“Come on, Spike.”
The dog followed dutifully and readily behind as Twilight went to the train, but did little to settle her. She glanced back several times on the way, but Luna merely stood at a distance on the platform, folding her hands and watching them. It eventually made her so uncomfortable that she stopped looking all together and focused more of her task. Finally, she, Spike, and Double Diamond loaded up, and only a few minutes later the train gave a mighty whistle.
After that, the engine began to churn and both the wheels as well as the monstrous guard on the front began to come to life, and not long after it began to pull away from the substation.
While there were some above in the main citadel who watched it go, Luna herself stood at the platform and surveyed the train as it slowly wound back and forth to descend the mount before leveling off and going north. After that, she watched as it vanished into a smoke column that passed through the un-reclaimed town. Once that reached the periphery, it too disappeared.
Only when that happened did Luna’s look turn darker and colder. She immediately spun around and began to walk to the citadel with a fresh purpose.
“Is this really necessary, President?”
“It was made quite clear when the conference was set that Mount Aris reserves the right to make all attendees abide by the rules of Hooded Cowl if necessary. Given the turbulent political climate as of late, it seems more than appropriate.”
Kibitz sighed inwardly, rather unhappy that it was impossible to wear his monocle at the moment—due to the fact that his head was enclosed in a black cloth cowl which fully obscured his features; especially in the meeting hall which was being kept in darkened shadows. Not only that, but the rest of his clothing and features were concealed as well, as if he was little more than a Harmonium altar boy or, worse yet, a cultist. The other members of the Manehattan delegation, including the Grand Chancellor, were much the same, and crammed together in a small seating box with curtains on all sides save the front. Across from them sat the numerous other delegations, all in similar circumstances and attire.
It almost seemed like a meeting of a secret society rather than an international conference, but Mount Aris, ever neutral and suspicious of its neighbors, would have it so under their rules of the “Hooded Cowl”. As a result of this setup, no one could look at another delegation and ever be sure of which individual was the one speaking, and thereby avoid (hopefully) any assassination attempts.
“Now then…” a voice from the Mount Aris delegation announced, “let us begin. We are setting the first day to review civil affairs, economy, and commerce only. I remind the committee that this is to lay groundwork for diplomatic and military affairs that will be discussed later this week. Item one on the agenda…the current state of these ‘phenomena’ that have arisen within Greater Everfree and abroad. First motion: to aid in further discussion, the establishment of a formal title. Mount Aris moves that Manehattan’s formal designation of ‘eidolon’ now be accepted internationally as the formal title.”
“Manehattan concurs.”
“Fillydelphia concurs.”
“And Mount Aris concurs. Any opposed?”
Silence from the others. The sound of a gavel smacking rang out.
“So ordered. Second motion: international discussion on possible responses to the emergence of eidolons.”
“Trottingham requests the floor,” a cold and emotionless female voice came from the Trottingham delegation, immediately striking Kibitz’s attention.
“Granted.”
A small chuckle came from the delegation. “Quite simple: extermination. Trottingham would be happy to provide international assistance in that regard.”
“Griffonstone objects!” a rather grouchy voice responded from their box. “They may be a bit more trouble than we like, but they’re our citizens none the less! What’s this nonsense of just rounding them up like wild rats and killing them?”
A snort from Fillydelphia. “I would have expected that from Griffonstone, considering they were the first to weaponize them.”
Another bang. “Trottingham currently has the floor. No others are recognized.”
“Naturally, Trottingham has no jurisdiction over the civil affairs of others,” the female voice continued, “but you should consider carefully just how much use such individuals are. I declare here and now that Trottingham, under the old administration, put their faith in one such individual who ended up having a great deal of ambition for goals of her own. Ones that were harmful to everyone.”
Kibitz heard the grand chancellor give a weak chuckle. “If that is all, Manehattan requests the floor.”
“I’ve said my piece.”
“Very well. Granted.”
“Hearing Trottingham talk of the ambition and goals of the past administration is, quite frankly, a poor joke at best and a slap in the face to everyone here.”
A bang of the gavel. “Political affairs are deferred until tomorrow, Manehattan delegation. And insults are not tolerated.”
“Trottingham wants eidolons eliminated for one reason and one reason only,” the grand chancellor pressed on. “Because they know they’re superior militarily in every other way.”
Another laugh from a different delegation. “So you admit it? They’re your substitute for a decent military!”
Three more gavel bangs rang out, silencing everyone momentarily, before the grand chancellor was allowed to continue.
“Discounting military affairs, frankly to even take Trottingham’s suggestion seriously is atrocious. None of these people asked to receive these symbols any more than someone asked to be born with blond hair or a fair complexion. This amounts to xenophobia and nothing more. That is all.”
He had scarcely finished speaking when Fillydelphia spoke up. “If I might request the floor.”
“Granted.”
“The Manehattan delegation is drastically simplifying the issue. To an almost naïve and childish degree, I might add. In light of what we all had to experience for eight years, nothing is so simple anymore. Here are the facts as they stand: Equestria lies still infested with Nighttouched, dozens if not hundreds continue to vanish inside, towns on the border continue to be swallowed up by reports of violent swarms of beasts even as we try to make inroads into the former country, the seas are growing more impassible by the day, spectral knights appear out of nowhere and leave destruction and ruin in their wake, war wages in the east while unrest stirs in the south, and, to top it all off, tales of individuals wrecking spectacular havoc as if they were an artillery division in one mortal body…individuals bearing the marks that brand them as eidolons. And all…all within the time after the darkness over Equestria has passed—a time when we all expected a return to normalcy and now have naught but growing discord.”
Kibitz saw him turn to them.
“Frankly, I don’t dismiss the Manehattan delegation’s earnestness to assimilate the eidolons as mere desire for a combative edge…I denounce it as reckless madness. There is a lot of loose talk running about as to who or what these eidolons are, but the consensus is that they represent creatures with abilities that make them far superior to humans, armies, or any weapon mankind has ever crafted. There can be no deals or arrangements with them when they possess that level of power. And now that they have arisen in the stead of the Lunar Fall, who is to say they are not here to bring a greater catastrophe on all of us? And what is to stop them from doing as they like, if they’re allowed to gain preeminence?”
Kibitz heard Fancy Pants guffaw. “The Fillydelphia delegation seems intent on starting a new age of witch trials. I suppose the President would like to act as the primary inquisitor himself.”
There was some murmuring at that, before the gavel smacked three times again to quiet people down. This time, they were less eager to do so.
Kibitz, on his part, tried to sit as easily as possible, but even as a military man he could see that there weren’t many in the room siding with Manehattan’s point of view, and he knew full well that not everyone even within their own delegation was on board with Fancy Pants. It started the meeting on a rather uncomfortable note, and he silently prayed it wasn’t a sign of things to come.
Celaeno took off her hat and rubbed her eyes as she staggered into the dormitory hall. After another long night of patrol, one that bled into the morning now that they were shorthanded, as well as trying to arrange some of the new refugees, she was ready to hit the hay. Both her and a few of her other fellow crew who had taken up guard duty.
The dormitory already had its normal morning traffic, whether it be mothers tending to their children or people out for repairs, cleaning, or cooking. She slowly made her way past them and to her own hallway, and began to slowly move down it as she reached in her pocket for her key.
She had just found it while simultaneously reaching her door when she stopped in her tracks, seeing an unusual sight.
Luna, moving with a stone-faced purpose, had come up from the other stairwell. Already, all others who got in her way froze and let her pass, but she ignored them all. She walked straight for the door that Celaeno recognized was Twilight Sparkle’s. On reaching it, she reached in her pocket, pulled out what Celaeno could only assume was a skeleton key, and put it into the lock.
“Uh…hey there.”
Luna ignored Celaeno, and soon the door was unlocked. She opened it and went right in.
“Um…Luna, was it? What’s up?”
No answer. For a moment, Celaeno paused, wondering if it was even her business, but then she risked stepping forward past her door and to Twilight’s. She poked her head around the corner and looked in.
Luna was already at a table Twilight had in her room, and rifling through what looked like opened envelopes. She found one after a moment, and promptly opened it up and read the message inside without a word. The mercenary knew enough to realize those were the letters that Twilight had been getting via train.
“Excuse me.”
Luna continued to ignore her. After a moment, she apparently found what she was looking for, for she took the letter with her as she turned around and began to walk back toward the doorway.
Celaeno stood up a bit more at that. “Excuse me, but what exactly-”
She cut herself off as Luna simply walked around her and kept going. Again, the mercenary paused, but after a moment decided “in for a penny, in for a pound”. As the rest of her companions looked on curiously at her behavior, she stepped back out and took a step after her.
“Hey!” she called out a bit louder. “I’m pretty sure Twilight Sparkle wouldn’t care for you breaking into her room and sifting through her mail.”
“Twilight Sparkle lives here at my command,” Luna coldly answered without turning. “My room was never hers to begin with.”
The tone of voice was so sharp that it made it clear to Celaeno that she didn’t care for her attempts to accost her and to drop it now, but the sudden change in her demeanor, from distant and stoic to suddenly forceful, was enough to unsettle her a little. And not just her. Others began to poke their heads out from their rooms and look to see what was going on, and on finding that Luna had actually entered the dormitory for once they were only more intrigued.
And unnerved.
However, even as Celaeno made a decision to walk after her, louder footsteps were heard coming up the stairs down the hall. She and the others began to follow after Luna, only to see three new figures step out into the common area: Gilda and her remaining soldiers. None of them looked very happy or pleasant, but they quickly crossed the common area and planted themselves at the end of the hallway—right in Luna’s way.
“There you are,” Gilda called out as Luna, seeing her way stopped, slowed to a halt momentarily. “I’ve been looking all over for you.”
“Stand aside now. I haven’t the time to deal with whatever concern you have.”
“Well make time,” Gilda snorted back. “Twilight’s finally gone so I’m getting while the getting’s good. You’re gonna set us on a train back to Griffonstone but only after you let us in on whatever weapon she had that made my soldiers go crazy.”
Luna leveled her gaze at her—far more sharply than before. “I am not your maid, your page, or even your host that I should be obligated to give you anything. You, on the other hand, are a squatter sponging off of my property. Indeed, Twilight Sparkle is not here. Which means I will no longer entertain any pretense of subservience. This is my domain, and none give orders to me here. Stand aside.”
She moved to step away, only to have Gilda put a hand against her chest and forcefully push her back an inch.
“Maybe you didn’t hear me right…” Gilda sneered. “I’m not like the rest of these lowlifes you got crashing with you. I’m not going to just take whatever slop explanation you decide is good enough for me. I’ve had it with your friends and with you, especially if what they say is true about you. You don’t even have a Promethian Sigil, let alone Anima Viris. In fact…just about everyone you had around here that did have Anima Viris is gone. I figure that makes me the one who calls the shots around here now. So I’d stop jerking me around before I grab you by the neck and jerk you around a bit.”
Silence lingered in the dormitory. By now, everyone on the floor had stopped what they were doing and watched the exchange. Gilda and her companions looked ready to bring out their Anima Viris in an instant, but Luna merely looked down her nose at them for a few more seconds.
Then she raised her hand.
“The three of you can feed the Nighttouched or Sombra’s legions for all I care. You are all banished.”
She didn’t even have to gesture, and if she had neither Celaeno nor anyone else would have paid attention. Their focus was entirely on the three from Griffonstone as a light seemed to radiate from inside them all at once—rapidly growing in brightness. It was as if they were lamps that were now coming to life. Their hostility rapidly turned to surprise as they looked down at themselves in alarm, but in the mere time it had taken them to do that the glow had grown so bright that it was almost impossible to see the expressions on their faces. It grew stronger yet, making all three blinding…
Then, with just the slightest whisper of a sound, each one was transformed into a mere blip of light, and streaked straight for the ceiling. On contact, they seemed to burst into light dust, which sprinkled about like embers from a fire, but then quickly vanished.
Those gathered were shocked. In another moment, panic and murmuring would have burst forth and swept over the dormitory. However, before any of them could say a word, Luna turned about on the chamber. Her voice blasted forth as it had that one night.
“Are there any others here who wish to excuse themselves from my abode? Speak now!”
The hall went silent. No one dared make a sound, especially as Luna swept her eyes over each and every one. Even the children.
“You all seem to have forgotten due to my lenience with you. You are not here by Twilight Sparkle’s will or Shining Armor’s will but by my will. This is my land and you are all benefitting from my hospitality. I was content before to leave you to your own devices. Now Twilight Sparkle is gone; and if you have any wisdom or sense in your heads, you will pray to Harmonium, Gaia Everfree, or whatever other god you serve that she never returns.”
Celaeno, as well as many of the others, were confused at that, but Luna gave them no attempt to understand it.
“You are living under me now and you will not only obey my rules but, should the time call for it, my command. If these terms are ill befitting you, then you may leave—either by your own volition aboard a train or by a word from me. I care not either way.
“But know this—the time is fast approaching and is nearly here in which you will have far more to fear outside this citadel than Nighttouched or Sombra. At that time you will throw yourselves on your knees outside my gates and beg entry from me only to be turned away. At the cost of your lives, I have warned you all.”
Without another word, she turned and effortlessly passed through the crowd, reaching the stairway and soon beginning to descend it.
Even once she was gone, everyone remained in fearful silence. The very air they breathed had taken on a new weight that left a feeling of dread and foreboding on everyone. Even Celaeno with her long life of struggle and danger no longer felt at ease about anything of their situation—not only Luna but the grounds, the buildings, even the bed she had been sleeping in. Rest was now the furthest thing from her mind.
The same thought ran through her head as did everyone else’s. In spite of Luna’s sudden ultimatum, all of them had a grim feeling in the pit of their stomachs that she wasn’t lying.
If so, what did that mean?
Three rapid short knocks were heard on the door. While the group was mostly lounging around in the common room, they all perked their heads up at that. At once, Stygian turned to the clock in the chamber and made a note of the time. Shining Armor, on the other hand, let out an exhale before turning to Big Macintosh.
“Alright, big guy. It’s time.”
Grimacing all the way, he practically pried himself up and out of his seat, before nervously making his way over to the window.
“Remember…go all the way to the end. Then start moving down. The walls are more angled over there,” Sunset called out.
“Uh…ee…eeyup.” After giving this half-hearted response, he looked to Marble Pie, who smiled encouragingly at him. It only made him swallow a lump before he reached the window. Nervously, he unfastened the latch and pulled it aside. He instantly froze and quivered at the breeze that came in, especially as it was strong enough to ruffle a few papers, but after gulping again he slowly began to pull himself out of it and to the exterior.
Stygian, on his part, quickly went about dimming the lights to prevent any chance of a shadow. As soon as he hit the last one, Big Mac was already gone in spite of how slowly he moved, and the private turned back to Shining Armor.
“We’re running out of time, sir. This is the last night we have, and the grand chancellor expects a dead Tempest Shadow some time this evening.”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get there,” Shining Armor answered. “Right now, we need to see what’s going on.”
“There is a chance there’s nothing to be seen,” Stygian spoke as he went over to Big Mac’s room and shut the door, making sure they could say he was sleeping if anyone stopped by.
“I’m not sure he’s made it far enough to reach that conclusion…” Sunset answered uneasily. “The first night he barely made it to the second room. The second night he only got to the end of the row and halfway down to the floor below us. On the plus side, he found out he could squeeze through some of the smaller windows if his life depended on it. It’s a good thing he hadn’t gotten past our block when he did that. I don’t think whoever is guarding the other delegations would have bought his excuse that he lost his way en route to the toilet…”
“Well, if it’s not us out there doing it, then I’m not about to criticize. The grand chancellor should have known we weren’t the best for this job when I told him we weren’t assassins.”
“Yeah, we’ll see how he takes that… It did occur to you that, in the event Big Mac does find something, that we could be in some real trouble?”
“I’m willing to take the chance. It’s better that this happens to us than Twilight.”
Sunset said nothing to that. She nearly tried to look away, but after only a moment she looked back. “So…how’s the conference been going?”
“Better today… They managed to barely bring up eidolons.” He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “We’ve been so busy running around in alleys and the country that I hadn’t realized just how bad it’s gotten. If it wasn’t for Manehattan, I’m not sure where would be a safe haven on Greater Everfree. Even Griffonstone might end up suspending its own special unit if Trottingham pressures them. Who would have thought the safest place to be might end up being Equestria under Nightmare Moon’s watch?”
She groaned. “Don’t even joke about that… I spent years trying to find a way back into that school, but the thought of being trapped there now makes my head spin…”
Big Macintosh would never have described himself as any sort of mountaineer. Quite the opposite…as a farmer he preferred his land as flat and rock free as possible. The ability to climb up on barn lofts and roofs didn’t really make that better. As a result, all things considered, he was doing pretty well for a terrified man precariously moving along ledges.
It wasn’t just the very idea of shinnying up and down a near vertical wall to get to all the various windows. It wasn’t even the fact that the palace hung over a several hundred meter chasm with wind constantly blowing. It was that the only purchase he could find was a small stone edging that might have been decorative for all he knew.
At this point, the only way he could move was by shutting it out of his mind all together. He had to think of nothing but movement. The precarious shuffling of his feet that were already too big for the etching and pressing his body against the building wall as closely as he could. His eyes never deviated from the masonry right in front of him.
To be honest, he wasn’t even sure where he was anymore, and pausing to think about it would only make him more tense. He just passed one window after another as quickly as he could before he accidentally cast a shadow that alerted people inside. He didn’t want to panic again like last night and force himself inside somehow; especially when he no longer knew where he was.
He was thinking of this when he risked a slight glance ahead, and noticed the next window had a glow coming from it. Not one that was full brightness, but definitely indicated a small light inside. He swallowed as he slowly went over to it—knowing he had to make sure not to accidentally reveal himself.
It took longer than he liked, but he gradually managed to make his way to the edge. Once there, his left hand crept out and felt about for a good purchase so that he could slowly squat and ease himself under the window and to the other side. He finally managed to find one and he nearly dipped right under it, until he realized he wasn’t sure if he had checked that window the night before. Groaning inwardly, he leaned in closer—intent on getting a quick peek before moving on.
At first he only saw the window frame. Inching closer, he managed to look inside just a bit to see the beginnings of a room. Sticking out his tongue and closing one eye, he grunted slightly as he pulled himself a bit closer…
That was when the light changed. The small yellow glow from before suddenly disappeared, only to be replaced with what looked like a greenish one.
He paused, just long enough to show some puzzlement, before moving in closer and looking inside.
His eyes widened at what he saw. His face turned white.
A moment later, he had to suddenly fumble out and desperately seize the window frame, for he had gotten so scared that he had lost his grip and nearly let gravity take over. Instantly, he was afraid he had made enough noise to be heard, and fueled by fear that had nothing to do with falling to his death he frantically began to shimmy back the way he had come. By the time the window was well out of view, the light turned from green back to yellow, but that only made him push himself away faster.
He didn’t try to get all the way back to his room. He was too panicked to find that. Once again, he only went back to the nearest window that he could squeeze through, and then shoved his fist forward to push it inward before grasping the inside and desperately yanking himself in. Much like the night before, he was too big and got stuck, but this time he frantically pried and twisted himself in as fast as he could—not caring for where he was at the moment.
It took a few seconds, but finally he managed to pry himself loose. With a suddenly surge, his body sailed out of the window frame and plopped back onto the ground of the darkened hallway. He held there a moment, breathing hard and sorting out his thoughts. After a few moments, he got enough of his wits to know what to do next, and he planted his hand on the ground.
“Why Mr. Big Macintosh…whatever are you doing out of your room at this hour?”
Hearing that voice over his head made the farmer freeze. He looked up…
Then darkness.
Once Luna had closed the door to the inner chamber, it was plunged into complete darkness. Not the slightest sliver of light or glow was to be seen.
Yet it didn’t remain that way long. Almost the moment she began to step toward the center the lights came on again. Not normal lights or candles or gaslights, but dozens…hundreds…thousands of tiny lights all over the dome-like ceiling. Stars. It was very much like the same sight she had shown the girls days ago, only in a much smaller chamber, and this time only illuminating what looked like the night sky. Yet it was not a night sky that any in the world had ever seen.
And it didn’t remain that way long.
No sooner had the last of them formed than rays of iridescent light traced between them, mapping out a great chart or emblem in the heavens themselves. One that glowed brighter and stronger until it cast a glow bright enough for Luna’s full body to be seen. From her perspective, however, it no longer looked like a room at all but the vastness of the cosmos, and she stepped right up to the center and looked skyward.
Once that happened, the emblem radiated one more time before a chime sounded through the air. At that, a cylinder of light, traced about like a crystal, came out from the synthetic heavens and emanated all around her. As she kept looking at the sky, lettering in a strange language, even one that Twilight herself had never experienced, began to trace across it. A voice spoke out in a tongue that had never been heard, and whether Luna heard it and understood or simply ignored it was unclear.
As it was still speaking, she focused her gaze on the symbols and spoke.
“I do not call you either to surrender or to beg for forgiveness or even to plead my case. I seek only to help you destroy our common enemy as I now lack the power to do so, and we have more enemies now than either I or my sister ever anticipated. I know the names of the ones the Firstborn seek. They are Twilight Sparkle and Sunset Shimmer, and they are finally apart.
“I have already taken care of Twilight Sparkle. Sunset Shimmer is at an international conference. I do not know which one or where but it will be the largest in Greater Everfree. You must find her and kill her immediately. Even if it means killing those who stand between her and you as well. That is all.”
She waved one finger, and immediately the crystalline structure vanished, the symbols disappeared, and the stars went dim before going out. Luna was again in total darkness.
Within that confine, she slowly exhaled.
“Forgive me sister…but it is no longer possible to save this world your way.”
Everyone in the room went a bit stiff at that, Sunset as much as everyone else. They had been dreading this moment for some time, after all—that someone would come knocking while Big Macintosh was out. Shining Armor held a moment before turning to the others. Stygian, immediately understanding, gave a nod before he stood and walked over to the window—shutting it completely for the moment and then silently walking back to his seat. Everyone else tried to look as casual as possible as Shining Armor stood up and walked over to the door.
He reached it and opened it up, and Sunset looked up enough to see who was at the door. She made out the head of a thin man in a bowler hat with a large handlebar mustache. Her mind went back to when they had arrived a few days ago and registered that he was one of a pair that had come along but she had never gotten a description of. She had reasoned they were secret service or the like.
“…Um, can I help you?”
“The grand chancellor wants to speak with you and your group. He says it’s urgent.”
Shining Armor hesitated a moment. Sunset felt a small knot in her stomach. “I…um…that is, one of our group already went to bed for the evening and-”
“That will be fine. You can tell him when he wakes up. Come along.”
Sunset swallowed, but only reluctantly began to pull herself out of her own chair. Marble Pie didn’t look much more comfortable about it, giving a worried glance to her from her one uncovered eye at the window. Stygian, on his part, was calm enough, although he shifted a little before standing up and walking over to one side. “Just need to change my shoes. I won’t be but a moment.”
Shining Armor was left standing there uneasily. The man in the bowler hat didn’t look particularly impatient, but neither did he look warm. After a few seconds, however, Stygian had his shoes on, and the three of them walked with Shining Armor into the hallway. They saw another man, also in a bowler hat with a handlebar mustache, was there and giving them the same stern look. Without a word, he turned about and joined his companion to lead them down the hallway. Shining Armor glanced one last time at the room before following afterward.
They only had to go about two hundred feet before they arrived at the room on the end. At that point, one man stood to one side while the other produced a key and unlocked it. He opened it afterward and stepped inside, but only to hold it open and silently gesture them within.
Shining Armor ducked his head inside and looked for a moment, but the lighting was dim and so he stepped inside. One by one, the others followed. Sunset saw the other two individuals she had confirmed were in the secret service of the grand chancellor, but they were flanking the entrance rather than him. The man himself was seated in the two-person easy chair in front of the fireplace. She couldn’t make out much of his features at first due to the shadow, but she saw his own monocle and his wife hanging on his arm. She also made out Kibitz and the other ambassadors gathered, although they were standing rather than sitting.
They also seemed to be awaiting their arrival.
As Sunset halted, she felt a wave of unease again. Much more strongly this time, and not just from her own fear. More like from the intuition she had developed after years of watching her own back. It came to a breaking point when she heard the door swing shut and click behind them.
In an instant, one of the men in a bowler hat stepped forward, drove something behind Shining Armor’s leg that looked pistol sized, and fired. A gunshot didn’t go off…at least, not in the traditional sense…but a flash of light and powder erupted as well as a sound like a mixture of a bang and a sandbag slamming into a wall. Immediately, Shining Armor’s leg faltered and he opened his mouth to cry out, but the man in the hat was faster as he immediately snapped on him, swung something over his mouth to gag him, and simultaneously pushed him violently to the ground.
Neither Sunset nor the others had a chance to react, because at that point the other man in a hat and the two secret servicepeople reacted by pulling out handguns of their own and firing the same odd bits of powder as one. Sunset wasn’t able to think of what before she felt the wind violently knocked out of her and a sharp, stinging pain like she had just been stabbed in the abdomen. She immediately fell to the ground in a mixture of pain and breathlessness, before the room went into a clamor.
She wasn’t sure what happened next exactly. Bodies swarmed over her and the others, but mostly on the others. She heard two more of those dull shots—both aimed at Shining Armor—before all was said and done, and both he and everyone else were at one point pinned to the ground with the weight of the servicepeople on their stomachs. They remained like that until they had their hands tied behind their backs in a painful, wrenching manner.
Somewhere through that pain Sunset was able to look up and to the grand chancellor. By now, in spite of the chaos, her eyes had adjusted, and for a moment she thought she was in some sort of nightmare—for the grand chancellor had gotten worse. Much worse. His cheeks and eyes were sunken in. His skin was pale enough to stand out even in the darkness. He looked very sick; to the point where his wife wasn’t so much hanging on his arm as helping him to stay up. He didn’t even look as if he had gotten dressed today. Yet in spite of his weakness, he regarded her and the group coldly and calmly as they were roughly bound.
“I am truly, deeply disappointed in all of you. I’ve been sticking both my neck and Manehattan’s on the line for you for the past three days in the international theater and months prior on our own stage. And how do you repay me? Going behind my back to undermine Manehattan’s interests.”
Shining Armor let out a sound at that point, but it was more of an angry grunt than a word. Sunset looked over and saw that the first thing they had done was make sure to gag him with some sort of special device.
Of course…so he can’t call out the Anima Viri…
However, she also noticed he wasn’t looking at the grand chancellor. His eyes were on Kibitz. The old man looked a bit uncomfortable, but that was all.
“I’m sorry, Shining Armor, but you couldn’t expect me to simply keep the matter quiet once you made your intentions known. Your complaint is legitimate, but you were jeopardizing the whole of Manehattan by carrying out your own designs.”
Sunset couldn’t help herself. She muttered between her teeth.
“You monocle-wearing rat…”
“You are the ones who deceived me first!” Kibitz sternly retorted. “Honestly…spying on us? You couldn’t afford us a little trust after all the faith we had placed in you?”
Sunset was puzzled on hearing that. Stygian looked the same, and opened his mouth to speak when one of the agents immediately gagged him as well. Marble Pie soon let out more panicked mumbles as the same thing happened to her.
“These two don’t have any of those ‘Anima Viris’,” one pointed out.
“Let’s not take the chance. We don’t know what these things are, exactly.”
“But what about the black-haired one?”
“She doesn’t have a Promethian Sigil. Besides, we already used the only other one we had on the big man. Leave her.”
Sunset couldn’t help but feel uncomfortable at that yet again, but her thoughts were soon interrupted by the sounds of the other ambassadors in the room.
“I hate to say I told you so, grand chancellor, but I warned you about this from the start. You cannot place your faith in these individuals. This power they command…it will make them eventually answer to no one. No doubt that’s what they’ve been doing in Equestria.”
“As much as I dislike saying it, President Neighsay has the right idea! We don’t even know whether this power these eidolons possess comes from nature or Hell itself! You’ve given them entirely too much leeway! Now look at the result!”
Fancy Pants sighed deeply, sounding partially from being emotionally overwhelmed but also from exhaustion. “I suppose I’ll have to re-negotiate our ‘agreement’ with Twilight Sparkle after this…”
“With all due respect, grand chancellor,” Kibitz spoke up, “I hardly think she’ll be very receptive if you have her brother in custody.”
“We won’t have her brother in custody, Major General.”
Kibitz and Sunset alike raised puzzled eyebrows. “Sir?”
Fancy Pants gestured to them. “Notify the Mount Aris guard. Inform them that we have recently halted an attempted insurrection within our delegation that was attempting to cause political upheaval by assassinating the spokesperson for Trottingham. We relegate them to their custody to deal with as they see fit.”
Shining Armor let out furious noises and was barely restrained, even with his injuries, but everyone else was utterly shocked. Even Sunset, always expecting to be backstabbed, couldn’t help but look stunned.
“Ex…excuse me, sir?”
“There’s nothing for it, Major General. This is the only way now. If we try to hold them here, assuming we can, then Mount Aris will start asking questions. We can’t let the plan come to light now. And after they just demonstrated how little trust we can place in them, they’ll no doubt try to expose the truth. However, Mount Aris has little regard for foreigners who are Promethian Sigil bearers. They’ll deal with them quickly and quietly, and so long as our story comes out first they’ll believe us. Then it’s just a matter of letting Twilight Sparkle know that her brother tried an insurrection. We can then forget this whole debacle ever happened.”
At this point, the agent on Shining Armor’s back had to smack him in the back of the skull with his own pistol butt to try and get him to stay down. If Sunset had been just a little less insecure, she might have lunged at him herself. As it was, she grit her teeth and sneered.
“So long as we’re criticizing each other for unequal exchange…after everything Twilight and her friends have done for you, after all the sweat, blood, and tears they’ve spilled on your behalf, you’re going to just lie to her face like that?”
“This is your doing; not mine,” the grand chancellor answered.
“Sir, I’m…not very comfortable with this arrangement… There has to be a better way.”
“We’re in the middle of a conference deciding the fate of the free world, Major General. We don’t have the luxury of options or time. Only for what is best for Manehattan.”
The old officer still didn’t look comfortable, but he could do and say nothing else.
“As for you, madam,” the grand chancellor spoke up again, “I’m going to be generous enough to give you a moment to think about your own situation.” He looked up to the agent behind her and indicated. “Take her back to the room and keep watch her. If Twilight Sparkle doesn’t end up being receptive to our account of the events, then I would prefer still having an expert on eidolons. After tomorrow’s conference I’ll ask her if she prefers silence about this matter to whatever dungeon Mount Aris keeps in this palace.”
Sunset was yet again surprised, but she had no time to ponder it. In an instant, she felt her arms seized from behind her and she was dragged to her feet. As one agent ran off to call the guard, she was roughly brought back out of the room and into the hallway. The last she saw of the others were all three of them still pinned down as the door closed behind her.
“And dinner is served!”
Applejack, Rainbow Dash, and Fluttershy all looked up from their respective tasks. Applejack had been making the rounds on the train to make sure it was secure. Fluttershy had been busying herself straightening up and cleaning as much of the interior had still been rather underused and dusty on arrival. Rainbow Dash, last of all, had been sprawled out in a chair in the common car and snoring loudly. Yet that changed when Rarity made the announcement and, much to everyone’s surprise, came in rolling a silver dining cart with a tray over the top of it.
“I must say, the headmistress certainly had a taste for the finer things. I would have died for a kitchen this lovely when I was back at school…” she mused as she wheeled the cart over to them, before removing the lid to unveil the platter. “Tah-dah! Trout meuniere with eggplant!”
She found herself nearly shoved to one side a moment later as Pinkie Pie dipped her head in with a much smaller tray, which she immediately unveiled. “And for dessert, my first sticky toffee pudding!”
“Sounds great,” Rainbow Dash called. “Uh…you don’t mind if I just have dessert, do you? Not much of a train appetite. What kind of dessert wine do we got?”
“Landsakes, Rarity,” Applejack muttered. “I go to the trouble of catchin’ them trout and you go and muddle ‘em up all fancy like. All ya’ needed to do is blacken ‘em a bit and slap some salt and ketchup on ‘em with a side of taters.”
“…I think it looks delicious, Rarity,” Fluttershy meekly added.
Rarity, who had been growing increasingly incensed, immediately nodded. “Thank you, Fluttershy. At least one of us knows how to appreciate fine cuisine… You may help yourself first.”
“Oh, um…I-I-I don’t know if you forgot, but…um…I’m a vegetarian. I’ll have some eggplant, though.”
Rarity’s eye let out a twitch, and she seemed to barely restrain herself from flinging the platter across the room. Pinkie Pie, however, slid over to Twilight’s side, cheerfully bearing her pudding and waving it underneath her nose.
“Oooooooh, Twilight! It’s din-din!”
She blinked, shook her head a little, and turned. “Hmm…what? Oh. Oh, sorry Pinkie. I was just…looking out the window and thinking.”
The girls all turned to her at that, some looking pretty concerned. “Twilight, dear…I know you tend to be on a bit of the introverted side, but you’ve been unusually quiet this entire trip.”
“Seriously,” Dash added. “I thought pulling you out of that egghead emporium at the school would get you to talk more, but I think you’ve been more quiet over the past two days then your whole time cooped up in the library. Here I figured I’d be the only one bored on this trip once we stopped running into trees to watch the engine chew through…”
Twilight sighed, bowing her head, and noticing that even Spike was looking up at her with some concern. “I’m sorry, everyone. It’s…it’s not boredom, though. It’s that I haven’t been feeling too well since Luna gave me this.” She patted the place on her chest where the pendant was under her shirt. “Well…no, I suppose that’s not it. I really haven’t been feeling too well since I started planning to go on this trip.”
“Why, Twilight?” Fluttershy asked. “Is…is there something bad this way?”
She shook her head. “It’s not that. It’s…it’s…well…” She closed her eyes and sighed. “Luna talked to me in the library the night before I managed to decipher the map.”
“For real?” Dash retorted. “She sees us off at the platform, she listens in on this trip planning, and she sees you the night before? This has got to be some kinda record for her…”
Her joke, unfortunately, seemed to fall flat with Twilight. “She…was asking some odd questions. Ones I never really thought about before. And ever since she said that one thing to me right before we left, I’ve been thinking about them more and…and…”
She gave a small shudder, drawing into herself and looking to one side.
“I’ve…been getting a bad feeling about this trip.”
Applejack frowned. “You reckon we’ll get all the way up there and that Crystal Core or whatnot won’t be there?”
“Or…” Fluttershy asked with a gulp. “S-S-Something bad will be there instead?”
“That’s just it. I’m not nervous about any of that. I’ve…I’m…” Another sigh. “I don’t know what it is. It’s just…it’s silly, is what it is.”
“Oh, there’s nothing wrong with silly!” Pinkie chirped. “Come on, Twilight! You can tell us!”
Her head sagged again. “You all know me. I may be able to do magic but I still look for reasons for everything. Logical explanations. That’s why I don’t want to think about this feeling. It’s got to be just superstition or nerves or something. But I just can’t get it out of my head. I…”
She looked up to everyone.
“I feel like I’m heading to some place that’s…bad. Or more like some thing or situation that’s bad. And there’s some feeling deep inside me that’s saying I shouldn’t be going this way, but…I don’t know why not. And I can’t think of why not no matter how hard I try. It’s like…like I should know why, but for some reason it won’t come to me. Like when you know you have to do something but you forgot the reason for it, and all you can remember is that it’s important to do that thing and that you have to do it no matter what. Only here it’s that I need to turn around and go back.”
A moment of silence passed over the car. Everyone looked uneasy for a few moments, even Pinkie. However, Applejack snorted and waved her hand at it. “Just a bunch of heebie jeebies. With that Sombra runnin’ ‘round, we’re all in a tizzy lookin’ for trouble behind every tree.”
“Yeah!” Pinkie readily chimed in. “You don’t have to worry, Twilight! You have us with you!”
“Pinkie’s right,” Rarity stated more decisively. “It’s all a bunch of codswallop. Now that you’ve shared it with all of us, you’ll begin to forget all about it. I’m sure once you have a good meal inside you and a good night’s sleep, you’ll chastise yourself for being so silly in the morning.”
Twilight was quiet a moment before smiling and nodding. “Yeah, you’re probably right. And I’ve never actually tried meuniere before, so this should be a real treat.”
Fluttershy smiled back momentarily, before she looked up a little. “Um…does anyone else notice that we seem to be…slowing down?”
The others were confused, but then looked up and out the windows. It was getting late at this point and it was already a cloudy day. Yet they had left much of the thicker forest behind and the trees and country were sparser. As a result, they could clearly see that objects were slowing down around them. Not only that, but the rhythmic chugging of the engine was slowing down too.
“What in tarnation…?” Applejack spoke up.
“I better check with Double Diamond…” Twilight spoke up as she began to rise from her chair.
“I’ll come along,” Dash added.
“Me too!” Pinkie chirped.
As everyone began to move with her and head for the front of the car, Rarity groaned. “Can we all at least try the meuniere before it gets cold? No? Oh, very well…”
It wasn’t long before the six ladies and one dog made their way out, ignoring the growing wind and cooler temperature as they made their way up to the engine compartment. Twilight looked around a little at the surrounding countryside as they did. It looked as if things weren’t only getting more sparser and more remote, but they were actually up in the hills now and several rock formations were jutting out along the way as the terrain grew more irregular. She realized they had been coming up on the last of the mountains if the map was to be believed, and from here on in things would level out again all the way to their destination. Of course, they would have to get through this part first…
At any rate, she only glanced around for a little while. They were indeed getting higher and, as a result, the elevation was getting both steeper and shearer on either side of the train. They finally worked past the coal car and toward the engine, but as there wasn’t too much room in there Twilight and Spike went in first with the others filing in behind her. The door was open, so she peered inside and saw Double Diamond easing back on the throttle.
“What’s going on?”
He glanced back at her, but was silent for a moment longer as he looked back ahead. Then he pointed. “Right there.”
Twilight looked out. It was a bit hard to see with the fading sunlight, but a sign was painted with big white lettering that stood out enough for her to read the text.
TRACK OUT: 2 KM
“I started seeing those signs 8 kilometers back.”
“Wait…huh?” she remarked in confusion. “Those have to be out of date. No one’s been up this way for eight years.”
“Well, I’m not taking any chances. The last roundabout is up ahead, and if the track really is out there’s no way else for us to turn around. Besides, look how fresh the paint is.”
Twilight was caught at that. To be honest, the paint was fresh. Over the past eight years the elements should have torn any sign up to the point of illegibility; painted white or not. Why could she still read this one?
At any rate, Double Diamond kept slowing down the train for the next two kilometers until it was chugging practically to a stop. Fortunately, being a small locomotive with a small load, that wasn’t too hard. While the sun continued to set, both Twilight and the others could make out more man-made shapes around them—obviously the remains of the roundabout station. She had known they would be coming up on this spot. It was the very place they were to make their last branch split off, the one Luna had specifically pointed out, before they had a straight shot to the destination.
The signs kept coming the whole way, and each one looked as fresh and new as the one she had spotted. Including the last sign that read: “TRACK OUT: 300 METERS”. Yet that only made things more confusing. The roundabout station had definitely seen its share of wear and tear. Why did the signs look so new…?
The train finally stopped, and as Double Diamond idled it Rainbow Dash hopped right off with Twilight and the others more gingerly following afterward. “Maybe these signs are for the right fork? Luna said that we had to take the left track…”
Rainbow Dash stepped away from the engine a little and looked up ahead down the way. She immediately stopped as her eyes widened. “Then I think Luna needs to get herself a new map. Look.”
Twilight and Spike finally reached the ground, and she moved out as the others began to step down and follow after her. However, even in the growing darkness, it was impossible for her to miss what Dash was pointing out—and soon it made her gape.
As run down as the area was, it was still in relatively good shape compared to much of the world that had once been claimed by the Light Eaters. A few of the old sheds and stations for the trains were still standing among others that had been ruined, and rusted and rotted as it was the area still resembled something of what it had looked like when operational. Both the old roads and tracks could be made out. Sure enough, the branch was just up ahead, and it was quite a branch at that. The track to the right broke off and headed up and over the rising hills—cresting the top all the way over to the horizon. The track to the left, on the other hand, went down into a lower valley that had been carved out of the encroaching mountains—an almost sheer rocky pass giving into a cliff-like valley that careened down into a river hundreds of feet below and stretching through the range before them. There was a stretch the length of three football fields that was a wooden suspension bridge before it even hit the precarious cliff rock.
As Luna had informed them, the track on the right had been blockaded off, and from the looks of it years before the Lunar Fall. However, the track on the left had also been far more recently blockaded, and with good reason. A very large portion of the rocky valley had collapsed right on top of the track and had smashed the bridge to pieces. It was now clearly nothing except a track to oblivion.
Fluttershy gulped on seeing it. “Oh my…”
“Merciful heavens…” Rarity added.
“I ain’t no stonecutter, but I know a washout when I see one. And this one must have happened not too long ago,” Applejack commented. “Everything’s still fresh and ain’t weathered at all. Dagnabbit…we must have gotten here just a day or two too late…”
“We should be thanking Harmonium that we did,” Rarity retorted. “If we hadn’t, either we might have been caught up in that rockslide ourselves or not seen any of these new warnings and sailed right to our dooms.”
“Well, that’s just great…” Dash groaned. “Now what?”
“Maybe we can fix it?” Pinkie asked a little hesitantly. “I know how to dig rocks and Applejack is good at building things…”
“I think this one’s something that’ll take more than a couple o’ two by fours and nails to patch…”
“Um…could we walk the rest of the way?” Fluttershy meekly suggested.
“Not on your life!” Rarity shouted so loud it made her jump. “I am completely ill prepared for a trek through a mountainous valley! My boots don’t have the waterproof lining and my dress is far too light colored for all of the dust!”
“…Plus, we still have nearly 300 kilometers to go,” Twilight added.
“Oh yes, that as well.”
“Well, well, well! Small world!”
Twilight and the girls, and even Spike, gave a mutual jump at suddenly hearing a man’s voice calling out from behind them. They snapped around and Twilight saw an alarming sight. A very elaborate collapsed wagon, one looking like it was the kind a traveling ‘snake oil’ salesman might use, was being pulled up along the road not far from where they stood. What was pulling it was truly eye-catching…a goat, a buck, a boar, and an ox somehow working together.
In the driver’s seat was a very tall and lanky man in a brown suit with long coattails, a stovetop hat, and a tuft of a beard just barely illuminated by a lantern hanging alongside it. However, he waved cheerfully to them none the less.
Instantly, however, Twilight was apprehensive. Although she supposed she could have been distracted, she didn’t recall hearing the wheels or jingle-jangling of the wagon until she had first heard the man’s voice. What more, Spike gave a quiet growl barely audible to her.
“It’s him!” Fluttershy remarked.
Twilight spun to her in confusion. “Huh? Who?”
The others looked to her, pausing for a moment, before Dash winced. “Oh yeah… Everything with Sunset Shimmer and Nightmare Moon happened so fast we kind of forgot that part, didn’t we…?”
“This big tall somewhat-spooky peddler pointed us the right way to get an airship to find you when you got kidnapped, Twilight!” Pinkie cheerfully explained, pointing to the man as he pulled the wagon to a halt.
She blinked, looking even more confused. “Really?”
“But what in tarnation is he doin’ all the way up here on the other side of a forest full of nightmare critters?” Applejack sounded out, half to the girls and half to him.
“Why, an old peddler goes wherever he’s needed, my fair lady,” the tall man answered, removing his hat and giving a bit of a bow…while simultaneously exposing his wild, only-somewhat-kempt hair that spiked almost into the likeness of irregular horns. “It seems that some lovely engine workers from Manehattan decided that it might be simpler to go down through Equestria to get to Canterlot rather than try to tunnel their way through forest overgrowth, and when I heard they were coming, well…I figured that opportunity had come knocking.”
He reached into his coat.
“You know how they are. Always in need of more railroad ties…”
He flung his arm out, casting a bunch of material toward the ladies. Twilight nearly leapt back, only to see, much to her surprise, that they were neckties made out of ribbons fashioned into the likeness of railroad tracks.
“…And blasting caps.”
He reached in and pulled his arm out again, this time holding a trio of riding caps in his hand. He flung them into the air and, in a gesture that caused Spike to yelp and cringe, they immediately ignited into bright and colorful fireworks. Pinkie laughed at the sight, but the others gave little starts in surprise of their own.
Once recovered, Twilight looked puzzled. “Wait…you’re saying that they tried to go up and around to get up here? That…doesn’t make any sense. There are no railroads that don’t run through Equestria they could have taken…”
“Well, I’m not a rail authority,” he shrugged as he replaced his hat and dismounted from the wagon. “I’m afraid I have little need for them. I’m a man of the road. Plus boars make excellent garbage disposals.” He patted the animal as he passed by it while walking up to the ladies. “The point being is that, like you, it seems that I arrived here just a little too late. After being so kind as to blockade this little washout, they seem to have all run out of funds, packed up, and gone home.”
He grinned.
“Or maybe they just got eaten by something large and monstrous. You never can tell nowadays.”
Fluttershy and Rarity alike gulped at how casually he said that part.
“But it would seem that my poor fortune is your good fortune. While I was trying to get my bearings to make my way back to what passes for civilization, I happened to notice a little something over on that hill yonder.”
He gestured to one side. Twilight and the others looked, spotting one of the intact sheds for a split second. At that point, however, it suddenly gave an old, loud creak, and much to their surprise it seemed to pick that precise moment to finally collapse due to age. All four walls gave out and fell over outward, with the roof breaking apart right down the middle and coming with it. An instant later, the entire thing had fallen in a rather loud cacophony; stunning and shocking the gathering.
Twilight got a further surprise, however, when she noticed that the act had revealed something behind it. In particular a very new-looking, well-maintained, and top-of-the-line engine from Manehattan. Complete with a coal car that looked loaded and even a caboose behind it. It wouldn’t have looked nicer if it had been fresh off of the line.
“It seems our workers left behind one of their modes of transport in their haste. Now, I just happened to overhear that, for whatever reason, you ladies would like to go north from here. Obviously you won’t be going along this track, and the one to the right has been blockaded off. But lo and behold! That engine right there is well past the blockade and right on the right track, so to speak. And good luck for you.”
He proceeded to point to one of the signs on that track. This one was actually older and more appropriately weather-beaten, but it clearly had a weight limit on it.
“Even if you could move this blockade there’s no way your engine would make it, but you’ll find this other train is just your size. And it seems the rail workers managed to get that way open before their…ahem…untimely departure.”
Twilight was so stunned by what had just transpired that she barely heard him. When her mind finally got clear, however, she looked at the man a little uncomfortably. Subconsciously, she had begun to step a little away from him, but he merely stood there and kept smiling.
“…At a loss for words?”
Twilight swallowed. “Ex…excuse us a moment.”
Turning around, she faced the girls and quickly motioned for them to stand back. Fortunately, with the exception of Pinkie Pie, they all seemed to be in agreement. They proceeded to walk away several meters as Double Diamond, curious about what was going on, stepped out only to start marveling at everything. At any rate she ignored him as she spoke with the others.
“Everyone…this…isn’t right.”
“I…think I gotta agree with you, Twilight,” Applejack nervously answered.
“Convenience is one thing, but this…?” Rarity answered. “There’s something certainly…eerie about this man.”
“You mean…s-s-scary…” Fluttershy spoke with a tremble. “Do…do you think he really knew people from Manehattan would be here…?”
Twilight swallowed. “I’m not honestly sure anyone from Manehattan was ever here.”
“There’s no way Manehattan would give ‘em a brand new train just like that just to get workers around…or that it’d still be this clean,” Dash added. “So…how the heck did he get one up here? Or how’d he get up here without Sombra coming along and soul sucking him?”
“Hmm…maybe he got really lucky?” Pinkie suggested.
Applejack frowned. “Twilight, this here fella…he feels, like…wrong ta’ me. Everything about this here place feels wrong.”
“I have to agree, darling,” Rarity quietly answered, making sure the peddler wasn’t seeing her lips. “Before he seemed a bit convenient and eccentric. Now…now I don’t feel comfortable around him at all. He doesn’t even have a Promethian Sigil and yet he somehow made it this far? And following business? Preposterous. Even if those workers had come north, there’s no one to sell to for hundreds of miles.”
“Thousands if you go the long way,” Dash added.
Twilight bowed her head, standing quietly for a few moments. Even Spike looked at her expectantly for what she would say next.
She finally sighed. “I think we should take the train.”
“Yipee! Another new train! I hope its kitchen’s as nice!” Pinkie cheered.
Everyone else was less than enthused.
“Are…are you sure, Twilight?” Fluttershy nervously asked. “What if it’s…some kind of trap?”
“Mark my words, that fella’s up ta’ somethin’,” Applejack added.
“Maybe…but we don’t have a choice. I’m already nervous that Sombra has been up this far since we haven’t run into anything yet. Even if he hasn’t, this is the only way we’ll get to the throne. We’re definitely not going on Luna’s original plan. He’s right…I looked at the old map and even if it wasn’t blocked like she said, the Tiberius wouldn’t make it. The only route we can take would need months to repair, and even if we had the resources and people who knew how to do it we don’t have the time. But most of all…”
She looked down and shuddered a little.
“I was ready to dismiss my bad feelings before as jitters when you all talked to me. Now, though…I know I don’t want to be up here any longer than I have to be.”
“Huh?” Dash asked. “What do you mean?”
“Just that I want to be done as quickly as possible and back in Canterlot. I’m willing to take a chance on that train for that. If he wanted to sabotage our trip…he could have just painted out the signs and let us go right into the ravine.”
Fluttershy gulped at the thought, letting out a whimper.
“You…got a point there,” Applejack half-muttered.
“As dreadful as this affair is, I must say I don’t want to be out here any longer than I have to be either…” Rarity added. “I suppose we have no choice.” She sighed. “I’ll start moving over the things. So much for my trout meuniere…”
“Aw, don’t be sad!” Pinkie added as she cozied up to her. “That’s nothing sticky toffee pudding won’t fix!”
Dash frowned. “Damn… I was hoping we’d get to run the Tiberius into a monster at some point…”
Fluttershy winced. “That…does bring up another problem, though. The Tiberius won’t run without Twilight’s pendant. So we’d end up having to abandon the train…”
Dash shrugged. “Eh…those Manehattan engines are easy enough for me to run. Especially on a small one like that. If we want to send Double Diamond on back we could.”
“I’d actually feel better about that,” Rarity pointed out. “It would be nice to have someone going back to Canterlot to inform them about our…change of plans.”
“But…doesn’t Twilight need that pendant to get into everything in Canterlot when she gets back?”
The ladies looked to Twilight. She actually seemed more nervous about this than the previous dilemma. She reached into her shirt, pulled out the pendant, and held it before her staring for a moment.
Dash finally shrugged. “I mean…Double Diamond would just have to hold onto it until you got back, right? And we won’t be more than a couple days behind.”
“I know, but…” Twilight quietly responded, still staring at it before trailing off.
“What?”
A pause, then she shook her head. “Nothing…probably nothing. I know Luna wanted me to have this, but…I’ll just let him hold onto it and not tell her until I get back.”
Moving a little reluctantly, she began to pull it off of her neck. When she finally had it removed, she began to walk to the engine. “I’ll explain the situation to Double Diamond. Everyone else, move over into the other train.”
As she parted, Rarity and Fluttershy turned to head back to the train. As for Pinkie Pie, she hopped excitedly before the other girls, who were still looking at the peddler as he, seeming pleased with their decision, went back to his own cart.
“Isn’t this great? He’s helped us out twice now!”
“Yeah…” Dash slowly answered. “And showed up right when we needed him…with just what we needed. I mean, he ended up helping last time, but…”
“Maybe he’s a guardian angel?”
Applejack frowned. “Not sure I like someone keepin’ an eye on what I’m doin’, angel or devil. What’s he get outta all this?”
“Who knows,” Dash answered. “But so long as we’re both getting something out of it, that’s alright. I’m going to go check out that engine just in case there’s any other of his ‘little surprises’ in it…”
She began to walk over, and Pinkie happily bounced after her. Applejack cast one last look at the peddler, before she sighed and followed them.
“Kinda hope this is the last time we ever get a visit from our tall friend…”
“It’s not enough that they come here in droves. Now they’re trying to assassinate ambassadors?”
“Who cares? Just dump them in the hole.”
“It’s getting pretty full down there…”
“That’s their problem.”
The heavy wood and iron door, supported by an equally heavy ring and chain, was yanked up with a large creak and groan. It opened only into utter blackness. But even if Shining Armor had the ability to speak, he wouldn’t have been able to ask anything about it before he was unceremoniously tossed right into it.
His eyes widened even as he plunged into utter blackness, because he realized at once that he did not hit terra firma within ten, twenty, or even thirty feet of falling. When he did finally make impact, it was about fifty feet below or rough stone. A cry of agony went through his gag, as he nearly dislocated the shoulder he landed on from the plunge. Yet moments after, he heard cries from overhead. He had a split second to decide whether to use his small regained bearings to try and brace the next person or get out of their way to avoid mutual injury before Marble Pie crashed down as well. It wasn’t long before Stygian joined them.
“We better figure out what to do with them soon. They’ll eat the palace out of house and home if we get many more of them.”
That was the last thing Shining Armor heard overhead before the heavy door slammed shut again—plunging him and his companions into total darkness. He immediately let out an angry noise, but he knew already it fell on deaf ears. They were now locked in the silence of whatever dim place they had just been thrown into. The only sounds were the guards’ footsteps overhead departing. Instead, he sorely began to pick himself up into a seated position while trying to ignore his injury and figure out where Marble and Stygian had landed.
Yet he only had a few moments to do this before he heard a girl’s voice in the darkness. “Can Yona do it now?”
Another girl’s voice, much quieter and softer, answered nervously. “Not yet… I think they’re still too close.” A few seconds passed, until the footsteps were gone. “Alright, now.”
Shining Armor looked about in the darkness in confusion, but obviously could see nothing. However, he gave a start a moment later when he felt a pair of meaty, powerful hands grab him by the shoulders from behind. He began to call into the gag again.
“It’s ok! It’s ok!” the softer voice called out. “We’re just going to get those gags off. Right, Yona?”
“Right!” a bigger voice sounded from right behind Shining Armor—obviously the owner of the hands. “Yaks best at undoing locks!”
“I’m not sure about that…” a new voice answered. “But yaks definitely best at throwing useless bits of bone into their braids that you can use for lockpicks.”
Shining Armor felt a bit of work behind his head, when suddenly the metal clasping around it released. He let out an exhale of relief as he felt the gag fall out of his mouth, and the hands released him as they moved on to the next person. After catching his breath and letting his agony subside a little, he looked around in the direction of the voice. “Who’s there?”
“Oh, I’m Ocellus,” the milder voice responded. “Over here…well, at least I think over here…is Smolder. And the girl with the lockpick is Yona.”
“You’re…you’re kids?”
“Hey, I’m thirteen,” the voice of who Shining Armor presumed was Smolder retorted. “I’m old enough to serve as infantryman in the Dragonlands National Army and gut a guy to death with my bayonet. Heh…I’ve been practicing for that too. I’ve got a shank I’ve been making in here somewhere… Never can be too careful when you’re in the hole.”
“Um…to answer your question, yes,” Ocellus answered, far more mildly.
Another gasp went off nearby, that sounded like Marble Pie, before he heard more shuffling from her moving on to the last member. “They threw three kids down here?”
“Three?” Smolder echoed. “Ha! You hear him? ‘Three’, he says.”
“By my last count, there’s at least 337 people down here.”
Shining Armor was stunned. “What…?”
A few other murmurs of ascent went around the black chamber from no less than two dozen voices, but the way they echoed quickly made it clear that they were reverberating off of many others.
“Men, women, children…not sure if there’s any babies too or if the dark just got to someone…” Smolder went on.
“And we’re from all over too. I came from Fillydelphia, but Smolder’s from the Dragonlands, and Yona’s all the way from Yakyakistan. Um…Everfreesian is only her second language, so she has a bit of trouble with grammar. She finds ‘Yakyakistani’ too hard to pronounce.”
“‘Yak’ shorter and easier to say!” the bigger voice retorted, right before there was one last click and Stygian exhaled.
“That takes care of the gags, but I better find that shank if I want to cut your ropes…” Smolder muttered.
“They don’t mind at all that you’re able to free yourselves?” Stygian asked.
“So long as we’re quiet whenever they open the hatch to this oubliette, they never check on us,” Ocellus answered. “Besides…it’s not like we can go anywhere. All they do is lower food and water on a rope and they can cut that anytime they want.”
“But what did they throw all of you down here for?” Shining Armor asked.
“Bad circle marks,” Yona half-snorted. “You get bad circle mark, and no one in Mount Aris like you. Throw Yona and her friends into hole. Yona say Mount Aris soldiers are cowards. Too scared to watch yaks in prison cells if have bad circle marks, so throw into hole so don’t have to guard them.”
“You mean Promethian Sigils?”
Smolder snickered. “Well look at you. You must be from out west, using that fancy name for them. In the Dragonlands they just say you’re marked, while in Yakyakistan they say you’re cursed.”
“Most of us are down here because they have Promethian Sigils,” Ocellus explained. “A few of us like me were here because we were trying to help them travel or were relatives. There got to be too many refugees on the borders of Mount Aris, so they put them in here.”
Shining Armor paused. “I…don’t suppose you have anyone down here who lived at a relocated colony in Manehattan, do you?”
“Who said that?” a distant voice called out in the darkness.
“I did! Are you from the Manehattan colony?”
“Yes, I am! Who are you?”
“I’m Shining Armor, but that’s not important right now! How did you get to Mount Aris?”
A pause. “Are you with Manehattan?”
Shining Armor noticed it was a sharp, accusatory tone. And definitely not friendly. He hesitated a moment before answering. “…I was with their delegation, but then they set us up to throw us down here. We’ve been trying to find out what happened to the people from that colony.”
Immediately, he heard an angry swear. Not just from the voice but several others.
“You should know! You’re the ones who brought us here!”
“Wh…what?”
“You assholes said you were going to relocate us! The next thing we know we’re being shoved into a train at gunpoint and dumped off at the front door of Mount Aris, and as soon as the government gets sick of us begging for passports and food they leave us in this hole to rot!”
He heard a scoff from Smolder. “At least your government had enough sense to lie to your face. The Dragonlands just threw us out on our rear ends. From there we all tried to get a lift from some wealthy industrialist who was supposed to have family in Fillydelphia, and instead they only get us this far.”
“Oh, you do not want to be in Fillydelphia right now,” Ocellus spoke worriedly. “The new president is really stirring people up against eidolons. Enough to where he got the new congress to agree to deport them all out of the country; even if they’re long time citizens. I tried to volunteer with an organization that said they were going to give them relief and relocate them to safe families, but when we arrived at Mount Aris the address didn’t exist.”
“When Yona and other yaks come down with bad circles, great yak shaman come to Yona’s village. Great yak shaman says yaks with bad circle marks need to travel across Greater Everfree and climb to top of sacred mountain to remove bad circle marks. But when yaks come to Greater Everfree, yaks can’t find sacred mountain. Yaks think maybe Mount Aris is sacred mountain since it biggest, so yaks go there.”
A pause of silence in the dark dungeons.
“Normally I’d make a crack at her for that, but we did trust an industrialist, so I think the folk remedy people have the edge on us,” Smolder answered.
“That’s what’s been going on, everyone,” Stygian spoke up again. “Something much bigger than just Manehattan. Someone…maybe a group of someones…has been trying to gather the eidolons. Manehattan had already lost too many and the remaining ones were accounted for by the government, so they have to impersonate the government to bring them here. Everywhere else they just exploited fear and panic.”
“What?”
“Of course…” his voice grew quieter. “That’s assuming that Manehattan hasn’t been in on it the whole time. It wouldn’t make much sense, true, but both the grand chancellor and the major general have been keeping their secrets from us. If nothing else, an official could be in on it.”
“But who would be doing that?” Shining Armor responded. “And why-”
He cut himself off as he felt a hand on his shoulder. A much bigger and firmer hand even than the one that had grabbed him a moment earlier. He nearly jumped or called out on it, until he recognized the grip and size…
“…Big Macintosh? Is that you?”
“Eeyup,” a familiar voice answered.
“Oh, you know each other?” Ocellus asked. “They threw Mr. Big Macintosh down here just twenty minutes before you arrived, but we had a hard time figuring out who he was as he doesn’t seem to be a man of many words…”
“Pretty beat up too, from the glimpse I got of him,” Smolder half-chuckled. “He must have really done something to tick them off.”
A gasp came from Marble Pie’s direction.
“Well now, that makes things even more incriminating.”
Shining Armor turned back to Stygian. “What?”
“It struck me as odd that they would have thrown us into this oubliette if they had merely spotted Big Macintosh looking around. How would they know where he was looking unless they were present at the same spot, when we’re supposedly sequestered to only one hall? The answer would be that he was looking at some place they were allowed to be and he saw something he wasn’t supposed to have seen.”
Shining Armor felt uneasy at that. “So you’re saying…Big Mac learned about all of the people being stuck in here, they saw him, and then they wanted to make sure they’d keep him quiet.”
“By throwing him, and us, in here with everyone else. Let Mount Aris take care of our ‘disappearance’.”
A moment of silence passed as the dark possibility came over Shining Armor. Yet what broke it was most unexpected.
“That ain’t it.”
Both he and the others perked up their heads at the new voice. Shining Armor was perplexed as it was right behind him, until after a few seconds he realized who had spoken.
“Big Mac?”
“This ain’t what I saw in the window. I saw somethin’ worse. A lot worse.”
Yeah…figures that’d be the first thing on my mind, doesn’t it?
The morning sun was glaring through the conspicuously large window of the room. It really was a beautiful sight. Under much better circumstances, Sunset would have appreciated the view. But naturally much better circumstances hadn’t been the case for a very long time.
She was alone now—seated in one of the easy chairs with her hands grasping where her helmet would normally be if she hadn’t left it behind on the train that returned to Canterlot. As much as she wanted it, the object was simply too odd to be permitted through Mount Aris security. Now she had no source of comfort and nothing but her self-consciousness and the growing pressure in his midsection. She had been looking at the same spot on the floor for at least two hours, but ever did she feel the presence of eyes on her.
Standing between her and the door, having not sat down for one moment since she had been “escorted” there, was the thin man with the handlebar mustache. He had merely sat down a bag nearby at his own feet, crossed his arms, and looked at her. She didn’t bother entertaining any thoughts of trying to get past him in spite of his smaller frame. He had disabled, quite easily, Shining Armor in spite of his bigger size and Promethian Sigil. She had no chance.
Her eyes flickered over to him once. He didn’t seem to mind; especially as her eyes went to his hip. She saw nothing but his long coat, but she had caught glimpses over the past few hours inside for the handlebar of his odd, pistol-like weapon.
Three hours ago, she had broken the silence. “I thought we weren’t allowed to have guns.”
The man hadn’t answered a word, but she had pieced it together. It was pistol-like, but it seemed to have been composed of odd materials. Perhaps they had brought in pipes or decanters or other innocuous bits of metal. What more, they weren’t firing actual bullets. They had just some sort of beanbag-type pellets with impure mixtures of powder they had probably snuck in like snuff. All things that were designed to be quiet and nonlethal if they had been caught. They had to be. Otherwise, Promethian Sigil or no, Shining Armor would have been dead.
Even if this agent hadn’t been superior to her physically, she would never get past that weapon.
She slowly exhaled.
Funny…if I was just thinking of myself, I thought I’d manage something a bit more important than needing to use the bathroom. Like how I’m essentially on death row. I swear I can almost feel my roots growing as I sit here. As soon as they notice my real hair color, it’s over. I’ve run for months and been halfway over the world, and this is where it ends.
I might still end up going back to Tempest Shadow, even.
She exhaled. “I have to use the bathroom.”
No answer or reaction.
There’s no way out of this. Let’s be honest…I’m not reckless, let alone brave. Without the Anima Viris, I’m nothing. It’s a miracle I haven’t curled into a ball and started bawling yet. I sure feel like it… There’s only one way out of this now. The same way I’ve gotten out of everything else until now. Use the only thing I have to offer…
There was a knock on the door. Sunset looked up along with the agent. After adjusting himself to keep an eye on her, he sided over to the door. He opened it only a crack, but Sunset looked up just the same. At first she saw nothing but heard, of all things, a female voice.
“Is she causing any trouble?”
That was odd. She hadn’t recalled seeing any female agents. Yet she was even more surprised when the man answered with a woman’s voice.
“No. She’s just been sitting here for the most part.”
“The grand chancellor’s feeling too sick to head to the conference, so he’s sitting in with the first lady. Everyone else is headed out, though. I’m going to start looking around. Stick to the story.”
“Alright.”
The door opened slightly; enough for the person on the inside to look in. What Sunset saw, however, was a woman’s face…and she just faintly made out what looked like the headdress that one of the maids of Mount Aris wore. She was puzzled, but mostly puzzled on seeing her face. It was new and yet familiar…
Suddenly, the realization came upon her. As the door shut again, she glanced again to the agent watching her as he resumed his position. She tried to imagine him without his big coat and, especially, the handlebar mustache.
So that’s how they were able to move around. We weren’t the only people up to no good on this trip. These two could have handled the assassination the whole time. Why did he insist on using us?
Forget about it. It hardly matters now. What matters is how I’m going to get my head out of this noose before the floor drops beneath me. There’s only one way—take their deal. Offer myself the same way I did to Twilight.
The only problem is she wasn’t as tight-lipped as I was. She told them most of everything that’d be any use to them. I could talk about the Angra Mainyu, but…to be honest, after speaking with Luna, I don’t really feel that great about talking about it anymore either. Especially now that I know that thing is out there somewhere. Of course, there’s other things I can tell them about to make myself valuable.
There’s Canterlot.
“I really need to use the bathroom.”
The agent said nothing.
Sunset sat a moment longer before exhaling. “Alright, then could you try and find a chamber pot somewhere around here? Because otherwise you’re going to get the nice smell of a puddle of urine in here pretty soon.”
She saw the agent frown and heard a loud exhale. After that, he…or, more appropriately, she…stood back a little before speaking in the male voice again. “Don’t try anything funny. The grand chancellor gave you a berth, so I wouldn’t waste it making stupid decisions.”
No need to worry about that. I’m not a martyr like Twilight and the others. Look at everything they did for you and how you repaid them. That’s what loyalty gets you. And I’m sad to say I have no choice now but to teach them that lesson again.
Luna has that school converted into a fortress, protected by Promethian Sigil bearers if nothing else. But I know how many. I know how to get in and out. I know what lies to make up in order to get her to let me in. Most of all I know how to get to their libraries and get the info that’s in them out and into the hands of Manehattan. I have value. I’m worth the investment.
And…
And…if necessary, I can get closer to Twilight and the others than anyone else. I can smooth over this whole business and make them buy it. Then…then I can do whatever they need me to do to them.
Sunset inhaled coldly as she rose from where she was standing. She walked over to the door and let the agent fall in behind her. After that, she opened the door slowly and calmly, and they both stepped out. They both turned and began to walk down the hall.
So she had pity on me. So she treated me with mercy. It was only because I knew things she didn’t. Well…alright, maybe it wasn’t. Maybe she saw through my bluff. Maybe she just figured I was so pathetic I wasn’t worth doing in then instead.
Alright…maybe it wasn’t that either. Maybe she just wanted to talk to someone else who knew Celestia. Someone she could confide in. And…well…maybe I wanted that too…
It doesn’t matter though. Only what I said matters. Her whole crusade has been a waste of time from the start. And…and…and she was a fool to trust me to begin with. After everything I did to her, she actually put some faith in me for so long? That’s life. When I was in Trottingham, I made sure to tie up loose ends. She should have done the same.
There were a few other maids in the hall. Ones that Sunset was sure were the real deal. However, they had a Mount Aris escort with them—watching for anything funny. While normally they were posted at the ends of the halls, by now they were probably making sure that no one who was staying behind was trying anything. Two of them in particular gave a look at Sunset and the agent as they approached on route to the bathroom at the end of the hall.
I’m sorry, Twilight, but…
Ugh, listen to myself. That little nugget in my stomach needs to get lost. It’s not going to save them and it certainly isn’t going to save me. This is the world we live in. Lunar Fall or no, it’s never going to change. This is it. I’m going to use the bathroom, I’m going to go back to my room, then I’m going to tell this cross-dressing super-spy that I’m with Manehattan. I’ll let them know whatever they want. Then I’m going to have them get me some damn cigarettes at last while I’m at it…
It’s nothing personal, Twilight. If you thought I was ever going to do anything other than save myself, then you’re the fool.
I’m not losing my head for you. This is where we part. It really sucks for you and your brother, but you knew what you were getting into. It’s better Manehattan rake you over the coals than Trottingham at least. Or Nightmare Moon, for that matter.
It’s all over.
Sunset exhaled as she kept walking, slumping her head a little as they neared the guards. They looked to her. A heartbeat passed. Her blood ran cold. Her stomach sank like a stone.
Suddenly, she sprung her head up and ran at the guards. Both of them reacted in surprise and nearly went for their weapons, and the agent behind her stiffened and reached out. Yet it was too late. In a moment, Sunset had run…not at the guards, but around them to use them as human shields.
“Help me! That’s not a man! She’s got a gun! She’s trying to kill me!” she shouted, pointing right at the agent.
The agent went wide-eyed—suddenly frozen on the spot. The guards themselves were dumbfounded, so Sunset insisted and pointed at the agent’s hip.
“She snuck in a gun! She’s going to assassinate someone! I found out and she’s going to shoot me in the bathroom! She’s not a man! It’s a disguise! Look at her hip!”
The agent’s face remained stoic—the only thing she could do. Fortunately, the urges were enough for the guards. Without a word, one suddenly darted forward and grasped the lapel of her coat. He pulled it aside and, before the agent could stand back, he managed to see a glimpse of a butt of the weapon. More than enough to suspect it as being a true pistol.
The agent came to life in an instant. In spite of the guard being larger, her fist immediately curled up, lashed out, and punched him dead in the throat. The end result made him gag as the agent spun around, grasped the weapon, pulled it out, and fired another shot right into the throat of the other guard. While not as loud as a gunshot, the eruption was enough to make the maids cry out, and the agent herself pushed past the collapsing guard and lunged for Sunset…
Too late. She had managed to worm her way behind the larger guards and wiggled past just as the agent’s fingertips brushed past her hair in vain. She began to run down the hall as the agent extricated herself from the guards; back the way she came. However, she quickly pressed herself against the wall as the four Mount Aris guards who were blocking off one side of the hall instantly charged down and past her for the agent. She, in turn, quickly assessed what was going on and ducked into one of the rooms being cleaned as they pulled their actual guns on her. The door slammed behind her just as one of the first guards reached it and began to pound against it.
Sunset, however, saw no more. She used the moment to quickly go back into her room, slam the door behind her, and lock it. As soon as it was done, now breathing hard and sweating profusely, she turned to the bag that the agent had left behind. She dove on it, tore it open, and found another Mount Aris maid uniform inside. She quickly began to strip to replace it with that garment.
I’ve cracked. I’ve lost my mind. This is elaborate suicide.
Me…no Promethian Sigil…no Anima Viris…no weapons…no training…no support of any kind…and I’m actually doing this. I’m actually going to try and bust them out of here.
I’m going to die. No prison. No torture. Just flat out die. Any minute now I’ll get found out and the last thing I’ll feel is bullets tearing though my body. I’m going to throw my life away because I’ve gone insane. For some teeny, tiny, pathetic sensation of worthless loyalty…
She swallowed as she began to throw on the maid outfit, already wincing that there were no other weapons in the bag.
And you know what?
I…I honestly don’t care. Harmonium help me…I honestly do not care.
Because I’m tired of living like a caged rat constantly afraid that each moment’s going to be my last.
Because I’m tired of having to get by through life by constantly sleazing my way through whoever can protect me.
Or maybe because if I’m going to die miserable and scared I’d like it if at least there was one person out there who was genuinely sad for me.
Sunset hated dresses at the best of times, but at least this one was more practical than fashionable. She had no idea if it would even work, but she also had no idea how much longer those guards could keep the agent pinned down. Once she was finally clothed, she exhaled and looked around a moment, before she reluctantly turned her head to the window.
Even if I still had my Anima Viris, this would be nuts… But Big Mac did it.
Almost giving a whimper, she went up to the window, unfastened the latch, put her hands on the frame and swallowed, and finally pulled herself up and out. Once there, she slowly and nervously turned herself around to face the seemingly-sheer wall, grabbed for whatever masonry she could, and began to inch her way along.
Ok, Sunset… You’re in an impromptu disguise that barely fits, you’re dangling for your life from the edge of a castle that no one should have ever been walking along, you’re going to have the entire castle looking for you anytime between now and the next, oh, fifteen minutes at most? Anything else?
A strong whoosh suddenly resounded through the air. Sunset immediately froze and clutched the palace walls. Seconds later, she felt a gust hit her…and actually pull her a little thanks to the dress she was wearing. For a moment, she felt her grip on the palace side weaken, before it finally died down and let her relax again.
The wind picked up. Great. So what’s the plan? You know, other than ‘don’t fall to your painful death’?
Well…if I keep inching this way, I’ll eventually reach that incline and, hopefully, I can scoot down to the next floor below. There’s no way I can get back into the palace on this floor, but maybe if I get down there, and maybe if a window is opened or unlocked, and maybe if no one is around to see me slip inside, and maybe if no guards spot me or ask any questions, and, finally, maybe if the staff buys this disguise and whatever excuse I can come up with, I’ll be able to make it out of the hall.
Then what?
…I have no idea. But I think I’m going to be making this one up as I go for the near future.
Just get moving before you come to your senses and realize how insane you’re being…
“Oh Harmonium…”
Shining Armor didn’t have to see the others in the chamber to know the looks on their faces. The dead silence in the oubliette was all the confirmation he needed to know both his group and the other inmates were likewise horrified.
“Ghastly…” Stygian finally said.
“That does sound pretty messed up,” Smolder spoke up. “Cool, but still messed up.”
Shining Armor paused a moment longer before looking up and around. “We have to get out of here. We have to warn the Manehattan delegation.”
Smolder guffawed. “Seriously? They threw you in this hole to rot and you want to bail them out?”
“If what Big Mac said is true, then we’re all in trouble…but Manehattan most of all.” He began to feel around so that he could start pushing himself to his feet. “Is there any way out of here?”
“Oh, sure. People are always getting thrown into dungeons when other people want them to just come and go somewhere as they please.”
“Yona try digging escape tunnel,” the bigger girl offered, “but yaks used to floors made out of dirt…not rocks.”
“We did try forming a tower at one point,” Ocellus offered, “but not only is that pretty hard to do in the dark, but it’s almost 15 meters. We can’t stack that high.”
He sighed, then turned in the direction of the group. “I don’t suppose any of us have any ideas, do we?”
“Only part of an idea…” Stygian answered. Soon after, there was some shifting noises. After a short while, there were sounds of metal on metal. “I managed to smuggle a small two-shot .22 in pieces in the soles of my heels. That’s why I changed shoes before we were brought out. It may be dark but I should still be able to assemble it.”
“Great job, Stygian.”
“Don’t thank me yet. It’s only part of an idea, like I said. It’s not like we can threaten anyone to let us out from down here. If we could get someone to get hauled out then that would be something…”
“We can’t help you there,” Ocellus answered. “They only ever open the oubliette to let down food and water, and there’s no way they won’t just drop the rope if we grab onto it. I think they have some sort of cage on a chain they can lower to pull people up, but first we’d have to give them a reason to let one of us out.”
“Yona fake being sick?”
“If we all got the plague down here, we’d just be doing them a favor.”
“We could say we know something about an assassination,” Shining Armor suggested. “Technically…that’s the truth.”
“I’m…not sure they’ll buy all the details on that,” Ocellus answered. “I mean, it’s just a tad farfetched. Even for me…”
“She has a point,” Stygian answered as he began to stand as well. “Besides, we’re supposed to be bound and gagged down here. It would help if we had a bit of light…
“Is there any wood?”
“Just from the bowls and cups they put our food in.”
“We’ll have to make do. If nothing else, maybe if we make enough smoke for them to smell they can think something is worth opening the door for…”
“Let’s hurry. If the grand chancellor is against us, I feel we may all be on borrowed time…”
“If we want light, allow me,” Shining Armor spoke up as he held his hand aloft. “Member of my house, I command you to come to me! Artistic Vanguard—Spearhead!”
Nothing. In the darkness, Shining Armor’s eyes widened as he was left standing there in total gloom, without so much as an increased breeze.
“Um…alright then,” Ocellus said uneasily.
“Is that traditional chant for making fire?” Yona asked.
Smolder burst out in snickers. “‘Artistic Vanguard’? You kidding me? What kind of title is that…?”
“You’re not able to call on your Anima Viri?” Stygian spoke up with more concern.
“No…I’m not…” Shining Armor answered uneasily. He tried again, but aside from gaining more snickers from Smolder, nothing happened. “What’s going on?”
“Perhaps Mount Aris perfected something that approximates the Eris Bell that Sunset Shimmer devised? It would make sense. If everyone in here has Promethian Sigils, then this prison would have a hard time holding hundreds of us…”
He sighed. “Great. Now that gun and getting out the ceiling really is our only hope…”
“Now commences the fourth day of the Greater Everfree Summit. The floor is now open to geopolitical, diplomatic, and military affairs.”
At once, a hand went up. “Trottingham requests the floor.”
“Granted.”
There was a pause from their delegation. After a moment, a somewhat amused voice spoke up. “Well now…the Manehattan delegation seems to be lacking a few members. I don’t suppose anything happened, did it?”
Kibitz could almost hear the other representatives stiffening in anger before the “second-in-command” diplomat spoke up. “The grand chancellor is detained with an illness this morning, if you must know. Not that it’s any of your concern. I personally would rather have had him attend so that you could take a small ‘gift’ back to Trottingham with you.”
The gavel banged three times.
Kibitz could almost hear the smile on the face of Tempest Shadow as she responded. “Nevermind. He’ll get the news soon enough. Firstly, some facts for all of us gathered here.”
One of the figures proceeded to raise a piece of paper. A cough later, and a different male voice began to read.
“Based on all of the data gathered by our own intelligence and external sources, Trottingham has estimated that, at maximum, there are no more than around 2,200 individuals in Greater Everfree who ever had Promethian Sigils. 761 of these were…removed by our government’s predecessors. Mostly from Trottingham and Manehattan. 92 are currently in jail or had their marks somehow removed…again, mostly from Manehattan. 191 died as a result of Fillydelphia mistreatment. 120 were killed by lynch mobs in the Dragonlands. 270 are in Griffonstone’s service, 85 are in Manehattan’s service, and 277 are dead for other reasons.”
“At the most, that leaves only 404 unaccounted for,” Tempest spoke up again, before her voice lowered in a menacing undertone. “Oh, wait…there’s one other figure we forgot. Mount Aris has 377 Promethian Sigil bearers currently in its dungeons—right in this very building. Well, that accounts for just about all of them give or take, doesn’t it?”
Kibitz stiffened. He wasn’t liking the sound of this already.
The figure rolled up the paper as she continued. “Now then, putting those facts aside, I would next like to announce that Trottingham has been involved in some…negotiations prior to this conference. The nations we’ve spoken with arrived at the conclusion that previous arrangements with the governments of Greater Everfree have not been entirely mutually beneficial. Seeing as we are in the middle of some aggressive expansion, we offered them the chance at better international arrangements.”
At that point, one group at the meeting suddenly stood. Not to protest. More as if they were rising on cue, which jilted everyone else.
“Former Abyssinia, for one, believes that its migrant worker program has been treating its citizens most unfairly for the labor they are performing. So Trottingham is opening a new migrant worker program with them, up to and including military service. At quite an increased beneficial cost to them. Our recent talk at Klugtown was most productive. Enough to where we should be working hand-in-hand in the future, and supporting each other in terms of weapons and munitions as necessary while their economy develops.”
Not long after saying this, a second group stood up.
“The Saddle Arabian government is of much the same mind. Since the attacks on Manehattan, the price of kerosene has risen dramatically worldwide and yet the prices that Greater Everfree is willing to pay for Saddle Arabian oil remains woefully low and effectively under control of Manehattan itself. We seek to alleviate that unjust burden by providing a new outlet for their oil. And since we have ensured that Trottingham will be the sole source of providing oil for the Dragonlands and Appleloosa, their future is secure. Of course, we will be aiding their own economy in return…again including supporting them with weapons and munitions.”
Now there was a tense chill on the air. Everyone knew by now what this was building to. And, at this point, the delegation from Trottingham itself stood up.
“We have a new international coalition. One that reaches much farther than any in Greater Everfree, especially with the unrest in Southern Equestria. And that brings us to right now, in which I will announce to everyone present that Trottingham is officially annexing Mount Aris. Effective today.”
Kibitz’s jaw dropped. Soon not only his delegation but everyone else’s began to murmur. And very soon, it began to turn to anger. Not long after, the Mount Aris delegation spoke up rather crossly. “If this is meant as a joke, ambassador, it’s in rather poor-”
She cut him off with a mirthless chuckle. “In spite of my laughter, this is no joke. That’s the problem with you going to all the trouble of isolating yourselves. Barricading your railroads. Shutting down air traffic. Enforcing your borders with armed personnel. Essentially, you’re now spread too thin to stop us and you’ve made your own cell. You only had one remaining rail going in and out of Mount Aris. As we speak, our military is seizing control of it. True, the elevation here is too high to fly any of our airships in, but that hardly matters. Within the hour we’ll have control of the only pass out of this range. The Mount Aris government is effectively our prisoner.”
The uproar grew again, more angrily this time. The guards surrounding the room began to advance on Trottingham’s delegation.
“Trying to take me captive would be a very bad idea,” she spoke up louder. “For one thing, it would accomplish nothing. The army and aerial navy are already on the way. For another, more important, thing, I don’t think you want to find out how costly my imprisonment or death will be to this palace. It will be a pyrrhic victory at best.”
“You insult and threaten us to our faces and expect to wander free? You’re a fool if you think even the might of Trottingham’s aerial navy will be enough to save you here!” the delegation responded. “Seize her immediately! Signal that if Trottingham makes any move on us, she dies! She’s too valuable to the monarch to risk her!”
That only made her break out in a cold laugh. “And who says the Trottingham aerial navy is going to try and ‘come to my rescue’?”
The soldiers, who had nearly fallen upon her, paused. The rest of the room went silent at this new comment.
“Didn’t you hear what I said? You’re our prisoners. When you lock someone in a cell, you don’t bother getting into a fistfight with them to torture them. You simply withhold their food and water. There’s no escape from your palace. No one is going in and no one is going out of this fortress in the mountains…these rocky, inhospitable, infertile mountains. How many days do you think you can last up here before you run out of fuel for your fires during the upcoming cold winter nights? Or without food to keep your soldiers strong? We don’t need to risk a single bullet on your defenses. We need only wait.”
At this point no small amount of fear was beginning to pervade through many of in the chamber. Kibitz himself swallowed a lump and felt his palms begin to sweat.
“Now then, that brings us back to our new coalition. The only value Mount Aris has whatsoever to Trottingham is to control the pass to the south. What we really need right now is to expand our industry and manufacturing. Former Abyssinia provides manpower, Saddle Arabia provides resources, but infrastructure and factories?”
With that, the delegation’s hooded heads turned to Griffonstone. Their own delegation looked shocked and taken aback. “You aren’t…?! How dare you! We’ll never-”
“Calm down, sir. We aren’t interested in a war with Griffonstone. Quite the opposite. You’ve been impoverished for nearly a decade due to being unable to gain enough capital to revitalize your industry. Especially since Manehattan and Fillydelphia left you to rot to benefit on your poor fortune. Trottingham can help you there. There’s enough room for one more on the coalition.”
Silence lingered in the room once again. Hooded heads darted one way and the other, looking to see what would happen next and waiting with baited breath on what it would mean. Kibitz on his part already feared the answer. He knew full well that Griffonstone’s economy was too poor to withstand an attack from Trottingham. And, as it was fast becoming clear, whoever wasn’t their ally was their enemy. If they managed to seize Mount Aris, then they would be the next on their march out to the west. Lastly, and most of all, he knew that their leaders were greedy and thought often only in terms of the short-term profit…
So what happened next, as he feared, was inevitable.
The Griffonstone ambassador stood. He gathered enough of his wits to bark out in his normal cross tone. “I’m sure there’ll be some complaints from the council back home, but…in light of the chance to restore our economy I think they’ll come around quickly. This isn’t very conventional for a summit, but I never really cared for all the pomp and circumstance anyway… Griffonstone sides with Trottingham’s coalition.”
A bit more reluctantly, the rest of their group rose. Now composed of four different nations, those standing seemed to be rather imposing…casting dark shadows over the assembly and bearing the lion’s share of the power and authority.
“Now that that’s settled…”
A figure among the Trottingham assembly reached for their hood and, to everyone’s surprise, simply yanked it off. Everyone soon realized it was Tempest Shadow herself who had done it—showing off her scar that seemed to glow faintly in the dim chamber and her piercing eyes that coldly challenged the room in front of her. She had made herself a clean target and was now daring people to do something about it. Yet not one soldier of Mount Aris moved, and none in power commanded them to do so again.
“I present to you the Storm King League. In the wake of the chaos of the Lunar Fall, we are now the power not only in Greater Everfree but the world. At the moment, we only have one-”
Everyone in the chamber snapped up in fright, for at that moment a sizzling sound went through the chamber like a mixture of a frying pan and a lightning bolt. An instant later, a blue-white-hot bolt cascaded off of Tempest Shadow and sailed straight for one of the Mount Aris soldiers who had gained enough boldness to pull her rifle on her. Tempest never even looked away from the crowd when she responded.
And a moment later, the upper third of the soldier was gone. The next lower third had become instantly carbonized and fell apart like it was made of terra cotta. The last third alone remained flesh and simply flopped to the ground like butchered meat. No one looked at Tempest again. Their eyes were glued on the remains, unblinking and unbreathing.
“As I was saying, at the moment we only have one demand for Mount Aris…other than complete and unconditional surrender, that is. We want the prisoners you have in this fortress bearing the Promethian Sigils. All of them. Either kill them all and present proof of their deaths or hand them over to us. We don’t care either way. You have twelve hours to decide on both issues. For the rest of you, feel free to finish your little meeting or go home now if you like. Our blockade won’t stop you from passing. We have nothing to gain from antagonizing your nations…”
Her eyes narrowed as she cracked a hint of a smile.
“…yet.”
Several people stiffened, but no one risked making another move now. The soldiers that had surrounded the Trottingham delegation were now rooted at the spot for fear of another bolt. They could still smell the ozone from the first, to say nothing of the horrid stench of the remains of the one soldier.
“As for the Trottingham delegation, we’ve said what we meant to say. We’ll retire to our own chambers.”
With that, she simply turned around and began to walk out of her booth. The rest of the Trottingham delegation soon did the same. Not only them, but also the Former Abyssinia and Saddle Arabian delegations. The Griffonstone one hung behind, seemingly unsure on what to do next. It hardly mattered. Everyone’s eyes were on Trottingham and Tempest Shadow. Soldiers actually parted out of their way as they approached, and the head of the summit as well as their delegation merely stammered and murmured—no longer having the force to speak in light of what was going on.
As they departed, Kibitz and the rest of the Manehattan delegation ignored the events and turned to one another.
“I move that we adjourn ourselves as well. We need to get to the Grand Chancellor immediately and inform him about what just happened.”
“He did what now?”
Sunset swallowed, trying to look as inconspicuous as possible. “He, um…lifted a necklace from me. I searched the room when I was cleaning it but I didn’t find it anywhere, so I think he still had it on him when he was thrown in the dungeon.”
The two guards stared her down critically and she tried not to blanch. She had been lucky until this point. She had managed to get to a lower floor and in through a window on a delegation that was already out, and then quickly made her way out of the tower. Praying that the one agent would remain detained, she scrambled around for a while trying to simultaneously avoid any guard checkpoints and find wherever the dungeons were.
She managed to drop a few floors before she ran into more solid checkpoints that gave her looks that said: “What are you doing here?”, and she didn’t chance trying to approach or get past them after that point. For a while, she was unable to make further progress and was scared that eventually one of the security forces would accost her.
But then, most unexpectedly, some message went about that caused the far bulk of the soldiers to abandon their posts and relocate. She had no idea what, although based on the level of movement she assumed it was something that had to deal with a major crisis. She used it anyway and rushed down the remainder of the floors until she found her way to the dungeons.
There were still two guards left, however, and she still needed a way past them.
Seeing them hesitating, she swallowed and insisted. “It…it was a gift from my mother before the Lunar Fall. It’s really important to me. Please?”
Silence for a few more moments. The two guards looked to one another. For a moment, she thought she had blown it.
“What do you think?”
One of the guards looked back at her. “Can you identify him?”
A glimmer of hope arose inside her. “Oh…yes, yes definitely!”
He sighed. “I guess it wouldn’t hurt to look at him real quick.”
“You sure?” the first responded. “I’ve never pulled one out before…”
“There’s nothing to it. Just follow me.” He turned around, and as he did he beckoned to Sunset. “You come too.”
“Oh! Yes, of course!”
She fell in behind as the two guards led her further down a few more artificial levels and ramps, descending into the prison area proper of the palace. Most of it looked more like a museum; as if it hadn’t been utilized in years. The cells were empty and open, and many of them were missing proper locks or bars. It had an old musty smell of disuse rather than mold or human filth. It seemed clear to Sunset that they had repurposed it only a little while ago, although why they would to begin with was a mystery to her. At any rate, she didn’t have a chance to dwell on this too long before they reached their location.
The lowest level was far more dank and dark, aside from the recently-installed gaslighting. It had a smell of oil and metal here from equipment that had been replaced and serviced more recently. In particular, there was a narrow stone corridor leading to a central room that was circular, fairly small, and constructed around a heavy sealed door in the floor. Nearby there were a few crude devices, including what looked like a portable lighting mechanism that used gas of its own, and a rather large cage attached to a winch and chain. Sunset also noticed that there was a chain rung ladder of some sort nearby, but that had been stashed and put aside some time ago.
“What does he look like?”
Sunset blinked, freezing on realizing the two guards had stopped. “Uh…um…pardon?”
“The thief. What does he look like?”
“Oh…oh! Well, um…he was dressed like a Manehattanite. He had dark blue hair kind of shaggy in the back and in the front. He was a bit more solidly set too.”
“I think I know the one she’s talking about. He went down not too long ago.”
“Alright, I’ll get the light.”
One proceeded to fetch the light and used a flint and steel prong to light it up before focusing the beam. The other one began to turn the crank nearest to the hatch to slowly pull it open. After that, the one with the light beckoned Sunset forward, and soon she and the other two were looking down the hole as a light was shone into it.
“We’re looking for a guy with dark blue shaggy hair who got tossed down not too long ago. Whoever it is, step into the light.”
There was silence save for some shifting for several moments. The guard nearly called down again, before a figure walked into the light. Sunset looked down and recognized Shining Armor; looking annoyed and still with his hands tied behind his back and his gag on.
“Alright, we’re sending down the cage. Only you get in. Anyone else, we’ll drop you all.”
After that, the guards stood back and began to pull out the lifting cage. As soon as they managed to fit it through the hole and drop it a few feet, they went to the crank and began to lower it. Sunset, meanwhile, stood to one side and stared as her mind raced.
Alright…now what?
So they haul Shining Armor up and…what do I do? It’s not like I can untie him. And he doesn’t have any necklace on him either. Maybe I can bluff and tell them to undo his mouth so he can tell me where it is, but if they know that he has to be gagged to keep from using the Anima Viri then that’s no good. They’re already looking at me like they don’t fully trust me. If I make my story much worse I’m in deep trouble…
Sunset was still trying to think of something when, before she knew it, the winch was already ratcheting upward again. As it neared the top, one of the guards got out his revolver right before Shining Armor’s head poked out. A moment later, he grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and hauled him out the last big step over the lip to stand on top of the oubliette. The other guard soon flanked him.
“Alright friend,” he began, before motioning out with his gun toward Sunset. “This lady here says you lifted something off of-”
He got no further. Abruptly, Shining Armor’s hands came out from behind his back and, before the guard could blink, he found a miniature two-shot pistol pressed against his temple.
Sunset wasn’t sure if it was blind instinct, luck, or a mixture of both, but somehow her stilted nerves reached out and seized the revolver in the guard’s hand. Thanks to his surprise, it popped out immediately, and she spun around to aim it right at the other guard just as his hand began to move for his own. “Don’t!”
The other guard froze, as wide-eyed as the first now, and slowly put his hands up. Shining Armor used his other hand to quickly yank out the gag, then tossed it on the floor to free up his limb and seize the other revolver. He motioned to the wall. “Both of you. Hands up. Over there. Don’t say a word.”
The two did as they were told, putting their hands in the air and taking their position.
“Watch them,” he told Sunset, keeping one eye on the guards while sliding over to the metal rung ladder. It took a bit of effort, but Sunset kept them still until he pulled it over to the edge of the hatch and fastened it on the side. He spilled it down the hole afterward and let it fully unroll. “Alright everyone, start heading up. It’s going to take a while to get all of you.”
With that done, he walked back over to Sunset’s side and held up both firearms to cover them. He stood there for a moment as the sounds of people starting to get onto the ladder and pull themselves up rang out. Sunset’s heart slowly began to ease as the initial danger had passed.
But after a time, Shining Armor looked at her. “You actually came to help us?”
She almost frowned. “Yes, I guess I did,” she flatly retorted. “I hope you actually have a plan to get out of here or you’re going to make me feel like a jackass for doing it.”
“We’re working on it…” A pause. “Thank you.”
“Seriously? After everything I’ve been telling you?”
“Yeah. Thank you.”
Sunset was quiet after that. She didn’t really know what else to say, to be honest. Only that for a moment she felt a tugging at the corners of her mouth.
At last, the first one came up—Stygian. Shining Armor immediately passed one of the guard revolvers to him. He looked at it uncertainly…even uneasily…for a moment before he accepted and took over his role watching the guards. Soon after came Marble Pie, and after her came Big Macintosh.
“Alright, let’s get out of here,” Sunset said hurriedly. “I don’t know why they pulled back the guards but let’s use it.”
“Hang on just a second…” Shining Armor answered as he stepped a short distance away and held up his hand. “Member of my house, I command you to come to me! Artistic Vanguard—Spearhead!”
A crackling went off, before light erupted and traced out the emblem of a soldier. After which, it flowed over Shining Armor and he was again clad in the raiment of the Healer. The guards actually recoiled in shock and surprise—having never seen that sort of thing before. However, Sunset soon became cognizant of a laugh coming from the hole.
“I’m never gonna get over that title…” a girl chortled before poking her head over the edge. She was a rather scruffy and scrappy-looking one, with keen eyes and an overbite that almost made her look sharp-toothed. However, she soon picked up on the glowing in the room and turned to Shining Armor.
For a fraction of a second she looked amazed. Then she simply grinned again.
“So what are you gonna do? Baptize ‘em to death?”
Shining Armor ignored this and looked down at himself. A moment later, he released his Anima Viri and returned to normal. “It looks like whatever was keeping me from using that was down there…”
“Wait, what?” Sunset retorted. “You couldn’t use the Anima Viri while you were down there? That’s not possible. They’d have to have an Eris Bell and there’s no way they know how to make one.”
“They have to have found some way, because it looks like they’ve been collecting everyone with a Promethian Sigil down there. There’s at least 300 down there.”
“377, including you all,” a girl’s voice came from further down as the first girl pulled herself out.
“Seriously?” the first girl called down. “You’re still all the way at the bottom?”
“No!” A pause. “I’m about…three rungs up.”
“Let Yona carry you! Yaks best at climbing chain ladders!”
“I-I-I think I’ll be alRIIIIIIIGHT!”
Sunset rolled her eyes and groaned. “There’s no way we can get out of here with 377 people. We’ll be lucky if we get out of here. And we can’t stand around here waiting for them all to get out of this hole. Let’s leave them the guns and go.”
“Hey, works for me,” the girl said with a grin as she reached for Sunset’s revolver.
“We’re not leaving,” Shining Armor responded.
“What?”
“We have to get back upstairs and to the grand chancellor.”
“The grand chancellor? Are you nuts?! He’s the one who got you all locked up down there!”
Sunset blanched a moment later when Shining Armor leveled a grim look at her.
“There’s something a lot worse going on here than the grand chancellor throwing us down in that prison and we’ve got to warn him while there’s still time. No one saw us or paid much attention to us when they threw us down in that dungeon. If we just walk up there like we know exactly what we’re doing, we should at least make it to the hall. Then I’ll pull out my Anima Viri and run us the rest of the way.”
“He has a point, Sunset,” Stygian spoke up. “No doubt you made it all the way down here because you looked like you belonged here.”
Sunset couldn’t argue with that. It was a tactic she had used quite a bit after leaving Celestia. She just fumed at the fact she had gone to all of this trouble to rescue them only to find they wanted to go right back in last place she wanted to be right now.
“Don’t worry. Once we’re through this, the grand chancellor will be wanting to pin medals on us.” He looked to the others as a much larger girl in braids began to pull her way out of the hole, bearing a much smaller and frailer looking girl on her back. “Alright…we’ll make less attention if we don’t all go. Big Mac, Marble Pie, and Stygian will stay here. Sunset’s already got a disguise so she can just lead me up and that’ll be it.”
“Sir.”
Stygian had spoken up almost immediately after Shining Armor said that, and his voice had unusual power and fortitude. It was the loudest and most forceful thing he had said since returning to Canterlot, and immediately garnered everyone’s attention.
He swallowed once. “I want to come with you.”
“It’s fine, Stygian. You can just stay here and help the others get out.”
“No…sir, I want to come with you.” He stated this more forcefully. Almost with a hint of anger. “This is important. Much more important than anything we’ve done so far. I have to…” He paused, and swallowed. “I want to be the one to make the shot. I won’t miss. Please.”
Sunset was puzzled at that. They’re not actually thinking of going up there and shooting someone, are they? Yet Shining Armor seemed to understand what he was trying to say and what this meant, even if she was too preoccupied at the moment to realize it. A moment later, he handed over the two-shot to Stygian. He took a deep breath and took it from his hand.
“Alright then.” He turned back to Sunset. “Give them the other revolver and let’s go.”
She opened her mouth to protest, but Shining Armor immediately took off and with Stygian following close behind. She stammered, and was nearly forced to toss the gun to Big Mac before running after them to catch up.
Running in without a word… She grumbled mentally. What exactly are they talking about?
“Sir, sir!”
“What is it?!” the hippogriff commander barked back as the rest of the unit left the watchtower without him. “In case you haven’t noticed, we have a crisis going on within the palace and we could be invaded at any moment!”
“That’s just it, sir!” the relay operative responded, still clutching a set of headphones to his head with one hand and writing down with another. “We just got a wire from the perimeter! We have an airship inbound! Signaling to request to land!”
The commander went wide-eyed. “What?!” he snapped, before stomping back over to the man. “They have a Trottingham ship inbound already?”
The operative turned back to the headphones, continuing to decode the message. “It’s not Trottingham, sir! It’s an unknown make and model! They’re saying it looks like…like some sort of cruiser model…”
“The devil it is! It’s another Trottingham ship! I’d stake my rank on it! Why didn’t the damn aerial defenses blow it out of the sky?”
“That’s just it, sir! It’s coming from the north!”
“The…?” he trailed off at the very idea. He paused a moment, then looked out through the windows of the watchtower. He looked north and, sure enough, it wasn’t long before he saw the incoming vessel himself. It was still in the distance, but it was lit up like a cruiser. Definitely something suited to fancy living and tours rather than military. And he could make out its signals from its own light that it was making for landing.
“That’s impossible… No airship in Greater Everfree can fly over the Hyperboreans…”
Neighsay didn’t even turn his head to Kibitz and the diplomat. He continued to talk with his young secretary, even when she glanced to both of them. The two didn’t mind—they were just glad to catch him as they ran up to him.
“So I see Manehattan is taking full advantage of the lax security…” he mused aloud, never looking up from the sheet he was reading off of. He folded up the paper and handed it to the girl. “Everything on the itinerary seems well and good. I believe we’re ready to depart.”
The girl looked uncomfortable, but nevertheless accepted the paper and turned to rush off down the hall. The two men immediately began to address Neighsay, but he continued not to look at them as he stood to one side of the hall. “Mr. President, we need to talk. I think we can all agree that the situation…”
She trailed off and Kibitz saw the reason why. No sooner had Neighsay moved to one side than he began to see members of the Fillydelphian delegation moving down the hall. Each one was carrying luggage and/or documents of a sort and was dressed for travel.
“What are you doing?”
“Not looking a gift horse in the mouth and getting out of Mount Aris while Trottingham allows it,” he dully answered, waiting until a few of his own guard had passed him before stepping out and beginning to walk with them…rather rapidly at that…out of the side hall into the main one. “I suggest you and your grand chancellor do the same.”
“We can’t leave now! We have urgent matters to discuss!”
“And what urgent matters would those be?”
“What exactly we can do about Tempest Shadow and the Trottingham incursion, of course!”
“I am doing something about the Trottingham incursion, ambassador. I am returning home to start preparing Fillydelphia for potential war and to find some way to counter whatever power they’re using. And you are currently slowing me down in that regard.”
“Trottingham is a problem for us both,” Kibitz interjected. “We need to make a plan. We need to marshal our-”
“We must do nothing, major general. The two of you didn’t come here to tell me what we must do—the two of you have come here to do what Manehattan always does whenever something threatens their precious pocketbooks. Come crawling on your hands and knees begging Fillydelphia to protect you yet again for pennies in support. Not this time. Find something for your army to do besides march in parades.”
“You cannot be serious,” Kibitz retorted. “With Griffonstone laying down its arms, there are only two major nations still in opposition to a Trottingham advance. We need each other. We need an alliance to stand against this new league of theirs.”
“Is your grand chancellor reversing his punitive economic policy against us?”
“I…I don’t speak for the grand chancellor, but-”
“Then why should I pretend that we are in any way, shape, or form allies? Why should I sacrifice more Fillydelphian money and blood on his whim? You need Fillydelphia, sir. Not the other way around. I will not even consent to a conference with Manehattan unless those tariffs are removed and our debts forgiven. Tell your chancellor to do that before coming to me cap in hand again.”
“Mr. President-”
“Gentlemen, as I have said before, you are wasting my time. Good afternoon.”
Kibitz and the diplomat fell behind at that point, for the delegation crossed into a narrower hallway that led to the staircase to the lower levels. They were forced to halt and watch as the rest passed them by silently without so much as a glance. Soon they were alone aside from the periodic palace staff running about.
“We didn’t even get a chance to mention what was to be done about Tempest Shadow…” Kibitz sighed.
“Nothing can be done. Even if we had the entire square guard here, they’d be mad to try and attack that. She doesn’t even have one of those things on her hand!”
“We can’t simply let her go free now! Trottingham is counting on us just silently skulking back to Manehattan! It’s all the proof they need to know they’ve nothing to fear from expanding even more!”
“It’s hopeless, major general. Even if Tempest Shadow was captured or killed, she’s right. They’d only end up taking everyone here captive. No one can get in or out from here now without their consent.”
Kibitz took in a deep breath.
“There is one thing we have that they don’t.”
The ambassador gave him a flat stare. “You cannot be serious.”
“It’s the only chance now. You have to realize this.”
“You’re asking us to treat with the same people we just threw under the wagon?”
“We have no choice. And frankly I’d rather beg their forgiveness than ask Trottingham for anything.” He sighed. “I will admit it’s not going to be easy. They already think we were just using them for weapons against Manehattan’s enemies and this will confirm it beyond any doubt, but maybe if we could get Mount Aris on board there’s a sliver of hope.”
“This is madness…” the ambassador sighed, running a hand through her hair. “I was never fully on board with making a deal with the eidolons in the first place and I know half of the delegation was opposed. Now we need to convince them that pleading with them is our only chance?”
“No, we need only convince the grand chancellor, who was already predisposed to the idea,” Kibitz corrected. “I am only a military man. I can speak only from that perspective and authority. I cannot tell you what to do in greater matters of state. However, if we are to defer back to the eidolons, ask for their pardon, and then convince them to side with us in frustrating Trottingham’s plans, then the time must be now. Every second allows Tempest Shadow to solidify her grip on the situation.”
The ambassador was quiet. The tension in her face was clear. Finally, she exhaled. “I’ll need to confer with the others immediately. And the grand chancellor will have to be the one to push the proposal forward, illness or not.”
“You talk with them. I’ll go to the grand chancellor directly. I was supposed to be the eidolon liaison, after all.”
“Keep this quiet. If Trottingham finds out that we’re doing this, none of us are getting out of Mount Aris. And more allies of theirs keep popping out of the woodwork…”
“Of course.”
Without so much as a further nod, the two parted. Both of them realized that it would look better if they took separate routes back up to their hall to stagger appearance of what was going on. The major general soon found a side stairwell and began to walk up it. His face betrayed nothing—nothing other than a look of the younger military mind and cunning he had once possessed. A realization that the situation was passing where he would be able to remain a mere advisor or, more appropriately, a glorified secretary. An appreciation that every circumstance that went on now was dire.
He did attract the occasional look from Mount Aris security or other passersby, but nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing that indicated they were intrigued in what he was doing. Nevertheless, he had taken this route to evade suspicion. A lesser known stairwell that was off the main route to keep too many people from knowing where he was going. One that wouldn’t pass by anyone else rather than the castle staff.
So, naturally, it was some surprise to him when he reached his destination floor, only to turn a corner and see Stygian, Shining Armor, and Moonshine Flash.
He walked straight into the first of the three, nearly pushing into him, before his eyes widened and he realized what was going on. Yet before he could so much as gasp in surprise, Shining Armor addressed him quietly. “Going our way, major general?”
At the exact same time, he felt a bit of steel poke in under his ribs from Stygian. It might have been small caliber, but he recognized the feel of a gun barrel. He quickly cut off the sound in his throat.
A moment later, Stygian slipped in behind him, making it look like he was walking behind him before the gun barrel pressed against his back instead. Shining Armor moved in to one side while Moonshine Flash quickly hopped in front of him. Now rearranged, Shining Armor nodded forward.
“Keep going. Straight to the grand chancellor.”
As that was where he was intending to go in the first place, the only thing that gave Kibitz pause was what exactly they planned to do when they got there. Yet the feel of the gun reminded him that they were serious and, as calmly as he could, he did as he was told. Soon the party was falling in behind as they stepped back into one of the main halls.
Again, they got a few looks, but the operation last night had been so quiet that no one suspected anything or put a face to his now-captors. As a result they were able to pass along looking fairly inconspicuous.
He swallowed and spoke quietly. “About last night-”
“Save it,” Moonstone Flash muttered behind her.
“You have every right to be upset-”
“Right now, I’m resisting the urge to just take you into a broom closet and beat the stuffing out of you,” Shining Armor cut off. “Especially since we could use you. So don’t push it.”
Kibitz was quiet for a few more moments as they walked on toward the main staircase, until they began to ascend it. “If you’re thinking of getting revenge on the grand chancellor for what he did, then I’ll be forced to alert the guard bullet or not.”
“Don’t tempt us,” Sunset sneered.
“We’re here to save the grand chancellor,” Shining Armor reaffirmed.
“What…save?”
“Did those two agents of yours who captured Big Macintosh happen to ask him what exactly he saw?”
“Well…no, actually. They just said they found him spying in the window of the grand chancellor’s bedroom and everyone leapt to the conclusion of espionage.”
“You should have asked him. You might not have believed him, but he got caught because what he saw scared him.”
“What do you mean?”
At this point, they reached the top of the stairs and were turning for the hallway that led to their rooms. Stygian spoke up. “Where are those two agents now? The specialists?”
“Who…Lyra and Bon Bon? There…there was some sort of confusion earlier. One of them was detained while the other is lying low. There was a crisis in the summit today…”
“There’s a crisis going on right here.”
“What about the rest of the guard?” Shining Armor asked.
“They’ve been redirected. Most of the delegates have left their rooms for a private meeting, but the ambassador is bringing them back right now along with the guard-”
“Good. That gives us enough time.”
“Enough time for what?” he asked, just as they turned the corner to their hall. It was totally empty at the moment save for the room of the grand chancellor, flanked by two of the servicepeople from last night.
Shining Armor leaned in closer. “We need to get in there immediately. Tell them to let us in.”
“I can’t do that. Not without you giving me more to go on.”
“The person who’s killing Fancy Pants is in there with him. If I tell you any more, you won’t believe me.”
“What do you mean?”
“Major general,” Stygian spoke up curtly, “between the two of us, you are the one who betrayed our trust. If there’s anyone here who needs to make a show of faith, it’s you.”
The old man opened his mouth briefly as he kept walking, but then shut it again. He exhaled uneasily, but looked forward and said no more.
In moments they reached the door. It took no time at all for the two servicepeople to note who was with Kibitz, and react with appropriate surprise. However, if either of them were going to say anything, Kibitz beat them to it.
“We need to speak with the grand chancellor immediately. It’s a serious matter concerning the Trottingham ultimatum and we have no time to waste. Kindly let us in.”
The two agents looked perturbed at the unusual situation, and glanced again to the three with him…who gave them nothing but grim and/or dirty looks in response. “Sir, what exactly is going on…?”
“Are you normally in the habit of talking back to a superior officer, ma’am?”
The agent swallowed. “N…no, sir.”
“Then what is the problem?”
“Sir…Mrs. Fleur-de-Lis said that the grand chancellor was feeling severely unwell and not to disturb him-”
“Be that as it may, ma’am, this concerns the future of all of Manehattan and I must talk to him immediately.”
They hesitated a moment longer but eventually relented. One of them nodded and withdrew her key, then turned around and unlocked the door. After opening it, Kibitz gave them both a nod before he felt Shining Armor practically push him forward. He nearly slipped on his footing before he walked inside with the others following him.
They had scarcely crossed the threshold into the room from yesterday when the door to one of the bedrooms opened. Teary, disheveled, half-sobbing, and still in her nightclothes, Fleur-de-Lis came out. She was still sniffling and wiping at her running makeup as she half-walked, half-staggered right up to the three of them.
“M-M-Major general…it’s…it’s awful! My husband! He…he…”
She got no further.
Stygian broke from the group, walked straight up to her, pointed the two-shot pistol at her forehead, and fired.
A resounding bang went off as both bullets were discharged, and Fleur-de-Lis instantly turned into a doll with her head on a string as her face snapped back and her body flopped to the ground.
Kibitz froze in abject horror. “What…what the devil…?!”
The two agents, naturally, ducked their heads inside and gaped. They froze only for a moment before they turned and bolted. Having no firearms of their own, they were going for the nearest Mount Aris guard. But as for Stygian, he exhaled, lowered the weapon, and immediately ran to the room that Fleur-de-Lis had come out from. Sunset, meanwhile, looked behind them to the door.
“They’re not going to be gone long, so we better hope he plays ball with us.”
“You…you…” Kibitz began to stammer. “You just…just murdered…”
Stygian, by now, had reached the doorway. However, only a short distance inside, his face froze. He showed just a hint of a swallow. “I’m…afraid we’re too late.”
Shining Armor looked at him. “I can put on the role of the Healer. Maybe I can still save him…”
“I…would be very impressed with you if you could, sir.”
The older man hesitated. Soon after, he walked over to the room himself. He barely looked inside before he went white as a sheet and stepped back. “Oh Harmonium.”
“I think I’m going to regret this…” Sunset sighed as she walked up to their sides and looked in as well. Not only did she go white, she made a retching sound and grasped for her nose and mouth as she staggered back, bracing herself against the wall before she could vomit.
By now, Kibitz, still struck aghast with horror and confusion, finally began to step toward them as well and the open doorway. “What in the world is going on here? Have you all gone utterly mad? Where is the grand-”
He cut himself off as he looked through the doorway. An instant later, he too had to use everything he could to steady himself or he might have vomited as well.
On the bed lay the grand chancellor…or, more appropriately, what was left of him. Even among the most desecrated and rotten of graves one would have had a hard time finding such a ghastly set of remains that seemed to defy the fact they were once human. If not for the monocle and the thin, pale remains of hair vaguely in his style and mustache one never would have guessed it.
The rest of him looked like it was the remains of a crushed, twisted, dried grape. His skeletal, thin, wispy features were horribly twisted in agony and horror—especially his face. The jaw looked pried extra open, such that it would seem a giant had grasped him in its hand and squeezed until every bit of life and essence had gone pouring out of his mouth.
Kibitz could say no more. He could barely even muster the strength to keep looking at the corpse without going into hysterics. Shining Armor had to take several breaths to steady himself before he turned to the major general and weakly pointed at the body. “That’s what Big Macintosh saw last night. He said he accidentally went to the room of the grand chancellor and looked inside, and he said he saw the first lady with her mouth open wider than it should have been full of sharp teeth…and she looked like she was sucking green light out from inside of the grand chancellor. Like some big parasite leeching off a host. He just sat there with a vacant stare and his eyes filled with green light while she did it, but he could see him getting thinner before his eyes.”
Kibitz blinked twice, finally snapping out of it. “You…you’re saying that the first lady was…was a monster? Impossible… She…she knew him since they were children… Her parents were Manehattan businessmen…” He swallowed. “There…there were only a few who…who knew of this…but she did have one of those Promethian Sigils-”
“This had nothing to do with a Promethian Sigil,” Sunset cut off coldly.
“I would wager it was an imposter,” Stygian spoke up. “She was out of the Congressional Square for some time. With an illness, yes? She could have been replaced at any time by…by whatever that thing was. I’m more concerned with how the grand chancellor’s own onset of illness coincided with his changes in behavior. If that parasite could make him docile while feeding off of him and make him forget the entire experience, it’s reasonable to assume it could control him. If so…then that means the recent changes in his diplomacy were not only not his own idea, but could have been designed to serve a different end.”
Shining Armor looked unnerved. “Like what?”
“I wish I knew.”
Kibitz looked around at the three for a moment, but then finally frowned. “This…this is too much, even for me. The first lady was no Light Eater or Nighttouched. There’s never been any sort of monster or beast that’s done this before. And you claim to me that no Promethian Sigil bearer has been the like either. So what was that thing?!”
Shining Armor grimaced, inhaling slowly. “We…may have gotten luckier than you think. That might have been one of the Anima Viris that Twilight and the others are looking for.”
Sunset looked just as uneasy, but hesitant. “I’m…not so sure. She didn’t seem to match any of the descriptions that Twilight said Luna told her-”
“What a rude boy…shooting an unarmed lady in the head without so much as a warning.”
Fancy Pants was all but forgotten in a heartbeat. The room became as silent as the grave, although, in the heads of the four, that last thing that had been called out behind them still lingered loud and clear.
The voice of Fleur-de-Lis…only far less pleasant.
They slowly turned around, back to where her body had fallen. Only it wasn’t limp anymore. She was very much alive and slowly picking herself off of the floor, no longer sobbing or grief stricken. Rather, her lips were spread in a wide smile—a very cruel and malicious one.
However, she was still sporting a pair of tiny bullet holes in her forehead. Not so much as a single drop of blood came from them. Rather, her skin around it looked cracked and fractured, splitting down in several directions like broken glass. The largest one rolled all the way down along the bridge of her nose before it twisted one way and went across her eye.
As for her eyes themselves, they had lost their former color. Now they were green. Not a lovely or even a “natural” shade of green but a nauseating, sickening shade. Like rot or infection. And they glowed in the dim light of the darkened room.
Stygian shuddered, nearly raising the pistol again before lowering it again. It was empty, after all. Shining Armor shifted to try and stand in front of the others, but was too stunned to even call on his Anima Viri. Kibitz and Sunset could only stare as she bared her teeth, reaching up to flick her hair behind one of her ears.
“Now look what you’ve done… You ruined my chance at a wonderful meal. I’d practically been on a diet feeding off of Fancy Pants. Even draining him dry was a snack at best.”
The pupils of the eyes narrowed…not by contracting but by collapsing on the sides like a feline or snake’s. Saliva began to drip from her mouth.
“You two, on the other hand… You look so nice and juicy with those Promethian Sigils. Maybe you can make it up to me right now…”
Kibitz’s lip pursed, because as Fleur spoke the parts of her broken face shifted and gradually began to get worse. By now, part of it around one of her eyes was peeling and moving away, such that her eye looked like it was half-hanging in her socket and half not. It made him want to retch.
“What the hell are you…?” Shining Armor finally managed to speak.
She let out a laugh, causing the split to widen more and sounding rather cruel and mocking. “You should be asking yourselves what you are. I’m a predator. What do you think that makes you?”
Kibitz turned his eyes briefly to the open door to the hallway. He saw nothing, but he was beginning to hear the distant sound of footsteps. He quickly looked back, trying to maintain a neutral expression.
“You know about Promethian Sigils…and eidolons too,” Sunset finally spoke up. “But you’re definitely not one of the Nighttouched or a Light Eater. Your own sigil doesn’t have any Anima Viris…”
“What, this old thing?” Fleur answered, holding up her hand and spinning it around to show the symbol on it. “Is this what’s confusing you? Let me fix that…”
Without another word, her hand went over, grasped the upper part of her hand, and dug her fingernails in. As if it was no more than tissue paper, her fingers dipped inside, and a moment later she yanked back and ripped the edge of it—leaving the thin skin dangling off of her hand like a pocket that had been partially ripped off. There was no blood left behind.
Rather, there was black, glistening material underneath. Like a shell or even an exoskeleton. It stank, however. Like the most putrid filth any of them had ever encountered.
“There we go. Better?”
Sunset could only cover her mouth before retching. Shining Armor, however, didn’t waste any more time. He held his own hand up and made the call. A moment later, his body exploded in an aura and he donned the role of the Healer. With a new staff in hand, he crossed it in front of himself to make a shield against Fleur.
This only made her laugh louder and more mockingly. “A Healer? Even if you didn’t just spread a feast before me, I’m supposed to fear a Healer? You creatures are as stupid as you are primitive!” A gleam went in her eyes. “Although you’re a real meaty one. I haven’t seen one as juicy as you in a long time…”
Sunset was struck by this again, while Kibitz was just more confused. The footsteps were getting louder, though, and he knew that it would only be a few moments more.
Unfortunately, Fleur seemed to know this as well, because while she kept grinning she began to back up toward the narrow window. Her skin continued to tear around her eye until it began to come out all together, but that only made a different pupil behind it, definitely non-human, stand out even more.
“Enjoy this tiny victory. We’re already among you,” she smirked wickedly. “And there are many more of us than you think.”
Without another word, she turned about and dove for the window. She did so with such sudden power and force that she shattered the glass all together before her body sailed through the opening.
Here was where the truly ghastly sight made itself known.
The windows were already too small for a person to force themselves through without great difficulty. As Fleur’s body dove through it, naturally her clothing and skin caught on the sides. Yet that didn’t halt her. On the contrary…the four were treated to a rather horrific sound of clothing tearing and skin peeling as she shoved herself through unabated. As a result, they watched as Fleur’s skin and hair flayed right off of her body before their eyes—peeling like it was an oversized banana.
In moments it was done, and her remains—as translucent and dead as a molted snakeskin—flopped backward still in their clothes and fell on the floor. Yet whatever had been beneath them kept going. They saw a shadow fall away from the window, before a loud noise like an insect the size of a pony beating its wings echoed in. For a moment, the four saw a shadow pass by the window, and then it was gone. The wingbeats vanished soon afterward.
That left the four standing there in a mixture of shock and horror, looking at “Fleur”’s remains. It had been so sudden and so terrible that they were all silently questioning themselves as to whether or not it had even really happened. If they had just dreamed that grotesque display and the disgusting monster talking to them.
They weren’t sure how long they were transfixed on that, but eventually something snapped them out of it.
“Oh, dear Harmonium…”
The four looked to the doorway. It was still open, and now it was filled with people seeing the ghastly sight. The agents had returned and they had brought whoever they could with them along with the gathering of representatives. Apparently, the diplomat had managed to bring them back just when they were running out. Now they were all beholding the aberration.
After a time, though, the diplomat herself swallowed enough of her own bile to look up to Kibitz. “Ma…major general…where’s the grand chancellor?”
The older man hesitated only a moment before he steadied himself. “…Dead. Killed and…and drained like a grape…by…by…”
“By those three!”
Kibitz reacted in surprise, but that was nothing compared to the shock of Shining Armor, Sunset Shimmer, and Stygian as they looked up in alarm. “Wh-what?”
“They did it! They shot her in the head and then…then they somehow sucked out her insides! It had to be them!”
“And they did it to the grand chancellor too!”
“Now…now wait a minute,” Kibitz began to speak up, holding his hands high. “They had nothing to-”
“So that’s why their companion was looking in their window!” one of the representatives shouted.
“I knew it!” another joined in. “I knew they were nothing but monsters! We should have done away with them long ago!”
“Are you kidding me?” Sunset snapped back.
“We weren’t the ones who did this!” Shining Armor retorted.
“It was the first lady!” Kibitz shouted even more resoundingly. “She was the one who killed the grand chancellor and then-”
“She had one of those things on her hand too!” one of the new agents cut off. “I saw it with my own eyes! The grand chancellor told me never to tell anyone!”
“So they’re eating each other! They’re cannibals!”
“They’re devils!”
“They’re a plague!”
Shining Armor and the others began to tense up as they rapidly saw the mood growing hysterical and angry. Kibitz began to step forward. “Would all of you calm down for-”
“Damnit, someone shoot them already! Doesn’t anyone around here have a gun?!”
“Don’t get near them! Don’t touch them!”
“They’ve got the major general! They must be using him like the grand chancellor!”
“Get those Mount Aris guards in here and blow them to hell!”
“Alright, that’s it…” Sunset spoke up, grabbing Shining Armor by the shoulder. “Can we get the hell out of here now?”
Shining Armor, looking indecisive, turned back to her. “But…but if we run now, they’ll definitely think-”
“You think standing here you’re going to convince them otherwise?!”
“She’s right, sir! We should run!”
“Wait!” Kibitz shouted to them, realizing what was about to happen. “Please!”
Exhaling, Shining Armor braced his staff in front of him. “Alright then, stay behind me! Run!”
With that, he took off straight for the door, with Stygian and Sunset Shimmer rapidly falling in behind him. As he ran, he chanted out one of the incantations that Twilight had shone him, before a translucent, gleaming shell appeared in front of him—a barrier spell. Fortunately, the best impact it had was instantaneous. The crowd-turned-mob, fearful that this meant he was attacking them, rapidly backpedaled in his wake rather than tried to stop him. That left the three free to tear out the doorway, past the crowd, and rush out into the hall beyond.
“So much for the ‘medals’!” Sunset shouted as they left the crowd behind. “We should have run before!”
“That thing was going to go after the people in the dungeon next!” Shining Armor shouted back, still bracing his barrier in front of him. “We need to get down there and get them out of here!”
“Now you really are crazy! There’s no way we can get over 300 people out of here!”
“There’s no way just the three of us can get out of here! With that many Promethian Sigil bearers maybe we’ll have a chance!”
Sunset didn’t have a chance to argue with his logic, because at that point the other end of the hall filled with Mount Aris guards. One look at Shining Armor’s glowing body and barrier was all they needed to immediately brace themselves and, without so much as a warning shot, open fire.
Shining Armor winced and slowed, but only a slight amount. Between his enhanced body and the barrier, the best the rifle bullets could do was give him a scratch. Instead, he kept pushing onward. “Break past them!”
Sunset and Stygian complied at first as they ran up on the guards. Fortunately, it wasn’t long before they had to pause to chamber their next rounds, and the three quickly began to close the rest of the distance. As they did, however, they also began to back up—out of the end of the hall and into the circular hub on the other side. Some weren’t quite fast enough, and Shining Armor reached them and proceeded to bowl into them with his barrier and staff. He pushed them both to the sides, and Sunset and Stygian quickly reached out and managed to yank a pair of rifles from two of them as they went—not so much out of a desire to contribute so much as a need to keep from behind shot in the back. The others, however, quickly got into the hall. Some began to fire again, but Shining Armor grit his teeth and kept toughing through it…
Yet a mere three meters before the end, Stygian suddenly lashed out and yanked him by the robe while planting his feet. “Stop! Stop!”
In spite of the Anima Viri, the man was forced to skip to a stop…fortunately for him. A moment later the Mount Aris guards made it clear why. Only a glimpse of him had managed to get out of the hallway, but at that moment the rest of the soldiers that had been firing on him turned and ran for it. Soon after, the end of the hallway was being torn apart by bullets from different angles—including ones that his barrier hadn’t been protecting against.
Going wide-eyed, he quickly retreated, and Sunset and Stygian followed. The young man pointed ahead. “They were trying to draw us out into that hub all along! Then they can hit us from all sides!”
Shining Armor swore. “Then we have to fall back.”
“Fall back to where, exactly?” Sunset retorted. “This whole hall is a dead end! Even you can’t jump out one of the windows and survive! The only stairs are in front of us!”
Stygian let out a hiss between clenched teeth. “Forts can very often end up as prisons…”
“Terrific… You can’t hold them off forever with an improvised barrier spell! Now what?”
Shining Armor flustered for a moment, looking one way and the other. He looked back out to the hallway, but from his point of view he could only see directly across from him into the hall on the other side. That was where the soldiers had run, but reinforcements were rapidly coming. In fact, by now, all three of them knew that the whole palace had to be coming for them. Having little other recourse, Shining Armor turned toward it and began to ready his barrier spell again.
And then something happened that made everyone in that end of the palace forget almost entirely about Promethian Sigil bearers.
With the sound of a wrecking ball, a tremendous, booming, echoing crack resounded throughout the hub and echoed down all of the hallways beyond it. It was enough to make even Shining Armor and the others crouch and shield themselves, while all of the other soldiers dove for cover. For a moment, the three of them caught a glimpse of the ceiling of the hub tower collapsing partially, but moreover an object descending from it even faster and slamming to the floor of the stairwell. Everyone went silent. All sides alike were left stunned.
The three looked ahead into the hub, but they could no longer see the other side. Nothing but dust from the ruined masonry. However, it looked like there was something there. Rather, someone. And they were currently rising from what to have been at least a 30 meter drop without hesitation.
They were equal parts mystified and nervous for a moment, before they saw it in the settling dust as the figure began to walk forward.
Eyes gleaming with lights.
“No…” Sunset exhaled.
Yet her fears were confirmed. The figure that exited the dust was an armored fighter just like the one that had attacked on the train. This one had a metallic ribbon behind it, and the style of the suit was different, but there was no mistaking that it was of the same ilk.
She hardly had time to announce this before another part of the ceiling caved in—this one closer to one of the hallways around the hub. This time, some of the soldiers cried out, but the other ones were petrified all over again. All save the first metal warrior. The three looked fearfully in that direction for a moment before they heard clicking of metal against the ruined masonry. Soon enough, a second metal warrior emerged. Now Sunset really did let out a gasp—this one was the same from the train, and looking no worse for wear after having been hit by an engine.
The three leapt forward and cringed again a second later, for this time an eruption sounded right behind them. They actually felt bits of dust and debris smack into them before a wave of thick dust rolled by. They were forced to close their eyes for a moment as the worst of it passed, and only with extreme effort and coughing were they able to turn around and look behind them. Much to their horror, a third one was approaching through the smoke and dust.
All three that had been accounted for.
Only this one’s metal face seemed to split, enough to show a hint of light inside the smoke, before it called out in a metallic voice.
Shining Armor looked ahead again, and saw both metal warriors were now approaching the hall. Their eyes were already aimed forward, and while they could have been looking at the group in general, they seemed to be aimed straight at her.
“What…what?” she echoed breathlessly. “They’re after me…? But…”
Shining Armor swallowed. He looked behind him and in front of him. The metal warriors were now approaching on both sides and would soon have them cornered. He inhaled stiffly. “Stygian.”
The young man turned, still looking fearful and bewildered but attentive.
“Take Sunset, get back to Big Mac and Marble, and get them and the others out of here. Any way you can find. I’ll follow if I can but don’t wait for me.”
Stygian and Sunset alike went wide-eyed. “Sir, what-”
With that, he rose again. “Stay behind me! You got to break for the stairs the moment you can!”
“What-”
He couldn’t protest any further. Shining Armor bellowed a cry and began to charge—right for the hub and right for the first metal warrior. Stygian and Sunset had no choice but to run after him or lose their last protection, and soon all three were again about to exit the hall.
The metal warrior behind them immediately took off in pursuit, but the other two were nearer and dashed in to intercept. The first was closest, and reached for the metal ribbon only to pull it out into a long, gleaming, razor whip. A moment later, she snapped it out for Shining Armor.
Sunset let out a small gasp as she saw Shining Armor’s shield immediately be cut through, and the whip went against him—sending up a small red mist. Yet the man barely faltered before crying out even louder, running all the way up to the warrior, extending his arms, and doing the best tackle of her midsection as he could.
Sunset and Stygian didn’t have the chance to see how effective it was. They had to use the moment to duck under his arm and run for the stairs. A moment later, Sunset cried out as the second warrior dove for them. She was just as fast as before, and it was only because she had been trying to avoid hitting the other metal warrior that her fist missed her. Even so, she felt the edge of her gauntlet slice a rather deep cut through the back of her dress and shoulder, but she was forced to ignore it as they two of them ran to the stairs.
They continued to duck as they tore around the edge and dashed down in a half-run, half-tumble. A good thing too, because at that moment the upstairs erupted into a deafening cacophony of gunfire. The Mount Aris soldiers had recovered enough to open fire, and both metal warriors behind them were lit up with showers of lead on metal as they were shot from all angles. Neither of them looked back to see the result. After a second or two, Sunset gained enough of her bearings to straighten up again. With Stygian, they managed to get enough of their footing to take the stairs two at a time, and they turned the bend to start heading down to the second tier…
They were still far from the bottom, however, when a horrible, resounding, almost head-splitting noise rocketed out from behind them. It almost had the force of a blow or an explosion, sweeping out their feet from behind them before, to their mutual shock, the stairs behind them literally burst as if they had balloons. Sunset and Stygian were both launched into the air and sent flying off of the stairwell, but in the moment that passed Sunset glanced behind her and she saw the third metal warrior was right behind them.
Her eyes only had a moment to reflect the horror at how fast she was catching up before gravity threw both her and Stygian to the marble tile of the next floor down—where they collided hard enough to flop. It was more than a little painful, and their heads were still rocking from the blast of what seemed to be nothing more than raw noise that had hit them a moment ago. Sunset moaned and began to push herself up from the ground, but she barely got her head off of the floor before she heard an impact behind her. Stygian was still getting his own bearings when she looked behind her in terror—seeing the metal warrior had landed only a foot behind her…
More loud, head-shaking noises rang out as a new chorus of rifle bullets thundered. Sparks erupted all around the metal warrior once again, and Sunset snapped her head back around to see another wave of Mount Aris guards that had been heading up to reinforce the first now saw the new target and were letting her have it. The metal warrior’s only response was to begin to split its helmet open again and reveal a glowing cavity inside, but as this wasn’t aimed at Sunset she quickly rolled to one side to get clear. Stygian followed suit, and as she reached out to pull him to his feet she heard another one of those agonizing sounds—this time aimed at the Mount Aris soldiers firing at her. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of six of them being scattered like dead leaves in the wind before she forced herself back up to her feet and limped around for the next stairwell.
The two of them half-managed to stumble toward the banister at the edge of the stairs before Stygian heard a metallic whistling behind them. Quickly, he grabbed Sunset by the back and shoved her head down while dropping his own. A moment later, gleaming metal whips shot over their head and proceeded to cleave through both the stone banister as well as the floor where they had been headed—right before the metallic body of the first warrior sailed over their heads, pivoted around, and splayed itself out right in their path. Both looked up in shock to see it facing off with them, poised and swirling both of its deadly whips.
For a heartbeat, Sunset was petrified—feeling like she was a rat caught in a trap. Carrying the rifle meant nothing if these things were shrugging off gunfire left and right. Yet a split second later, Stygian moved…not away but ducking right toward the warrior. And somehow Sunset got enough of her bearings both to realize what he was doing and to quickly do the same as she went on its opposite side. The warrior raised both of her whips and cracked them out, and Sunset could feel the air and maybe a few of her hairs cut, but Stygian had correctly deduced that her weapon was too long range to hit them when they were that close. Yet as they dashed by for the stairs, she realized they were in the open again.
That was when she saw a black object headed for her face. She ducked her head to one side and saw it sail past…gasping on realizing it was a grenade. More Mount Aris guards down another hall were getting desperate to try and damage the attackers. The metal warrior spun around to attack Sunset and Stygian only to see the explosive land at her feet. As a result, it quickly retracted one of the whips and aimed its arm out at the hallway where the grenade had come from. Sunset heard a bullet-like sound as something was fired from inside the arm, just as she and Stygian turned around and reached the stairs…
An instant later, both of them were flinging themselves down onto the stairway and, in spite of it being stone, beginning a painful roll down it. They had to as standing would have been a sure way to get ripped apart by shrapnel as two explosions went off. The lesser fragmentary explosion from the grenade would have been more than enough to tear them both apart, but it was nothing compared to the explosion the metal warrior had caused. The entire stairwell shook and the boom was louder than any of the sonic blasts until now. There was little doubt in the minds of either of them that the force of the explosion was bigger than most artillery shells, and had no doubt collapsed that entire hallway.
They kept rolling down, partially due to injury and partially due to purposely escaping, as the noise got worse. Large eruptions and gunshots continued to thunder from over their heads, and by this point it was joined in by more soldiers desperate to try and fight back against these assailants while the civilians and delegates were now fully panicking and screaming. It was nothing short of a war zone. Worst of all, both Sunset and Stygian knew they had scarcely escaped down the first two flights of stairs. They reached the landing for the next switch back, however, and both began to get to their feet to run down the rest…
A heavy, solid, and rather painful metal object proceeded to strike both of them in the back. The blow was so sudden and strong that it left them both dazzled from the pain and surprise, and as a result neither of them could stop themselves before their bodies were flung over the edge of the railing and sent hurtling to the ground yet again…
This impact was the hardest yet. That height was easily enough to break a bone if landed on wrong. As it was, much of Sunset’s chest absorbed her own fall, but her face still banged against the ground and jammed the inside of her mouth onto her teeth, cutting a deep gash. Stygian at least had a Promethian Sigil to brace him, but he still landed on one of his wrists and let out a cry of pain before he sprawled out against the floor. Sunset was left too sore and stunned to do much, but he bit through his pain and rolled on his back—looking back at what hit them.
It seemed the metal warrior with small wings had another surprise. Sunset didn’t see it, but she soon became conscious of a whirling noise over her head…courtesy of a metallic, oblong platform with what looked like a pair of narrow-necked metal baskets mounted on either end of it. Both were belching what looked like potent blue flame, and rotated freely within holes in the platform. The flames acted like stabilized rockets, keeping it not only steady but hovering in midair while the metal warrior perched on top of it—seeming to ride it.
Sunset barely managed to start lifting her head, blood oozing from her mouth and one of her eyes bruised, when the rocket pivoted downward. The metal warrior was repositioning itself over her, and held out one of its gauntlets with fingers extended as if she was making her hand a blade. A second later, the rockets pivoted around and began to drive her downward to her…
Yet a loud crackling sound and a burst of blue-white light impacted her on the side of the head before she could. Where all of the rifle bullets and explosions before had failed to make the metal warriors even flinch, Stygian saw not only her head but her upper torso jerked one way from the force of the impact and the platform she was riding on was twisted to one side. It forced her to halt and stabilize herself before turning to her attacker.
“Well, well…that’s an impressive new weapon.”
Sunset went white as a sheet, and began to gasp as frantically as she had weeks ago on hearing that voice. She was soon rooted to the spot in terror; leaving Stygian to turn to the voice of who had spoken.
There, standing at the end of one of the halls, her own ensemble and brutish-looking guards behind her, stood Tempest Shadow. She didn’t seem to be the least bit afraid of the metal warrior in spite of the sounds of screaming and explosions still going off upstairs.
Instead, her eyes were narrow and her jaw turned in the hint of stern scowl. Without a word, she held up a hand behind her—instantly causing the thuggish soldiers and their entourage to move away and slip to one side. She herself calmly walked out from the hall and to the other side to give them a berth.
“Not one made from Manehattan, either. So that makes it something designed explicitly to kill eidolons or me. I’d like you to tell me about how you came by it. Now.”
Stygian glanced between the two for a few moments. The metal warrior said nothing and, naturally, showed no change for two seconds. Suddenly, the rockets pivoted again.
A moment later, they fired, and proceeded to shoot the platform and its rider across the room, smash right into Tempest’s upper torso, and then crush her against the wall with such force that the platform embedded itself in the stonework…leaving only her legs and lower torso dangling out.
Sunset was still frozen to her spot, but Stygian was left aghast. As brutal as the metal warriors had been, seeing how ruthlessly it had dealt with probably the most feared woman in the world left him rather petrified as well. He couldn’t even muster the will to move at first.
Yet just as he was regaining his bearings, he froze again. He heard a crackling sound from the wall. At first, he thought it might be more of a fracture growing from the impact the metal platform had made, but he realized the metal warrior was still there and still pushing her rockets into it. Yet in spite of that, the platform was quivering. And a moment later it began to pull back again.
That was when he truly gasped, because he soon saw it wasn’t because of the rider. Tempest Shadow, very much alive and actually grinning now as lights danced in her eyes and along her scar, was pushing the platform back.
Far from scared, she looked invigorated.
“Heh…a real challenge at last. Don’t disappoint me.”
With that, a blast of electric light three times as large as the first one shot forth from Tempest Shadow and impacted the metal warrior right in the chest. In response, she actually went flying back and away from Tempest, but only about three meters before halting herself and evening out again, crouching and eying her.
Tempest didn’t hesitate, but instantly whipped out another arc of light for her, tearing up more masonry along the floor as it flashed up toward her. This time, the metal warrior reacted faster; pivoting her rockets around and shooting up and out of her way. She immediately dove again at Tempest, but the scarred woman showed off her own prowess as she promptly sprung to one side—letting the metal platform slice the ground where she was as she alit and crouched again before firing off a counter blast. The metal warrior quickly backed up again, but was forced back a second time as Tempest sprang back up and fired once more.
Stygian didn’t watch anymore. As the fight continued to rage, he turned over to Sunset and grasped her by the shoulders. “Come on! Let’s go now!”
At first, she wouldn’t move. Even when he pulled at her. Eventually, however, she swallowed and allowed her fear to push her into flight rather than freeze, and started to pull herself up again. She had just reached down to take her own rifle with her when a cutting sound was heard, and the ceiling over their heads began to groan. Neither of them afforded a look skyward. Instead, the fresh panic made them both scramble up into a crouch and scatter out of the way…just as a huge section of the stone masonry came down and obliterated where they had been.
Sunset risked a look behind them as they ran around for the next set of stairs down—just in time to see the whip-bearing metal warrior come crashing to the floor along with the ceiling. She didn’t even pause but immediately cracked and snapped her whips out at Tempest, who had just finished dodging another diving swipe from the flying platform of the first warrior. The scarred woman answered by leaping back twice, once for one whip and a second for the other, before her eyes flashed and she lashed out with an arc of electric light in front of her to cut a path into the floor. Doing so was not only enough to halt the whip-bearing one from coming closer but interrupted the path of the flying one so that she had to cut to one side just as she was making another dive for her.
As Sunset and Stygian reached the stairs and quickly began to run down them, they heard yet another echo of a sonic blast. Luckily, they were far enough away to only wince from it, but it didn’t come from the ceiling. Rather, the wall behind Tempest exploded from the force of what had to be the third warrior annihilating it. While it was still erupting, Sunset caught a glimpse of the warrior bursting through the falling rubble and seizing Tempest from behind. It immediately yanked her close—as if getting ready to blow her head off with the next sonic blast. Yet still not overcome, she drove her head back and smashed it into the hollow metal skull with enough force to jar it to one side, causing the sonic blast to obliterate the top of the stairwell. Fortunately, at that moment, the two turned around the next set of stairs going down and kept rushing.
It was only then, when the sounds of battle and destruction began to very slowly turn to echoes rather than resound all around them, that Sunset realized how hard her heart was beating and how heavily she was breathing. Stygian, however, kept a hand on her shoulder and kept pushing her downward. “I don’t think even Tempest Shadow can survive those three all at once for long. We have to hurry.”
She said nothing. She was still panting too much. It was all she could do to lock her brain into keeping herself moving.
Fortunately, the attack served as adequate diversion for most of the castle. There were a few other guards and civilians along the way as they kept descending, but they were either preoccupied with their own tasks or, far more often, fleeing the tower themselves as fast as they could. The battle continued to rage overhead and with sufficient power to shake the entire palace, and once or twice it even sounded like it was getting closer, but for the most part it grew fainter as they made their full descent.
They finally reached the right floor and rushed back toward the dungeons. By now, they had been practically abandoned. No more guard posts to rush through or soldiers to worry about. However, the distant eruptions kept sounding and the palace kept shaking.
After running through the last few desolate halls, at last they saw it. Far ahead at the entrance to the oubliette, the area was crowded with dozens of people. Many of them were dirty, squinting, and looking more than a little malnourished, but they were out at least. However, the two also saw that people were still coming out of the hole; being guided by Big Macintosh and Marble Pie.
It wasn’t long before Smolder ran up to them, although she slowed as they got nearer. “Whoa…you two look like crap. Is there a war going on up there or something?”
Ocellus nearby looked far more nervous. “Where’s Mr. Shining Armor?”
“We have to get out of here. Right now.” Sunset looked back to Big Mac. “Is everyone out yet?”
“Almost,” Ocellus answered for him. “We only have about sixty-two to go.”
“Six…sixty-two?! That’s ‘almost’?!”
“Yeah, well climbing a metal rung ladder when you haven’t seen any light in days or had a decent meal or a chance to move around is kinda hard,” Smolder retorted.
“Some people have babies too,” Yona threw in from nearby.
Sunset groaned. “I just had to come back to try and rescue everyone…”
“We can’t wait any longer,” Stygian stated. “We can keep letting people come out, but Big Macintosh, Marble Pie, Sunset Shimmer, and I need to head back and hold off the junction just before the stairwell. Anyone able-bodied should follow or continue to help people out, then follow after us.”
Sunset turned to him. “Why?”
“I may not know how we’re going to escape this palace, but I know how we’ll be trapped in it. If we lose that junction, then we might as well be stuck in a cell. There’s no other way out this deep.”
“Ugh…good point. Big Mac? Marble? Can you trust someone with those guns?”
Smolder immediately raised her hand eagerly, but the two deferred to passing them off to two of the more alert-looking inmates. Other ones who seemed to be in better strength got to the edge of the hole and proceeded to start helping hoist people out as quickly as they could. As for Big Mac and Marble, they came up to stand alongside Stygian and Sunset, and the four of them turned and began to head back the way they came.
Sunset almost immediately handed her own rifle back to Big Mac. “Either you or Marble will be better with this than me.”
The bigger man reluctantly took it, but also looked concerned. “Uh…”
Guessing what he was going to say, Sunset sighed and shook her head. “I don’t know where Shining Armor is right now. He told us to go ahead. Things have gotten bad up there. Real bad. We’ve got all of the Mount Aris folks after us and they’re not the worst of it.”
Marble let out a gasp at that and Big Mac was dumbfounded.
“If we get out of this alive, I’ll give you the details, but suffice to say we’re not going back to Manehattan…”
Stygian picked up the pace, beginning to scale the short staircases leading up into the higher levels. “We need to hurry. This junction is all we can hope for at the moment, but as soon as we’re able we have to try and hold something that at least is on the first-”
“Hey!”
The shout was a mercy to the four, who looked up in alarm. They were just getting to the top of the stairway after Stygian when they spotted four Mount Aris soldiers far ahead at the end of the hall just before the junction. Two of them were crouched at the walls but two were up, and their guns were raised in an instant. The four just had time to recoil before a pair of bullets went off, trying to hit them as they ducked back down the stairs.
In moments, all four were pressed against the ground as more bullets whizzed overhead. “Great…we’re too late already.”
“It’s only four of them…” Stygian remarked as he cocked his own rifle. “With any luck, we can mark them without much effort.”
Marble looked a little uncomfortable on hearing that. Big Mac wasn’t much better. As Stygian flipped his body around to put his belly against the stairs, he only reluctantly swallowed and began to crawl up as well.
However, before Stygian could call out when to wait for a shot, they heard more cries of alarm from up the hall, followed by a pair of loud knocking sounds. Two more soon followed it, and then silence aside from heavy breathing. The four were confused for a moment before they all risked a look over the top.
Sunset went wide-eyed. “Shining Armor!”
It was indeed him, although saying he had seen better days was an understatement. He was half-hunched over his staff, which had already been broken once but nevertheless had been used to strike the still-writhing soldiers down. Much to the unease of the others, his white robe had turned mostly red with what looked like slashes across his body, and his aura had dimmed considerably. Considering that he was a Healer, Sunset realized the initial injuries had to have been far worse.
The four quickly got up and ran the rest of the way. Stygian went straight for the fallen soldiers and, with a little help from Sunset, quickly stripped them not only of their weapons but also their spare ammunition. Big Mac and Marble went for Shining Armor, and not a moment too soon. He managed to only take one step in their direction before he heaved and collapsed—being caught by Big Mac just in time. Sunset, taking up a fresh rifle, turned to him and saw that his aura was flickering. His robe and staff were barely staying intact and were trying to transition back into their original forms.
Stygian sighed. “I knew the power of one Anima Viri. It’s shocking that those metal warriors were so strong…”
Marble Pie wheeled to him in alarm. “Hmm?!”
“Yes, they’re here. All three of them,” Sunset darkly answered. “And I’m more scared of them getting here than the entire Mount Aris army, so that means we need to get out faster. But first off, look what our friends here were trying to do.”
She pointed down to the two soldiers that had been against the wall. Stygian and the others saw a series of red cylinders tied together and connected with twisting wires were planted there. There was another one on the other side of the hallway from it. Both had lengths of wire coming from them a short distance before coiling up in a spool that had not yet been unwound.
“Dynamite,” Stygian remarked.
“They must be losing it up there. With those metal warriors here, they want to make sure none of the eidolons get out of here alive. They were going to blow this hall and seal us all in it.” Sunset shrugged. “Well, I’m assuming they have a detonator on them too. Looks like we got a couple bombs as our assets now…”
“Wait.”
She froze just as she leaned over to start rifling through one of the solder’s things. Stygian stared on at the dynamite for a moment, calculated something, then looked up to her again.
“We both agree that the biggest threat right now are those metal warriors, and that even Tempest Shadow won’t be able to hold them back for long, right?”
She looked a little confused, but nodded. “Yes, but what does-”
“Then I have an idea: let’s set a trap.”
“What?”
“If they get on the other side of this, they’ll be underground in a stone prison. If we blow the entrance on them, they won’t be able to escape. Even eliminating one of them would be a boon at this point.”
She paused, thinking that over for a moment, but frowned. “One problem. They’ll be coming toward us. They have to be on the other side for us to set off the bomb.”
“We have bait, though.”
“We do?”
“That one called your name, remember?”
Sunset went wide-eyed. She started to shake her head. “No…no, I am not going to be ‘cheese’ for these-”
“Just trust me. Stay here until they get here, then I’ll take care of it. Just make sure the detonator is ready.”
The woman looked more than a little dubious at this proposition, but she really couldn’t argue at the moment. Now that they had stripped the soldiers of their weapons, it only took another moment of searching to find a basic lever detonator. Marble Pie took the spool and began to unwind it, and once it had gotten a good distance Big Mac began to wire it up to the detonator. Stygian and Sunset stayed behind covering the soldiers, but it wasn’t long before more of the inmates began to show up. As soon as they were there, they passed out the spare guns and ammunition. There wasn’t much but it was better than nothing.
Once the bomb was set, Marble ducked into an enclave in the wall with the detonator while Big Mac ran back. He ducked down and got Shining Armor onto his back. Not long after, his glow died out all together, but that hardly mattered now. Stygian himself began to move back to the stairwell and Sunset only reluctantly followed after him. As he did, he spoke to those arriving.
“Alright, whatever you do, don’t go forward or head in that direction. That’s where most of the fighting is taking place. As soon as you get to a set of stairs, head upward. We need to get to where we have multiple exit points.”
With forward spoken for, that left either the right or the left. It seemed that either way would be good…or neither way. For all they knew, Mount Aris might have been able to cover both wings. Yet it would still be easier to fight through them than through the metal warriors.
However, no more than thirty of them had managed to gather when echoes started coming down from the right hallway. The group turned to it, realizing that was the main direction reinforcements were coming, and Stygian looked back to the others. “That means head to the left. Try to keep moving forward to the nearest exit.”
The inmates didn’t argue, but soon took off with their few weapons they could spare in the lead. After the large group left, more soon began to stream out behind them. As for the others, they quickly got into position. Big Macintosh positioned himself at the edge of the turn in the hall in visual range of Marble while setting Shining Armor down in an adjacent enclave, while Stygian held back further in another enclave. He motioned for Sunset to stand with him, and she sighed and moved up alongside him.
“If one of them shows up, we immediately need to fall back and draw their attention before they can attack anyone else.”
“Great…I’m not just being ‘volunteered’ to be bait, I’m also being volunteered to be a martyr…”
“They attack whatever constitutes a threat. They made that clear upstairs. We just have to hope everyone gets out…”
The sounds of the footsteps grew louder. Stygian leveled his rifle and Big Mac quickly did the same. Sunset, not being foolish enough to stick her neck out, quickly pressed herself back against the wall. She looked around for a few moments for anything she could use for a weapon, but found nothing other than a loose brick when it began.
As one, both Big Mac and Stygian fired out shots. Big Mac stopped after one but Stygian quickly reloaded and fired again and again until he had exhausted his entire five shot clip…firing enough for Big Mac, a little confused, to fire again himself. After that, they stopped. Stygian quickly went for his only remaining clip and began to reload.
Sunset gave him a look. “There’s no way you hit five of them just now.”
“No, I didn’t hit any.”
“What?!” she screeched in a harsh whisper. “We don’t have ammo to waste!”
“We have to let them think they’re more then two of us!” he loudly whispered back as he put his clip in. “Big Mac! As soon as one pokes their head out, fire a shot! Keep doing that!”
“Eeyup!” he whispered back as he kept watching.
People continued to stream out, one after the other. Some were dragging children along or carrying them if they couldn’t keep up, others were more able-bodied running, but none of them were moving as fast as the group. It made Sunset increasingly nervous and she tried not to count them as they went by. After a few moments Big Mac fired a shot. Only ten seconds later, he fired two more, and was quickly forced to go for his own remaining clip.
Beginning to shake with anxiety, Sunset called out to one as she passed. “How many more?”
“They’re down to the last ten, but they each have babies! They’re trying to get them up!”
Sunset swallowed back the cold feeling in her stomach as she began to mouth for them to hurry up. Big Mac scarcely managed to reload before he had to fire again. Less than a minute later, she heard more footsteps coming down the hallway. Soon after, Big Mac fired off twice again, and a shout to “take cover” was heard. She began to breathe hard as she realized he was down to two shots, and grasped her brick more tightly as if that would help…
Big Mac fired once more, and this time Stygian quickly had to pick up the slack with two more shots of his own. The big man grimaced before he shrugged and choked up on his rifle to use it as a bludgeoning weapon, but turned to the two of them and shrugged. Sunset was now getting extremely nervous, before she noticed one of the people running by was Yona. The Yakyakistani turned to her with a smile.
“All people out! Ready to go!”
She let out a huge sigh. “Thank Harmonium… We just need to hold for a little-”
She was cut off by the sound of an explosion. He wasn’t terribly near, but the stone hallways acted as a perfect echo chamber to make everyone freeze where they were and cover their ears in shock. At the same time, both Sunset and Stygian spun to the direction it came from—the pathway right ahead of them and up the staircase. They saw a cloud of dust rush down the stairs, followed soon after by several bits of rubble…
…And pieces of Mount Aris soldiers.
Sunset turned white, but the nearest inmates were far more shocked. One of them immediately screamed at the top of her lungs while the others began to be seized with panic.
“Keep going!” Stygian shouted at them. “Run! Don’t look back!”
The people, motivated more by fear and panic than anything, did as they were told. Even Yona seemed to lose a bit of her confidence before she rushed after them, with more people still streaming out. As for Stygian, he immediately stepped out of the enclave and into the center of the hall…as the sound of metal footsteps began to echo to them.
Sunset gaped at him. “What are you doing?”
“Stand out here with me!”
“What?!”
“We can’t set off the trap until everyone’s out! As soon as I shoot, run for it!” He turned to Big Macintosh. “Take Shining Armor and go with them!” Finally, he looked to Marble Pie. “When I yell ‘now’, hit the detonator!”
The three were aghast. Stygian was only a young man yet he was taking charge so readily now that there was a void of leadership. Yet none of them were in a position to argue with him at this point. Sunset realized she’d rather be closer to a person with a gun than farther away and reluctantly stepped out to his side. Both of them swallowed and stood their ground as bravely as they could as they looked ahead at the stairs. People continued to stream out, but they focused only on the sound getting louder and louder…
Finally, they saw her footsteps begin to descend the stairs. Not long after, Sunset felt a chill as she saw the ends of the razor whips dangling down as well. It was that one, it seemed. She didn’t have the others with her, but just seeing her was bad enough. Her glowing eyes were soon exposed and focused forward, seeing the stream of people running by and looking beyond it to the hall.
“Sunset Shimmer.”
Just hearing her name called again made Sunset begin to tremble. Stygian raised his weapon and leveled the sight. “Remember,” he said through his own quivering lips. “As soon as I shoot, run for it.”
She didn’t answer, feeling her mouth drying out and her knees knocking as the metal warrior walked closer and began to enter the junction. Big Mac and Marble dared not move. The people, stricken with fear, kept running by her. Stygian started to sweat.
“I’ve got her right eye in my sight. Just…just a little closer…”
Finally, the metal warrior reached the edge of the people running by, and stopped. It stared ahead a moment longer. Then, its helmet turned down and saw them pass. It stared for one whole second.
Then it snapped his whip up, flashed it out, and bisected three of them as they ran by.
Sunset and Stygian alike gaped in shock. “Wh-what?!”
“Sunset Shimmer.” The other whip went out and sliced apart two more.
The screams resounded through the entire hallway as blood and body parts went flying. The escapees were quickly split it half, with the ones who had already run going faster and those still to come grinding to a halt and quickly pulling back the way they came. The metal warrior didn’t stop. She only continued to look after more, picking off the stragglers.
“Hey! Hey!” Stygian shouted at it. His face finally broke, showing not only shock but anger. “Over here! Here!”
The metal warrior ignored him, continuing to attack those around her.
“Here!” Gritting his teeth, he raised the weapon, took aim at its eye from the distance, and fired.
The shot just barely missed, impacting it in the side of the head instead. It didn’t even flinch in response, but it did pause. Just long enough to let one of its whips fall and raise its arm up toward him. Sunset saw a hint of an opening on its wrist.
“No…run!” she cried, lashing out just long enough to push him to one side while he was still aiming, while she dove to the other and back into the enclave.
A capsule shot out of its arm and hit where they had been a moment later, and Sunset was deafened as not only an explosion but a pillar of flame erupted and quickly spread along the floor. The maid dress she was wearing was quickly singed and set aflame, and the force shoved her the rest of the way into the enclave at the same time. She made a rather hard impact against the wall, but quickly snapped out of it at the feeling of burning along her legs. She reached down and violently tore at the hem of the dress, ripping it out the rest of the way.
No sooner had she done so than she spun back around to the hallway. “Stygian!”
She couldn’t see him. Only flames now, filling most of the passageway. The remaining inmates were pulling away farther and farther; going in the opposite direction they needed to be. Sunset looked forward again and saw the metal warrior had never even looked in their direction. She was continuing to lash out and cut people down by the legs. She looked like she’d take off after them soon.
“Sunset Shimmer.”
The woman rooted herself to the spot at that, eyes opening in realization as the truth hit her. The metal warriors may have been calling her name but they didn’t know what she looked like. They were just attacking Promethian Sigil bearers looking for her.
Her heart began to race. Her stomach sank. Every fiber of her being told her to hide. Yet somehow, in spite of all that, enough of her mind forced her to take a step further out and yell.
“I’m here! I’m Sunset Shimmer!”
The metal warrior instantaneously forgot about the ones she was pursuing. Turning aside from the some dozen she had butchered, her glowing eyes focused on Sunset instead. An instant later, it retracted both whips and lunged at her.
Even if Sunset hadn’t been petrified in terror of the unstoppable thing headed toward her, it wouldn’t have mattered. It seemed to practically fly across the hallway, seize her by the neck, and then rapidly swing around and slam her against the wall. She tried to cry out in pain, but that was instantly impossible as the hand around her throat, more tighter than an industrial vise, crushed to choke her. An instant later, it tightened enough to pinch off the blood vessels as well. Her eyes bulged as she gagged and felt the pain growing tighter and tighter.
She realized the metal warrior wasn’t going to stop. It was going to crush her neck and spine and pop her head right off…
“Don’t ignore me!”
Through the crushing agony, Sunset turned her head to that void, and saw that Stygian was up again. He was a little singed, but that wasn’t what caught her eye. For a moment, she only saw his furious face. His teeth were clenched and his eyes blazing.
Yet she could almost swear she saw something running down his cheeks. Not tears, but…tar?
She saw no more, for at that moment Stygian swung his fist at the side of the metal warrior’s head purely on instinct. A meaningless effort. These individuals hadn’t withstood bombs and gunfire and even Tempest Shadow with nothing to show for it to have anything to fear from a small man’s tiny little punch.
So Sunset was rather shocked when she heard a clang against metal like a bell…before the metal warrior was knocked clean off of her feet.
The vise-like grip loosened, and Sunset was dropped to the ground. If not for the wall behind her, she would have collapsed as she began to gasp and gag raggedly. She clenched for her agonized throat as her eyes watered and even breathing burned. Even then, however, she looked to the metal warrior for she wasn’t sure if she had just imagined that. Sure enough…she was not only knocked away a whole meter but was spread out on the floor. Even Tempest’s energy blasts hadn’t managed that.
She wheeled back around on Stygian. She saw him standing there, still smoking, half-hunched over, without his gun, and gasping hard. His anger had abated. Now he was gaping at the metal warrior with his hand still curled into a fist; a mixture of regaining his wits after his angry outburst, exhaustion from adrenaline, and sheer shock at what he had just done. There was no sign of the streaks on his cheeks that Sunset had thought she had seen.
He didn’t stay like that for long. He looked up, and over to the remaining people. They were as surprised as Sunset was, and were staring at him now along with the warrior on the ground. However, he began to frantically wave at them. “What are you waiting for? Go! Go!”
The yell shook them out of it, and soon they began to run again. A good thing, too. The fires were dying again to let them quickly run past, but the metal warrior was far from out. Moving almost like a mechanical toy, she began to smoothly and rigidly get her arms out and press them against the ground to start standing up again.
Stygian, his anger now giving way to anxiety, swallowed before he looked around on the ground. After a moment, he found his rifle and took it up, then looked to Sunset. “Go! Go now!”
“But…but how did-”
“Just go!”
Sunset was still awash with confusion, but now that the metal warrior knew who she was she wasn’t eager to stay there any longer. Especially not with how nearly she had been killed. She turned and joined up with the others. As for Stygian, he quickly cocked his rifle and went up to the still rising metal warrior. He got as near as he dared, before he raised it and fired it into the biggest joint he could find. The warrior flinched slightly, but continued to rise. He cocked it again and quickly fired his last shot into another joint around the shoulder. Again, a slight flinch, but nothing more.
By now, Sunset and the last of the inmates were clear, but as they kept running she turned back. “Stygian, come on!”
He grit his teeth and Sunset thought she heard a curse, but then he began to turn to run for it. However, just as he did, the metal warrior sprung more to life and, with a nimble gesture, righted herself and sprang to her feet. Again ignoring Stygian, she turned fully to Sunset and got ready to lunge at her again, much to the woman’s terror…
However, Stygian saw this, and immediately answered by leaping onto her back, wrapping an arm around her neck, and furiously beginning to beat away at the back of her head with one hand. Yet whatever strange, momentary power had given him the ability to punch her to the ground was gone. He might as well have been beating on a locomotive. The only thing he did was seem to stall the warrior for a moment as she began to look for how to disengage this attacker.
“Now, Marble! Now!”
Sunset gaped. “No! You’ll get blown up too!”
“Just do it! Hit it!”
Sunset turned to Marble, but the Pie sister seemed horrified at the suggestion. Her hands remained frozen on the detonator and unmoving. Stygian continued to struggle, but wasn’t able to leave any other mark on his opponent. As for the metal warrior, seeing itself unable to get a good purchase on him, it instead angled itself away for the nearest wall and began to flex its legs. Considering what they had seen the one do to Tempest, both Sunset and Stygian knew that it planned to smash him against the wall like a bug and scrape him off.
“Now! Marble, please!”
The woman continued to shake. Her fingers twitched, but she couldn’t bring herself to push it. The metal warrior arched herself over and got ready to spring back…
She didn’t get the chance. Barreling forward with all the force he could muster, Big Macintosh charged into the hall and smashed into her back as she was arching forward. As crude as the move was and as ineffective as it was to do any lasting damage, his experience in dealing with big animals on the farm proved to be a boon—for between Stygian’s own weight and his charge he managed to knock the metal warrior off balance all together and send her again face first to the floor.
This one hadn’t been nearly as severe a blow, and the metal warrior began to rise again almost immediately, but Big Mac didn’t wait. Using his bigger size, he seized Stygian off of her back like he was no more than a toddler, spun around, and began to carry him at full speed back to safety.
“Now!”
That finally gave Marble the prompt she needed, and she mashed the detonator.
Sunset almost thought the bomb had gone off right in front of her, considering how she felt like her eardrums were nearly blown out and the impact from the blast immediately sent her back to the ground again. The rest of the light, noise, and force rendered her incapable of remembering what happened over the next few seconds as the dynamite erupted. But Big Mac caught a good part of the explosion as he was not only taken off of his feet with Stygian in tow but seized and flung through the air. He could have easily seriously hurt the young man if not for the fact that the force managed to twist him before sending him falling to the ground again. As it was, he landed painfully on his side—too painfully even for his Promethian Sigil to protect him as he was ground along and let Stygian unceremoniously fall out of his hands and topple to the ground.
Even then, a cloud of dust and smoke swept over everyone followed by numerous rocks—many of them large, painful, and capable of bruising and gashing or worse when it struck them. Sunset herself got hit by one particularly bad one in the shoulder blade, and cried out only to choke on dust and debris. The entire hallway was soon coated in it and rendered totally black. Even then, the sounds of progressive crumbling and crackling both from falling debris along with damage getting progressively worse continued to echo out.
Sunset, in spite of her pain and being blinded, forced herself back onto all fours and started to crawl away from the sounds of the crumbling, hoping she was headed out. She tried to catch her breath, but as all she got was more dust and smoke she progressively began to crawl faster, and finally pushed herself back up on both feet and forced herself to rush. Finally, enough of the dust cleared to at least see the lighting, and at that point she coughed and hacked to try and get her lungs free.
She kept coughing and blinking to clear dust from her eyes as she went further, until at last enough smoke cleared to see the last of the inmates likewise running, coughing, and choking. She looked around, trying to find the others. After a moment she found Marble was ahead of her, caked with dust as they all were but no worse for wear. She didn’t see the others right away, even the further they went, but eventually she looked behind her into the dust cloud. It took a few more seconds, but finally she saw Stygian staggering out of there while Big Mac, looking more labored and struggling, hobbled after with Shining Armor on his back.
She tried to call out, but only coughed and choked more as a result. It wasn’t until they finally reached the set of stairs and began to go up that she was able to speak. By that point, even walking hurt, and her exhaustion from all the running was beginning to add up on her. Nevertheless, she still choked out to him. “Everyone alright?”
Stygian, a bit to her surprise, was still frowning and glowering at the ground. For once, he didn’t respond right away. Instead, Big Mac gave a nod and a breathless: “Eeyup.”
“Here’s hoping we finally got one of those bitches… Even she’s not going to be able to shrug off being buried by-”
Sunset was cut off by a distant echo. One that came from back down the hall in the smoke cloud.
One that sounded like stone being forcefully broken.
Stygian’s grim demeanor turned to shock as he and the others spun and looked behind them. They saw only smoke but soon heard the sound again.
“We don’t have long…”
Turning forward, the group started walking faster.
By this point they were all panting, bloody, bruised, and looking in worse and worse shape, but the sad part was, compared to the inmates, they were still in the best condition. It didn’t take long for them to pull ahead and take the lead as they began to condense together again. The only one who lagged behind was Big Mac, who was breathing much harder than any of them liked by now, but they excused due to his load.
“Really wish we had a Healer at this point…” Sunset groaned as they finished ascending a second stairwell.
“One more flight…then we’re on the first floor,” Stygian answered through pants. “From there we need an exit…”
“Not sure how far we’ll get…but better outside than in…”
As the décor of the dungeons gave way to more palace architecture and design, the group reached one final staircase. Half-walking, half-limping, they led the over 300 strong group up the final distance. They reentered the halls of the palace; fortunately to an absence of sounds of explosions or gunfire. As soon as Stygian reached the top, he took a moment to look about, then pointed.
“That way… It should lead to the foyer…for this tower…”
Sunset took a deep breath and forced herself into a half-jog. The others did much the same as they went into the hall. There weren’t any more guards or soldiers along the way, and before long she saw the hall open up ahead into a wider area. Already, she could see large glass panes in the room they were approaching. Even if there was no door they could smash those out. For a moment, she entertained thoughts of them actually being able to escape as she emerged into the new larger chamber and looked for the stairway leading down into the foyer.
Yet that hope evaporated both for her and for all of those with her as they ground to a halt.
They had barely begun to see the floor below when they noticed at least fifteen soldiers with rifles drawn. There were likely many more of them placed there, but neither Sunset nor anyone else bothered to see any more before they pulled back. They narrowly avoided a stream of gunfire before everyone nearby quickly slammed themselves to the ground. The rest of the inmates behind them screamed in further panic and quickly recoiled. They were still shaken from the metal warrior. Now it was all the calm ones could do to keep them from scattering in panic.
The gunfire continued to rip out where they had been for several moments, actually eroding away at the edge of the stairwell in a vain attempt to hit them, before it cut off at last. Gasping and shocked, the group looked to one another.
Smolder let out a snort. “That figures… They got those three monsters to deal with and they still left behind these bastards for us?”
“What the hell?” Sunset uttered breathlessly, looking at the stairs. “They nearly cut that step apart trying to hit us!”
“I…I think that’s one of those newer types of guns…” Ocellus nervously answered. “It lets you keep shooting lots of bullets continuously…”
“Even Trottingham was still working on that when I left…” Sunset muttered.
Yona abruptly lifted her head up from the floor, looking alarmed. “Yona hear floor shaking! More Hippogriffs coming from hall!”
“Damnit! They’re surrounding us! And shooting to kill!” Sunset looked to Stygian briefly, but saw that he only had his head to the floor and was saying nothing. Inhaling sharply, she looked around for a moment, but then finally caught the stairs. “Alright, we’re going up then!”
“There’s no way out from up there!” Ocellus protested.
“There’s definitely no way out down here! Come on! Everyone back up and get to the stairs!”
Those nearest to the stairwell began to slowly inch their way back, waiting until they were out of firing range before daring to stand up again. There was no telling how long it would take the soldiers below to decide to start advancing or when the soldiers Yona heard would arrive, so there was little time for caution. As soon as they were all up, the massive group began to head for the stairwell and start to ascend. Unfortunately, that put them back in range of the soldiers blocking the exit, so they had no choice but to start returning fire to try and keep them suppressed. Luckily for them, it seemed the rapid-firing gun couldn’t aim upward, and they soon managed to turn about and wind their way up.
“I’m…getting a little tired…” Ocellus half-gasped.
“Not Yona! Yaks best at running uphill!” the larger girl boasted.
“Good. You can carry us in a minute…” Smolder groaned.
Sunset had to admit she was getting a little dizzy herself. Big Mac was visibly slowing down by the minute. This was already an act of desperation and getting them deeper in the palace with no visible escape route, but unfortunately it got worse yet. No sooner had the group managed to cross up to the upper floor and turn for one of the side halls when they were stopped yet again. Not by soldiers, but rather by a large portcullis having been dropped right in front of the hall entrance.
“What the hell is this?”
Stygian finally looked up, but only to let out another groan. “Apparently…they have ways of locking us in even if they can’t afford the soldiers to go after us…”
Sunset took a moment to catch her breath, but that was a moment too long. As the inmates began to pile up behind her, they soon saw the same sight. It wasn’t long before the tension began to become evident on their faces, and soon after they began to hear the sounds.
“We’re trapped…”
“There’s no way out…”
“They’re going to kill us all…”
Sunset felt herself tensing up, but then swallowed and motioned with her head. “Alright everyone! Next floor! Come on!”
She took the lead, and was secretly grateful when the others in the group followed after her along with the girl inmates. Fortunately, although the others paused a moment, that was enough to get them to run after them soon afterward. They reached the stairs and began to ascend.
Yet they were hardly up the first flight, which was much harder than last time, when Smolder spoke up again. “Uh…you guys do have a way for us to get out of here, right?”
“We’re working on it…” Sunset managed to mutter in between gasps.
Ocellus, looking the worst out of the three girls, took a moment to gasp enough to catch her breath as they started to exit onto the next floor. “If…if you’re…thinking…of stealing…an airship…it’s…no…no good… We’ll…we’ll never…never…”
She didn’t get a chance to finish. Sunset, still finding herself leading the way, was turning around to head to the next flight of stairs on the tower when she heard the telltale sound she had heard before.
A sonic blast.
Going white, she instantly halted where she stood, prompting the others to do the same. They never had a chance to ask what was wrong before one end of the foyer exploded.
This blast, fortunately, was decently far enough away for those who had already gotten to the top of the stairs to cover their faces and brace themselves. Yet the fact that they only felt dust strike them did little to assuage the growing dread inside them as they realized what had happened. Almost fearfully, they lowered their hands and looked ahead in the wake of the latest destruction.
Part of the wall had collapsed inward and was still falling…but that made no difference to two pairs of glowing eyes. The one with the sonic blast moved in a blur to shoot herself inside the opening that had just been made, while the one who had the rocket platform soon swooped in and at her side. Their cold, steel visages zeroed in on the group…and in particular Sunset Shimmer herself.
No one moved. No one said anything. Sunset could only stare in terror; the only sound she made being her own heavy breathing. They had no weapons, no plans, and no way of fighting back. Even the few with guns were too scared to try and use them—knowing they’d be worthless. An air of dread and finality came over all of them. A shadow fell over Sunset’s face.
This was it. There was nothing left and no escape.
The two warriors, showing neither pity nor mercy, continued to advance. The one on the platform extended her fingers like blades while the one on the right opened her mouth wide to blast again, and all the group could do was cringe and draw back…
At that moment, however, something happened that none of them expected.
A woman fell from up above and landed in between the two sides; causing the metal warriors to halt where they stood.
Sunset was dumbfounded, and it wasn’t until much later that she would eventually conclude the woman had to have been at the top of the next stairwell and jumped down. For now, she seemed to have simply appeared out of thin air. She was dressed well enough from what they could see, which wasn’t much as her back was to them. All they could really make out was a fine, long coat that splayed down to her dress boots and what looked like a traveling hood drawn up over her head—concealing everything about her features. In fact, all that could be seen was her fair hands and the long nails on each finger.
She wasted little time; immediately rising back to her feet. A moment later, she stunned Sunset a second time as she began to trace out symbols in the air while unmistakably chanting in the arcane language. She didn’t recognize all of the syllables, but there could be no question—she was casting a spell.
That became more than obvious a moment later when her aura flared and obeyed her in tracing out patterns of light in the air. Ones that glowed almost as bright and radiant as looking at the sun itself; making her own previous patterns and Twilight’s look like dim candles by comparison. When done, she swept her hand out in a circle before pointing her finger at the one with the sonic weapon.
Instantly, the light streamed toward her, breaking into rays. One of the rays condensed until it was almost like a ribbon, and suddenly lashed out and wrapped around the metal warrior’s head. Before it could fire another blast, the light ribbon contracted and slammed her weapon shut again. Not only that, but the other beams quickly snapped around her body, entangling her. She tried to fight and push through it, but it was useless. In moments, her body was completely bound and left standing rigid. She couldn’t even squirm.
Still moving her hands, the new arrival swept her hand up and turned her palm to the sky. In response, the metal warrior was plucked from the ground and began to hover in the air. A moment later, she turned her arm around and pointed again.
In response, the lights that bound the metal warrior gleamed even more brightly. In an instant, they became blinding…right before Sunset heard the sound of a teleportation spell rip through the air. Even before she could look again she knew what had happened; although she was as aghast as the others when the light faded. The metal warrior that had been caught was gone. Only her partner remained.
This, however, made the one on the rocket platform halt. The newcomer quickly turned to her and tried to seize on her distraction. She began to trace the symbols again. However, before she could complete, the rockets fired off again—this time in reverse. By the time the newcomer generated her ribbons of light, the metal warrior was back through the opening and accelerating; quickly shooting away and out of sight before the spell could grab her.
The newcomer left her hand extended a moment, but then slowly lowered it as she realized the moment had passed. The area grew silent again. After a time, the sound of distant boots, no doubt more soldiers arriving both from behind them and ahead of the hall, slowly began to become audible, but even in light of that no one moved. They were transfixed on the woman.
Sunset herself was open-mouthed; looking at her in disbelief and especially her spells. Yet a split second before she could find her voice the woman spoke without turning her head.
“I can’t protect you all from the three of them and the Hippogriffs at the same time. My ship is docked at the top of this tower. It can fly over the Hyperboreans. Take it and escape to Canterlot.”
Smolder paused for a fraction of a second, then smiled and held a thumbs up. “Sounds good to me. Let’s head on up.”
Sunset, distracted by that, turned to her along with Marble and Stygian. Already, both she and the other girls along with some of the others were headed for the stairs. “Huh?”
The girl shrugged. “When someone pops out of nowhere and does something that badass, you do what they say. Unless you guys had a better plan?”
Stygian gave a grimace at that, while Marble let out a sheepish “mmm-mmm”. It was only a moment longer before they turned and began to head to the stairs as well, with the others quickly following.
“Sunset.”
The young woman froze yet again on hearing that name. Especially in that tone of voice. She spun back to the woman, who had turned her head slightly back to her.
Just enough to see the tip of her nose and a single lock of iridescent hair.
“Twilight and the others are in grave danger. You have to get to Sedes Imperii Crystal and get them away from there.”
A moment later, she turned enough to finally show her full face.
“Time is running out.”
Sunset barely heard that. She couldn’t over the sound of her own gasping. It was her.
It was as if the past eight years hadn’t even touched her. In the few moments she had, her brain tried to tell her it was her imagination. Only someone who looked like her or shared her features. But no…they were all exactly as she remembered them. The arch on the nose, the forehead, the hue of lavender in her eyes, and even the somewhat pale pallor to her skin. She was too stunned to breathe the name but it was all that ran through her mind.
Headmistress Celestia.
The face lingered only long enough for her to realize she hadn’t imagined it before it spun back around, and the woman took off for the hall ahead to meet the approaching troops. Sunset remained rooted there a moment longer, her mind unable to think of anything else, before her feet started to stagger after her.
She was stopped by an iron grip on her arm. Yet it wasn’t until it tugged back sharply enough to her that she had enough wits to turn and look. She saw Stygian grasping her.
“What are you doing?”
“That…that woman…she was-”
“She’s buying us time and we need to use it. Come on.”
“But…but…no, I…I need to go after her.”
“That’s madness. We need to do as she said and run.”
“You don’t understand. She’s…” She started to turn away and pull as her voice grew more insistent. “I…I need to-”
“Do you know how to fly an airship?”
“Yes, but I-”
Immediately, he yanked her back much harder, enough to snap her around to look him in the eye. His face was growing angry.
“Well none of us do. If we lose you then none of us are escaping.”
Sunset hesitated. She looked back but, much to her surprise, the woman had already vanished. There were sounds of shouting down the hall that eventually gave way to clamor, but she could see no more. On top of that, far below them and back the way they came, not only were footsteps still approaching but another sound of rock breaking. The metal warriors were still coming.
She bit down and winced. Her palms sweat and her brow tightened. She didn’t move on her own, but Stygian began to pull her as he went after the others. Unconsciously, she let herself be pulled, although it wasn’t until they were up to the next floor that she finally turned away and reluctantly ran with them.
Exhaustion soon began to settle on everyone regardless of age or physical condition. It would have been unreasonable to expect the people to run up seven flights of stairs under normal conditions. They only made it up four before they were having to drop to the fastest climb they could manage. Everyone was sweating, many were hurt or bleeding, and soon more and more were staggering. The stronger soon had to help the children and the weaker, but even then they grew spaced out on the stairs and ended up spanning three floors. The only good thing was, thankfully, the sounds of battle and movement remained at a distance.
As the group neared the top, they began to feel a cool breeze wafting down on them, and they realized it was the open night air. Sure enough, as they finally reached the top and final floor, they saw it was only partially enclosed and that one hallway opened large and wide to a rooftop that apparently doubled as an airship dock. It was there that the group stopped, not just to catch their breath but to take in the sight.
At the end of the hall, gangplank still stretched out, was an airship of considerable size. Yet it wasn’t the harsh, cold metallic colors of modern military airships. Nor was it the dirty and austere ones used for work or common civilian transport. This one was beautiful; composed mostly of dark woods and more “earthy” materials. Much of it had been either carved or artistically designed for aesthetic pleasure, and it was overlain with fresh paint and gilded on all the metal parts. It looked like an airship more out of a children’s fantasy than a practical one, but it hovered there just the same.
“Oh…it’s lovely!” Ocellus commented.
“Whoa…you sure we aren’t taking the princess’ luxury yacht, or something?” Smolder asked.
“I wouldn’t care either way at this point,” Stygian answered. “Let’s just load up while-”
A loud whump from nearby cut him off. Both he and the others looked and saw that Big Mac had fallen flat on the roof—still carrying the unconscious Shining Armor on his back. Marble immediately dove down next to him and checked on him.
Sunset, on the other hand, sighed. “You pushed yourself too hard, Big Mac. You should have let us give you a hand.”
However, she hardly finished saying this when Marble’s face paled. Her jaw dropped and she let out a hint of a gasp. She looked up at Sunset and Stygian and held up her hand she had placed against him a moment ago.
Both of them were soon as pale as her when they saw it was completely red with blood.
At once, they both dove down to his side. It took a bit of effort, but they pulled Shining Armor’s unconscious body off of him—soon realizing he had been soaking up quite a bit himself. It wasn’t his blood, however. That was coming from Big Macintosh’s back. Soon others began to react in horror when they saw a good part of his shirt was likewise soaked and still quite wet.
“Oh no…” Sunset exhaled. “That…that blast must have hit him with shrapnel…”
“He’s been pushing through it this whole time…?” Stygian spoke in disbelief.
Ocellus nervously cupped a hand against her face. “I…I think that wound…is near where the hepatic blood vessels are…”
“What does that mean?” Smolder retorted.
“It means he could bleed to death pretty soon…if he hasn’t already…”
Stygian went rigid and silent again. Sunset quivered in fear for a moment, not knowing what to do exactly.
“Here, here!”
She snapped out of her paralysis when two of the inmates moved forward. One stepped up ahead and quickly went down to his side.
“I’m…not a doctor but I’ve seen some bad stuff following Nighttouched attacks…and I’ve had to help out before. I’ll get his wound bound up. You people need to get us out of here.”
Sunset was going to protest, but cut herself off when the inmate soon looked calmer and more knowledgeable than her. He immediately started to take off Big Mac’s belt while the one behind her took off his shirt. They quickly made it into a dressing and used the belt to apply it to the wound to try and stop the bleeding. Stygian said nothing else. He just stared and quivered as well.
“I’ll carry other guy!” Yona suddenly volunteered, walking up and bending down next to Shining Armor. After a moment to hoist him up, she surprisingly lifted him on her back with relative ease in spite of being over a foot shorter than him. “Yaks best at carrying hurt people!”
Marble remained at Big Mac’s side herself, clasping her hands and nervously watching him. He was still breathing, but it was much slower than any of them wanted. That left Sunset, who, on realizing no one else was moving, sighed before motioning. “Alright everyone, onto the airship!”
She found herself once again reluctantly leading the group onward across the roof and toward the gangplank. It didn’t take long for her to pick up on not one but two unwelcome things. One was that the echo of distant noise seemed to be getting closer again, which meant that at any moment they might find themselves attacked again. The other made everyone nervous…the fact that the roof they were on sported two very large artillery cannons with adjustable aim. Clearly meant for air defense, one of their shells could critically damage an aerial warship. It would only take one shot to obliterate the wooden airship.
She was the first on board and saw that the interior was clearly as designed toward art and comfort as the outside. She spent little time admiring the décor, even though it did seem familiar to her, and instead made straight for the bridge. Fortunately, the way had been left open by its pilot. A few of the other inmates, not knowing what else to do, followed her inside as she stepped in.
There were wide windows surrounding the bridge in a horseshoe-like shape, affording a wide view of the surroundings. That included the roof they were docked against. Sunset got some relief on seeing the cannons weren’t aimed directly at them, but that meant little right now. She stepped right up to the controls and looked them over.
She paused a moment before she looked like a mixture of confused and intrigued. She kept looking over them as more people came in. Among them was Ocellus. She looked a little nervous as she walked up front.
“Some people are still coming up the fifth floor, but someone ran ahead and said the Hippogriffs are coming again. And…I’m not an expert on airships, but I’m pretty sure they need a lot of people to fly…”
“It’s the Equestrian design…the Canterlot model…”
Both Ocellus and other around her looked to Sunset in confusion. “What?”
“The same design as her steam chariots. I thought these had all been destroyed.” She reached out and began to move a few controls. “I can do this… I remember it like it was yesterday…”
“What are you saying?”
Sunset blinked, but then shook her head. “Alright, we…we need to do a few things. Um…ok…check the pressure. Good. Check the boilers. Good. Altitude… It really can go that high…” She moistened her lips, then finally turned to the inmates. “I’m going to need help from some of you. Watch for when everyone is on board. Someone…no, two people…get over by that panel over there. Find those levers.”
As she spoke, she began to work along the various controls. All the while, people continued to pour into the airship. Yona managed to carry in Shining Armor with little difficulty, and as soon as that was done she ran back out again. Soon after, she was carrying Big Macintosh in with Marble Pie and Stygian in tow.
As people kept loading up, more kept going to the bridge—enough to where Sunset had to start telling them to get into the back of the ship. However, that didn’t stop Smolder from tagging along behind when Stygian and Marble Pie finally walked in.
“This thing have any cannons? ‘Cause otherwise what’s the plan to keep from getting blown away by those big guns once they get up here?”
“Taking off before they get the chance,” Sunset answered, risking a look behind her. “How’s Big Mac?”
Marble was teary-eyed and too choked up to speak, while Stygian continued to bow his head and sulk. Rather, the inmate who had treated him, and who was now stained with a good amount of his blood, looked uneasy. “The bleeding is stopping…at least the bleeding on the outside…but it doesn’t look too good…”
Sunset swallowed, but looked back to the controls and kept focusing. “Alright…everyone’s almost on. Get out there and disengage the pneumatic anchors.”
“What’s a ‘new may tick’ and how do you do that?” an inmate asked.
She groaned, rolling her eyes. “A ship like this is designed so that it can possibly be run by one or two people. But in order to dock on the fly, there’s these steam-pressurized cannons that shoot the anchors into the docking moors and automatically clasp them.”
She pointed outside, indicating to those on the bridge two long chains tethering the airship to the roof. In particular, two great big metallic structures that looked like mixtures of anchors and vises were connected around two thick mounted metal rungs.
“You need to go out there, deploy the crank ratchet, and reset them so that I can pull them in and we can take off. I’d prefer someone who can crank really fast but I’ll take whoever I can get now…”
“Alright. We’re-”
“I’ll go.”
Stygian’s curt statement was so fast it made Sunset turn around again, but without waiting for a word or confirmation the young man had already turned and was running out. One of the two groups was dumbfounded, looking to each other for a moment, before they ran out after him. Marble looked around a moment, but then turned and took off as well—leaving the second group to likewise be surprised before they ran after her.
Sunset sighed but turned back to the controls. She turned a few more settings. “Alright, that’s the best I can do until we get undocked…”
“What are we going to do?” Ocellus asked.
She pointed to a gauge. It was low at the moment, but slowly, almost imperceptibly, building. “We need to get altitude and get it in a hurry, so we can’t just gently glide on out of here. I’m building up pressure in the main air sac sub-boiler right now. The moment I say ‘go’, flip those valves against that wall and that’ll move the hot air to heat up the sac and hopefully get us to ascend as fast as possible. But if we do it while we’re still anchored I’m afraid it’ll rip part of the hull of this wooden ship right off.”
The girl nodded. “Alright.” She quickly put her hands up on two of her valves while another inmate nearby grasped the other two.
Sunset looked out the window. Stygian was running and was already across the gangplank. He soon reached his own anchor and bent down next to it. However, he was still struggling with it when the rest of his group caught up with him. She watched them watch him for a few moments before an older one stepped in. She also noticed, when he did so, Stygian snapped at him temporarily before only reluctantly pulling back.
She frowned a little, but then turned to Marble’s group as they soon ran out to their own anchor. By this point the first group was already cranking, but she realized why Marble had run out when she made it clear she knew what she was doing. Not only did she get the anchor out but she began to rapidly crank it like a seasoned pro.
The two groups continued to work for a short while, albeit a longer one than Sunset wanted. As she had hoped, each time one got tired of cranking another quickly stepped in and took over. Even so, it was a long process, and the only other thing to pass the time with was looking at the gauge that was building even more slowly.
It was only a third of the way to where Sunset wanted when Stygian’s group managed to finish. They quickly turned about and ran back for the airship, and she engaged the retractor to quickly pull that anchor in. As soon as they were inside, she heard Stygian’s voice from the rear.
“Get the guns ready! I can hear them coming up the stairwell!”
Sunset swallowed and looked back to Marble’s group. Fortunately, she didn’t even have to wait two seconds more when she saw them finish as well. They all rose, turned about, and began to rush back in. Sunset quickly looked down to retract the chain for that anchor.
The sounds of a burst of gunfire made her snap her head back up again.
When she looked up, she saw back in the interior of the tower as the first row of Mount Aris soldiers showed themselves. Their rifles were already drawn and smoke from gunpowder was rising from their weapons. Her pupils narrowed as she turned back to the other anchor.
Blood was still settling on the ground, and was joined by bodies soon after that had been riddled with bullets. In particular, she saw Marble Pie’s body twist toward her as it went down…one exit wound through her shoulder and the other through her abdomen.
“No!”
Stygian’s echo through the entire ship was soon matched with rifle shots. As Sunset watched, one of the soldier’s heads erupted in red mist before they went down. It was immediately answered by another before the others quickly took cover. More soldiers rolled up soon after and quickly spread out, with even more behind them taking side routes. Stygian’s gun continued to fire, while shots began to be returned. Soon far more than before. After a moment, more gunshots from the airship began to fire as well.
At this, Sunset grit her teeth and looked back to the console. She quickly retracted the remaining anchor, before she went over to the side hatch controls. Ignoring the gangplank, she engaged them to start closing it.
This prompted Smolder to turn to her. “What are you doing?”
“You don’t honestly think we can fight off the whole Hippogriff force with a couple guns, do you?”
“But…” Ocellus began to protest meekly, “what about…the…”
“They’re dead! And if they aren’t we can’t help them now!”
Ocellus cringed, but even Smolder was struck silent for a moment with the touch of rather cold reality. Sunset felt herself start to breathe harder and her hands shook as she looked back to the gauges. Stygian kept firing until the hatch was fully closed, at which point the soldiers began to fire en masse on the ship. As for her, she looked again to the pressure rating and saw it was only half full.
“Damnit…I really, really wish I had a drag right now…”
The gunfire didn’t last too much longer. The airship may have been more delicate than most, but it wasn’t so flimsy as to fall to some rifle bullets. However, they continued to advance while others kept spreading out. Sunset breathed heavier and kept watching the gauge.
Then a great metal clanging sound was heard. One loud enough to echo through into the airship bridge itself. Ocellus, watching the windows, let out a whimper.
“I…think I just saw one of those big cannons shift a bit.”
Sunset glanced back out that way. Her heart sank as she saw it was true. The nearest cannon had shifted downward. Based on her own experience, that meant it was locking into the gears…
“Um…isn’t now a good time to get the hell out of here?” Smolder asked.
“We don’t have enough pressure.”
“Forget the pressure! Let’s just start lifting off!”
“If we don’t get high enough, fast enough, it won’t matter! They’ll be able to track us and shoot us out of the sky! I’m waiting for the minimum!”
“Well how much longer?”
“I don’t know! This isn’t my damn ship!”
Sunset had barely stopped yelling when she saw it. The artillery unit began to pivot about to aim its barrel at the airship. Considering its size, it moved rather slowly, but more than quick enough to draw a bead on them.
She began to sweat again as she looked to the gauge. Only two-thirds of the way to where she wanted it. Gritting her teeth and whispering a curse, she yelled behind her. “Alright, now! Throw the valves! We don’t have a choice!”
Ocellus and the other inmate immediately did as they were told, and Sunset quickly engaged the steam propulsion engines. She grasped the control and hoped for the best.
The best didn’t come.
Much to her dread, the airship only slowly lifted off, and the engines did nothing but “tread air” for a moment before they began to push forward. Only slightly faster than a basic hot air balloon. The airship gently glided away from the dock, fast enough to prompt the soldiers to fire again while they slowly glided past firing range of the artillery, but that was all. They only continued to slowly climb and practically drift away. If the soldiers had been bold enough, they probably could have had a few jump on.
“Damnit all!” Sunset shouted as she struggled in vain to give the engines more power.
“Oh no…” Ocellus remarked. “I’ll…I’ll shut the valves again…”
“Don’t bother now… If we make ourselves stop here we’re only going to be an easier target. The only thing we can do now is pray this thing either picks up speed fast or they’re really bad shots with their anti-aircraft cannons…”
It didn’t take long for the cannon to start correcting itself, this time both elevating as well as pivoting around. Sunset looked back to their own altitude and speed, but as she watched them as well as the cannon falling behind them it only took her a few moments to start feeling dread all over again. It was clear that the cannon was still going to overtake them. She knew those artillery pieces were meant to hit targets that were thousands of feet in the air. Hitting them wouldn’t be an issue. As the seconds kept ticking by, she saw that the others realized the same thing.
“Wait…look!”
Hearing that call made Sunset turn away from the controls again. They had gained painfully little distance on the roof and could still see most of what was going on there, but the inmate was pointing to the cannon. At least, Sunset thought she was at first before she noticed in front of it.
Marble Pie was moving.
Not very fast, but she was dragging her bleeding body closer to the cannon. Fortunately, she didn’t have far to go, and from where she was lying none of the soldiers even noticed that one of their targets wasn’t dead. She was soon able to press herself fully against the turret, pushing herself over and sitting against it.
“What is she doing?” Smolder asked.
Sunset didn’t answer. She saw her pause there a moment, unable to fully see her face, before she saw her reaching into her dress. She came out with something small that she couldn’t recognize at first, but then she reached in again and pulled out something else.
Her eyes widened when she realized it was a stick of dynamite. She had to have removed one from the bundle that they had set up, or perhaps picked up a loose one from the soldiers. A moment later, she held up the first object and, with much strain and agony, began to move it.
In the night sky, Sunset caught just a hint of sparks.
“No…”
Yet the sparks kept coming, until they were steady and a different color.
“Marble, no…”
Even if her voice could have possibly reached her, it wouldn’t have mattered. She lay her body back against the turret again, grasping the lit dynamite to her chest just as the cannon managed to angle itself to hit the fleeing airship. She closed her eyes, and the last Sunset saw of her was her making the symbol of Gaia Everfree across her chest.
A moment later, and the dull sound of an explosion permeated the cockpit as she vanished in a ball of fire and smoke. Even from their distance, the airship was shaken by a rough tremor, but no one seemed to notice. They were silently transfixed on the side of the turret as they saw bits of metal and debris fly out from the blast. An instant later, the cannon fired…but it was too late. The blast had destroyed the support and the barrel was already falling. The artillery shell sailed underneath the airship by about 5 meters before it cascaded to the mountain valley below and detonated harmlessly.
The soldiers left on the roof were in an uproar and went scrambling. They tried to get the other cannon functional, but by the time they had even engaged it the airship had finally gained enough altitude and distance to be out of its range of motion. And it continued to gain both as it turned toward the Hyperboreans to the north. As it sailed to their darkened peaks and freedom, the palace of Mount Aris slowly filled the vision of the people on board. A good part of it was smoking or enflamed now, but still lit up and filled with chaos.
Eventually it grew smaller as Mount Aris was left behind and the airship rose toward the clouds. But still no one said anything. A loud cry was heard from the back of the ship followed by a loud noise, but nothing else. Everyone else’s heads went low and they slowly withdrew into the rear of the airship, sinking to the ground with shadows over their faces. Sunset herself had looked back as long as she could, but then looked forward again to keep driving the ship.
Her heart slowed, but the cold, low feeling persisted. And it kept doing so no matter how far away they were.
She finally sniffled once, letting out such a noise that she startled herself. Only at that point did she blink for what felt like the first time in fifteen minutes.
She reacted at that, for she felt something. Instinctively, her hand reached up to her cheek, touched it, and pulled it back.
Her fingertips were wet.
“Miss…Miss Sunset Shimmer, was it?”
The woman looked up, almost in surprise, and found Ocellus at her side looking at her.
“I-I-I understand this probably isn’t the best time, but…what…what do we do now?”
Sunset didn’t answer immediately. After staring at Ocellus for several seconds, she looked down, as if she too was thinking about that question. She inhaled and exhaled, letting a few more tears roll down her cheeks before she reached up and wiped them away. Once that was done, she looked forward again and grasped the controls.
It took her a moment longer before she could answer.
“First I’m going to take you all back to Canterlot. Then…I’m headed to Sedes Imperii Crystal.”
Double Diamond let out an exhale that matched the engine’s last burst of steam as he brought it to a full stop at the Canterlot station. After that, he wiped his brow, threw a few final controls to start cooling the boiler, and then turned about to exit the main engine.
On glancing up, he saw a few people were already waiting for him—namely Celaeno and Limestone Pie. The former of the two looked impatient, but Limestone was frowning a little as he exited.
“You’re all back already? That was quick…”
“No, just me. Is Starlight Glimmer back?”
Celaeno shook her head. “No, not yet. Although even when she gets here-”
“What do you mean ‘just you’?” Limestone snapped, cutting him off. “Where’s my sister and the others?”
“They went on without me. They thought it was safer to send me and this train back rather than leave it behind.”
Limestone seemed to hate that answer, but Celaeno sighed. “That’s wonderful… I really needed to talk to Twilight Sparkle. Things have changed around here.”
“Huh? What do you mean?”
“Luna or Nightmare Moon or whatever she wants to call herself at the moment has gotten a bit more strict about our ‘boarding arrangements’. I might need to-”
“What are you doing here?!”
Celaeno instantly clamped her mouth shut. Limestone herself, in spite of her brash attitude, cringed and shrank at the power of the voice that echoed behind them. And Double Diamond, completely caught off guard, recoiled like a child in the act of having his hand in the cookie jar.
He could see clearly what the other two could not—Luna half-storming, half-running down the walkway to the station. Her face was a mixture of shock, fury, indignation, and even a touch of horror. Her blazing eyes glowered at him the whole way down, feeling like nails rooting him to that spot. She practically shoved Celaeno and Limestone aside as she got in his face and glowered over him.
“Why are you back here?!” she blasted in that same voice. “And why are you wearing that pendant?!”
Double Diamond was so petrified he could barely even move, let alone speak. But as Luna didn’t let up, the same terror that froze him in place eventually compelled him to reply. “Th-they…they sent m-m-me back… They went on without me…” He meekly held the pendant up to her. “Tw-Twilight g-g-gave me this to run the t-t-train…”
He shrank back as Luna snatched it from his grasp, never looking away from him. “And why did they abandon the Tiberius in the first place? This train is the only engine capable of making it to Sedes Imperii Crystal!”
“They…they had to… The…the bridge had collapsed…”
Part of Luna’s rage suddenly transitioned into surprise.
“What do you mean? What bridge?”
“The…the bridge leading up north. There was no way to move on to the track. So they had to borrow a train from that weird guy…”
The remaining anger broke. Luna’s pupils shrank.
“What ‘weird guy’?” she spoke more softly. “Describe him to me.”
“I don’t know. I didn’t get a good look at him. He just looked tall and kind of crooked. He had this weird wagon he was carting around though. Like it was being pulled by all kinds of things. I thought he was some sort of magician…”
Luna didn’t answer. Her face was blank, but she seemed to be trying to think of something or determine something. A few moments passed before she finally turned her head away.
“I made a mistake…”
Before anyone could even think of asking for more than that, she fully turned around and went back the way she came just as fast as she had come down. Faster even. The three were so immobilized by her voice and appearance that they could do little more than watch her. It wasn’t until she was out of view for several seconds that they finally broke enough to look at one another.
“What was that all about?” Limestone spoke up.
“I’ve got no idea, but I’m regretting taking this job more every minute…” Celaeno muttered back.
Luna didn’t stop until she was back in the chamber, nearly forgetting to lock herself inside in the process. She immediately went to the center and reactivated the glyph. Soon she was surrounded by the ethereal light and looking skyward again.
“I’ve made a terrible mistake. You need to redirect the three northward immediately. It’s definitely-”
“This waypoint has been decommissioned.”
Luna’s eyes widened as the voice, thundering even louder than her own powerful one, echoed back over her as the light surrounding her transitioned from blue to red.
“Wh…what?”
“A message has been recorded here for Luna’s eyes only,” the voice continued. “Identity has been confirmed.”
There was a momentary pause, before a powerful voice spoke up in a far more condemnatory tone.
“Emissary Luna…you and your older sister have already been charged with defying the order of Crystal Imperium. Recently you submitted evidence to assist with the efforts to prevent the emergence of the Angra Mainyu, but this evidence has since been concluded to have been another attempt at deception as Dulcis Machina and Sinum Currus both positively identified Emissary Celestia—who promptly attacked both and enabled Sunset Shimmer to escape.”
Luna audibly gasped on hearing that. “What…wh-”
“The Princess has concluded that you are persisting in your efforts to prevent the annexation, and as a result has decided to attend to the matter personally. She will be arriving to lead the settlement effort within the next 3 cycles.”
Luna gasped again; her face going from surprise to fear.
“At that time, you will be expected to appear before the Princess within 1 lunar cycle. Failure to appear will render you eligible for judgment upon sight. That is all.”
The voice ended, and with it the red light vanished.
Luna was left standing there as if she had just had a heart attack. Her head turned to the floor but she stared at it blankly in complete confusion. All trace of knowing what to do and what was transpiring had left her. She could only speak one phrase breathlessly.
“What is going on with this world…?”
Sunset did one last look over the controls. The sun was still up so even if she couldn’t see Canterlot directly she could see the landscape, and knew they were nearly there. The airship was cruising at a lower altitude now at a gentler pace, and all of the pressure gauge readings were normal to indicate full operation. After checking the compass and instruments for their current heading, she exhaled and stepped away. Wiping her head a little, she turned about and exited the bridge.
No one was in the hall at that point. Anyone with families were tending to them, while everyone else was sprawled out wherever there was sitting or lying room. She made her way unimpeded to the aircrew cabin area. It wasn’t the most comfortable or glamorous portion of the airship, but as it had been the closest to the entrance the wounded had been dragged in there and no one had risked moving them since.
The door was already cracked, but she pushed it open and looked inside. Several inmates were lounging or sleeping inside, including Ocellus, Smolder, and Yona. The latter was snoring rather loudly, but the other two glanced up to her. She didn’t look at them at first but instead looked to the bunk areas. Big Macintosh was on one and looking far paler and stiller than she liked, but she could barely see his chest still rising and falling. Shining Armor was on the other, and while he didn’t look as badly beat up that was purely relative. He hadn’t moved since he had been placed there.
Smolder looked at her a little wide-eyed. “Uh…shouldn’t you be driving the airship?”
“This is one of the more modern Canterlot designs. It’s rigged up so simply that it can be run with one or two people in most situations. The wind is low so our course will be steady for a few minutes at least. And because it’s a wood frame, we’re nearly to our destination.” She grimaced and motioned with her head. “How are they?”
Ocellus looked around hesitantly to Shining Armor. “Um…he…doesn’t seem as bad but he winces when you touch him in certain points, so I think he has some broken bones… As for…Big Macintosh, was it? He’s been looking worse, but…he’s still hanging on.”
Sunset sighed. “I was hoping Shining Armor would come to. He has the Role of the Healer. Now it looks like he needs one of his own… Um, listen…I know you two have been through a lot but I don’t suppose you managed to catch which one of us is ‘Stygian’, did you?”
“Oh yeah,” Smolder answered. “Scrawny kid. Kind of nerdy looking. Good with a gun?”
“That’s him. Have you seen him lately?”
Smolder smirked and let out a short laugh. Ocellus, however, looked a little fearful and drew in toward herself. “Er…not…since we left Mount Aris…”
Sunset raised an eyebrow. “Did something happen?”
“The guy just vented some major stress before he headed back…” Smolder snickered. “I guess I should’ve figured his shoestring muscles had that in him after what he did to that tin can man.”
“He, um, punched the wall before he went to the last cabin…” Ocellus answered more quietly. “Everyone was so nervous about it they just let him be, and he’s been in there ever since.”
She was left a little puzzled. “I’ll go check on him.”
Returning the way she came, she soon reentered the hall and began to walk down again. She passed by the larger, more luxury cabins as she went, and each one was filled with as many people as it could hold. In spite of their salvation, a lot of the people looked to be in low or at least anxious spirits. Each one looked up to her as she passed; clearly showing that they wanted to know if she had any more information or guidance for them. That only made her sigh as she walked on by.
But then she saw it.
Around one of the corners leading down to the engine room, a large chunk of the wall was missing. It had actually cut through one of the pipes hidden beneath it, although as it wasn’t belching steam it must have been a maintenance or support line. The metal was as thick as for the other pipes, however, and yet it looked not only dented but shorn. Considering how pristine the airship had been when they received it, she was surprised to see such a large piece of obvious damage. She thought for a moment about what kind of ordinance the Hippogriffs had been using on them and if it could have done this.
Then she remembered Smolder and Ocellus…
“No way…”
She voiced her thought aloud at that, staring at the damage, before finally looking away uncomfortably and continuing to the end of the hall.
The door at the end was shut and she couldn’t hear a sound from it. She faced it and reached up to knock, only to find herself hesitating before managing to do so.
“Stygian?”
No answer. After a few seconds, she turned the handle and slowly opened the door.
The room was completely dark on the inside—only illuminated as light from the hall spilled in. It took a moment or two of looking but eventually she could see the back of the cabin. There, crouched on the floor, facing the wall, and head bowed, was Stygian. He was so still she mistook him for part of the room at first, but when the light fully revealed him he didn’t move.
She wasn’t sure what to do next. Before she could call out again, however, she heard him take a deep breath and raise his head.
“What is it, Ms. Shimmer?”
Sunset was still unnerved, since he didn’t turn to her and was still in that position. His voice, however, sounded normal enough. After an awkward pause she responded tentatively.
“We’re…nearly back at Canterlot.”
“I see.”
She swallowed. “Stygian, I…I really…don’t like doing this to you now, but…I…I have to ask if you can see to the others getting inside. After what Cel…that woman said…I want to take the airship north to get the ladies. I…I don’t know who…I mean, even if she just popped in to save us, I think that’s enough for me to do what she said.”
A long pause.
“Very well.”
“Thank you.”
She said that almost hurriedly and started to pull back to shut the door again. However, she stopped herself. She thought of all that had happened and swallowed again. With a forceful effort, she pushed the door open a little more.
“Are…are you…alright?”
It was weak and flimsy but she did force it out. Stygian was silent for a moment before he let out a sigh.
“I’m fine. But that’s what has me upset. I’m always ‘fine’… Marble Pie died making sure we could escape, and I couldn’t protect her with cover fire. Big Macintosh is fighting for his life after my plan went wrong and I had to be rescued. Shining Armor has given me the closest thing I’ve had to order or a figurehead to look up to in years, and all I could do was watch him sacrifice himself for me. And all of that pales in complete comparison to what happened when we fled. When I saw every one of my comrades die terribly one after the other. When Little-”
She saw his hand make a fist and heard him swallow back, just barely able to hold in his composure. His head lowered again.
“I promised her I’d look after her when we were the only two survivors. Yet she ended up dying for me. I said I was her guardian, but now she’s gone and I’m still here. I have one of these emblems on my hand that says I’m supposed to be powerful and special, and yet people keep dying to keep me ‘fine’.”
Sunset grimaced. She stood there silently as Stygian concluded, still not turning to her, but eventually putting his fist on the floor. She dug her own foot into the ground, twisting the carpet a little and looking at her shoes. She bit her lip for a few seconds.
“Just…just take it easy, alright?” she finally managed to spit out. “We’ve all been through a lot. We’re all seeing more people die than we should. Don’t…don’t let it get you down.”
Stygian was silent for a few seconds before he exhaled. “…I suppose not. I’ll try.”
Sunset was quiet again. The sounds of the airship engine resonated through the walls, and the two were so silent that they seemed almost louder here than on the bridge. She stood there in the doorway awkwardly for another moment before starting to shrink back. Her hand went out to grip the handle.
“Stygian…?”
For the first time, he looked up and over his shoulder. One of his eyes met hers.
She stood there, mouth hanging slightly ajar, for several seconds. A few small noises came from her throat.
“N…nothing. Just…thank you. I really appreciate it.”
He didn’t say anything else. After staring a moment longer, he looked away again.
Sunset grimaced as she stepped back and shut the door. She began to step away from it, but paused again and looked back. In the end, she turned away again and went back to the bridge. She had to prepare for the temporary landing cycle.
It wasn’t long before what had happened at Mount Aris and what was still to come soon dominated her thoughts.
Twilight shivered despite the heat of the engine blowing over her. Even if they hadn’t been heading to such a cool place, the surroundings would still be filling her with an icy chill.
The valleys and forests of Equestria had mostly been left behind now. For the past 100 miles, the landscape had turned into something far more stark and barren—practically alien. The train tracks had taken them into one last mountain valley, but the mountains themselves grew smaller and smoother until they were little more than periodically rising slopes that faded to bluffs and hills. The vegetation gave way to a more tundra-esque setting, where there was little more than pebbles and grist instead of trees, bushes, and grasses. The sky had filled with clouds and mists that began to sweep over their path, until they were surrounded by fog that illuminated little save for the ever-diminishing hills.
By now it was quite late in the afternoon and evening was approaching, but the world was already rapidly growing dimmer and darker. And still the fog settled around them. It was cold, and yet there was neither snow nor frost. Just murky pools of collected water on top of the permafrost as they kept going northward. The track never deviated, turned, or angled. It just proceeded forward into the fog, seemingly going into it infinitely.
It was quiet. Deathly quiet. No birds or wind or sign or sound, save for the chugging of the engine. It was unsettling to Twilight, and even with Spike resting her head on her lap she felt little comfort. He seemed as uneasy as her, after all.
Exhaling a cloud of misty breath, she pulled her blanket closer around her and stood up; letting the dog disengage himself and move to one side as she rose and looked at the meters and gauges. According to the odometer, they were nearly at the end of the line by how the map went. She reluctantly looked out the sides of the train and waited. It took about five minutes, but eventually, in the midst of all of the starkness and growing darkness, she saw a sign confirming that the end of the line was soon.
She looked nearby. Rainbow Dash was the only one of the girls who had adequate experience running an engine and so she had joined her in the main compartment. Unlike her, she had managed to curl up and fall asleep a while ago. Yet even she wasn’t cutting her normal snores—indicating she was resting only lightly.
“Rainbow Dash.”
Sure enough, her eyes readily opened. “Yeah?”
“We’re almost there. We need to start slowing down.”
“Alright, alright…” she muttered quietly before she got up. Exhaling, she went up to the engine and started to manipulate it.
After assessing she was still dressed lightly, Twilight spoke up again. “You’re still not cold?”
“Eh. I’ve been in cooler places for longer. Besides…keeps me alert.” She turned to her. “You alright?”
Twilight bowed her head, staring at the ground. Like she was considering that question.
“No…I’m not alright.”
“Well, maybe Rarity’s got a spare coat in all that luggage-”
“That’s not it. It’s not the weather, it’s…it’s here. I started feeling bad before and I thought it might have been nerves or my imagination, but…”
She inhaled and exhaled.
“N…Nevermind. I’ll…I’ll go tell the others we’re almost there.”
Swallowing, and ignoring Dash’s staring at her, she turned about and started to make her way out of the engine back to the cars. She kept her head down and her eyes open as she walked, and as Spike fell in next to her he looked at her constantly. She practically didn’t even notice how wet the train had become from mist and how slippery it was to navigate, instead continuing to think and brood all the way back to the door.
Opening it up, she saw the others were gathered around in the front of the car, and they immediately looked up to her as she stepped inside. They had taken quite the “downgrade” in terms of comfort when they had moved to the new train, as the only car was a rather bare and empty one used purely for cargo, but that didn’t seem to be the only reason they were in lower spirits. None of them seemed to have been resting that much. Even Pinkie didn’t look quite as upbeat as she was normally.
“Somethin’ wrong, Twilight?” Applejack asked.
She exhaled again. “No. We’re almost there. We’ll be stopping soon.”
“Well…thank goodness,” Rarity softly answered, not sounding quite as enthusiastic as she could have. “This…wardrobe isn’t suiting me as well as I like. I dare say I feel rather uncomfortable with it.”
Fluttershy swallowed and shrank into her seat a little. “I…I don’t want to make anyone…n-n-nervous, but… I-I-I think I’m starting to get the same bad feeling Twilight has…”
The car was quiet momentarily. Everyone exchanged glances, and in doing so they realized that she wasn’t alone. They were all feeling that.
Applejack coughed. “Well…we can’t back down now. We’re almost there.”
“That’s just it… I…I don’t want to back down.”
Everyone looked to Fluttershy again at that. She looked even more anxious.
“I do want to go there. More so now than ever…but I’m also scared… I…I almost feel like I need to go there even though I’m scared. And…that scares me even more…”
“Now that you mention it…” Rarity spoke up uneasily. “I…think I feel the same thing…”
Twilight grimaced, a cold feeling sinking in her stomach. “Me…me too…”
Spike let out an uneasy whine. The girls were only able to dwell on this a second longer, however, before Pinkie bounded up—seeming to redouble her energy.
“Cheer up, everybody! We’re almost there! We’ll get the Crystal Cor, turn around, and head back home…and then I’ll throw the biggest party ever to celebrate how we snatched it out right from under King Sombra!”
There was a momentary pause, before Twilight gave a weak smile. “You know something…? I…think I’d like a party after this. We’ve all been working real hard and…it would be nice to take a little break.”
“Yeah…yeah,” Applejack chimed in with a nod, forcing a smile as well. “Then let’s mosey along and get this over with already, then turn tail and head for home. Bet ol’ Big Mac, Shining Armor, and Marble’ve got loads of stories.”
On that note, the girls picked themselves up and joined Twilight. As best as they could manage, they headed back outside and toward the train engine. By that point, the sun had lowered enough to make it even harder to see their surroundings. It wasn’t too much longer, however, before they noticed the landscape had changed.
The train was beginning to go up an incline. Very gradual, but also unnaturally perfect. More so than could be expected of any natural terrain. It was impossible to see from either side, but it seemed to stretch on forever into the mists. From what the girls could see it looked like it was almost ascending to a plateau. The only interruption in the path were the mile marker signs, and Dash continued to use them to slow the train further as they went higher.
At last, the landscape leveled out. By now, the train was only going a few kilometers per hour, and the rear car had scarcely ascended the bluff when Dash slowly brought it to a halt.
After throwing the brake, Dash let out a whistle. Twilight sighed. “Alright…let’s see where-”
She cut herself off, seeing Pinkie already merrily bounding outside.
“…we’re at.”
“Hope I can find that turnabout out here…” Dash exhaled as she hopped out after Pinkie. “As cool as it’d be to ride a train in reverse back a hundred miles, not if it doesn’t have a ‘cow catcher’ on it.”
“I wonder what this here place even looks like…” Applejack muttered as Fluttershy followed after Dash. “From that map, all I could reckon was the ocean.”
“That’s a bit odd, now that I think on it…” Rarity remarked as she followed. “Shouldn’t we be hearing some waves from this close?”
“Maybe the map was out of date,” Twilight answered as she stepped out after them with Spike trailed behind. “Or there’s a low tide. That’s even better, if you ask me. I was afraid this place might be submerged at some times of the day…”
“Tee-hee!” Pinkie called back as she stepped out. “You don’t have to worry about that, Twilight! There it is!”
She looked up, clearly surprised that Pinkie had apparently found something already—only to see the rest of the ladies were already rooted on the spot and staring open mouthed ahead of them. She only stepped another few feet from the engine before turning and looking, and promptly joined them.
From where they stood, the fog spread far and wide, and the sky—transitioning from the summer heat to the fall cold—gave an occasional drizzle mixed with flurries of snowflakes. Ahead of them, however, both the fog as well as the clouds had lifted, allowing just enough pale moonlight to stretch over the ocean beyond. Yet it was not the ocean that attracted their attention, but rather what lay on it like a mixture of ship and island.
A vast landscape, irregular and unnatural, spread before them. It had been manmade, but not by any man any of them had ever heard of. There were towers and structures clustered closer together than any cityscape of unknown and almost alien design. They vaguely seemed to form what one might call a palace or temple, yet it was impossible to say for certain. It was metal…that much was certain. Not a trace of wood, stone, brick, or concrete was to be seen anywhere. And it was dotted with lights. Thousands upon thousands of lights that neither flickered nor burned as flame.
The sky continued to part around it and spread out, as if the land itself was clearing the fog and gloom away to make itself more visible to them.
Almost like it was expecting them.
“Was…this on the map, Twilight?” Applejack asked after a long silence.
“No… I’ve never seen anything like it before in my life. Not even in any of Celestia’s books…”
“I’m…not even certain what I’m looking at,” Rarity spoke up. “Is…is this a building?”
“Or a factory?” Fluttershy suggested.
Twilight looked a little more uncomfortable. “I…think it kind of resembles the place that Starlight found.”
“Whatever it is, I don’t like it,” Applejack finally muttered, for once sounding nervous. “It ain’t right.”
Twilight exhaled. “I don’t either, so let’s hurry. Let’s get in, get out, and start heading back to Canterlot before Sombra gets here.”
“Oh, Twilight?” Pinkie suddenly asked, sounding a bit imploring. “Do you suppose that maybe…possibly…there’s just a teeny, tiny chance that there’s two different guys running around as big black clouds with big scary green and red eyes in Greater Everfree?”
Twilight turned to her; the question making her quirk an eyebrow. “Um…I’m pretty sure there aren’t. Why do you ask?”
“Because there’s one right behind us.”
The ladies only had a moment to gape on realizing what Pinkie was saying, before they snapped away from the bizarre structure and looked down the way they had come.
There he was.
The cloud had doubled in size from the largest they had ever seen it, and with it the eyes had grown likewise. Even in the mists they emerged from they looked like the vision of some hellish giant of shadow and smoke.
Yet as they stood there rooted in place, eyes wide with shock and horror, he made it worse. The black mists underneath and between the eyes seemed to grow thinner and wispier. They couldn’t tell why at first, but after a few seconds they realized something else was emerging from it. What looked like teeth. Sharp. Cruel. Bestial. An entire mouth’s worth.
And they curled into a grin.
“Of all the rotten luck…” Dash finally managed to say. “I can’t believe we got here the exact same time as him…”
That made Twilight turn a shade paler.
“What if we didn’t get here the same time as him…? What if…he knew we’d be going for the Heart…and he followed us?”
None of the ladies liked the sound of that, but all of them began to fear that was so. Their thoughts were soon interrupted, however, when the mouth-like vapor parted. A wind blew by. Hollow, deep, and resounding…but just twisted enough to where it didn’t sound like wind at all, but a voice.
“…myyyyy…cryyyyys…taaaaal…”
Fluttershy let out a panicked whimper while the others recoiled. “D-D-Did he just…t-t-talk?”
No one answered, for yet another horror soon greeted them. They began to realize they were seeing other lights around Sombra. From beneath him, within him, and spreading out to the sides and back of him. They were faint at first but soon became clearer; both from the sources coming closer as well as the mists continuing to clear. And when they realized exactly what they were, their hearts sank like stones.
“No…”
“That’s…im…impossible…”
“They can’t all be…”
Yet the lights were indeed the eyes of those controlled by Sombra. Not a hundred, or two hundred, or five hundred, or even a thousand…but thousands. Perhaps even tens of thousands. The fading mists only revealed them stretching further and further back.
Birds…beasts…insects…it was as if the entire Greater Everfree had been emptied of its remaining Nighttouched. Many were distorted and twisted beyond recognition of what their former forms had been. Yet even those were nothing compared to the horror of the countless people mingled in with them. Having adorned themselves with whatever crude weapons and armor they could find, their faces and bodies were twisted in inhuman agony and anguish until they looked like wraiths rather than men and women. As if Sombra had wrung every bit of vitality and vivacity out of them and replaced it with nothing more than his own hate and madness.
An entire army of darkness and grotesque horror was now shambling forward on whatever served for limbs. Who knew how many days or even weeks were spent gathering them, but it was clear that Sombra had not struck again until now for lack of “manpower” or strength but rather because he intended to bend his will and energy all to this one goal. Now he had brought his full force of his malevolent spirit here to crush and devour the six last roadblocks between him and his full strength.
Twilight and the ladies stood there with shaking spirits. Escape was out of the question. Even if they could get the engine running in reverse, and it somehow managed to cut through the legions, that would still serve Sombra’s same goal—leaving no opposition to him seizing the Heart.
Because of that, Twilight realized they only had one choice.
Summoning her courage was harder than ever now, for even the battle against Nightmare Moon had seemed less hopeless, but she turned and faced the others to garner their full attention.
“Everyone…this is it. We’ve got no choice now. Today, right here, is where we have to defeat Sombra.”
The ladies, predictably, gave rather shocked responses.
“Are you mad?!”
“Are you crazy?!”
Fluttershy let out another nervous whimper.
“I’ll help!” Pinkie cheerily offered.
Twilight let out a sigh. “It was going to come to this sooner or later, everyone. We might as well do it now. We don’t have a choice anyway.”
“But how in tarnation we s’posed to beat him, Twilight?” Applejack shot back. “He’s nothin’ but a bunch o’ smoke!”
“The situation hasn’t changed. He still needs energy from other living things in order to sustain himself. And look!” She swept her arm at the landscape south of us. “Everything’s barren here for miles! If he runs out of spiritual energy here, there’s nowhere for him to go and no one else for him to feed on! That’s the real reason he’s throwing everything he can at us! Don’t you see? He knows if he loses here he’s finished!”
That gave the ladies pause. They looked back downhill—seeing the horde continue to approach slowly but relentlessly. Yet the eyes themselves held back. And while they grinned, they let the controlled army do most of the intimidation.
“I…suppose that does make sense,” Rarity reluctantly admitted. “And Twilight is the only one of us that saw how to defeat him…”
“Uh, extra, extra, read all about it, everyone!” Dash butted in. “There’s an entire army out there!”
Twilight answered by quickly summoning her two Anima Viris in rapid succession—transitioning from her original form into the role of the Scholar in moments. After that was done, she turned again to the approaching army. Sombra’s ghastly visage continued to grin at them the whole time.
Then, the teeth parted.
“…flaaaaank…theeeeem…”
In response, the army began to split at the sides; clearly meaning to surround them as they approached. This made the ladies tense up a bit more. “Twilight…”
“Alright,” she spoke up firmly and quickly. “To control all of these creatures and people at once he’s spread himself pretty ‘thin’. He can’t direct them all individually with any type of order so he’s formed these eyes and mouth to be able to direct them as one. So he’s having to exert effort both to control them all and command them at the same time. We need to strain that to the breaking point. Rarity, use the Prodigy and that power you learned to try and give us some fortifications and funnel them in. Fluttershy, you use the Minstrel to try and put as many of them to sleep as possible. Pinkie, you distract them using the Dancer. Sombra will have to waste energy trying to overcome the effects. The rest of us bombard his eyes and mouth with everything we got. Focus as much as we can on him—leave the people and animals alone if you can.”
That made the group pause again. Applejack frowned, and Dash scoffed at the same time. Rarity looked rather nervous.
“Twilight, dear…I know we’ve practiced a bit with them, but…Applejack doesn’t have more than one Anima Viri. And as for the rest of us, I don’t think we can manage more than a quarter of an hour at most in battle…”
The mage exhaled, but shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. We’ll have to anyway.”
“Um…Twilight?” Fluttershy spoke up uncomfortably. “What if we…end up having to attack the people? And the animals…?”
She winced. She looked back down the hill, and saw the first of the army had reached the ascension. Her face grew grim and regretful.
“We don’t have a choice. We already saw what Sombra did to the people he seized. We just…have to hope there really is no way to save them now.”
Fluttershy didn’t like that answer. No one did. Even Pinkie’s happy bouncing slowed a little. However, no one ended up protesting it.
“One last little detail,” Dash spoke up again. “Let’s say we do stop him. Who’s the lucky lady who makes him their new Anima Viri?”
Rarity, Fluttershy, and even Applejack looked aghast at the thought. Twilight winced nervously once again. “I…already got the one from Nightmare Moon, and I don’t think it’s a good idea for any of us to have two…”
“Oh, oh! Pick me!” Pinkie said excitedly. “I’ll do it!”
Twilight and the others looked to her; their expressions a little uncomfortable as the memory of what they had learned in the quarry. However, after staring at her own blissfully unaware expression, Twilight finally exhaled and nodded. “Alright then. Everyone, get ready…he’s coming at us fast.”
“…gooooo…”
Twilight had scarcely finished saying her plan when the two flanks rushed at them; charging up the hill from either side. Pinkie Pie quickly pulled out her two Anima Viris and transitioned into the role of the Dancer while Rarity did the same for the Prodigy. Fluttershy, after some hesitation, put on the role of the Minstrel.
As for Applejack and Rainbow Dash, they both turned into the Warrior and the Disciple respectively. As soon as Applejack was done, she quickly took out her lasso and began to tie it to the end of her Warhammer.
Dash glanced at her with a frown. “You’re not really thinking you can take him out with just that thing, right? He can just float over it!”
Applejack glared back. “Well on that note, I see ya’ still ain’t put on your second Anima Viri.”
She flushed a little. “I said I’ll do it when I need to!”
“And now ain’t a good time?! You yell at my hammer, but you ain’t gonna get him with your fists!”
Dash clenched her hands into fists, but Twilight shouted out before she could retort. “Rainbow Dash, we really need every advantage we can get right now!”
The Huntsman growled, but looked back out and saw how dire the situation was getting. To all sides of them were enemies now, and they were rushing in fast. The malevolent visage of Sombra loomed closer and closer.
She practically let out a yell. “Fine! Member of my house, I command you to come to me! Sky Clipper—Soarin!”
Dash’s aura explosion was so strong that even Applejack, fortified with her own single Anima Viri, was nearly blown off of her feet. When she was able to recover and look back, she saw Dash standing in her new role. Her head now bore a cap on it with a plume of a feather the same iridescent hue as her hair, while the rest of her was garbed in outdoor leatherwear with a hood. This was in addition to a quiver along her back tipped with dozens of fletched arrows. In particular, her forearms were padded and her fingers clad in special gloves to let the tips of her fingers through.
Once done, Dash looked over herself a moment only to snort. “Great…on top of everything else, I’m the same role as Sunset…” Her fist lashed out, snapping the signpost for the end of the track. She instantly seized it and bent it—transforming it into a longbow in the process and going for the first arrow. “Anyway, I told you I could do it when I needed to…”
“Alright everyone!” Twilight shouted. “This is it! Let’s go!”
As the army continued to close, Fluttershy swallowed once, but then closed her eyes and began to sing her lullaby. It was soft at first, allowing them to draw as close as around 100 meters. Then she managed to increase her volume, and with the wind on her back her voice carried over the field and the effect went into action. All within earshot immediately slowed. Despite their controlled states, their arms and shoulders drooped and their faces relaxed. While there were thousands behind them that remained unaffected, the nearest few hundred that could hear her soon provided a bulwark against the rest.
Unfortunately, it didn’t stay as effective for as long as they wished.
“…hoooooowl…”
From among the zombie-like crowd came a chorus of animal like screams and shouts. The humans in the group that weren’t affected began to bellow and roar in terrible, nearly grotesque ways. While there were plenty of actual twisted animals to join in, even their shouts seemed otherworldly and nightmarish. Soon a horrid, spine-tingling cacophony of noise began to shout over the sound of Fluttershy’s singing. And as it did, the ones who form the “barrier” began to loosen up—raising their heads and their arms again. Not long after, they began to advance…
But before Fluttershy could lose her nerve in the wake of this change, their own “next wave” joined in as Pinkie Pie hopped out to the forefront of the ladies and began to engage in a festive, jubilant dance. The moment the swarm laid their eyes upon it, human or beast, howling or silent, they again fell still and became transfixed upon it. Soon the crowd was halting again. Sombra’s mouth parted and he shouted another order, but this time it fell on deaf ears for much of the horde was still howling and drowning out their master as well as Fluttershy.
It was at that point that the true assault began. As Sombra’s mouth opened wider to yell louder, it was suddenly scattered—like a reflection on water dispersed by stones—courtesy of Dash’s archery. While she was brand new to the form, she was taking to it well as she made the air sing with two more arrows in the span of one second—these ones to scatter either eye of Sombra. The shadow shifted, as if it had turned into a cumulonimbus cloud, and quickly reformed the eyes and mouth, only for them to immediately scatter again as Twilight hurled three different balls of fire at them. This time, the heat blasted them away and left holes in the shadow in their wake.
Again, the cloud shifted, and reformed the visage again—this time resembling an annoyed look. The mouth opened and half a syllable escaped before Applejack’s impromptu weapon swung out and swept across the mouth; this time making it look like fresh paint that had been smeared. A growl seemed to be heard on the wind as the face reformed and this time ascended higher, dodging Dash’s latest arrows long enough to open its mouth and shout louder.
“…staaaaaampeeeeeede…”
Dash and Twilight rapidly scattered the face again, but as they continued to assault it they quickly became cognizant of the ground rumbling even louder than expected by the thousands around them. Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie looked up in the middle of their bewildering moves and saw in the closing darkness a terrible sight. Amid the swarms approaching them, dozens of individuals were being thrown into the air on all sides, but from five specific directions all surrounding them. The ground shook louder and the noise grew further before the group realized the reason—the larger, stronger minions were combining their power and driving themselves forward in an attempt to crush them on all sides. Soon they began to emerge from their brethren—a host combined of nightmarish horses, twisted stags, rhino-like beings, and all matter of other creatures turned into living engines…
But then they were quickly hidden again as Rarity exerted her stolen power from Sombra himself. The area was quickly surrounded by a palisade of sapphire-like crystals bursting from the ground. In moments, the six were protected on all sides save for three small, narrow openings. An instant later, the ground thundered one last time as the stampeding creatures connected with the crystal, only to do nothing more than crush themselves against it uselessly. For a moment, Sombra’s jaws curled into a snarl before Twilight scattered them with a fiery column big enough to ravage his entire face in one blast.
The back and forth continued, but as Twilight and the ladies fell into a sort of rhythm Sombra found himself unable to gain any headway. While he was able to pull back enough to avoid Applejack’s swings, he could never clear himself of Twilight or Rainbow Dash, and he needed to be closer to shout immediate orders. With the palisades in place restricting the flow of the army, they could only attack from three angles that remained squarely in front of Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie, and Rarity. The crystals were too sheer for them to climb, and Sombra’s attempts to use the flying creatures among them to subvert the obstacle only gave them a bird’s eye view of Pinkie’s dance. They fell to the ground like stones as their ability to fly was arrested.
For about two minutes, it seemed as if they could actually keep him at bay. Applejack nearly called out how long Twilight thought it was going to be before Sombra would start showing signs of weakness.
That, however, was when the cloud reformed its mouth only to quickly pull itself back—narrowly missing the latest attacks. Before Dash could shoot an arrow into it, it managed to call another order. “…tuuuuuunneeeeeel…”
“What in tarnation did he mean by that?!” Applejack shouted as she readied her weapon for another swing.
“Who cares so long as he can’t get us!” Dash yelled as she kept firing arrows into him. “Let’s just…”
She paused, blinking once.
“Just…just hang…”
Her breathing suddenly changed, becoming more labored. The bow faltered in her grasp, allowing Sombra to reform both eyes as he swept forward again. Twilight quickly blasted them out again with a branching bolt of lightning, but she looked to Dash only to see her heaving and letting her arms fall all together.
“Rainbow Dash?”
“What’s gotten inta’ ya’?” Applejack called.
“I…”
That was all she managed to get out before her eyes rolled and she fell to the ground. Right before impact, she managed to extend her arms and stop herself on her hands and knees, but there she remained afterward. Her aura died out rapidly—returning her to her base form.
“Ain’t no time for jokes or sleepin’ on the job, Dash!” Applejack shouted back as she swung her hammer out to try and rip away Sombra’s teeth…only for him to pivot them upward and out of range. Twilight again had to blast them away. “Get on up now! Quit foolin’ around!”
“Oh dear… She’s not fooling, Applejack!” Rarity shouted back. “She never trained with two Anima Viris at once!”
“J-J-Just…g-g-give me a minute…” the Huntsman muttered.
Sombra’s face spread into a grin as he loomed closer, forcing Twilight to quickly increase the potency of her spells to make up for the loss. Applejack groaned as she spun around and started swinging again. “We ain’t got a minute! We’re fightin’ a damn army!”
“Twilight!” Rarity called back. “Is there any way that I can heal her to make her recover faster?”
Twilight was rather busy trying to keep the pressure on Sombra, but managed to call back. “I don’t think it works that-”
The mage was silenced by an eruption…not of a bomb or fire but of dirt directly below Fluttershy. She let out a muted shriek as she was cast into the air before toppling to the ground rather roughly. While such an assault was nothing to her current body, she soon scrambled back in shock and alarm along with everyone else at what was in her wake.
A large muddy hole was now in the ground, and crawling out of it was an eight-foot, solidly-built monstrosity. It came to the surface and began to lumber forward on nubby, thick legs. It arms were stocky and stubby with long, curled, pick-axe-like claws, and its face was elongated with massive rodent-like teeth that seemed to protrude from outside of its mouth. Its eyes were so tiny that they were nothing more than green and red dots, but its snout was filled with fleshy, worm-like protuberances that thrashed and swished about as if feeling the air.
It let out a deep growl as it staggered forward, before opening its monstrous jaws and letting out a bellow. It spun around to the nearest target: Pinkie Pie. She was still dancing away just as rapidly as before, but the beast ignored that—apparently unable to see it clearly. Still bellowing, it dashed right at her and gave a swipe with its claws for her head. She managed to dip under it and shoot back quickly enough, but it had done what Sombra no doubt intended—interrupted her dancing.
A moment later, Twilight paled as he confirmed it beyond all doubt.
“…chaaaaaargeeeeee!”
At once, all three openings were flooded with a living deluge of possessed bodies. Raging like monsters they flowed in; distorted, ugly, and filled with hate and darkness. They savagely ran for the nearest target looking ready to eat her alive—who happened to be the still fallen Rainbow Dash.
Gritting her teeth, Applejack swung about as she yanked her hammer back to her and seized it by the hilt before running to her aid. “Goll damnit!”
She cut herself off, seeing it was too late. The nearest attacker, wielding a crude axe made out of scrap metal, nearly cleaved into Dash’s head when Applejack arrived in front of him. Her hammer swung out horizontally and caught him by the arm and the side, not only breaking the bones and driving them into his torso but flinging him back into the crowd of rampaging maniacs to hold them at bay momentarily. That was good because the next stream immediately ran up to her, starting with a monstrous dog leaping for her throat. She answered by swinging upward and catching it under the jaw, shattering half of its skull and sending it flinging, before she threw all remaining caution to the wind and charged the flood right back—striking down one after another with threshing-like swings.
Yet the third stream was still flowing in and the first one was recovering. They quickly moved to swarm over the sole attacker. Twilight quickly glanced over the others. Fluttershy was still recoiling in fear; struggling to find her voice again. Pinkie was, at least, keeping the giant mole creature busy, but she was also being kept busy in turn. That left Rarity, who after hesitating was able to run in with her rapier.
Twilight cried out to her. “Seal the barrier!”
Rarity instantly ground to a halt, turned back to Twilight for a moment as the command clicked, but then nodded. She turned back to the crystal wall and used her power again. In moments, the barrier was sealed in all three places. However, over a hundred were already inside and struggling to swarm Applejack.
Worse yet, Twilight was again stunned long enough for Sombra to give more commands.
“…flyyyyyy…buuuuuurroooooow…”
Twilight nearly cursed herself as she realized what was coming soon. Having no other choice, she called. “Everyone but Pinkie! Switch to offense until she can get dancing again!”
Rarity blanched a little. “But…the people…”
“We don’t have a choice! We can’t restrain them all!”
She didn’t seem to be comfortable with that, but also realized Twilight was telling the truth. With that in mind, she took a deep breath and dashed forward—putting herself between Applejack and one of the streams of enemies. Her sword angled forward, and a moment later she went to work. She nimbly stepped in, and with three lightning-fast jabs struck down the first three attackers, before moving to slashes that hit the next three each in the vitals. She continued to advance as the maniacs turned their attacks to her, but amazingly she still outperformed them. She evaded a club only to counter with opening a neck artery, dodged a claw swipe from a monstrous beast beyond it before driving her sword tip into its eye socket and the brain beyond, and nimbly backflipped twice from a pair of assailants slashing at her before giving one slash of her own to cut both throats at once.
Twilight was pleasantly surprised—noting that two Anima Viris seemed sufficient for disabling most of Sombra’s legions. Her eyes quickly turned to Applejack afterward, however, trying to see how well she was doing. For a moment or two, she noticed her raw fury seemed to be stemming the tide on the nearest attackers…
But then she saw the second wave about to hit her, and that in the lead were three colossal wild boars bearing their tusks and in full stampede.
“Applejack!”
She heard the warning and turned her head, but that was all she had time for. She watched them plow into her with sufficient force to rip her right off of her feet and grind her still-airborne body right into the opposing flood. They didn’t stop there but kept bearing her onward until they crashed right through the crowd and smashed her right into one of the crystalline walls. The mage was aghast. Nothing short of a train engine could have made an impact that bad. Even with an Anima Viri, she couldn’t have walked away unscathed…
And now, both swarms, heedless of the damage to them, turned around and began to pile on top of where she had landed with renewed ferocity.
Twilight, still shaken, looked skyward to Sombra and readied to blast his mouth again, only to see he was doing nothing more than snickering. However, his eyes were right where Applejack had fallen. Realizing he directing them there while his mouth gave commands, the mage quickly snapped her arms up and unleashed another bolt spell to split and pierce in either eye. It worked, but with only one assailant he already began to form new eyes in other parts of his cloud the moment she blasted him. She fired again, but the bolts themselves had less effect compared to the rest of her powers and he recovered even faster…
Meanwhile, Fluttershy, having heard Twilight’s command, reluctantly gulped before releasing one of her Anima Viris…reverting her into the role of the Rogue. Although she clearly didn’t feel as comfortable with it as Pinkie, she clutched her own small dagger and got back to her feet. She moved up behind the giant mole creature as it continued to swing at Pinkie and chase her around with savage fury, but quickly yelped and leapt back every time it half-glanced in her direction or simply planted her feet in fear.
Eventually, she managed to make her way up behind it while it was still unguarded, but nevertheless hesitated again—clearly nervous about striking out at a living thing, even a monstrous one. At last, however, as it was chomping at Pinkie and trying to catch her in its monstrous jaws, she closed her eyes and reluctantly drove her dagger toward its back.
In spite of having short hair and what seemed to be normal skin, the dagger almost harmlessly glanced off—unable to even leave a scratch in the mole creature’s hide. However, it instantly halted where it was. Its head spun about and leveled its beady eyes at Fluttershy. A low growl came from its throat.
She looked up at it in a mixture of innocence and fear. “Oh…I’m sorry, Mr. Mole… I-I-I didn’t mean to-”
Again, she was cut off as the monster backhanded her with its hooked claw so hard that, even though she was struck at an angle, she was smashed into the ground loud enough to echo through the palisade. She sprawled flat, and though she was able to pick her head back up again after a moment she was clearly dizzy. She got enough of her wits just in time to look up and see the monster ready to impale her with the same claw—prompting her to give a panicked squeak as she shrank back…
The claw never came, however. Spike, who had held back until now, took the moment to dive in and give the monster a bite on its Achilles’ tendon. A rather sharp one too, sinking its teeth in and yanking back hard enough to actually give the monster pause. Forgetting Fluttershy for the moment, it snapped around and swiped at him instead—although he used the moment to leap back and give it a series of snarls and barks. Unfortunately, it didn’t hold its attention that long as Sombra had to be directing it to kill the girls, but it did give Fluttershy the moment she needed to stagger to her feet and run away.
As for Dash, she managed to pry her head upward, looking angry all over again; and on seeing the situation she let out a sneer. “To hell with this…”
A moment later, one of her Anima Viris was recalled, returning her to the role of the Disciple. Forcing herself back up to her feet after that, she vaulted three steps forward before leaping out and giving a knee to the back of another possessed madman’s head. The sound of the neck breaking was audible as he spilled forward into his companions, but soon she landed and began to savagely punch and kick with bone-shattering force at those swarming over Applejack.
In spite of this, Twilight still called out to her. “No, Rainbow! We still need the Archer!”
Her cry seemed to fall on deaf ears—although it could have just as easily been her struggling to survive as the attackers soon began to spin on her and started flooding her as well. With her one Anima Viri, she was having to focus to punch and kick them away. Unfortunately, just as she began to do this, the hammer fully dropped.
A renewed flood of flying creatures, mixed of birds, bats, insects, and a number of other horrors, suddenly ascended over the palisade wall and came at Twilight like a living river. Gasping, she quickly turned to them, redirected her latest fireballs, and sent them flying at the incoming cloud. She watched as both sailed into the swarm of death and ignite—either one killing dozens or even hundreds of attackers. Not that it mattered, however. Ten times as many swarmed over the eruptions and swallowed up the fire and smoke before billowing out still for her. In panic, she frantically made an ice spell and pointed it at the ground…
An instant later, a wall of frozen spikes formed a shield in front of her. It was nearly too late. Several of them ended up entombed in the ice, but even with the barrier she soon cried out in pain as the sheer number of them meant the swarm curled around and still managed to land bites and claws against her. Both of her arms were soon tagged with over a dozen small lacerations from their wild attempts to rip her to pieces.
This was just the beginning. As she struggled to survive the attackers long enough to counterattack them, she looked back to the crater that the giant mole monster had emerged from. The ground was heaving and splitting around it as things from beneath the earth were pushing up and out. Soon after, all manner of foulness and fierceness, covered with mud and hissing and spitting, started to push out to the surface. The monster hadn’t just infiltrated them; it had made a tunnel for its companions. Now they began to chase after Fluttershy who was still fleeing from her life from the mole monster as Spike desperately tried to get its attention.
Worse yet, she could see the edges of the palisade, and saw more maniacal legions were clawing at the top of it. Unable to get over the barrier on their own, the hundreds and thousands surrounding it were beginning to form living mounds against it for their companions to ascend. They were less than a minute from being totally overwhelmed.
Fluttershy was continuing to shrink and cringe from the giant mole creature, too afraid to get any nearer to it. She saw that everyone else was getting pressed on in danger, but was too nervous to move out after them and leave herself open to attack. She could only stand there and whimper as Spike snapped at the monster’s stubby legs in an attempt to get it to move back. In response, the monster swung at him repeatedly with his own giant claws, much to Fluttershy’s dread, but missed him each time.
Finally, however, he did something different. As Spike tried to move in from one side, he didn’t slash at the dog, but rather reared one of his legs up. As Spike went in for a bite, he lashed out and audibly connected with him right in the face. A yelp went out as the dog was knocked across the field.
“Spike!” Twilight cried.
Fluttershy, however, gaped in open-mouthed shock at what had just happened—especially when Spike lay flat and did not snap back up. She lingered for a few moments before she looked back up. As she zeroed in on the mole creature her look turned from terror to anger to fury.
“How…dare…you!”
Finally bringing the speed and agility of the Rogue to bear, Fluttershy vented bravery and passion unlike any she had shown in the battle so far as she charged. The mole creature turned to face her and tried to sweep a claw out for her. She answered by not only easily vaulting over it but landing on the monster’s bulky forearm; running all the way to the top, reaching its head, and doing a springing handstand over it to land on its back.
Giving a tiny war cry, she held on with one hand while furiously beginning to stab with the other with her eyes closed. In spite of her renewed spirit, this didn’t seem to do any more damage than her more half-hearted stabs, but it did at least annoy the mole creature into rearing back, roaring, and then furiously try to get the nuisance off of it.
As a result, Pinkie was finally free to dance uninterrupted. A good thing too, for at this point both Dash and Rarity were getting swarmed by the attackers and the flock of flying creatures was coming around to attack Twilight from behind. Fortunately, a mere five meters before they could land, they began to fall from the sky again.
Twilight gasped in relief as she stepped out from behind her barrier and looked out to the field. Some of the land-based attackers were getting entranced by the dance, but there were more still pouring out of the hole and ones were beginning to come over the top of the palisade like a pot beginning to boil over.
“Rarity! Seal us off!”
The woman turned to Twilight on hearing that, but that was a bad move. At that moment, a monstrous-looking bear-like creature that might have once been a raccoon snapped forward, sunk its enlarged claws into her sword arm, and followed up by biting down. She screamed in alarm and agony as the horde around her bellowed, rushing on her and beginning to swing with their blades and hatchets to try and rip her apart…
Somewhere, in the midst of the chaos, Dash caught a glimpse of this while three of the maniacs had seized her. Gritting her teeth, her muscles tightened before she bellowed.
“Get…off of…me!”
Snapping her head one way and the other, she smashed her skull into the heads of those on either arm so hard that sickening cracks were heard along with eruptions of blood. As those two faltered, she ripped her arms free and proceeded to slam both of her palms against the side of the head of her third captor—smashing the skull in between her hands. Venting her full power, she proceeded to lean up and deliver two more palms to the faces of two more maniacs rushing in, causing more crunching before they fell back, and then followed up with an elbow slam to the head of a monstrously-distorted deer so hard that it snapped its antlers along with its neck. After delivering two final blows in the form of forward kicks, nearly decapitating two of the same hedgehog beasts that had attacked Twilight and Stygian days earlier, her way was free.
Breaking out of the crowd, she rushed over to Rarity, leapt into the air, and brought down an axe-kick on the raccoon monster’s back that severed its spine. A follow-up roundhouse kick knocked away most of Rarity’s captors—allowing her to wrench free and quickly run to one side. Though she was clearly agonized by her bleeding arm, she managed to hold up her other hand and quickly use her spells again. In moments, the crater was sealed—crushing a few monsters that were trying to worm through in the process—and the palisades increased in height and arched over.
By now, most of those remaining were either being torn apart by Dash’s ferocity or were getting entranced by Pinkie’s dance. Twilight glanced over the battlefield for a moment, before, behind the ranks of multiple entranced individuals, she caught a glimpse of Applejack’s hair lying on the ground. There was no telling how badly she was hurt, but Fluttershy was still futilely trying to kill the mole monster.
Gritting her own teeth, Twilight turned to it as it staggered around madly slashing, before she risked chanting a stone spell. Soon after, a missile of jagged rock erupted from the ground right for the mole beast; only to break on contact without making it do much more than roar.
She groaned. “We have to take that one out!”
“Oh, why didn’t you say so?” Pinkie instantly cheered. A moment later, she began to reach for her Promethian Sigil.
“No, Pinkie! Don’t-”
It was too late. She proceeded to drop her newest sigil—which in turn caused her to don the same flamboyant red with a wide-brimmed hat that Rarity’s first Role had been. Clearly the Magician. Not wasting a second, she hopped and leapt right up to the rampaging beast. By now, Fluttershy was crying again as she weakly tried to get it to stop, but the monster itself slowed on seeing someone new approaching it.
It orientated itself toward her to attack, but before it could she waved at it. “Hey there, Mr. Mole Man! You’re looking pretty worked up, so I’ll help you cool off!” She pointed the end of her own knife-turned rapier to him and proceeded to draw an arcane symbol on the air. “And…there you go!”
The sigil executed…and a moment later, to the sound of a soft “poof” in the air, the mole monster’s head was enclosed in a block of ice. It was unclear whether or not Pinkie had intended it to be that effective, but it apparently executed a brain freeze or lack of oxygen because the monster’s arms dropped almost immediately. A second later, much to Fluttershy’s surprise, the beast fell to the ground like a ton of bricks.
“Oh my…”
“Fluttershy!” Twilight shouted. “Take care of Applejack!”
She nodded and began to rise, changing Roles as she did so. Twilight couldn’t risk seeing anymore, because she quickly had to generate a bigger, thicker ice spell around herself as the birds—now freed from the control Pinkie had them under—began to furiously bombard her from all sides. She managed to get the ice up, but they drove themselves so hard against it in an attempt to fracture it to bits that soon her surroundings were getting covered with blood as well as cracks as they bashed their own brains in.
As she frantically continued to regenerate the ice, she looked out and saw Rarity, in spite of her injury, trying to fight off the remaining maniacs who had gotten inside. Between her and Dash, Fluttershy was free to move toward Applejack and get down at her side. In another moment, she would have called out to Pinkie Pie to focus on the flying creatures as well, but before she could she heard another monstrous sound.
“…draaaaaagoooooon…”
As Dash, panting now, punched out one of the last “ground-bound” threats, she looked to the sky with a tired expression. “Tell me he didn’t just say ‘dragon’…”
Dash didn’t have time to quip back about that before Twilight along with everyone else felt the ground shake a little. It shook a bit more a second later, and again soon after. The loudest sound yet, what seemed like a deep-throated growl, echoed over the palisade.
Twilight exhaled tiredly, closed her eyes for a moment, and then made one more symbol in the air. On executing, a powerful bolt of electricity erupted from it and into the swarm—chaining along them to wipe a hundred of them out of the sky at once. The others backed off temporarily to regroup, and Twilight used the moment to punch through one of the more shattered pieces of ice and stepped out.
“Everyone!” she called, getting their attention temporarily. “This isn’t working! We’re still playing into his hands! I need everyone to cover me as long as they can!”
“What are you doing?” Rarity called back.
Already, the mage planted her feet and was beginning to far more slowly draw a much bigger sigil. “I’m going to make this next one as big as I can! I think if I make it hard enough even he won’t be able to pull back together from it!”
Twilight hated having to shout that, but she had no choice to get everyone on board. Unfortunately, that also got Sombra’s attention. His red and green eyes instantly zeroed in on her—clearly making her the focus. The swarm almost immediately began to reform to double its power and go after her, while the stomping grew louder yet.
Dash, however, cried out over it. “You heard the lady! Let’s keep them busy! Pinkie, get dancing again already! Fluttershy, hurry up with Applejack and get singing!”
“Oh, goodness no!” Rarity shouted back, as Pinkie merely saluted and began to bring out her other Anima Viri again. “You can’t let Fluttershy revert back into that Role so quickly!”
“Well why the hell not?”
“You’d know if you had practiced with your own… Going from two to one and then back again too quickly could be disastrous!”
“What?!”
“Why do you think Twilight chastised you for losing the Archer?”
Dash would have protested more, but the ground began to shudder around them again. This time not from impact. She scowled. “Ugh! Just…get to work!”
Fortunately, it seemed Pinkie…possibly due to her “special” circumstances…had no such restriction on bringing her second Anima Viri back out. As the swarm began to dive bomb them, she reverted into the Dancer and began again. The effect worked well, and soon the flying creatures were dropping out of the sky once more. Yet even not accounting for the fact that the horde was still trying to mound itself up high enough to climb the wall, the rumblings continued until they erupted in soil explosions in three new areas.
Rarity and Dash alike both staggered back and guarded themselves for a moment, only to look back and see three new giant mole creatures emerge with maddened expressions. If that wasn’t enough, the fourth one was beginning to rise again—scraping for its head with its claws to try and break the ice around it.
Sighing, Dash nevertheless knuckled up and ran right up to the first to meet it. It greeted her with swiping its claws at her body, but she vaulted over them and quickly punched it dead center in between the beady eyes. Unfortunately, that seemed to only make it take a step back and double its anger. It quickly swung out with both claws at her next, which she leapt over and answered with a kick across its face. It was enough to split its monstrous lip, but, again, only seemed to make it madder.
As for Rarity, she quickly began to throw loose rocks at one of the remaining ones—the biggest her enhanced strength could manage. It did serve to anger it, and soon it was stomping after with teeth gnashing and claws up. As soon as it was in range it tried to swing down both to maul her and crush her, but she managed to sidestep and sliced out with her rapier. Her first slash only managed to cut the claws shallowly, but as it stomped forward and kept swiping, she backed up and drove the tip into the more fleshy parts. She drew blood…but not much else, unfortunately.
This left two to start moving unimpeded toward Twilight. Dash spotted them as she was being driven back by her first opponent; who was only getting more bloodied and angry rather than debilitated. She looked between the two for a moment, but finally groaned. As the mole creature before her dove to try and snap her with her incisors, she vaulted forward, leapt on its shoulders, and went over to launch herself into a flying knee in the back of the head of one of the others. It was hard enough to make it stagger, but as Dash went past it and landed on the other side she found all she had really done was made another mole creature mad at her. One was still free…
Yet something new happened a moment later that caused attention to shift yet again. The “dragon” arrived.
It was tall. That much was clear by the fact that in spite of the crystal palisade its head, neck, and even its shoulders easily towered over the edge of the defenses. It wasn’t a “true” dragon, obviously. Rather it looked like something that had been twisted, warped, and gorged in the right places to gradually make it into a dragon-like shape. Frills of skin and bone-like scales made weak flaps on its back like an attempt to make wings. Its neck was sinuous enough but also stretched and bulged to the point of its scaled exterior being split and bare at points. Its face was the most dragon-like at all, save for a heavy-set jaw. Cruel, scaled “lips”, rows of jagged, disjointed, and sharp teeth, a dual horned crest, and, of course, the eyes filled with the same madness and hate as Sombra himself.
A deep-throated snarl went out from its throat, loud enough to echo over the chaos around them. The ladies were so stunned by its appearance that they almost forgot the mole creatures momentarily. However, it didn’t take nearly as long to size up the situation. In mere moments, its head turned to Dash and picked her as its first target. Its jaws gave a quiver as drool dropped from them, before suddenly they shot open wide. A horrible stench of sulfur and bile washed over the area as it snapped for her like a striking snake.
Fortunately, between Dash’s own skill and the Role of the Disciple, she was fast enough to dodge out of the way. Even so, the dragon beast swung its jaws around until it found purchase—only this time on the body of the last mole creature. With a snap like an iron drawbridge, the jaws slammed shut—scattering blood and matter everywhere. The dragon’s head recoiled and, to the dread of the ladies, they saw the mole creature had easily been bitten in half. Only its bleeding lower torso was left behind, which immediately collapsed. The dragon itself, blood dripping from its jaws, leaned back up and, on seeing it had missed its target, rapidly began to swallow the mouthful of monster so it could try again.
Rarity was totally aghast. “Merciful heavens! That…that thing could eat us with one-”
Her distraction cost her. The other mole creatures were unphased by the death of their companion and the one she had been fighting seized the opportunity to lash out and strike her alongside the head. Fortunately, it used the broad side of its claw or it may have done some real damage, but even without that a bloody gash was cut across Rarity’s face before she was cast to the ground. Thanks to her double Role, she shook her head and began to look up again almost immediately after landing, but the mole creature was already diving on her and opening wide…
A bone-shattering hit slammed its jaw again as Applejack, torn up, dirty, bloody, and yet mostly healed charged in and slammed her hammer into its skull. Just as with Dash’s blows, the monster barely seemed stunned with the first hit in spite of the severity of the blow, but she wasn’t done there. With a bestial fury of her own she bashed away at its head again and again until its jaw was mangled and its cheek was sunken in. Only then, putting both hands together on the hilt, did she swing up and around and catch it under the jaw. The monster’s head snapped upward as it was knocked back and finally spread out on its back.
Even then, it hissed and gurgled as it tried to rise, but Applejack quickly grabbed Rarity by the arm and yanked her up before pulling her out of the way. A moment later, the dragon slammed its head down where both of them were—this time getting a mouthful of dirt instead. Growling angrily, it spat all of it out and leaned up again, turning its attention back to Dash. By now, she was engaging her own mole creature again, while the one that had been stunned was finally breaking its head fully free and beginning to close on her too.
Dash dodged another pair of claw swipes from the dominant one, but couldn’t get in close for a counterattack. It was keeping its claws in front of it to prevent that now. Instead, she tried to kick up a loose bit of metal weaponry from one of the downed maniacs and punted it at the monster’s head. It landed, leaving a gash, but did little else to stop it. Groaning, she tried to come at it from the side, only to see the other mole creature was already coming at her from that end. Quickly, she had to abort and backpedal to try and get clear of it…
A moment before she did, she noted the dragon snapping again, and she immediately pivoted again. She narrowly missed its jaws as she came back…but that only left her completely open to the first mole creature’s charge. It again swiped down, and this time all she could do was brace her arm against it to try and protect itself. She let out a cry as she got a gash across it for her effort, as well as the pain of a blow sending her staggering back.
She managed to recover just as both mole monsters went for her at once, making her quickly retreat as she kept an eye on the dragon’s head looming above her. “Hey Twilight! Is that spell ready yet?!”
“Sorry, but I need more time!” she shouted back, still painstakingly drawing a sigil that looked nowhere near complete.
“Rainbow Dash!” Fluttershy called in alarm, seeing her injury. She nearly began to run toward her. “Hold on!”
“Forget it!” she shouted back as she ducked under another claw. “You want to do something? Turn back into the Minstrel and put these things to sleep or something!”
“I can take care of the dragon!” Pinkie Pie cheerfully offered.
“Don’t ya’ dare stop dancin’ again!” Applejack shouted back as she hefted her hammer. “The rest of ya’ worry ‘bout them mole critters! I’ll handle this overgrown lizard!”
With that, she barreled right at the twisted wyrm as it again looked down on Rainbow Dash with the intent of biting; especially now that she was pinned. This time, however, as it struck down—Applejack interjected herself between the two and quickly shoved her backward while leaping back herself. Again, the dragon beast’s jaws missed her entirely and plunged into the ground. Applejack left Dash to the mole creatures again, instead quickly snapping her arm around and smashing her hammer into the tip of the dragon beast’s nose.
A rather loud “clang” resulted, like a hammer on iron. And in spite of Applejack’s enhanced strength, she immediately winced and recoiled. It looked like she had just tried to smash down a wall of iron. She didn’t even leave the scales scratched. However, the dragon beast definitely felt it. Enough, if nothing else, to forget about Dash and turned its maddened eyes fully to Applejack instead. It let out a snarl, followed by another foul roar right in her face before lashing out at her in a furious snap. The Warrior barely had time to recover from her numbing jolt before she was dodging teeth trying to bite her in two.
Dash was already looking tired before having to deal with two mole creatures, and now it was starting to show. Unable to even fight back anymore, she kept leaping back further and further from them as they kept swiping and slashing at her. Finally, she reached a slip up. Stepping back, her heel caught on some of the uprooted ground and made her stumble. Before she could recover, two of the claws came down and smashed into her body. The tips, fortunately, didn’t hook into her, but it still felt like a tree was falling on her as one of the mole beasts flung her to the ground.
The impact was hard, but not enough to knock her senseless. She opened up her eyes again, but grunted as the first mole monster pushed into her to keep her still. She saw the second one was rapidly falling in behind it, apparently even madder at having its head frozen. As it snorted and snarled, it cracked its jaws open wide and raised its claw to crush her head.
Yet as it was nearing and Dash struggled to get free, she suddenly got an splurt of red, hot liquid splashed in her face. It was the end result of the tip of Rarity’s sword erupting from its chest. She glanced up, just in time to see a stressed, bleeding, and desperate Rarity still holding her blade where she plunged it with both hands and all of her strength into its back—miraculously hitting a spot between the bone.
She didn’t see much more than that, for the monster immediately bellowed and snapped back and around, viciously “backclawing” her away. Blood, however, continued to fountain from its chest. The wound was fatal and now it began to go into its violent death throes. Dash didn’t pause to watch it die, however…and she couldn’t. The first mole, having finally pinned its target, immediately leaned in with its mouth open wide to bite her head off.
Her skull was already enveloped by the time she raised her arms to keep its jaws open. But not only did that cause the monster’s teeth to instantly dig into her skin and draw blood, but even with her own power and one Anima Viri it took everything she had to keep it from clamping shut regardless. And now that she was pinned, it began to slowly overpower her…
Applejack, meanwhile, continued to engage the dragon—which wasn’t terribly easy. The thing was as fast as it was large, and she soon found herself dodging more than she was attacking. Even when she managed to hammer against its head, the blows did nothing other than drive her into more pain from the attempt to hit it. All the while the dragon’s own attacks grew fiercer and faster, pushing her harder and farther.
At last, it snapped down; prompting Applejack to leap back again. Yet right before its head could plunge into the dirt as it had before, it suddenly snapped taut. Applejack looked and saw that the dragon had been so intent on getting her that it hadn’t realized how far it had been overextending itself. Its neck couldn’t go any farther over the palisade.
The Warrior expected it to pull back and start circling the wall, but much to her surprise…and dread…it took a more “direct” approach. It simply reached up with a pair of massive claws, seized the crystals, and began to push itself in on them. They began to creak and groan before they started shifting.
“It’s tearin’ down the wall to get in!” Applejack shouted.
“If it does, we’ll be flooded even if we kill it!” Twilight shouted back.
“I can get it!” Pinkie chirped.
“No, keep dancing!”
With no other visible options, Applejack bit down and ran right back into the face of the dragon beast. It didn’t attack her that time, focusing on breaking in, and so she used the moment to plant her feet and beat away at the side of its head for all she was worth. Fully ignoring the pain, she smashed her hammer again—sending out showers of sparks and resounding noises like a bell gong.
Yet for all of her power and fury, she didn’t even leave a scratch on the beast. She only seemed to irritate it a bit more, and after a fourth swing it had enough. Suddenly, it snapped its head and neck at her—ramming its own massive maw into her like a wrecking ball.
The power was more shocking than any of the others expected. Not only was Applejack swept aside like so much chaff, but on hitting the crystal walls a rather loud cracking was heard. For a moment, they thought that the dragon actually had enough power to break the crystal—only to see Applejack slide off of it and reveal it was still perfectly intact. The cracking hadn’t come from the palisade…
An instant later, Applejack cried out in agony, as pain and trauma drove her enough to roll up. One hand was still clutching the hammer while reaching over for her limb, but the mere sight of it was grotesque to behold on seeing it bent and twisted the wrong way. It had to have been broken in multiple places, to say nothing of how many other bones may have been broken.
The dragon, having barely paused to do that, kept pushing in as the crystals started to give way. Already a gang of maniacs was beyond it clawing and scraping like mad bees. Fluttershy, on her part, was just now putting on the Role of the Minstrel when she gasped at seeing what happened to Applejack. She’d be forced to switch back to heal her now, but even if she had time the dragon would break through in seconds.
Dash glanced at all of this for a moment, before she scowled. “To hell with this…” She raised her hand with her Promethian Sigil.
“Rainbow Dash! Don’t!” Rarity shouted.
“Member of my house, I command you to come to me! Sky Clipper—Soarin!”
Her aura exploded, and in moments she was back in the Role of the Archer. Fortunately, the light and power was enough to cause the mole trying to decapitate her to pull back—so she immediately used the opportunity with her increased strength to seize its own incisors and yank back with a surge of strength. The creature soon bellowed and shot back as its teeth were ripped clean out of its head, and Dash used her aura to morph them into a fresh shortbow and arrow.
Not wasting a second, she quickly snapped back up to her feet, drew up her bow, knocked the arrow, took aim right at one of the great reptilian eyes of the scaly beast, and let it fly.
The shaft sank all the way inside, leaving nothing but a plume of blood and vitreous humor in its wake. The barrier was instantly forgotten as the monster reared back and roared in agony loud enough to make even Sombra’s own legions wince and recoil in pain. It shot back reflexively into the midst of its companions, trampling and rending dozens of them as it vanished.
Fluttershy and Rarity, however, were aghast as they stared at Dash. On her part, she spun around and gave them both a grin.
“What’d I tell ya’? Nothing…”
She paused, suddenly wavering a little. Her smile ebbed.
“Noth…nothing…”
She sniffled, and rubbed her nose reflexively with the back of her hand. She felt something wet on it, and looked down to see what it was. One half of her hand was completely smeared with blood.
She didn’t even have time to notice that trails of blood were already running out of both of her tear ducts and her ears before she groaned and collapsed to the ground.
“Rainbow Dash!” Rarity shouted in horror. Immediately, she began to run toward her. She dismissed one of her Anima Viris to return to the Magician and practically knelt at her side. However, the Huntsman was continuing to bleed, and had gone fully still and pale.
Quickly, she held her hands out over her and began to use one of the healing spells that Twilight had taught her, but she didn’t get very far before Fluttershy, having reverted to the Role of the Healer, reached her and began to do the same. Rarity hesitated a moment on seeing her arrive and chanting, before she swallowed and began to rise up again.
“W-W-Where are you going?” Fluttershy asked.
“Someone has to tend to Applejack, and you’re better at healing than I am. I’m counting on you, Fluttershy.”
This made the older woman gulp. Trembling, she looked back to Dash and resumed her work. Unfortunately, she thought the same thing that Rarity thought—that neither of them were sure that conventional healing could repair this kind of injury. Nevertheless, Rarity managed to get to Applejack’s side and started her own work while Fluttershy continued—all the while as things continued to get worse. More and more of the horde was poking their heads above the edges of the palisade, and were stopped only by seeing Pinkie’s dancing.
But then, Twilight heard another word that sent a cold feeling into her stomach.
“…fiiiiiireeeeee!”
The moment Sombra spoke that, the ground shuddered again as the dragon beast once more began to loom above the palisade. One of its eyes was still gushing blood and matter, but it didn’t seem to care about that anymore. Its remaining eye was focused on the crystal ring. Far more importantly, Twilight saw a light within its horrible jaws. It glowed purple but it exuded foul, sulfurous vapors she could smell from there and sent up wisps of smoke from the gaps in the teeth.
The realization nearly broke her incantation. Fortunately, Pinkie called out for her. “Hey! I think that dragon Sombra made really can breathe fire!”
This got Rarity, Fluttershy, and Applejack to all look up in horror. “Twilight!” The Magician cried. “We need one of those defensive spells of yours!”
“I can’t! If I break this spell now and have to restart…we’ll be overwhelmed before I can do it again! Fluttershy has to do it!”
“M-M-Me?!” she practically shrieked. “I b-b-barely practiced it…!”
“You have to! The fire and heat will just go around Rarity’s crystals!”
Fluttershy’s answer was a panicked whimper, but there was no time for delays. Applejack, only slightly relieved from Rarity’s barely-started healing, managed to push herself up with the designer’s help and started limping over to Twilight to at least get them all together. Fortunately, Fluttershy and Dash, who was still quite unconscious and barely looking better…if at all…were already close by. That left Pinkie, who was continuing to dance but honestly seemed oblivious to the danger.
Once all were close together, the dragon beast was already looming over the top of the palisade ring again and starting to rear its head back. The gaps in its scales began to gleam with the dark flames growing inside of its body, gleaming brighter and moving up to its head as its cheeks swelled. Rarity, trying her best to help, quickly cast small ice spells around them to try and mitigate the incoming damage, while Fluttershy, trembling like a leaf and barely able to look up at the monstrous fiend reluctantly held her hands up and began to chant to generate the shield spell.
As Pinkie slipped underneath them, Fluttershy barely got out the last of the words before the dragon monster snapped its head forward and exhaled its flame.
It would have been bad enough if the fires had been purely natural—between the searing heat threatening to roast their lungs as well as their bodies and the shear force of the flaming blast. Yet this fire burned unnaturally hotter and billowed out to sweep the entirety of the palisade. The remains of its brethren were instantly turned into ash before being pulverized into smoke while the ground itself was practically fused from the horrendous foul heat. The last of the mole creatures had just recovered from its gruesome tooth extraction only to be practically dissolved alive by the fire.
Fluttershy, as a result, was practically sobbing as she chanted as loudly and furiously as she could. Even so, tongues of dark fire kept bursting through her shield—resulting in searing pain and even a bit of singeing of the ladies beneath. One actually lit Rarity’s hat on fire, prompting Applejack to quickly smack it out with her good hand. Another lashed Twilight’s outstretched arm, again nearly breaking her spell. The air was almost impossible to breathe even with Rarity continuously surrounding them with ice—which kept melting as fast as she put it together. Even the steam from the ice was rapidly heated to boiling, such that it felt like they were being burned regardless.
It wasn’t long before most of them were screaming out just to try and endure the pain, whether they were chanting or not. It nearly reached the breaking point when the flames mercifully subsided. Even then, in their wake, the ground was sizzling and, in some places, gleaming red. Rarity and Fluttershy, both totally exhausted, fell to the ground and gasped. Applejack herself fell back to one knee, struggling to breathe through the hot, ashy air. Twilight faltered, now barely able to keep making her sigil.
The dragon beast, however, had clearly only needed a “break”. It looked down on the wrath it had waged but stared only a moment on seeing its prey had survived before it began to inhale again. Once more, the gleam in its neck began and started to travel up to its jaws. Sombra’s shadow grinned even wider and more ravenously on seeing its victory nearly eminent. Even worse, the swarms of flying creatures and surrounding horde began their encroachment again on seeing Pinkie’s dance had stalled.
Twilight could only look desperately back, as no one was left in any shape to do anything. Once again, the dragon beast reared its head back as the flames began to billow from the gaps in its teeth.
Yet it never got the chance.
“Hey Twilight?”
Weakly, almost in a daze, the mage turned and saw Pinkie looking at her.
“I know you told me to keep dancing and all, but I think I better stop the dragon for you.”
The woman could only weakly utter a syllable before Pinkie turned around to face the monster and started to hop toward it. It didn’t seem to notice…or at least care…as it kept building fire, but Twilight watched as Pinkie pulled out her knife from when she was the Thief Role…only for it to elongate into a larger, ornamental shortsword. She grasped it in both hands and gave another surprise as she split in two, and began to nimbly move them around her hands like she was ready to juggle.
“I’ve got more dances up my sleeves than one!”
Applejack quirked her brow. “Say what…?”
Without another word, Pinkie broke out into a new dance. Rather than the alluring one from before, this one was more performance based—twirling, spinning, and dancing about clanging and spinning the blades in her hands. She only got a few steps into it, as the dragon was ready to breathe, before the ladies watched her leap into the air straight for the beast.
She moved so fast and with such power that they were astonished, even for two Anima Viris. Her body easily sailed out of the ring, over the palisade, and all the way to the monster as she kept spinning and dancing. Then, just as shockingly, she seemed to shoot back the way she came. She obviously had to have kicked off of the draconian nightmare, but it looked almost like she snapped back like she was a toy on a string.
As soon as she landed, Twilight noticed the dragon had stopped building its power and the gleam in its neck and mouth was dying down. Pinkie struck an elaborate pose with both swords as if dance was complete.
The mage had only a moment to note that both of her swords now had blood on them…before, like a tree having been felled in the forest, the dragon’s severed neck split and its head fell to the ground with a massive whump.
The ladies were still gaping in awe even when the ground thundered from the head and body of the dragon falling to the ground. Applejack was totally speechless, but Fluttershy was quivering all over again. “T-T-That’s monster…didn’t even wince when Applejack hit it…but Pinkie…”
“I…think we keep forgetting just where Pinkie came from, d-d-darling…” Rarity muttered.
Further discussion was cut off by a more roar-like sound from Sombra. A glance at his visage soon made it clear he had not taken that change in events very well. Once again, he was sending everything. The ground began to surge in multiple places as the sounds of vicious clamor and yells came from the newest holes. The maniacs began to finally reach the top of the wall and crawl over it to dump their bodies inside the palisade. The swarms of flying creatures gathered and began to come down while the area was rocked by tremors at what had to be more giant beasts incoming.
Applejack let out a swear. “Twilight, is that damn spell ready yet?!”
The mage answered by performing one last move, before her entire sigil glowed.
“…Yes! Everyone, get as flat to the ground as you can!”
They did as they were told, even Pinkie joining in, as Twilight executed the sigil. Immediately, the sky began to thunder—first giving a rumble and then emitted a few lightning bolts with it. The bloodthirsty horde continued to execute its command, but Sombra paused and looked skyward when another thunder peel went out even louder. The wind was picking up, and picking up fast. Ash and debris was caught up almost immediately, but within seconds the wind was blowing so hard that the aerial creatures began to struggle to stabilize themselves while those on the palisade were almost blown back again.
All of this prompted Sombra’s eyes to look skyward as the wind went from gusts to a gale to even stronger. The thunder roared even louder as the ladies themselves had to push their bodies harder to the ground to keep from being pulled up by it. A moment later, the lightning flashed again and, somewhere on the roaring winds growing louder all the time, Twilight heard an echo of what sounded like a gasp.
The lightning had illuminated the clouds, and they were now churning in a full-fledged thunderhead. Worse than that, they were circling and rapidly forming a funnel. Sombra glanced back down just as the debris got large and violent enough to start hurtling deadly shafts into his minions, before it started picking them up and tossing them around like toys. He realized too late Twilight had generated a tornado…and not a small one either. And it was coming down directly upon him.
Twilight managed to look up just long enough to see the funnel complete itself—meeting right on Sombra’s own twisted visage. The eyes genuinely looked panicked before black clouds swept them away like film swished about in dishwater. After that, she had to hold her own head down as the deafening roar of thunder and wind tore overhead. It was all she and the others could do to keep themselves flat as the twister raged below, digging huge rifts into Sombra’s army but, far more importantly, scattering every last bit of his shadow to the four winds. His anguish and rage continued to echo on the rumbling for several seconds, but even when it faded away the storm continued to linger.
It wasn’t until a full thirty seconds had passed that the tornado began to dissipate again, but it wasn’t for another ten seconds after that before the winds had died down enough for the ladies to look. Fluttershy was so nervous about everything that she buried herself in treating Rainbow Dash, but everyone else nervously looked up. The few maniacs that had managed to get into the palisade had frozen in place. They stood totally still and dully gazed forward. One could imagine that the others outside of it were the same.
They slowly rose, but the horde didn’t react. There had to be thousands left and yet none of them made a sound inside or outside the palisade. Most of all, however, as the tornado’s effects faded to nothing, it revealed just a normal cloudy sky. No sign of the eyes or the mouth. No noise but the breeze from the nearby ocean.
“Is…is it over?” Rarity asked.
“I…don’t know,” Twilight admitted. “All I know is that I saw that he had to use most of his personal power to hold his ‘face’ together so he could give commands. So…I used the biggest spell I could come up with that I knew would scatter him apart. As fast and far as I could.”
“Looks like it got ‘im,” Applejack commented. “They ain’t movin’ a muscle and no sign of him.”
“Maybe… But he had a lot of power stored up. I find it almost impossible to believe that even a spell like that could have-”
She was interrupted as one of the standing maniacs suddenly gave a violent spasm, instantly gaining everyone’s attention. For a moment, it looked like invisible forces were pulling up at him—or, more appropriately, pulling out from him. Then, like a puppet clipped of its strings, he fell to the ground in a limp heap. The green and red in his eyes faded. He didn’t even breathe anymore.
The maniac to his right did the same soon after. Then three of them did. Then the whole remainder did. They weren’t alone. While they couldn’t see them, they could hear spasming on the other side of the palisade. Happening with hundreds at once. Mixed with a few traces of…not-so-pleasant noises. Ones that sounded like ripping and tearing of bodies.
Rarity clasped a hand to her mouth. “Great Harmonium…I think they’re…dying…”
“So that’s gotta mean we won, right?” Applejack asked.
Twilight shook her head nervously. “N-N-No… They would have just stayed still like the ones back in Canterlot. I…I think I can see bits of shadow coming out of each one, and…”
Fluttershy cut her off with a shriek, and Rarity soon added to it with a retch. The others were mortified at what they saw. A wisp of shadow suddenly streaked over the top of the palisade, reached down to one of the now-dead bodies, and proceeded to…in the tamest terms…open up part of the face and take out what looked like some of the bone inside. Another shadow soon reached into the ground where a monster had been burrowing out and reached into its leg, removing what looked like long sinews. A final piece of shadow simply seized a piece of sharp metal that had been part of a weapon of one of the attackers. All three recoiled immediately back over the palisade, but the fact they heard similar noises on the other side made it clear it was continuing in much greater quantity over there.
Fortunately Dash’s bleeding had finally stopped and she was beginning to moan a little, for Fluttershy was too horrified and scared to keep healing. The others were aghast.
“I…I think we got our answer ‘bout whether or not he’s gone…”
“What in merciful heavens is he doing?!”
“Hmm…” Pinkie puzzled for a moment. “Oh, I know! The whole reason Sombra came out here was to get a body, right? So…maybe he’s decided to make one himself?”
As innocently as Pinkie posed the question…which wasn’t surprising giving what they knew of her background…the only thing that struck the ladies more than grotesque revulsion at the idea was the thought of how accurate it sounded. Especially as they saw the streams of shadow over the wall start to condense, and got a feeling of coldness and death emanating from the other side all over again.
“I think we’ve convinced him that his army isn’t enough to kill us…” Twilight nervously muttered. “He’s drawing all of the power he’s gotten from all of them and putting it in one spot…”
“What…whatever for?”
Rarity got her answer soon after as the noise fully died down…only to be broken by a new sound.
“Giiiirls…”
Even Applejack went pale on hearing that horrible voice, if one could even call it a “voice”. It sounded like a mixture of no less than a dozen different people, beasts, monsters, and who knew what else grossly distorted. A moment later, the ground began to shake again. Not as intensely as before, but far more rapidly. Crackling went out soon afterward as the group saw black crystals emerging from underneath the palisade in front of them. They acted to shift the existing crystals, before with a terrific noise they burst from the ground and flung Rarity’s own crystals into oblivion and opened the way.
Twilight had to struggle not to scream at what was on the other side.
It was now Sombra “in the flesh”…but only in the most putrid and ghastly sense of the word. What stood before them was a horrible, sickening amalgamation of bits of flesh, sinew, bone, and who knew what else patched together to make a colossal, towering humanoid that stood easily three meters tall. It wasn’t even a symmetrical being or composed of the same species. It was a mixture of parts with “extras” added where necessary to accommodate its size and shape.
The only relief was that scraps of metal, and even some still-bleeding hides of monsters had been composed to give it the impression of armor and a cape—hiding some of its nightmarish physiology. Unfortunately, it also gave it a rather long, cruel, and twisted greatsword which it only hefted with one “hand” because its right hand was composed of at least three separate arms working in concert.
The worst was the head. The only armor there was a crude iron crown, allowing everyone to see its ghastly visage. It was bad enough that the horrible eyes were now asymmetrical as well as maddening. The mouth was shoved full of countless teeth from what seemed like every breed of man and monster he had in his assemble. All to give him an even more monstrous grin.
Twilight managed to swallow. “Fluttershy…Rarity… Get Applejack and Dash back on their feet. No matter how long it takes. Pinkie and I will hold him off.”
Not giving him the chance to make the first move, Twilight began to walk toward the hulking cadaver drawing a fire sigil. Yet in the time it took her to execute it, Sombra waved his free “hand”; causing a rather large, flat, and diamondesque black crystal to emerge from the ground. He seized it from behind and held it in front of him like a tower shield. Twilight executed her fireball, but he had enough time to swing the shield in front of it and intercept it. The ball struck it but it had as much effect as everything else had on the crystals so far—nothing. It burst and fizzled out.
Twilight grit her teeth, quickly drawing a larger sigil as she kept approaching and flung a bigger fireball at him. Sombra grinned back, blocking that fireball as easily as the previous one.
The mage breathed a little heavy after that, holding her hand down to her side. Her fingers were shaking uncontrollably. “I used at least half of what I had in that tornado… I can’t just bounce back from that for more spells…”
“Then leave it to me!” Pinkie whistled, merrily hopping next to her. Soon after, she again brought her knife up and split it into a pair of shortswords. She once again performed the “blade dance”, clicking them together and spinning around in circles a few times before leaping out for Sombra as fast as before, spinning about in a wild circle.
This time Sombra did stop and actually planted his “feet” long enough to bring his shield fully in front of him. A moment later, Pinkie collided with a flurry and sparks and resounding “bam” echoing over the battlefield.
But when she dropped to the ground, not so much as a scratch was on the gem shield.
“Aw…” she moaned disappointedly.
Still grinning, Sombra brought the shield to one side and, with horrific speed and strength, yanked his blade up and behind him. Swinging it around like the pendulum on a battering ram, he brought it down and smashed into the Dancer. Even knowing what Pinkie was, Twilight was aghast at the thunderclap of a blow that she heard—before the woman was launched into the air and flung entirely out of the palisade and who knew how much farther. She had been little more to Sombra than a golf ball to a club.
Worse yet, the moment she was out of the way he broke into a charge. In spite of his hideous body and size, he was far faster than Twilight anticipated and was nearly on her before she even had the presence of mind to execute another sigil. This one was lightning—hoping to snake around and hit him in spite of his protection. It was as useless as the fire; breaking against the shield and not even slowing him down before he was on top of her. His sword again raised and came down—this time like the world’s largest guillotine.
She dove to one side, but that hardly mattered when the blade missed her and smashed the ground. The force was enough to fracture it inward, actually heaving her off of her feet, making her stumble, and sending her rolling back into his line of sight. He quickly raised his sword again to finish her off and she was forced into a panic move. Desperately, she held up both hands and “dual drew” ice sigils as fast as she could to put a frozen shell around her…
An instant later the blade came down—easily cutting through her flimsy barrier and slamming into the ground. She gasped when it did; realizing the only reason that she didn’t immediately get bisected from top to bottom was because the ice had managed to deflect the blade to one side, and now the massive weapon was hovering mere inches from her head. Fortunately, the ice was still generating when he came down, and soon it was freezing around his sword. For a brief moment, she saw some tension on his arm, indicating it had been immobilized. She used the moment to scramble up and try to escape…
No good. Seeing her wriggling free, Sombra merely released his impromptu shield and lashed out with his grotesque hand to seize her by the skull. She immediately gripped it in response, for in spite of being pieced together from various body parts it tightened into a crushing grip. Enough to make her cry out for a moment as she felt like he was going to pop her skull like a grape.
Before he could do any worse, however, a light “ding” was heard. Twilight could barely comprehend it through the crushing pain, but Sombra himself dully looked around just as a second noise rang out. Applejack, fully back on her feet with both arms apparently functional, was pounding away at his back with her hammer in blows that normally should have turned ribs, shoulder blades, and spines into powder.
He didn’t tolerate this long. Rising up, he tossed Twilight aside headfirst like she was a piece of garbage, and she didn’t stop flying until she smacked straight into a crystalline wall. Immediately, she slumped to the ground with no more than a light moan and a streak of blood smearing across the crystal. He proceeded to let out a dark, amused chuckle as he calmly rose and turned toward the rancher, barely even shifting from each one of her hammer blows.
Suddenly he snapped his large blade up and out for her as he spun around. She managed to leap back, but she was never the target. Instead, his blade caught her hammer and, with an easy flick, ripped it out of her hands and flung it away. Applejack was stunned at being left unarmed, and the stun was more than long enough for Sombra to haul back his now-free “hand” and give her the back of it. Another echo rang out as she was painfully smacked to the ground and sent sliding away from the grotesque hulk.
On halting, in spite of how bad the hit had been, she grunted and started to get up again. Yet scarcely had she managed to get her feet underneath her when Sombra stalked up to her, raised one of his feet, and planted it square against her chest. Applejack let out a cry as the air was knocked clean from her body before she was flung away again, this time smacking against a few bits of dirt and debris before coming to a stop again.
In spite of clearly being sore and in pain, she forced herself up even quicker, albeit more wobbly than before. Yet as fast as she moved Sombra was faster, and no sooner had she managed to stand when he came up to her and slammed his own head down on hers. Two thin trails of blood painted the air as she was instantly spread flat on her face once again.
Chuckling cruelly, he reached down and seized her by the neck. When he yanked her up, her face was bleeding from three places and bruised along the top of it. All she could do was glare at him angrily and defiantly. This, unfortunately, only seemed to excite him as he tossed her against the nearest somewhat-vertical slab. Then he proceeded to smash his fist into her face as many times as he could. Each one sent a ripple through the air and blood trailed off of his fist each time. Applejack was only able to take two before going limp, but that didn’t stop him…
Right before he could hit her for the seventh time, however, he grinned even wider before another black crystal in the shape of a tower shield erupted behind him—just in time to intercept Pinkie Pie as she came swinging at him with another bladed circle. Once again, it clanged off harmlessly.
This time Pinkie actually pouted. “Oh…no fair!”
Sombra left Applejack’s body behind as he rose again and spun around. He showed a hint of hesitation for a moment, clearly not expecting to see Pinkie there and still intact, before he seized up his new shield and swung an arc at her again. This time, she managed to nimbly step back and evade it. She began to perform her “blade dance” again, but only got a few steps in before he swung at her horizontally this time—forcing her to stop by ducking. She instantly started up again, but yet another slide caused her to misstep.
“Hey! Cut that out!”
Sombra chuckled again before swinging his shield arm back and then bringing it up and around, trying to squish her underneath it. It was easy for her to step to one side to evade it, but that was exactly what he wanted. With frightening speed, he lashed out with his sword again at her exposed body and this time made contact. With an unusual sound, Pinkie’s arm split at the shoulder and was cleaved from her body before flopping to the ground.
Again, Sombra gave pause on seeing there was no blood. Not only that, but no innards that he could find either. Pinkie herself was oblivious to it, and on seeing him perturbed she immediately snickered. Snorting, he swung his blade out again. A moment later, her other arm joined the first on the ground, yet still she didn’t react or register any damage.
“Tee hee!” she giggled, as her severed arms proceeded to hold up their respective blades and twirl them around. “Look at that! You really ‘disarmed’ me!”
His grin having turned into a sneer by now, Sombra slammed his shield into the ground hard enough to spike it in place; leaving it set as he glared down on her. A moment later, he seized her by the neck and held her up to his face.
“Hehe! What’s next?” she laughed as she held up her legs and wiggled her toes. “Are you gonna try and ‘de-feet’ me n-”
Pinkie was cut off as Sombra opened his massive, tooth lined mouth and proceeded to belch his foul miasma all over her. Her previously merry and happy expression was morphed into dread and horror. Her body went limp in his grip and began to quiver and shrink as he worked the same mind-crushing effect he had used on the ladies back at Canterlot…
“Unhand her, you brute!”
Sombra’s jaw clamped shut and he pivoted his head just in time to see Rarity thrusting for the larger of his two eyes. Unlike the other blows thus far, he actually pulled away to evade the thrust. Rarity quickly angled upward for his other eye to force him back another step, but more importantly to get him to unhand Pinkie so he could focus on the Prodigy. Letting her now-pale form simply fall to the ground, he readied his sword and cross-slashed at the woman.
This time, however, he got a dose of his own medicine as Rarity produced a crystal of her own right in between her and the blade. Although his own blow was strong enough to cause her crystal to tilt, it remained as impervious as his. Sneering, he reached out to take up his shield again, but Rarity was a bit faster and promptly generated another crystal. His grotesque hand was suddenly blocked from reaching the shield and he was left overextended. With that, she quickly thrust inward again…
Once more, Sombra was forced to step back—twice this time. However, his face was twisted in far more irritation as, while doing so, he caused Rarity’s rapier to pull out from his eye socket with the larger of his two eyes pierced on the end. Unfortunately, she seemed to be so impressed with herself at that damage she gave him a chance to recover. A black tendril of smoke lashed out from his empty socket for the nearest corpse, ripped out one of its eyes, yanked it back into his head, and changed its colors as he generated a new shield and advanced on Rarity.
He hauled back his sword to slice again, and she answered by quickly generating another crystal to block it. However, it was a feint. He leveled his other arm with his shield in front of him when he made the move, and proceeded to come forward and smash it into her body. It wasn’t as horrible as his other blows, but it still was enough to stun her and make her spill over and onto her back.
She tried to rise, but Sombra was again faster. He stepped forward, raised his crudely-armored foot, and smashed it down on her sword-bearing hand. The impact was enough to snap the blade at the hilt…but the true shocking act occurred when bulk of his boot landed on top of her hand and multiple cracks rang out. Even Rarity’s composure couldn’t be contained at that for more than a moment before she cried out.
Sombra raised the blade again to deliver a finishing blow, but as he began to swing it down…he suddenly began to move far more slowly. Like he was imbedded in water or something even thicker. Rarity, in spite of tears streaming down her face at her horrible injury, looked up and saw him pause and tried to use the moment to get away. It turned out to be easier than she thought, for her body moved at a much faster speed. She was well out of range by the time Sombra’s blade finally reached where she had been.
Another irritated grunt went out, before with a flash of light from his eyes Sombra broke free of whatever was holding him and panned his head to one side. Twilight, although she was staggering and bleeding freely from her scalp, was up again with both hands elevated and ready to cast again. Snorting, he pivoted around and began to charge for her.
Twilight answered by quickly drawing two different sigils at once. The first sent up another column of rock in Sombra’s path. He bashed it away with his shield and kept charging, but it had given enough of a delay for her second spell to accelerate her body. In spite of hobbling, she still managed to dodge to one side as his blade sliced through nothing.
Both of her hands kept moving with new sigils even as Sombra pivoted to try and charge again. He took another step just as she finished one, and before he could take a second he found himself caught. He looked and saw one of his feet had been frozen in place. A moment later, Twilight finished her second sigil and swung her hand down. Sombra caught this, and quickly raised his shield up and over his head. Just in time, too…for a sizeable thunderbolt came down and crashed against it.
The shield once again protected him, but it did serve to stoke his anger even further. As soon as the thunder died, he returned his shield to his side and charged again. Once more, Twilight’s hands were already moving, and this time she let out dual fireballs. She didn’t bother aiming for him this time but rather aimed at the ground he was charging on—spreading flames in his path. In spite of the seemingly minor nature of the attack, it made him halt. Twilight quickly followed up again with two more sigils, seizing the opportunity, and a second later two boulders were whipped up by columns of wind and cast at Sombra. Either one managed to sail past the shield and connect with his head with sufficient force to shatter on impact.
Again, Sombra’s anger seemed to be the only thing that changed. Once again he broke into a charge and once more Twilight generated spells in front of herself. However, just as she prepared to execute them, a new crystal erupted in front of her. The mage halted, surprised at the sudden blockade, when Sombra’s malformed body suddenly used the crystal as a platform and ran over the top of it. One of his feet lashed out, going right through the sigil and slashing toward Twilight’s face.
She quickly recoiled, but Sombra swung his sword down in another arc for her outstretched limbs. She barely managed to keep them from being cut off. As it was, she still winced on the tip of his crude sword slashing across the back of one of her arms. The pain left her stunned as Sombra leapt down and slashed out at her again. Even with her speed spell, she barely got back in time. Twilight was forced to keep dodging back as Sombra pressed his advantage, nearly slicing into her with each chop as she ran back. She tried to generate another advanced sigil, but his sword swept out and cut her off before she could.
Finally, however, she managed a much smaller sigil that sent off a stream of mist into his two red and green eyes. He let out an inhuman hiss and recoiled back; giving Twilight enough confidence to start making a bigger sigil…
Only to find it was a bluff as his eyes cleared and his grin widened—right before he leapt forward with his shield. Twilight saw and, at the last moment, managed to switch to generating a shield spell, but even then the impact was enough to make her buckle and cry out before being sprawled on the ground. Sombra didn’t bother with an overhead chop this time. Instead, he leveled his massive blade up for a thrust and drove it forward…
A sharp whistle went through the air, followed by a breaking sound. The blade suddenly snapped loose and drooped—leading to the sword piercing the ground between Twilight’s legs instead.
The mage was surprised but quickly scrambled back, but Sombra himself noticed that one of his forearms wielding the blade had gone limp from being sliced across a key ligament. He pivoted his head to the source of the attack as his black tendrils snaked out to find a “replacement part”, and in moments his eyes spotted Rainbow Dash; standing again in the Role of the Archer, albeit with dried blood on her face, heaving a bit, and looking a little dizzy.
“Alright…let’s see how long I can keep it up this time.”
Reconnecting his muscles, Sombra stood up again and glared about. Twilight was standing again and readying more sigils on one side, while Dash was behind him. He hissed a moment more before snapping back to Twilight and charging again.
Twilight quickly finished her new sigils and aimed downward—causing the ground to ripple and become uneven in Sombra’s path. The result caused him to stumble, and as soon as he did Dash fired again. This time, he quickly pivoted around and blocked it with his shield. However, Twilight used the moment to quickly advance, using both hands to rapidly form a single sigil and shoot fire at him once again.
Once again, it wasn’t aimed at him directly, but rather at the path in front of him—bathing it in flames. His attempts to correct himself nearly made him stumble right into it, but once again he managed to halt just in time. His next move was readying to vault over it and attack Twilight head-on, but just as he shifted his weight another whistle went out as Dash’s next arrow hit the mark and severed his impromptu Achilles tendon. He immediately faltered, nearly going face first into the fire. It was only by swinging out his shield and plunging it into the ground that he stopped himself.
This, however, let Twilight quickly catch up to him. He attempted to use his sword arm to slash at her, only for her to use another speed spell at the last moment and shoot out of the way. Her other hand finished executing a lightning sigil, and this time managed to connect as she discharged the new bolt right in his face. A horrible noise came from his multiple throats as he reared up and back, quickly pulling more body parts in to rebuild himself. As he saw Twilight shoot by, he lunged out after her and swung his sword downward; only for more arrows from Dash to break his multi-limbed arm in several spots. This time, the entire sword snapped his remaining arm off and fell to the ground.
Now he emitted something far more akin to a growl. Without even looking at Dash, his power made the ground shake. She noticed and tried to jump free of it, but even so barely avoided being skewered as dozens of needle-like crystals erupted from beneath her. With his back now clear, he charged after Twilight again. He left his sword behind as body parts came up and began to rebuild his arm, instead relying entirely on his shield.
She suddenly planted her feet and spun around, rapidly generating more fire spells one after the other with the intent of covering his path with flame. Unfortunately for her, he was coming too fast—hitting them with his shield before they could reach their desired trajectory. In moments he was on her and swiped out with the edge of his shield to try and bisect her. Unfortunately for him, she executed one last sigil before he could reach her, aiming it downward this time. It was a wind spell, and the small tempest that arose quickly propelled her into the air and above him and his swinging shield arm.
He looked to the sky as she soared over him, generating more sigils all over again. He raised his shield to guard himself but she expected it this time. She rained down dozens of frozen shards instead of fireballs. They smashed into the shield one after the other but they didn’t shatter. Rather, they broke halfway before freezing and piling up on it. The sheer volume with which she produced this icy hailstorm was enough to completely cover the shield with thick ice in moments, causing it to become overweight and lopsided. Sombra held out as long as he could before he heard a crackle. Looking to his arm, he was surprised to see the weight snap his thinner wrist and wrench his shield to one side.
Freshly angry, he pivoted his previously broken arm. A line of flesh, bone, and tendons snapped taut and yanked his blade and limb off the ground to him—finishing reforming his arm while getting his sword back in his grasp. He readied himself to slice Twilight back out of the air as she descended.
He didn’t get the chance. Loading two arrows at once this time, Dash, having freshly repositioned herself, fired again. A moment later two shafts sank into the back of his bloody head only to erupt through either eye socket. He gave his loudest cry of rage yet at he was blinded.
Holding her hands together, Twilight used them to paint a sigil twice as fast and sent an even larger fireball at Sombra’s body. He tried to rebuild his arm but wasn’t fast enough this time as the fireball struck the limb a moment before he could get the shield up again.
This time, the fire burst against his body and immediately began to catch the fat, tendons, and exposed parts of his grotesque frame. It instantly began to lick at them, and Sombra cried out again as he staggered back. In moments, molten and charred pieces of his stitched-together body began to fall off from him as smoke arose from the point of impact.
Letting out a multi-throated horrible hiss, he finally shed that part of his anatomy all together. But it left a wound…a much more gaping and dire one than one would have thought. His shield arm now fell limp at his side, and the black tendrils that shot out from his body had to stretch much farther and more potently in order to find new pieces to rebuild it.
Twilight, panting hard after all of the magic she had discharged, nevertheless managed to call out. “He’s filled with power but his body is weak! And it’s taking him even more energy to put it back together!”
“Alright then!” Dash shouted back as she knocked another arrow. “Let’s cut him down to size!”
As two more eyeballs shot into the air to fill his sockets, she let fly and plucked them off one after the other. Twilight answered with throwing two more fireballs at him, and though he resorted to wild retreating to avoid them he proved to be too big of a target to evade both. One of them landed on his leg and burst, wrapping it in fire and beginning to eat away at the fragile joint connections. He ended up rooted to the spot.
With no other option, he hoisted the wide edge of his blade and his shield in front of him to weather Twilight’s next bombardment while he struggled to regenerate. The next two fireballs impacted against his protection; dissipating uselessly. However, as Twilight generated the fifth and sixth one, Dash took careful aim and let another arrow fly from behind. This one wasn’t aimed at him directly, but rather impacted his shield. Not only did it end up knocking it slightly askew, but it rebounded and proceeded to hit him in the chin with enough force to dislodge three teeth. Worse yet, on knocking his head up, it left it a clear target for one of Twilight’s fireballs and soon his entire upper skull was aflame. He roared in a mixture of rage and anguish.
Both ladies would have kept firing, except the ground erupted around him both in front and behind as a circle of obsidian crystals surrounded him. He was shielding himself on all sides as his black tendrils snapped out even faster to collect more parts to rebuild himself with. However, neither lady paused. Dash began to run up at full speed while Twilight shifted to a new type of spell. A moment later, she slammed both of her palms onto the ground. A much more powerful earth spell rocked it soon after—approaching the level of a true quake. It was enough to force the massive crystals to dislodge and lower.
As soon as one was low enough, Dash ran up to it, leapt into the air, and touched down on the black stone. She didn’t stay long—only using it as a pivot to springboard herself off in a nimble mid-air flip over the space it was enclosing. For a moment, she looked below and saw Sombra—smoldering from multiple places, still struggling to put himself back together and unable to “unblind” himself so long as his head was still sizzling. She smirked as she took careful aim and let loose another two arrows. These ones were aimed right at the shoulder joints and hit true.
A pair of bony snaps rang out as Dash spun over to the other side. While her shots weren’t enough to sever his limbs entirely, it was enough to break the bones being used as levers. Both of Sombra’s arms slumped to the ground as he was left literally disarmed and exposed. Twilight snapped back up and proceeded to fire both of her next spells right at his chest. They erupted and engulfed his entire upper body in flames. He let out his loudest bellow yet.
Dash had scarcely landed before she snapped around, ignoring her returning sweating and winded nature, and took aim again with a grin. “Alright! We got him on the ropes! Let’s finish him!”
“Careful!” Twilight shouted back as the hulking corpse staggered out of his own protection furiously spinning around to try and extinguish himself faster. “He still has a lot of power left! He might-”
Sombra cut Twilight off as a strange sound came from his still-burning head. Dash herself only caught a glimpse of it. For a brief moment, one of the iron spires of the crude crown he had made for himself lit up with the same sickening colors of his non-existent eyes. A streak of light came out and painted itself in Twilight’s direction in a deadly sweep.
She quickly looked to Twilight to see what had happened…and saw the mage abort her latest sigils as two of her bloody fingers flew off from her hand and into the night sky.
Dash was shocked, but not nearly as horrified as Twilight as she turned as pale as a sheet. An instant later, her intact hand grabbed her freely bleeding one where her pointer and middle finger had been, clasped it, and screamed in pain. As she staggered from the trauma, Sombra turned fully to her even without eyes. He took a step forward…
Quickly, Dash knocked another arrow and took aim. “Hey! Keep back you son of a-”
Unfortunately, in her passion she failed to realize the reason Twilight had been hit at all was because she had made too much noise, and at that moment Sombra pivoted around and let his crown unleash another ray of the deadly light. Dash was a bit faster on the uptake; seeing him turn about and pivoting to one side. However, the ray still managed to shoot up and tag her bow, and whatever heat and force it possessed not only bisected it but caused either end to erupt in splinters.
Dash gave a much more subtle cry as the combination of the attack and her unbalance caused her to fall on her backside. By that point, the gesture had been enough to make her sickness come out full force, and she was left nauseated and sweating for a moment before she was able to bite it back and try to rise.
That, however, was a moment too long. Sombra leapt into the air as soon as she landed, and before she could get more than her head off the ground he came down to the ground on top of her again—bringing one of his huge metal boots down right on her abdomen and lower sternum.
Dash’s pupils vanished into pinpricks and her mouth opened wide, letting out a horrendous gag as both the wind and several droplets of blood erupted from her throat. Sombra, still smoldering and with only his legs intact, immediately hefted his boot slightly only to slam it down even harder. The Huntsman spasmed again as more blood came from her throat; the end result of him driving his heel into her softer organs. Still not satisfied, he began to press down with it, and soon after a loud snap rang out followed by a second soon after as he started to break her ribs. If Dash had any air left, she would have been screaming.
Still pinning Dash like a bug under a boot, Sombra swept his head around as a tendril finally brought him a fresh eye. It was unable to connect itself directly into his smoldering skull at first, so instead he extended the nerve to connect it and looked. Twilight, shuddering all over from exhaustion as well as trauma and blood loss, was clasping her injured hand to her chest as she drew another sigil with her intact one. Yet she was too slow this time with everything she was fighting through, and before she could get any further a disgusting “wad” of fresh organs, bones, and appendages were ripped off of the ground and hurled into the back of her head—broadsiding her and stunning her.
No sooner had they done that then they reformed into the multi-limbed appendage Sombra had made before, and the largest hand in the set grasped her by the throat and clenched into a throttle. She was yanked off of the ground afterward, practically hung, and left to clutch and claw desperately at the grotesque arm. Yet all it did was “reel her in” to Sombra’s main body as he reconnected it yet again, and in moments the arm was intact and still choking her right in front of Sombra’s half-rebuilt face.
In spite of one of her hands being free, without her voice Twilight could complete no more spells. Instead she struggled against his hand for all she was worth, even beating against it with her fist for all of the good it did. Sombra, on his part, did not grin anymore…but that didn’t mean his rows of teeth weren’t bared at her in rage, hate, and anger. He only kept clenching her as she kept struggling in vain. Dash, on her part, was still being half-crushed by the monster and powerless to do anything. After several moments, Twilight’s struggles began to weaken and slow. Her eyes started to glaze over as she kept gasping for air in vain…
Yet before she could black out, a rather solid blow struck Sombra on the back. From her position, Twilight couldn’t see it clearly, but based on the fact that rocks shattered and scattered behind him in his wake she could assume it was a boulder of some sort. It wasn’t the only thing that broke, however. A loud sound of bones snapping went off—Sombra’s vertebral column breaking in two. His legs faltered beneath him, and instinctively he released Twilight. She dropped to the ground limply, coughing and gagging for breath as she clutched her throat with her good hand.
Sombra ignored her entirely, snapping around for the source of the blow as his spine reconnected. Twilight weakly looked as well and got a surprise.
Applejack was standing again; no longer looking hurt in the least. Moreover, however, her aura was blazing brighter than it ever had. Furthermore, she wasn’t just wearing light battle armor anymore. Now it was a full plated suit in an earthy, amber color, covering every part of her body except her face…which nevertheless was enclosed by a helmet. Her warhammer had enlarged, and the previous hook on the back of it had grown into an axe combination. Not only that, but she was now sporting a shield in her other hand and hefting both as if they were nothing.
Most of all, Twilight noticed her Promethian Sigil hand.
Even with the armor, she noticed two blazing lights on it.
She wasn’t able to ponder it. At that moment, Sombra snapped his foot back—landing it squarely on Twilight’s face. Not only did it cause blood to gush from her nostrils but it also sprawled her alongside Dash’s own broken body in an instant. Growling, he snapped out his arm and took up his sword again before giving himself a fresh shield and began to stomp up to this new and improved foe.
“Come on an’ get me, ya’ big bull’s ass!” Applejack shouted back as she ran to meet him. “I’ve got a lickin’ ta’ give ya’!”
Sombra’s only answer was to pick up speed. As soon as she was in striking range, he brought up his greatsword and swung it out horizontally for her. She neither balked nor attempted to duck. Rather, she braced her shield against the arm bearing it. The sword connected, letting out a resounding clang and a shine of sparks, and Applejack’s arm bent in slightly as she shifted…but, in the end, she held. Not only that, but she gave a yell of her own and quickly swung her sword down on the blade. For all his size and power, Sombra was stunned to see her twist the blade down and deflect it to the ground. And as soon as it was, she advanced with her other arm, swung upward, and connected her hammer with his jaw.
It was instantly fractured again, with half of it sent flying and the other half left hanging on only by muscles and sinews. A sound of rage and anguish came from his multiple throats as his head was smacked upward. On recovering he was infuriated at having sustained such a powerful hit, but Applejack was already moving. Lashing out with her hammer, she used the axe side to hook around his shield and yank it forward, and her power was so great that in spite of his own size he was sent staggering forward right into her. She quickly snapped her hammer head back and slammed the broad side into his exposed innards, bashing and ripping the guts inside, before arching up and smashing it again into his face, breaking more of his piecemeal skull and sending him staggering back.
Still advancing, she brought her arm back with the axe head in front and swung it at his chest. Sombra managed to plant his feet and quickly swung out with his shield to deflect it. However, her axe remained locked against the shield and she continued to press in, and as a result he brought his own sword around to try and slice into her from the side. Again her shield went up and out, and the weapons collided and held. In spite of being far smaller than Sombra’s ramshackle body, the two held firm and dug in, glaring at one another as their respective weapons and shields struggled to overpower the other. Their teeth barred in each other’s faces.
Finally, Sombra’s crown began to gleam again, clearing meaning to blast her at close range. He never got the opportunity as she responded with something far more rudimentary—driving her head inward and smashing her own helmet into his still-rebuilding skull. His face was caved in, physically driving him cross-eyed, and he reared back enough for her to lift an armored boot and drive it into his middle to knock him away. As soon as he was off, she brutally swing her axe head out and slammed it across his face one way and the other, sending exposed muscle and bone flying with each thundering blow.
He nearly recovered to try and come at her again, but she quickly arched her hammer down, cleaved it against the ground, and yanked up another bit of rock and dirt as she had before. Pivoting the weapon around to use the hammer head, she swung and smacked it against Sombra with sufficient force to obliterate it on impact. Between his injuries, the rocks slamming him, and the eruption of dirt and mud in his face, he lost his balance and spilled backward; losing his footling and landing on his back.
Quickly, Applejack made a short leap and brought her hammer up and behind her head, meaning to bring it down for a crushing blow. Yet for all the injuries she had inflicted on Sombra, he still wasn’t out. Letting out a vicious snarl, he snapped his greatsword up and swung it across Applejack as she was still airborne in her strongest blow yet. Her shield went out to protect her, but the blow was so powerful that it nevertheless cleaved halfway into it, bent it in half, and still smacked Applejack out of the sky. The blade completed its arc and smashed her into the ground—still embedded in her protection.
Snarling and fuming, Sombra shot to his feet and snapped his multi-jointed limb back, ripping Applejack’s shield out of her grip and flinging it aside as she still lay hurt and stunned on the ground. As his black tendrils snaked out and kept bringing him fresh “replacement” parts, he held his tower shield over him before slamming it down on her like an oversized hammer. The ground shook and thundered as she was smashed into it. Still bellowing in anger, he brought it up and slammed it into her two more times, physically pounding her into the ground each time, before finally yanking it back and tossing it aside. Applejack was left lying in a hole, bloodied, bruised, and moaning from the beating.
Instantly, he swung his greatsword around, wielding it with both arms, and then brought it down for a killing chop. While it was a weak resistance, Applejack managed to lift her weapon up and cross it in front of her. The two collided and her arms buckled enough to let the sword come all the way down into the tip of her chin before she managed to hold. That, however, only made Sombra bring his whole weight down on her with a murderous rage, pressing in, and slowly starting to cut through her weapon entirely to finish her. She grunted and strained, using everything she had with her new power to hold him back…
But as the two fought, a faint yet clear song echoed over the battleground.
“Fate has been cruel and order unkind.
The sky has turned cloudy and gray.
No wind in the trees. No birds on the breeze.
The harmony’s silent today…”
Twilight, in the midst of her pain and weakness, wiped her bloody nose and slowly raised her head to the sound of the voice. There, once again seeming to had become detached from the current situation, was Fluttershy. She was crouched over the remains of one of the tunnels that had erupted after the dragon’s fire; in particular one now filled with the dead and desecrated remains of the animals Sombra had warped for his own ends. She gazed at them tenderly, still in the form of the Minstrel, as she sang.
“But into the stillness I’ll bring you a song,
And I will your company keep,
‘Til your closing eyes and my lullabies
Have carried you softly to sleep…”
Fluttershy wasn’t able to sing the next part, for at that moment the silence was pierced again by a horrendous scream from Sombra. She looked up in shock and Twilight spun back to him. He had dropped Applejack’s bleeding body and had reared back, now grasping his own pieced-together skull as if to block out the noise, and staggering backward. He looked disorientated…even unsteady…
But her Scholar form saw the truth and gasped.
“It’s a hymn…a requiem… Fluttershy’s singing a Harmonium requiem…”
She apparently was able to hear that as Sombra began to regain his footing. “I’m…I’m sorry… I didn’t mean to make him mad… I just saw all the poor animals and I wanted to do something for them… I don’t even know any other Harmonium songs except-”
Twilight cut her off. “Fluttershy, keep singing!”
“Wait…what?”
“Keep singing that song! It’s a requiem! It’s putting the souls Sombra’s using to rest! It’s killing him!”
This was punctuated a moment later when Sombra’s grotesque eyes opened wide—realizing that the ladies had not only found a weakness but a means to exploit it. Quickly, he hefted his weapons again and started to dash in to try and finish Applejack.
“Sing! Now!”
“O-O-Ok…”
Nervous as she was, Fluttershy started singing again. It was like Sombra had been exposed to nails on a chalkboard with the power of a factory steam engine. He halted in his tracks and faltered again, bellowing and clutching for his head once more. Before long, Twilight saw the body parts he was composed of were no longer fully “obeying”. Some of them were coming undone. Others were swelling and bulging in ways that Sombra hadn’t intended. Even his voice sounded more disjointed than before.
It wasn’t enough to fully cripple him, unfortunately. Even with his body no longer fully under his control, after a few moments he managed to bite back his pain enough to look wildly at Fluttershy. He extended his hand to no doubt drive a crystal through her. This quickly snapped Twilight out of it. Clutching her bleeding hand to her chest, she moved her intact hand again. It was still quite difficult, but as Sombra came bearing down on her she finally managed to pull one off. A fireball erupted from her complete sigil and straight toward him.
Fluttershy’s singing had not only disrupted his balance but also his ability to defend himself. He couldn’t even divert the strength to bring up his shield, and the fireball hit true against his chest and quickly burst across it. This time, much to her dread, Sombra didn’t slow. He let the fires keep spreading and focused entirely on pushing himself toward her—fully intending to strike her as soon as he was in range. Twilight realized this and struggled to defend herself again, but she hadn’t expected to generate another spell so quickly with just one hand. The look on her face made it clear she knew she didn’t have time.
Yet her sight line from Sombra was broken even as she tried, as Rarity suddenly stepped in between the two with renewed passion and vigor in spite of her own broken hand. Heedless of Sombra’s mad charge, she glared rback at him fiercely.
“I’ve learned another ‘trick’ thanks to your monstrous pet, you brute!”
With that, Rarity took in a deep breath. Her throat gave off a dull glimmer from under her skin—one of lavender light that radiated up her neck and shone through her teeth. A moment later, she opened her mouth wide and proceeded to belch a torrent of fire.
It may not have been as large as what the faux dragon had made, but Twilight and Applejack alike were both soon gaping in shock as Sombra’s entire body was washed over by the same intense magical flames that the monster had generated. Even if Sombra had been able to bring up his shield it wouldn’t have helped him. The fires licked and swept about him until his entire body was engulfed—instantly lit aflame at the same time.
It was too much for him. With his whole body enflamed, he had no choice but to halt as pieces of him began to char and fall off. His shield swung in front of him to cut off any further fires. Tendrils shot out everywhere, although none of them dipped within the crystalline perimeter. It seemed as if everything of “value” had already been claimed from there already. But soon parts were being pulled back in as what was still intact moved away further—much larger and in greater quantities and sizes than before.
But just as one wave of them was about to join to Sombra’s burnt husk, a flash moved out and, in a spin of light and force, shredded both the body parts and the tendrils carrying them to pieces. Sombra’s roasted skull, now having only one intact eye, looked in surprise as what few pieces were still intact joined to him and the blur descended and landed with a smile. Pinkie was back, still carrying both swords and looking no worse for wear.
“Sorry I’m late! He made me really, really dizzy!”
Sombra bellowed at her with what was left of his face, and raised his sword arm to strike her away again. Yet over the sound of his own roar, a much smaller one echoed with it. Applejack, forcing herself up again, was charging him from behind and used the axe end of her weapon to chop the amalgamated arm off his body. He tightened his face in agony and turned to her, only to have her cry out again before she reversed to the hammer and swung it into his chest. The impact was so strong that it shattered him right off of his hip bones and knocked his upper torso several meters away.
Both Applejack and Pinkie Pie tried to press their advantage, while Sombra, still smothering his flames, yanked out even more tendrils to get more body parts. He closed his remaining eye and yelled. Crystals began to erupt from the ground between him and the two ladies: cruel, jagged ones designed to pierce their feet like caltrops. Applejack was forced to grit her teeth and tough through them or run around them, but Pinkie didn’t even seem to notice as she ran right through. As a result, he instead implemented his spire-like crown and began to shoot beams of darkness and death after her.
She nimbly twisted around one and vaulted over another. Before he could get a third off, Twilight managed another fire spell—this one aimed at his remaining eye. The aim was true and soon he was bellowing again as he was blinded. In spite of her injury, Twilight had forced herself up and was coming after him. She had already seen Rarity hunch over and nearly collapse after that exhale of fire, while Fluttershy, although still singing, was growing more weary-looking and dizzy. The others were almost at their two-Anima-Viri limit.
This had to end soon.
Pinkie Pie reached Sombra just as he managed enough body parts to force himself back up, but blinded and incomplete he could do little other than try and shoot her at point blank range. She ducked underneath, losing only a few strands of hair in the process, before performing her “blade dance” to try and cleave into him again. This time, through blind defense, he brought his shield in front of him to intercept and block her, but with his reduced physicality it still made him stagger. He blocked two more blows from her as he waited for more arms to rebuild his “fighting” limb, but right before the pieces could join Applejack burst through and proceeded to cleave the approaching appendages into bits.
Infuriated anew, Sombra’s monstrous maw opened up and belched more of his foul miasma at both ladies simultaneously. They both quickly pulled back, only to have crystals erupt behind them to block their way. In another moment they would have been engulfed by it. However, Twilight managed to counter faster and quickly whipped up a light wind spell to blow the miasma aside. And as soon as it was clear, both Applejack and Pinkie rushed back in.
By that point, Sombra had finally managed to rebuild his sword arm and brought his blade down on Applejack as she neared. She was forced to halt and block the massive blow, but this, in turn, left him open as Pinkie darted in and opened another slash across his side. He spun his head about and sliced out with his beam again, this time seeming to tag Pinkie and knocking her back momentarily. Yet the move cost him as it allowed Applejack to advance and proceed to take a chunk out of his barely-rebuilt left leg. He quickly brought his shield arm about and broadsided her again. It wasn’t as hard as last time, but it still connected hard enough to knock her off of her feet and send her sprawling on her back. He tried to follow up with a killing beam—only to have Twilight ignite a ball of light in his face for a blinding spell. He hissed in rage and misery as his newly-replaced eyes became useless once again.
As the three continued to hammer away at him relentlessly, his tendrils kept going out to rebuild him as fast as they were damaging him. Yet it wasn’t long before the tendrils started having to go farther and take longer, and grew thinner as a result. He began to slow in his regeneration; whether it was from loss of power, lack of “material”, or both. What more, as Fluttershy forced herself to keep singing in spite of her weakness, Sombra couldn’t pull himself “totally together”. In fact, some tendrils were breaking off from him and simply fading into the air. And more followed suit as he started to clearly slow down…
Applejack lunged forward and delivered another punishing blow across the face just as Sombra was about to exhale his miasma again. This one ripped his jaw clean off, making his multiple, tooth-lined palates hiss in absolute rage. He couldn’t replace it. What tendrils he was still sending off had grown thin and needed to focus to reach farther to try and rebuild more important parts of his body. Instead, the foul vapor exuded in a thick cloud around him as he blasted it at her. Yet while it made her retreat, he didn’t have the jaw to forcefully spew it at her.
By now, she was panting and sweating—clearing reaching her limit. But she was pushing forward and, of the two, it was no longer clear who would give out first. However, as Twilight looked between the two of them from afar, she abruptly halted in her next spell to check on Fluttershy. By now, she was looking rather pale; like she was straining to keep her voice going. She would give out any time as well. So rather than finish her smaller spell, Twilight began to draw a more elaborate sigil yet again.
As soon as Applejack saw a break in the miasma, she lunged forward with the axe end of her weapon. Sombra answered by swinging his shield arm around, now barely able to move the large protection, and letting her clang harmlessly off of his crystal. The amount of power she had put into the swing meant she was knocked back as a result, giving him breathing room again. However, Pinkie, still active and shrugging off everything he was doing to her, quickly darted in. A moment later, and the shield limb was cleaved off entirely.
When his maddened eyes looked to her, the anger was laced with a foreign emotion…a hint of panic. There were no more limbs nearby to grab onto and no power to connect them. He couldn’t bring up his shield again.
However, it reverted fully into hate once again when Pinkie tried another move. Letting out a horrible sound, he again made crystals erupt from the ground. These ones were long, sharp, and stake-like; and they instantly pierced Pinkie in all four of her limbs to impale her in mid-lunge. In spite of how gruesome it looked, there was no blood, and Pinkie, stuck in mid-air with her thin sword extended toward Sombra, only wiggled uselessly for a moment on them before looking disappointed.
“Hey! That’s cheating!”
With her incapacitated, he spun around back to Applejack as she was still getting up. He didn’t have enough limbs for his sword arm. Only two were currently attached. So instead, he immediately lunged for her with the conjoined limb and wrapped his ramshackle fingers around her throat. He didn’t go for the full throttle. Rather, he leveraged that to throw his entire half-complete body at her. She struggled to withstand him, but weakened as she was she was soon forced down.
Now with her pinned by his weight, he again reared his disgusting, half-cleaved jaw over her. He couldn’t project his miasma before, but with her down he finally had a chance to finish her. He began to vent it once again…
But got no more than a few puffs out before balls of fire began to smack all over his body, lighting him up once again.
As he recoiled in anguish, Twilight paused in her sigil to look surprised. She turned to Rarity, but not only had she collapsed onto all fours she had lost her Anima Viris and reverted fully back. And she certainly hadn’t cast the spell. However, she soon realized the truth on looking back up to Pinkie Pie. She was still immobilized, but she had used the opportunity to release one of her Anima Viris and go into the role of the Magician. With her thin sword now a wand and pointed at Sombra, it was little trouble to ignite him once again.
Seeing that, Twilight quickly resumed her sigil casting. Not long after, Fluttershy gave out one last tired exhale then collapsed to the ground completely. The song was over, but at this point it no longer mattered. Sombra wasn’t able to keep charging forward this time, and as his tendril cut off he backpedaled—trying to use whatever limbs he had to extinguish himself with little success. Yet even now, clouds of black continued to come off of him. His open mouth vented more miasma, but now rather than anything “purposeful” it seemed like a gaping wound shedding blood.
Pinkie was left trying to work her limbs out via cutting through them one at a time, which left Applejack standing alone. She was too winded to press any advantage and simply stood there with weapon hefted and staring at him. Dash, finally coming around again although reverted, grunted and hefted herself up just enough to look out and spot him.
His fires subsided but didn’t go out as he slowed. His one remaining eye glared ahead hatefully, but also was wide and with pupil shrunk. It looked around at them one after the other, and the sigil that Twilight was making. Pinkie managed to free one limb, which she used to quickly free a second, but other than that no one moved.
Suddenly, the light in the one eye went dim as it turned into a regular eyeball and, like a hastily made card house, his body collapsed all together and disassembled. However, a thicker black cloud arose from the carrion mess, and instantly rose and shot away from it. It began to ascend rapidly in the sky, but also moved back toward the palisade walls and south.
“The jerk’s running away!” Dash managed to shout.
At that moment, however, Twilight finished her sigil. She glared at his fleeing shadow and drove her finger into the center.
“No…he’s not.”
A concentrated dark pulse, the exact same that she had utilized on Sunset Shimmer back on the airship, erupted. While it was harder to do with one hand, the power of the Scholar gave her the extra strength she needed to pull it off. Sombra picked up speed, but in the end her wave was faster. It caught up to him before he ever reached the palisade and he had no time to maneuver.
The resulting blast was too much for the weakened ladies. Dash was knocked back to the ground, Applejack and Twilight were swept off their feet, and Pinkie’s crystals were knocked aside with her still on them—ironically freeing her. Sombra’s cloud, on the other hand, was annihilated. Instantly burst like a popped bubble and driven out on the four winds. No trace of darkness or gloom, let alone any grotesque, menacing eyes, were left behind as the bang erupted for miles in all directions.
When the echo finally died, the ladies slowly and weakly picked themselves up. Twilight exhaled, releasing her own Anima Viri for the time being and leaving only Applejack and Pinkie Pie in theirs. The two looked out ahead as the winds calmed to see the aftermath of the final attack.
In their midst, hovering mere inches from the ground, was a hazy black mist. As dark as it had become, it was very difficult to see—much less the faint outline of colors that resembled eyes and a mouth. Both were now wide, twisted in anguish and despair but no longer having the energy for hate.
“Now, Pinkie! Take his Anima Viri now!”
“Huh? Oh, right-right!” Pinkie answered before cheerily bouncing over to the still-eerie and somewhat menacing sight. It didn’t even seem to notice her as she came to a stop. Afterward, she stuck out her tongue and looked to the sky with a thoughtful expression. “Hmm…now how did that go? Oh yeah!” Clearing her throat, she straightened her shoulders in an impression of trying to look big and important and boomed out.
“Valiant spirit, my household opens its doors to you!”
The dark mist didn’t move. The lips on it twisted slightly. The anguish in its eyes remained, giving way to a more forlorn look.
“Um…” She coughed louder. “Valiant spirit, my household opens its doors to you!”
The mist let out a mild groan, although Twilight and the others could hear it even from where they were due to how quiet it had become. The eyes dimmed, as if they were half-shutting. A faint voice, only a shadow of the menace and power it had once been, responded.
“I did only what I was meant to do… Why…is this my fate…?”
Twilight looked puzzled at that. As for Pinkie, she started to look uneasy.
“Um, Mr. Sombra? I don’t know if you heard me, but I said: ‘Valiant spirit, my household opens its doors to you.’ Soooo…”
The eyes slowly opened again. With its last vestiges of strength, the mouth changed once again into a malevolent grin.
“So be it… If I cannot rule this world…I will aid…and relish…its destruction…” Then, loud enough to echo. “I, Sombra, the King of Despair, pledge myself to the House of Pinkamena Diane Pie!”
“Wait…” Twilight tried to interrupt. “Sombra, what are you-”
“Oh, good! ‘Cause this was getting kinda awkward… Ahem… The binding is done; may our souls be as one!”
In a flash, a sigil lit up in the sky—one that drew Sombra’s remains up into it. It did not ignite into gold like all of the other Anima Viris they had encountered so far, however. This one was a much more menacing color: blood red. And somehow, in spite of the fact that it was glowing, it still seemed strangely “dim”.
The visage that materialized in the center of it was no better. For a brief moment, the ladies saw him—the original Sombra in all of his “glory”. He had the form of a man, obviously, and based on the cruel armor he wore and the crown on his brow that was the true image of what he had tried to reproduce, he was a warrior king. Yet the malice on his face…the hate…the cruelty…the lust for power… It twisted his grin into something monstrous. Even when he was alive, it was clear he was a demon.
But then it broke apart, and the light streamed into Pinkie’s outstretched hand. A moment later, a third light gleamed from the back of it, and then dimmed again.
The landscape was silent once again. Everywhere the eye could see was nothing but crystals from both Sombra and Rarity and the carnage of the remains of the vast multitude that had been consumed. It was darker now. The wind blew cooler. The only sounds were gasps from those still recovering and the faint rush of the ocean behind them.
Twilight was first to push herself fully into standing. She was still agonized, obviously, and clutching her severed fingers to her chest which had, mercifully, slowed in bleeding. “Pinkie…are you alright? How do you feel?”
She spun around and developed a childish thoughtful expression. “Hmm…a little tired…sleepy…a little less happy than usual…” Her eyes widened. “Oh…and maybe like there’s a big, monstrous darkness welling up inside of me threatening to take me over and destroy the world!”
A pause, and then she let out a small burp.
“…Nope! It was just leftover cake!”
Twilight sighed in relief. She turned to the others. Fluttershy was shaking all over, trembling like a leaf as she got back onto all fours. Rarity had managed to sit back as she cradled her own broken hand but looked increasingly fretful. Rainbow Dash was sniffing, possibly due to still bleeding from her nose, but trying to get up in spite of how wobbly she was. Applejack was still breathing a little heavy but stood to one side. She had released her Anima Viris, and now she stood there with her hammer at her side looking at the ground. Her face was grim.
“That was…horrendous…” Rarity practically moaned. “And…we still have to do that four more times?”
“And then take out someone worse than all of them…” Dash groaned.
Fluttershy closed her eyes and let out a meek whimper.
Twilight’s own demeanor sank; clearly not able to bring up anything to encourage them this time. Instead she turned to Applejack. She was still looking at the ground.
“Applejack…thanks,” she spoke with a meek smile. “You really saved the day. But I didn’t know you found another Anima Viri…”
“I didn’t,” she answered, flatly…almost coldly. “Not ‘til just now.”
The way she said that make Twilight hesitate. The others looked over to her. Slowly, Applejack reached up to her hat and removed it. She reached behind her head, grasped her ponytail, and turned it in front of her. She undid the small tie on it and let her hair flow out.
She held up the ribbon in front of her face. Her expression tightened.
“‘Fore we headed on the train, I lost my hair band. So…Big Mac gave me this one fer luck.”
Everyone’s faces blanched white. Even Pinkie gave a start. Twilight’s jaw loosened. No one said a word. Applejack’s face kept tightening; struggling to hold herself together and keep up her brave front.
It didn’t work. Even from a distance they could see the tears welling up in the corners of her eye. She held a moment more before she flung the ribbon away as fast as she could.
“Ya’ damn fool! Why ya’ always gotta be so stubborn! I told ya’ it’d get ya’ killed one day! You horse’s ass! You…you…!”
She couldn’t hold anymore. Dropping to her knees, she began to sob.
Rarity swallowed and tried to rise again to move over to comfort her. Pinkie was closer, but for once she didn’t move for the same reason Twilight didn’t move. In spite of Applejack’s pain, fear had seized them both. If something had happened to Big Macintosh, then something could have happened to Marble Pie and Shining Armor.
Yet thinking of Shining Armor slapped Twilight with realization as her own head looked up.
“…Where’s Spike?”
Fluttershy and Rarity both turned to her. Twilight went paler yet. Her face began to turn fretful as she looked around, and only grew more anxious on seeing nothing but ash and body remains.
“Where’s Spike?!”
“I-I-I don’t know…” Rarity answered. “I…I haven’t seen him since he tried to stall that horrid mole…”
Fluttershy let out a gasp and cupped her hands to her mouth. “He…he wasn’t with us when that dragon breathed fire… You…you don’t think…?”
“No…” Twilight half-whispered, looking around even more frantically. “No…no, no, no… It can’t be… Spike? Spike?!”
“Bravo, bravo, bravo!”
The sound of a man’s voice once again diverted everyone’s attention. In a heartbeat, they turned to the edge of the palisade that faced the ocean.
Standing on top of it, slowly clapping, was the peddler.
“Marvelous... Magnificent! Very well done! I’m so glad I decided to speed you on your way! There’s so much to see across all of Greater Everfree but nothing like this!”
Spike and Big Macintosh were both forgotten. The ladies stared at him in surprise…and unease. Applejack couldn’t rise and tears were still running down her cheeks, but Dash put her hands into fists and tried to look as formidable as possible.
“You…” Twilight remarked.
“Oh, hi there!” Pinkie waved. “You know, if you wanted to follow us, it would have been easier to ride in the train…”
“What in the world are you doing here?” Rarity accosted.
He smirked and stopped clapping. “Why, enjoying the show, of course. You ladies are a riot. I’ve been having fun for months watching all of your ins and outs.”
Dash instantly frowned. “I don’t like being spied on.”
“And I must say, this was the best I’ve seen so far. Far better than the Tantabus. A whole major metropolitan area and you didn’t so much as level one building.”
Dash gave a start. Pinkie looked confused, but Twilight went rigid.
“Oh, and that fight with Nightmare Moon? Bor-ring… All that fire and all that shadow…and still everyone who died there had already died seven years ago.”
Now the group really did look uneasy. “Wait…what…?”
“I mean, at least you got a few Trottingham flunkies crushed or eaten when you fought Sunset Shimmer on the airship. But here? Oh-ho! Wonderful! Nothing but carnage and chaos for an entire square mile! You’ve definitely stepped up your game. I can’t wait to see the messes you leave behind when you round up the other four Anima Viris.”
The ladies had gone dead silent. Even Dash didn’t look bold anymore, and Pinkie, even with her childish mindset, began to realize the truth.
“Um…should he know all that stuff?”
Twilight didn’t answer that question. She was focused fully on the grinning man, who, at this point, didn’t seem to have any pretentions of being purely friendly or jovial anymore.
“…Who are you? And don’t say ‘a peddler’.”
“Oh Twilight…you’d think by now you’d be used to not getting the answers you want. Besides, there’s no time for such trifles as that.”
He held up his hand and snapped his fingers. Immediately, the crystals to his left shattered completely.
This was shocking enough in and of itself, as none of them had managed to make so much as a blemish until now. Yet the shattering obliterated them so much that they were reduced to snowflake-like dimensions, and the sea breeze instantly took them up and blew them away. As they were scattered off into the night, it revealed what had lain beyond the whole time: the artificial island still gleaming with the mysterious lights.
Yet at that moment it made a sound. A humming of some sort that seemed mechanical but was nowhere as crude or noisy as that of modern steam engines. While it was a bit hard to see in the darkness, the ladies saw the front of it at the place closest to the shore open up. Against the metallic island it was more like a cave opening than any of the structures, and once it did open it led into nothing but blackness. However, at the same time, a metal ramp slid out from beneath it to mesh totally with the shore. It was undoubtably an opening. One large enough for all six to stride in comfortably.
“Your prize awaits you: the Crystal Heart. That is what you came for, isn’t it? Oh, and there’s a bonus! There just so happens to be a man inside waiting for you who knows the identity of the Angra Mainyu you’re so dead-set on stopping. Perhaps you should pay him a visit while you’re there.”
The ladies remained still, but were looking increasingly uneasy at how he knew all of these things. Twilight looked again to the dark opening but let out a shudder. She looked even more fearful than she did on the train. They all did.
“You cannot be serious. You don’t honestly expect us to simply waltz right in where you tell us to go after exposing what you’ve been up to, do you?” Rarity retorted.
He shrugged in response and leaned back. For a moment, it looked like he would fall off of the crystal spires…only to halt on air as if an invisible cushion was supporting him. The group grew even more nervous as he began to float into the air while reclining. Like he was being supported by an invisible balloon.
“Suit yourselves. Run on back home if you feel like it. But you’ll have to go in there sooner or later. You or the Angra Mainyu, at any rate. You see…”
He smiled wider. This time with a sinister twist to it.
“You need what’s in there.”
He held up a hand and tapped a part of it, right where the sigil of an Anima Viri would go. It took a moment but they got the insinuation.
“You’re saying another one of those big ones that Anger Whatever thing wants is in there?” Dash called out.
“Why don’t you go see for yourselves?”
Twilight grimaced. In spite of the untrustworthy appearance of this mysterious man, she found her body leaning toward the opening. However, her feet remained fully rooted to the ground, and the pervasive, unknown fear continued to restrain her.
“I wouldn’t trust him…” Rarity muttered.
“Well…he hasn’t actually lied to us so far…” Fluttershy meekly offered.
“What do you want to do, Twilight?” Pinkie asked.
The mage hesitated a little longer. She swallowed. Then she looked at the entrance and slowly shook her head. “I…I think we’ve seen enough for one day. We…we should get out of here.” One of her feet began to slowly step back.
The grin turned into a frown. “There you go, being boring again. I’m disappointed. Here I thought you were all about the truth and finding answers but it seems you’d prefer to crawl on back to your little library and bury your nose in books. Fine, fine…” He rolled his eyes and waved his hand as he spun in midair. “Go on home. It’s past your bedtime anyway.”
The taunts only seemed to antagonize Dash a little. Everyone else, however, had indeed seen quite enough. Even so, Twilight found herself needing to focus to cause her feet to move back. A part of her body seemed to want to keep moving forward…
“Oh…just one last thing.”
The man suddenly straightened in midair. He opened up one side of his coat.
“Since you’re going home early, I’m sure you won’t mind if I handle the ‘pet-sitting’.”
He reached inside and, like a magician pulling a particularly large rabbit out of a hat, he drew out a glowing, metallic collar that was attached to a cringing, whining purple dog.
Twilight gasped. “Spike!”
Spike spotted her, letting out another whine. He was suspended by the collar around his neck—looking like it was made out of the same material as the island behind him. The tall man smirked as he hovered the canine in front of him, causing him to struggle like he was being choked.
“Not a very responsible owner, are we? Letting your dog run off like that. No telling what sort of trouble he might get in.”
Twilight’s teeth clenched in a rare show of anger. Her good hand raised to start making a sigil. “Put him down now!”
“Sure. I’ll just…oops!”
The man made a gesture to lower his hand, only to suddenly make a hand wave. With a zip, Spike let out one more whine before he was pulled back into his coat and disappeared into thin air.
“Butterfingers.”
Twilight’s anger surged. “Let him go right now!”
“Of course. But you’ll have to go in to pick him up,” he grinned in response, pivoting in mid air and gesturing toward the open doorway. “Your choice, Twilight. Decide whether you’d like to go back to your castle with or without your dog. I’d suggest you decide quickly. The old man inside is a much worse pet handler than you.”
With that, he held up his hand and snapped his fingers. Instantly he ignited into light—much more brightly than any of the Anima Viri connections the ladies had made before. Twilight, in spite of her anger, was forced to look away momentarily. While it was only a fraction of a second, when she was able to look back both the tall man and Spike were gone. Only the artificial island remained.
Twilight, on her part, hesitated only a half a second longer before she squared her jaw and began to walk toward the opening.
A moment later, Dash ran in front of her and held up her hand. “Whoa, whoa, whoa! What do you think you’re doing?”
“I’m going in after Spike,” she flatly retorted. “I’m not leaving here without him.”
“Uh, hello? Did you see what that freaky guy just did? Did you hear him? There’s no telling who he is or what he wants! He’s got to be another of those weird bad guys Luna showed us!”
“He isn’t, but even if he was I don’t care! Spike’s the only one I had after the Lunar Fall for years! I don’t know what he can do to him and I’m not going to find out!”
She paused, still incensed, but exhaled.
“But you’re right that I don’t want to go in there. Mostly because it feels almost like my body is pulling me in that direction against my will… I’ve got to anyway, though. I’m not going to ask any of you to come with me.”
“I’ll come.”
The ladies were rather surprised to hear Fluttershy speak up. While still looking nervous, she walked up to Twilight’s side.
“I mean…um…I still think I’m too tired to heal much…and I don’t think I can fix your fingers, Twilight… But I hate the thought of Spike being in there with some scary guy all alone…”
Dash frowned. “Terrific. You can’t heal and Twilight can’t even cast with that hand.”
“Frankly, we all need doctors at this point…” Rarity muttered.
“Not me!” Pinkie cheerily offered as she bounced up to Twilight’s side. “I’m still fresh as a daisy and fine as a birthday cake! I can come!”
Dash let out a groan at that, before reluctantly stepping aside and up to them. “Well then, I’m coming too I guess… This place is freaking me out and I’m not about to turn chicken before the three of you.”
Rarity let out a tired sigh, but then began to reach for part of her dress. “It’s a good thing I went with the wide ribbon on this one so I can use it for a sling. I think going in there is an absolutely horrid idea, but Twilight’s right. I’m not about to let little Spikey-Wikey be subjected to some awful fate; hand or no hand.”
Seeing the rest of them decided, Twilight paused before she turned to Applejack. Yet she was surprised to see that the farmer had already risen. She was wiping the tears from her face with the back of her hand and clenching her jaw.
“Harmonium knows how many folks we lost already today… We ain’t losin’ no one else on my watch if I can help it.” She hefted her hammer as best she could. “Let’s get to it while we still got enough spit an’ vinegar to put up a fight…”
Twilight hesitated, especially at Applejack who clearly wasn’t at her best, but she ended up looking to the others and smiling weakly.
“Thanks, everyone…”
With that, she began to lead the way toward the metallic island. She stopped only long enough to reach down for the remains of the only intact weapon she could find—a bit of bone she could use for a wand. Once she was gripping that firmly and holding her staunched hand to her chest, she led the rest of the way.
Her step only slowed a moment on reaching the shore, seeing that the metal platform now extended all the way to it, before she tentatively stepped out and touched down on it. Yet as soon as her foot made contact she took a deep breath and boldly walked the rest of the way inside. One by one, keeping their own eyes forward, the others followed after her.
It wasn’t until all vanished inside and the shoreline was again quiet save for the wind and water that the same bright flash erupted again; causing the tall man to reappear in thin air right where he had been. He smiled as he looked at the entrance for a few seconds before a new noise echoed in on the breeze: an airship engine.
He turned and looked up to it. Parting the remaining clouds and coming in for a landing was the same airship that had escaped the summit at Mount Aris.
He grinned in a mixture of glee and malice. “Ah, the guest of honor finally graces us with her presence. Now tonight’s fun can really get started.”
Snapping his fingers again, he once more vanished long before the pilot of the airship ever got the chance to spot him.
That vague groan was the first audible sound that Shining Armor had made in some time, but even that seemed distant and incoherent to him. Like it was being said through water at the end of a long tunnel. All of his thoughts were mush and dreamlike. He couldn’t even tell if his eyes were open, but if they were his vision was little better than what it had been with them closed. Nothing but faint light and vague, misty blobs moving one way and the other. He could barely even comprehend what was going on now, let alone where he was or even how he had gotten that way.
One of the nearest dark shadows rose up from his side, indicating he was lying down. Faint noises in a disjointed mumble washed over him. They were all indistinct, and constantly rising and lowering in volume.
“How is he?”
That was the first phrase he understood. It came from a taller, darker shape standing farther away from him. He vaguely recognized the voice—Luna.
“Better now, I think,” the voice of Ocellus answered.
“Will he be alright?”
“I honestly don’t know… I think he has a head fracture…maybe a hematoma. He opens his eyes like this from time to time but he doesn’t react when we speak to him. But…at least it’s better than the big man…”
“Big Macintosh’s case has not improved?”
“His…wounds smell bad. Even people who can heal can’t help that… His family is trying to keep him cool now because he’s really burning up. I…I don’t know if he’s going to make it through tonight… I’m sorry I can’t do more but we don’t really have a functional hospital here…”
“I am grateful for what you can do. You and all of the Healers among us. I wish I had time to teach you the right spells but we haven’t that luxury at the moment. Besides…it seems we have a way to secure medical supplies. I don’t know what madness drove that farmer to invite those two charlatans here, but we might as well make use of them…”
“So we’re staying in a big school, huh?” another distant voice spoke. “Eh…with this kind of pad, I can’t knock it.”
“I’ll organize you shortly. With this many new arrivals, I believe we have sufficient numbers to start repopulating the surrounding city. Canterlot has to become self-sufficient and very soon.”
“There you are… Ms. Luna!”
The new voice was accompanied by a new shadow which ran up to the largest one.
“What in the world is going on in here? I could barely get back in to Canterlot! Where’s Twilight and the others? And why is everyone deferring to you?”
“Seeing as I am in charge here, Starlight Glimmer, that seems appropriate. Twilight is not here. Why do you ask?”
“…This is kind of something she’d be interested in more than you, I think.”
“Neither she nor her friends are going to be returning here any time in the foreseeable future, so if you have something important to share with us you might as well inform me.”
Silence for some time.
“…Very well. Take a look at these pictures. I took them during my visit to another one of those hidden facilities that my group turned up while perusing over sites that Sombra might have wanted to invade. This is the first one we found that had those tubes that seemed to be filled with something. In particular, things that looked like they were animals in stages of development. Only the tubes were all sealed. It was as if those animals had been growing inside the tubes their whole lives. What more, we saw what looked like ‘adults’ in some of those tubes. Only they didn’t look like anything. They looked like unfinished, blank dolls or what a kid would draw as an animal. Now take a look at this tube. This was one of the opened ones. And it was big enough for a person.”
Silence again.
“…Is that all, Starlight Glimmer?”
“No. We did some more snooping of the area. We found the former property that facility was on was owned by a woman named ‘Celestia’. Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t that the name of the former Headmistress here? And your sister’s name?”
The silence lasted so long this time that Shining Armor wondered if he had again slipped into unconsciousness. It was a long sigh that summoned him back to reality.
“I’ve kept everyone here in the dark long enough. Now that both Twilight Sparkle and Sunset Shimmer are gone, there is nothing left to stop me from telling you all the truth. And since I know Shining Armor will take it the worst, then it is best that I tell you now before he awakens. Let me preface this by saying within the next few days the world you know will change forever…for the worse.”
Now
Sunset Shimmer really wished she had a cigarette right now.
She had somehow managed a ground landing on her own, which wasn’t an easy feat even with Celestia’s special airship. If she hadn’t been accustomed to the sight of carnage, she would have immediately vomited on stepping out of the gangplank onto the ground. Even the Nighttouched and Light Eaters only mutilated bodies. They didn’t “disassemble” them and leave the unnecessary, chopped-up, and/or incinerated pieces everywhere.
A feeling rose in her chest when she looked around and saw nothing but the corpses and strange crystals, some like sapphire and some like obsidian, everywhere mingled with the carrion. She didn’t know what it was at first until she realized it was in response to not seeing the ladies there. In spite of everything she had been through, she knew she was concerned…even fearful that she would see them among the dead.
However, on spotting the huge, metallic island stretching in front of her, as well as the foreboding opening in the side of it, somehow she knew she didn’t need to bother searching the bodies any longer. Something told her they were in there. That wasn’t the only feeling that unsettled her, however. She felt a pull toward that place. Something deep inside her. Like she was meant to go inside, in spite of the fact that it looked about as inviting as walking into the den of a dragon.
She might have forced herself to pull away, except she remembered what she had been told. And in spite of the fact she once vowed to never obey her ever again, her thoughts of Twilight compelled her to finally walk forward.
With neither her helmet nor tobacco to support her, she summoned what personal courage she had and passed through the opening.
The inside of the metallic island wasn’t any more welcoming than the outside. It was very dark. There were periodic green lights of various sizes dotting their way in one space or another, but they provided such small illumination that they could barely detect the shape of things in front of them.
The place smelled old…old and wet. Like it had been under the water or perhaps frozen in seawater for a very long time. It was colder on the inside than the outside. While they couldn’t see everything, they could tell it opened up wide from the echo that resonated as they moved along. All throughout the darkness were formations of odd shapes and sizes. They looked too regular to be natural, but they were also too bizarre to conform to any device any of them had ever seen.
It continued to stretch on and on, well past when the entrance was out of sight. However, there was a wide path that they were on, and the lights only appeared alongside it, and so they continued to follow. Over time, it felt like they were wandering a ruin of a city or landscape rather than inside an artificial structure. None of them grew used to it, however. It only became more unnerving with each step.
“Spike?” Twilight called. “Spike?!”
Nothing but her long, resounding echo slowly fading through the metal halls. That alone was nerve wracking for the ladies.
“This place s-s-sure is…s-s-scary…” Fluttershy nervously muttered.
“Boring is more like it,” Dash flatly retorted. “If someone’s gonna jump us, get it over with already!”
“Perish the thought, darling,” Rarity quickly answered. “At least until we’ve recovered enough to heal, I’d prefer if nothing else happened.”
The ladies immediately turned and braced themselves, finding that Pinkie was pointing to one of the nearby devices. This one was rather large and resembled a thin rimmed portrait frame, only with nothing in the center of it. However, sure enough, the lights at its base were coming to life, and soon after regularly spaced lights began to illuminate the rim itself. The girls tensed further as it began to make a noise and, before long, the lights seemed to start weaving a pattern in the center of the frame. Like it was making a portrait or picture of beams of energy right in front of them.
But what it ended up completing was something none of them expected.
It was an image of them—just as they were now, wandering through a place that looked identical to where they were. Perfectly identical, it seemed. What more, it wasn’t just a mere picture. The figures in it were moving as if they were alive or, at least, one of those rotary scope images that carnivals had.
Soon after, however, they started to speak. Or, rather, sound was played as the lips on the figures moved. Like there was a phonograph hidden somewhere only much larger and clearer-sounding.
“Spike? Spike?!”
“This place s-s-sure is…s-s-scary…”
“Boring is more like it. If someone’s gonna jump us, get it over with already!”
“Perish the thought, darling. At least until we’ve recovered enough to heal, I’d prefer if nothing else happened.”
“Hey look! There’s something happening!”
The lights turned off, and the image immediately disappeared.
The ladies were left frozen except for Pinkie. She grinned and laughed. “That was so cool! How do you think they managed to make that so fast?”
Everyone else turned to one another nervously. “What…what was that?”
“Was that…us?” Applejack spoke up, shaken out of her own misery by that unsettling sight.
“Was it some sort of machine? Or…photography?” Rarity suggested. “I’ve never seen the like in my life…”
“Neither have I…” Twilight answered uneasily. “Even Celestia never had anything like that. If it was some sort of photographic device, though…how did it show us? We just got here…”
Before anyone could say anything else, another machine began to hum to life. They turned and looked and saw a nearly-identical device just up ahead also lighting up. This time, in its glow, they began to see that there were multiple of those devices along their way—seeming to stretch along the entire path, in fact.
Soon this one was displaying an image, and this one was even more familiar.
“What…what was that?”
“Was that…us?”
“Was it some sort of machine? Or…photography? I’ve never seen the like in my life…”
“Neither have I… Even Celestia never had anything like that. If it was some sort of photographic device, though…how did it show us? We just got here…”
Again, it turned off. And the ladies began to tense up.
“Someone out there think they’re being cute?!” Dash shouted into the room, getting nothing but her own echo back as a reply. “Come on out and I’ll show you what I think is cute!”
“There’s somebody…w-w-watching us…” Fluttershy nervously spoke as she looked about.
“I do say, I feel more uncomfortable with this place than ever now…” Rarity half-muttered.
“Don’t worry! They’re just like pictures!” Pinkie suggested. “They can’t do anything to us!”
Twilight exhaled. “Pinkie’s right. They’re only showing what we’ve done since we got here, so there’s nothing to worry about. Whoever’s here, they’re just trying to distract us. Let’s move on.”
She began to boldly lead the way once more, and after only a little hesitation the ladies followed. They kept their eyes ahead, fully expecting a new one of the frames to light up and show that conversation they just had any moment now.
Sure enough, they didn’t get much farther before another frame lit up in front of them. But what they saw made them hesitate all over again.
It was indeed an image of them, and it was indeed of where they were right now. Yet it was something they had never seen before.
“What was that supposed to be? We never-”
“Did…did you just-Eep!”
“That…”
“How…?”
“But…but we just watched…”
“How…how is it showing us…?”
“That was neat! Hmm…you think they’re taking the pictures of us now?”
“This…this isn’t possible… How can it show us doing something that we haven’t actually done yet?”
The image cut off. The ladies were left standing there, mostly confused…but also a bit unnerved.
“What was that supposed to be?” Dash spoke up. “We never-”
Immediately, just like the version of her in the image she had just watched, she clamped her hand over her mouth in shock. Fluttershy, wide-eyed and frightened, nervously pointed at her.
“Did…did you just-” Realizing what she was saying, and how she was obeying her counterpart from the image, she cringed. “Eep!”
The others, save Pinkie, turned as pale as ghosts. They looked to each other in total shock—now quite unsettled and even frightened. That, of course, only made it worse…because they realized as they looked to one another they looked the exact same way they had on the image.
“That…” Was all Twilight was able to spit out, silencing herself on realizing she was still matching the images.
“How…?” Applejack spoke up, being shaken totally out of her sadness in the wake of this.
“But…but we just watched…” Dash half-gasped.
“How…how is it showing us…?” Rarity half-whispered with her hands to her mouth.
“That was neat!” cheered Pinkie, about the only one not realizing the situation. She began to look about her into the darkness. “Hmm…you think they’re taking the pictures of us now?”
“This…this isn’t possible…” Twilight said on finally finding her voice. “How can it show us doing something we haven’t actually done yet?”
Pinkie paused, growing “thoughtful” again. “Hmm…oh! Maybe these are machines that are just really, really good at guessing what we’re going to do?”
“I’ve never heard of any machine like that before…” Rarity answered quietly.
Twilight shook her head. “Even if this is some sort of machine that just shows people doing things, it showed us reacting to ourselves reacting to it. How in the world is that possible?”
Another light came on, and another image was generated. This time, the ladies in it looked even more nervous than before save for Pinkie and Dash.
“Alright, this is startin’ to spook me a little…”
“You think this is funny? Come out here, you big coward!”
“I-I-I’m not sure I want whoever it is to come out…”
“Hmm, would he be over there if he saw us from that way? Or…will he be over there now?”
“If their goal was to upset us, Twilight, I hate to inform you that it’s working rather well. Perhaps we should leave for now…”
“No! We have to stay until the end of what we saw, because then I… Spike? He’s over there!”
“Then let’s get him and get the hell outta dodge…”
The images shut off again, leaving four of the ladies even more shaken up…although Twilight looked at where the image had been more intently.
“Alright…” Applejack spoke up again. “This is startin’ to spook me a little…”
“You think this is funny?” Dash snapped out to the darkness around them. “Come out here, you big coward!”
“I-I-I’m not sure I want whoever it is to come out…” Fluttershy whimpered.
Pinkie stuck her tongue out, put a hand over her eyes, and peered in front of them. “Hmm, would he be over there if he saw us from that way? Or…” She looked elsewhere. “Will he be over there now?”
Rarity, looking rather frightened, backed up to Twilight’s side. “If their goal was to upset us, Twilight, I hate to inform you that it’s working rather well. Perhaps we should leave for now…”
“No!” Twilight shouted back, still staring where the image had been. “We have to stay until the end of what we saw, because then I…”
Sure enough, just like in the images, Twilight perked her head up at that moment. Mostly because the sound of a distant dog bark became audible up ahead.
“Spike?” She pointed in the direction of the sound. “He’s over there!”
Tightening her grip, Applejack pushed forward to take the lead. “Then let’s get him and get the hell outta dodge…”
While most of them were still nervous, the others fell in behind her and quickly picked up to her pace, until Twilight was again able to move ahead and lead on. They didn’t get much farther before another device began to light up. But even as it was coming on, another device further down was doing the same thing. By the time it displayed an image, a third one was lighting up. Twilight tried to ignore it, but she couldn’t block out the sound or the image in the corner of her vision.
“But you’re right that I don’t want to go in there. Mostly because it feels almost like my body is pulling me in that direction against my will… I’ve got to anyway, though. I’m not going to ask any of you to come with me.”
“I’ll come. I mean…um…I still think I’m too tired to heal much…and I don’t think I can fix your fingers, Twilight… But I hate the thought of Spike being in there with some scary guy all alone…”
“Terrific. You can’t heal and Twilight can’t even cast with that hand.”
“Frankly, we all need doctors at this point…”
“Not me! I’m still fresh as a daisy and fine as a birthday cake! I can come!”
“Well then, I’m coming too I guess… This place is freaking me out and I’m not about to turn chicken before the three of you.”
“It’s a good thing I went with the wide ribbon on this one so I can use it for a sling. I think going in there is an absolutely horrid idea, but Twilight’s right. I’m not about to let little Spikey-Wikey be subjected to some awful fate; hand or no hand.”
“Harmonium knows how many folks we lost already today… We ain’t losin’ no one else on my watch if I can help it. Let’s get to it while we still got enough spit an’ vinegar to put up a fight…”
“Thanks, everyone…”
This made her slow to a halt, and the others with her. Sure enough, the image wasn’t of the place they were in. It was of outside, right after their encounter with the “peddler”.
“Wait…that’s us right before we walked in here.”
“Whoever’s here was watching us from outside as well?”
The next one came on soon after, again showing the outside…and the ladies looking much healthier and cleaner but no less frightened.
“Twilight, dear…I know we’ve practiced a bit with them, but…Applejack doesn’t have more than one Anima Viri. And as for the rest of us, I don’t think we can manage more than a quarter of an hour at most in battle…”
“It doesn’t matter. We’ll have to anyway.”
“Um…Twilight? What if we…end up having to attack the people? And the animals…?”
“We don’t have a choice. We already saw what Sombra did to the people he seized. We just…have to hope there really is no way to save them now.”
“One last little detail. Let’s say we do stop him. Who’s the lucky lady who makes him their new Anima Viri?”
“I…already got the one from Nightmare Moon, and I don’t think it’s a good idea for any of us to have two…”
“Oh, oh! Pick me! I’ll do it!”
“Alright then. Everyone, get ready…he’s coming at us fast.”
“That’s from before the fight started!”
“We weren’t even in front of the damn big metal thingamajig then!”
The third one lit up as other started to come to life simultaneously. This one wasn’t even in the area. It was from days earlier, when they had been stopped at the broken bridge.
“I know, but…”
“What?”
“Nothing…probably nothing. I know Luna wanted me to have this, but…I’ll just let him hold onto it and not tell her until I get back. I’ll explain the situation to Double Diamond. Everyone else, move over into the other train.”
“Isn’t this great? He’s helped us out twice now!”
“Yeah… And showed up right when we needed him…with just what we needed. I mean, he ended up helping last time, but…”
“Maybe he’s a guardian angel?”
“Not sure I like someone keepin’ an eye on what I’m doin’, angel or devil. What’s he get outta all this?”
“Who knows. But so long as we’re both getting something out of it, that’s alright. I’m going to go check out that engine just in case there’s any other of his ‘little surprises’ in it…”
“Kinda hope this is the last time we ever get a visit from our tall friend…”
“And that’s from when we had to change trains… That’s nowhere near here.”
“Was whoever this is watching us from that far away? And if so, then how?”
The ladies didn’t bother calling out the next images as they came on. They merely stared in shock and silence as they kept walking onward. There were dozens of them coming to life. And as they moved further along, each one showed the ladies themselves. More specifically, an event that had brought them to this point while moving backward in time. There was the train trip at first, but eventually it turned to Canterlot and the library. Yet the images were no less clear there. In spite of thinking they had safety and privacy in that place, each event was perfectly replayed for them.
But it got worse than that. It showed them when they had split up afterward, and in spite of being in different places and even different continents, it watched them perfectly. Even Dash’s anger gave way to unease as she knew for a fact no one could have been photographing them—let alone recording them. Yet it kept recalling image after image, and as they walked deeper into the metal island and farther away from anything natural or that they knew, it only unsettled them more.
Eventually it reached the point in time where they had initially listened to Luna when she showed them the chamber and first pointed out the Anima Viris, including that of Sombra. It was an unsettling scene—for it brought back all the dark and unsettling memories of that night as it went over each one of the six and made each of the ghastly visages look more nightmarish than ever.
But as they passed this one, only one of the glowing frames was left and it was directly in front of them. It wasn’t until they approached it that it came to life. This one didn’t show past events, however. It showed them right there as they were—possibly right in that very spot.
“Is that…gonna happen soon? What did we see?”
“Wait…Sunset’s here? How did… Where did she…?”
“Twilight…that’s Spikey-Wikey!”
“Here Spike!”
“Over there!”
At that point, from the shadows, a new figure ran out into the scene—Sunset Shimmer. Yet as she ran in, both she and the others gradually slowed down and looked ahead. One by one being captivated by something ahead of them and going wide-eyed.
The image died soon after, leaving the group standing unnerved for a moment as the frame faded out.
“Is that…gonna happen soon?” Applejack ventured uneasily. “What did we see?”
Twilight stood a moment, before her brain clicked on what it meant. “Wait…Sunset’s here?” She spun around, as if expecting her to already be standing behind them as in the image. However, just like when she had looked around in the image, there was no one yet. “Where did she…?”
She was cut off by the sound of a dog whining and letting out a bark. Very close now.
Rarity lit up on hearing it as the mage quickly turned back around. “Twilight…that’s Spikey-Wikey!”
Sure enough, he wasn’t far away at all based on the sound. Pinkie immediately cupped her hands to her mouth and called. “Here Spike!” She followed it up with some canine whistling.
Dash pointed forward. “Over there!”
The ladies looked forward and noticed something was changing. The last frame wasn’t staying stationary—it was lifting up quietly and pulling into the darkness of the ceiling. Behind it, it revealed that their path ahead only stretched forward a little more before spreading out into a small open area. Right in the center, still wearing that odd collar and attached to some sort of metallic stake, was Spike. He had started yelping again on seeing Twilight so close and was pulling and tugging at his restraints.
Twilight began to run to him, but she only got three steps before halting again. Soon she and the others were gaping not at Spike but beyond him.
What it was defied description. It appeared to be some form of machinery, but far more bizarre and intricate than anything that had ever been built on that world. The best way to describe it was what looked like metallic “plant growth” in the form of huge branches and roots all streaming toward that part of the chamber and forming something of a “mound” with a pillar or podium in the center. From the looks of it, these metallic cables were not only thick and massive but stretched out into the darkness in all directions—as if everything was feeding right to that spot.
On the top of this mount, which stood a good distance over the ladies’ heads, were another series of frames. These ones were lit up, along with faint lights all over the metal “roots”, but showed no images. But in spite of there being hundreds of the small lights, the area was still draped in shadow and even a cooler temperature. They all seemed to surround the very center, where another mass arose. Here, all of the “roots” seemed to taper and thin until they formed connections all over it. Some of them looked like they were pumping odd fluids while others gave off faint hums and glows.
This part seemed fairly unremarkable, until it gave off the slightest, faintest noise. As it did, it began to slowly swivel around. Only at that point did it become clear it was some sort of great metal “armchair”—especially as they saw that someone was seated in it.
It was an old man, arms curled over the rests and sitting back in the chair in such a way that he perfectly conformed with it. Emphasis was on the “old”. When he first turned about, the ladies thought he was more of a dried-out corpse than a man. They could scarcely believe he was even alive—so withered and hollow he looked. Like he had undergone mummification only without coverings.
He had a long beard just on his chin, coming out in a thick, white tuft. His eyebrows were likewise just as bushy and thick. His lower chin jutted out enough to be an underbite, and his canines protruded from his shrunken lips. But two other physical features overshadowed those—and made the ladies question the figure’s humanity.
One was that his head had two very large, very curved black horns growing out from it. They looked like ram’s horns.
The other was his eyes. They were completely red and the pupils were oblong. Something so hideous and unnatural that it struck fear into each of them just to see it.
He was so striking that the ladies almost didn’t even realize just what he was sitting on. It seemed all of the cables and pipes tapered off and proceeded to enter him—such that it didn’t seem to be so much a throne he was sitting on but a mass he was attached to. He nearly looked like he was growing out of it like a sickly, withered plant. Or some sort of corpse being kept unnaturally alive. He barely moved, but his eyes did focus on them and, hideous as they were, the pupils contracted to focus upon them.
The chamber was deathly silent for a moment. Even Twilight couldn’t bring herself to look away and down to Spike. She swallowed before she finally relaxed enough to briefly look behind her to the others.
They were all transfixed but, sure enough, just as in the image, Sunset Shimmer was now there—having run up behind them but halting on seeing the same thing they saw. She didn’t worry about that now, though. She turned back and looked up to the hideous, intimidating figure.
“Who…who are you?”
The ancient man lowered his head slightly—as much as the cables that were connected to the back of his head would allow. He smiled. It showed more of his teeth and was not the least bit friendly.
“I am the Father of Monsters. Think of me as the ‘Devil’ of the Harmonium faith. You may call me…Grogar.”
His voice was as hollow and old as his body, but it was what he said that filled the ladies with a wave of fresh fear. They scarcely had a chance to express it, however, before all of the frames in the chamber came on at once—surrounding the ladies with light and images. Now they had even more events. Moments from their trek across Greater Everfree. Moments from their battles with Nightmare Moon. Moments from their fights and flights from Sunset Shimmer. All of their private meetings, gatherings, and everything leading up to when everything between them started. It left them stunned and afraid.
“Beautiful, isn’t it? Wondrous even,” Grogar spoke up as they remained dumbfounded. “That is the power of destiny. That is the power to not only see the future but to see all things. Not nearly as remarkable as one might think, however. If one can see far enough back in time to the same origin, and sufficiently understand it, then in the end they can always see the destiny of all things.”
He exhaled, long and slow, and leaned back in his seat. “That is the end of all things—to be slaves to destiny. None can escape it. Not I and not you. There’s only one question that remains.”
He smiled, once again darkly…even cruelly.
“Does the thought of destiny bring you comfort…or despair?”
The ladies didn’t even know how to feel about this, let alone respond to it. They remained standing silent for a moment before another familiar voice let out a joyful exclamation.
“Ah, you all made it! Very good!”
The ladies, now including Sunset, looked to one side. To their surprise, the “peddler” was there. He was no longer hovering but instead leaning on the top of one of the devices, but he had clearly not been there a moment ago and was unsettling none the less. Even more so with his gleeful grin.
“I thought you’d all never get here! And believe me, I’ve been waiting a very, very long time.”
Twilight winced at that, but saw neither he nor Grogar were making a move. With that, she risked turning around again and looking at the new arrival. “Sunset, what are you doing here? How did you get here?”
The woman blinked a moment, snapped out of her own distraction. “I-I-I came to get you… I was…I mean…someone told me you were all in trouble.”
This got the others to look at her, equally puzzled. “Someone?” Rarity echoed.
“Someone who?” Dash added.
She blanched momentarily. “That…that’s not important right now. Let’s just get out of here.”
“Not without Spike…” Fluttershy meekly answered.
“And not just him,” Twilight stated, before turning back to Grogar. She firmed himself up as best as she could before speaking out more boldly. “Did you just say your name was the ‘Father of Monsters’?”
“Yes, I did, Twilight Sparkle. I figured that you would remember that name from Luna. And you know what that means. It means you must kill me to obtain my Anima Viri.”
At this point, as many things as Grogar knew, the fact that he knew about that as well shouldn’t have been terribly surprising. Yet how nonchalant he was about it made the ladies tense up. Applejack and Rainbow Dash both braced themselves for an attack.
Instead, they got a burst of laughter.
“It should certainly be an easy task! Look at me, Twilight Sparkle. I’m far older than you can possibly even comprehend. My body is little more than a withered stick. My muscles are not just atrophied but decayed. My bones have practically disintegrated. If not for this life support system, I’d be dead in moments. My lungs won’t even breathe enough for me to talk to you now—I’m cycling air into them as if I was little more than an instrument.” He laughed again. “Sombra lamented his destiny, but mine was far worse! Grogar, Father of Monsters…now no more than easy prey for harbingers eager to feast on his soul!”
The way he said that and laughed again afterward unnerved Twilight and the others even more, but soon he calmed and smiled at them again.
“And one day you shall, Twilight Sparkle. Just not today. After all, it’s not my Anima Viri that you really want, now is it? Neither you nor Sunset Shimmer behind you.”
Twilight was puzzled, but Sunset managed to be more bold and spoke out to him for the first time. “And what is it that we want?”
“Answers, Sunset Shimmer. Answers to all the riddles that Luna keeps leaving you to ponder over. Answers to all the questions that keep coming up. Why were you born with the power of Promethian Sigils and others not? Why did Celestia think you two, out of all of the bearers, would be the ones to save the world when she had more power than either of you, and why did she keep that monster locked right beneath your feet? Why did Luna think that she could save the world by keeping my Anima Viri and those of the others for herself? What is Canterlot and everything there, and why were your instructors so eager to expose some parts but keep you away from others? And why, Twilight Sparkle, did no one remember you when you returned to your hometown?”
The mage stiffened, growing rather uncomfortable at that memory, but…deep down inside…focusing more on Grogar in response. After all, the man had already demonstrated the ability to see the past.
“And the greatest of all…who is the Angra Mainyu? What is the Angra Mainyu?”
That question lingered there momentarily, leaving the chamber in silence. The ladies were still on edge, and on realizing that this man was one of the “evil” Anima Viris none of them were that eager to be in his presence. Spike began to whimper again and pull at this chain, but by now he was all but forgotten.
Grogar’s smile eased as he sank back into his chair. He took a deep breath.
“To understand fully, we must go back. Not years or millennia but eons before this world as you know it came to be. Harmonium, the god of this world, is not god of this world alone but of numerous others.”
“Wait…” Dash cut in. “Did you say ‘Harmonium’? All that crap all those nuts believe in?” She snorted. “You aren’t actually saying that’s supposed to be real, are you?”
“Oh…what’s wrong?” the peddler cut in, pivoting around to lie on his belly with his head on his hands. “Do we have some ‘faithless doubters’ in our midst?”
Twilight was still uncomfortable, but she did manage to retort. “You have to admit…in the modern age, the idea of an actual religious deity is…more than farfetched.”
Sunset crossed her arms. “Not to mention that if Harmonium was real, then how come she let so many of her ‘faithful’ die over the past eight years?”
That question made Grogar grin all over again. “How indeed… Oh, but trust me. You will become true believers shortly. As I was saying… Harmonium is the god of not one but many. Hundreds and thousands of worlds much like this one and all bearing a form of sentient life, and more similar to it than you would believe. You see…Harmonium is the ultimate architect of destiny. All others merely obey her will and her plan for them—including both you and I.”
The frames surrounding the ladies lit up again and began to display images. They looked about, but this time it didn’t show them or any time in their past. On the contrary, it showed dozens of different people who looked like they could have come from any part of the world at any time over the past few decades. A few of them looked familiar, but most were strangers. However, they all looked noble, courageous, devoted, brave, compassionate, or any other mixture of great character traits.
“Of course, you can guess the fate of the ‘good’ souls…the leaders…the healers…the devoted…the chaste…the virtuous… All those things that make for the exceptional and beautiful spirits. Their fate is to make the domain of Harmonium more glorious…to persist for all eternity and fill her realm with light, life, and splendor. To bring healing to the sick, hope to the despairing, and light to the darkness. And, for those who are the most exceptional, there is the destiny of the Anima Viri. To have their souls bind to others and manifest the power and knowledge they had in life in the body of another.”
The images faded.
“Now then, what about…the rest?”
The images lit up again, only this time in a different hue. People were produced again. These ones were far more ‘common’ looking…as well as more numerous. They filled all of the screens with multiple images and stretched behind it.
“The sinful…the perverse…the liars…the thieves…the murderers…the traitors…the impure…the depraved…all those consumed by hate, jealousy, greed, pride, vanity, and everything else that becomes their sole lot in life? Well, as it turns out, there’s a place for them too. Not one of honor, mind you; but a useful one none the less.”
The people faded, but into something else. Silhouettes outlined with a light like a fire. As they did, they curled over, twisted, and arched into they began to look more monstrous… More wrathful. More feral. More like monsters than people.
“Torment… Torture… Darkness and pain. Punishment their eternal lot. Again and again, until they know nothing but agony and envy for the more upstanding and pure. Nothing but hatred and rage for the order of Harmonium. Seeking nothing but to make others as pained and miserable as they are now. That produces a great deal of power. Power that, in the proper hands, can make one quite a mighty being. Of course,”
Grogar looked at both Twilight and Sunset squarely.
“You two would know all about that.”
The two were unsettled at that answer. Sunset looked confused, but Twilight was hesitant…seeming to realize something.
“What are you talking about?” Sunset asked. “Why would we know anything about that?”
The peddler laughed. “Oh Sunset, don’t feign such ignorance if you really were Celestia’s star pupil. What did you think the reason for your power was? Magic? Psychic abilities? Being born with the ability to roll your tongue?”
Sunset went silent, but Twilight looked up uneasily. “You’re saying that…what we think of as ‘magic’…what we’ve been doing this whole time…is…?”
“And here I thought you liked to ‘study independently’, Twilight Sparkle,” Grogar chuckled. “Did you ever bother to try translating any of those spells and sigils that you were taught? If you were, you might have realized you were invoking the souls of the condemned each time. Calling one or more of them back to life briefly for the chance to vent their hate and misery on this world that has cast them out in the form of fire, lightning, or whatever.”
The group grew uncomfortable, and not just Sunset and Twilight this time. A chill had gone through the room. They didn’t answer but they didn’t have to. Twilight uneasily looked down at her own hands…giving a look like she had taken something for granted for so long that she only now began to think seriously about.
“In other words,” the peddler snickered, “not everyone gets to be an Anima Viri when they grow up. But the world needs the soul equivalent of ‘ditch diggers’ too.”
“More or less,” Grogar answered. “Or, it is to say, even in a world where Harmonium allows enough room for…‘variation’, so to speak, everyone in the end has their place. Everyone has their destiny. It can be difficult to plan out every little detail due to the nature of chaos, but with the proper setup you can know all paths. That, Twilight Sparkle, is why I knew you and these women would be here today. Or haven’t you noticed?”
The frames changed again, this time to replay everything that they had seen on their way in.
“These aren’t recordings or mirrors of any sort, Twilight Sparkle. Oh no…these images you see and witnessed coming in were created a very long time ago. A few showed you what you had just done while others showed you what you had yet to do. As you can see, it accounts for some variation. And while some events show more than others, I understand your destiny quite well and knew that the most likely path you would take would be the one that has brought you before me. It was destiny that you would be here today, Twilight Sparkle. It always was.”
None of the ladies liked the sound of that. It was unsettling and making them more uncomfortable all the time. Even Pinkie’s perpetual energy began to diminish. As for Grogar, he let that sink in only a moment or so before taking another deep breath.
“But I digress. Harmonium, naturally, desires perfection in her domain. Peace, prosperity, and contentment. The optimal end. Yet I already told you that some variation has to be allowed, and sometimes it can grow quite extreme. And even in spite of her best efforts, that doesn’t always allow for the best outcome. Not even when she sends her celestial servants to help steer people into the right direction. Still destiny, mind you, but not the best destiny. A horrible one at times, in fact. Ones where war, greed, pride, and callousness rot the world and slowly poison it. Or, worse yet, one where the people continue to grow but only as predators or parasites…destroying everything good to make themselves worse. What you call evil and corruption. Those worlds…those peoples, specifically…have to be disposed of.”
“D…disposed of?” Rarity asked.
“Like yer just ballin’ ‘em up like a newspaper and throwin’ ‘em in the trash?” Applejack added, sounding a little angry at the idea.
“Oh, don’t be so naïve, ladies,” the peddler spoke up again. “I’m sure all of you can think about at least three or four people this world would be better off without. This is just a bit more of an…extreme case.”
Grogar ignored this and continued. “Harmonium approached me with a task—find a way to cause these worlds to annihilate their own species. Root out the corrupt races and peoples before they have a chance to destroy the rest of the viable world or, worse yet, move to ruin others. And do so without necessitating divine involvement—what would destroy the world and anything remaining that was good and pure on it. The problem daunted me for some time. I saw it as an instance of wanting to have one’s cake and eat it too. However, there was one night where I had a dream and it all became clear to me.”
He leaned his head up, gazing skyward.
“I saw a cup…a goblet…a vessel being filled with blood by thousands of tiny, savage creatures no larger than ants. The more they warred on each other, the more blood they spilled to fill it with. Eventually it grew so full that it spilled over and drowned them all in the very blood they had filled it with. It was then that I realized the answer to Harmonium’s balance problem…what you all know as the Angra Mainyu.”
The ladies stiffened again as Grogar looked back down at them.
“The Angra Mainyu is a natural occurrence when too many ‘bad’ souls are sent into the next life. As they accumulate more and more and the power of chaotic, destructive magic grows stronger and stronger, they eventually naturally conglomerate and manifest themselves in a more pure and deadly form…an individual. One born with the sole purpose of devastating this world with its own wickedness. It is, figuratively, a cup which fills with the world’s sins until it topples over…at which point it drowns the world that gave rise to it. The only ones who can possibly survive it are the elect…the chosen…the ones who destiny picked for greatness.”
Sunset shifted uncomfortably. “You mean…the ones with Promethean Sigils.”
The ladies turned to her at that, but Grogar let out a single chuckle. “It seems you can put two and two together about some things. They arise to combat the Angra Mainyu when it appears. They unite to destroy it—if they can. And now, it seems, you all know the story with ‘Nightmare Moon’. How the celestial being known as Luna attempted to subvert the emergence of the Angra Mainyu with this ‘lesser’ apocalypse. Yet it was far inferior, of course. Against a vastly inferior entity incapable of more than a fraction of a true holy war. The real Angra Mainyu is far more pure and cleansing, with its hate and anger far more genocidal and annihilating. A true scouring of a sinful world…leaving only sanctity behind.”
He smiled.
“Beautiful and perfect.”
Twilight, however, was aghast…as were most of the ladies. “No… Horrible. Insane.”
The peddler snickered. “Only if you’re a ‘sinner’.”
“What about all of the animals? The birds? The bunnies? The fish? The forests?” Fluttershy weakly spoke up. “They were all…ruined by that shadow Nightmare Moon put out…”
“I saw youngin’s gettin’ eaten alive by damned Nighttouched!” Applejack shouted. “Babes who ain’t never hurt nobody!”
“And what about everyone who ended up dying of starvation and disease? Or the hundreds of thousands who were left homeless and with nothing? Or all of those people who gave into despair and took their own lives?” Rarity threw in.
“And I’ve seen plenty of these so-called ‘chosen’ people getting killed too!” Rainbow Dash retorted. “Your little system sucks!”
This only made Grogar chuckle even more loudly. “Heh…Harmonium said the same sorts of things once she saw the price she had to pay for a world of balance. That was her foolishness, however. I gave her exactly what she wanted and, more importantly, what she needed. I enabled her domain to remain peaceful and glorious in spite of her squeamishness. In the end, almost every last celestial agreed with me. And for that, I became ‘the Devil’. Nevertheless, destiny is absolute, and now you know the destiny of this world. You know its fate. There is nothing to be done now but wait for the end.”
Twilight frowned. “You’re wrong. Celestia wanted us to stop this from happening, and we’re going to stop it. We already know the Angra Mainyu can’t ever get full power unless it gets a special set of Anima Viris, and we’ll make sure it never does. We’ve already kept it from getting two of them.”
Dash cracked her knuckles. “And once we crumple your withered butt, we’ll be up to three.”
At this, the peddler suddenly peeled out in bowlfuls of laughter. The biggest and loudest ones yet. Strong enough to resound throughout the entire chamber. The ladies turned to him but he only kept laughing. And as it went on, it seemed to grow more unhinged. More deranged. More…malevolent.
Grogar himself kept smiling as he waited for the peddler to stop.
“I’m sorry, Twilight Sparkle…but Luna didn’t tell you everything about how the Angra Mainyu works. It’s true that the Angra Mainyu can’t access its full potential innately. However, even supplying it with the Anima Viris of past Angra Mainyus gives less than desirable results.”
Sunset raised an eyebrow. “Past Angra Mainyus…?”
“To truly gain proper Anima Viris for the task, it wasn’t sufficient to just have the evils of this world give rise to the ultimate destructor. It needs the souls of the wicked taken from still-living bodies in its own time period. Individuals who perfectly capture the evils of their race and who, together, represent a damning edict for the same. The purpose of the special Anima Viris is not to empower the Angra Mainyu directly, but rather to ‘awaken’ their own potential as Anima Viris within their souls by attaching to them. So you see…”
His eyes narrowed.
“You haven’t done anything to halt the zenith of the Angra Mainyu. On the contrary…you’ve already bound two of the necessary Anima Viris to their proper souls, and gathered all the rest of the ones it needs in the process.”
It took a few moments of silence for what Grogar said to sink in, and even longer than that for the ladies to realize the insinuation. They slowly began to look surprised, but also confused. One by one, they inquisitively looked to one another in puzzlement before turning back to him.
“Does anyone get what this guy is saying?” Dash spoke up, “Because I can’t make any sense of it.”
Pinkie giggled. “It almost sounds like he’s saying we’re the ones that the big scary monster wants! That’s so silly!”
Twilight, however, took that very seriously. “You…think we’re those ‘souls of the wicked’? Us?”
“No,” Grogar flatly answered, “I know you are those ‘souls of the wicked’.”
Another pause before Twilight guffawed. “That’s ridiculous! We…I mean…we’re hardly the worst of humanity. Maybe not perfect, but far from the worst of the worst.”
“Really now. And what exactly do you know about your ‘friends’ that you’ve met less than a year ago, Twilight Sparkle?”
The challenge on the voice was so sharp that it made Twilight hesitate, but only a moment. “Well…I mean…I’m just a magic student and I’ve certainly never done anything really horrible and terrible. Rarity just runs a clothing business in Manehattan, Rainbow Dash is a veteran working as a Huntsman, Fluttershy just lived a hermit’s life tending to animals, Pinkie Pie is…is from a family of miners, and Applejack is just an honest rancher and farmer. We’re just a bunch of normal people, more or less. Not anything horrible. Right everyone?”
The ladies all nodded back or gave their assent. Sunset, on her part, noticing her omission, winced. However, she also noticed something odd.
All of the ladies except Pinkie had a shadow fall over their eyes. They expressed a moment of hesitation. It was small…but it was there.
A hint of fear.
“‘An honest rancher and farmer’, you say?” the peddler asked, before turning his grin to the woman in question. “I see. In that case, I don’t suppose you’d like to inform everyone what you told the Flim-Flam Brothers when they came to call that one day in Manehattan, would you Applejack? I believe you informed your friends that you drove them off. But maybe you’d like a look at what’s going on in little-ol’ Canterlot as we speak?”
At once, one of the frames lit up again and gave up a new image. This one was set high, affording a wide view, and it took the group a moment to realize that it was showing the rail station all the way in Canterlot.
However, it showed something rather surprising. There was a new train there. This one was a freighter, brand new with shiny paint showing off a pair of men with great big lettering of ‘Flim-Flam Brothers Supply and Seed’. Not only that, but the two men themselves were on the side in the flesh, looking like they were making a grand pitch to the refugees there for their goods. Luna herself stood nearby, arms crossed and looking annoyed at the whole thing, but putting up with it. Her appearance confirmed the locale and the people beyond any doubt.
“Aren’t…aren’t those the men Applejack threw out?” Fluttershy asked quietly.
“What the devil are they doing in Canterlot?” Rarity questioned. “How in the world did they know how to get there?”
“Yes, Applejack,” the peddler grinned, “how did they know how to get there?”
Twilight turned to Applejack with the others and got another surprise. Applejack’s former bold look had faded. Even her grief over Big Mac seemed to have retreated. Now she looked uneasy. Her eyes were staring at the ground and she seemed to sink beneath her hat.
“I…uh…”
“Oh…still hiding the truth? Not very ‘honest’ of our rancher and farmer, is it? Well don’t worry. We’ve got that part here too.”
For a moment, the ladies saw Applejack raise her head in alarm and nearly protest, but it was too late. The frame lit up again, and this time showed the outside of Carousel Couture. It took Rarity and Fluttershy a moment to recognize when it was exactly, but it soon became clear when the doors opened wide and they heard a familiar sound.
“I’m gonna see these two bits of bull dung out of here personally. Be right back.”
Moments later, they saw the same pair of men who were on the train, the ones Rarity and Fluttershy recognized as the Flim-Flam Brothers, being tossed onto the portico. An angry-looking Applejack followed them out and slammed the door shut behind her. She marched right up to them even as they began to pick themselves up and dust themselves off, but the moment she was close enough her face turned from anger to anxiety and her voice grew quiet.
“How in the hell did you know about that?”
They both proceeded to smugly smile at her. “Oh, come now, Applejack. A small town like that?”
“Impossible to keep a rumor from going around. Although we didn’t know how right it was until we saw the look on your face.”
“Now we have to wonder if there’s any truth to the rumor you-know-what happened to the Redwood family-”
“Alright, alright!” Applejack practically spat, shutting them both up. She glanced over her shoulder, making sure that no one was at the closed door, then turned back with an angry sigh. “Fine. You keep your traps shut and I’ll let you in on where to bring your stuff. But it better be the real McCoy this time.”
“Oh, of course!”
“With exclusive customers, there’s no reason to cut any corners!”
“And I’m only lettin’ ya’ in on where ta’ bring it to sell it. It’s up to the folks there if they wanna trust you two varmints. And you ever let anyone else in on where we’re holed up-”
“Not to worry! Mum’s the word! Believe me, we’re not about to let any competition in on our territory!”
“And we also know full well what you’re capable of if we get on your bad side!”
Applejack’s face flushed in fresh anger and tension at that. “Just…get lost. I’ll get you the spot later tonight.”
“We’ll hold you to that, Ms. Applejack! Thank you very much!”
“May this venture be profitable for all of us!”
Still fuming, she ignored the two men tipping their hats to her before turning and walking off. She spun around to the door, taking only a moment to compose herself, before opening it up and walking in again.
The image faded and the ladies were left silent and stunned. Applejack’s jaw clenched as she bent her head a little lower. One by one, they turned to her.
“Applejack, dear,” Rarity spoke up, “what was that all about?”
She pursed her lips. Her head raised and she looked to one side, quivering, but she said nothing.
“Oh-ho…not such an honest one after all, are we?” the peddler grinned.
“It seems you do not know your friend as well as you thought,” Grogar added. “Fortunately, as I have demonstrated, destiny makes one’s life as easy to view as the pages in a book. So here is the Applejack you thought you knew.”
The rancher’s head snapped up, her eyes wide with alarm and fear. “Don-”
She cut herself off but it was too late. Another frame lit up and showed a new image. This one was of an older, more rural and rustic, farmhouse foyer. Simple and opening up into a main dining area and sitting room as one would expect from someone lower income. It centered on a door, and soon there was a knocking on it.
Not long after, a new individual materialized into the scene and walked toward the door. A much older man with an underbite exacerbated by the loss of teeth and a bandanna around his neck. He had a bit of a slow time, but he reached it and opened it up.
There was Applejack…only noticeably younger by a few years. She smiled as the door opened but it was weak. Her expression was joyful but that too was likewise being forced. She stood there awkwardly a moment before speaking.
“Uh…hey there, Grand Pear.”
“Applejack?” the old man exclaimed. Then he smiled and stepped forward to give her a hug. “Applejack, darlin’! You finally came to visit! It’s great to see you!”
After the two embraced for a short while, he stepped back and turned around. He began to lead her to the nearest table. “Don’t be a stranger! Come in, come in!”
“Sorry for droppin’ in like this… I know it’s harvest season and all…”
“No, no…it’s just fine. Always time for family. Too old to be out there pickin’ anyway…”
She began to follow him inside, although she did so slowly, and not just because he had a harder time getting around. She was clearly nervous.
“How’s that old crabapple doin’?”
“Oh, granny? She’s…she’s, ya’ know, granny, heh.”
“I do know, heh-heh… What about Big Macintosh?”
“Same as always. Just sticks to his chores and can’t get more’n two words outta him most days.”
Grand Pear smiled and nodded, but paused as his face fell. “I, um…heard ‘bout Apple Bloom. I…don’t suppose you’ve heard anything yet?”
Applejack’s own face fell. “…No, we ain’t heard nothin’ yet.”
“I see. Well…it’s only been two weeks. You know how things are up that close to Equestria. Wouldn’t be surprised if them damn night varmints uprooted the train tracks again…got the mail in a tizzy…”
“Yeah…yer probably right.”
The two were silent until they both sat down; now both looking uncomfortable. The older man took a moment to adjust himself before he cleared his throat and tried smiling.
“Say now, care to try our new crop? Normally I’d offer you some pear jam, but we’re still gettin’ the raw fruit so you’d have to wait a little while for that yet.”
“Actually, Grand Pear…I was wonderin’…” She looked more nervous than ever now. “Er…um…remember when we first met up? How you…you said…um…if I wanted, there’d always be a spot for me on the pear farm?”
The older man went quiet. The room’s mood dropped immediately. Applejack’s eyes became more anxious and pleading.
“Some slicker from city hall came by yesterday mornin’ to mark out Sweet Apple Acres for auction next month. Granny chased him off with the shotgun but he’ll be back with the sheriff ‘fore long.”
“Oh…Applejack…I had no idea it had gotten that bad…”
“We’re in big trouble, Grand Pear. We need money and we need it fast. Most of the Apples are livin’ on the homestead now. We could barely put food in everyone’s mouths before, but this year’s bad crop…it might break us. Granny would never admit it…to you least of all…but we’re in a real pickle.”
“Applejack…”
“Now we don’t want no charity. We know you ain’t got any to give even if we did. You’re livin’ hand to mouth just like us. That’s why I’ll work for every nibble of it.”
“Applejack…darlin’… If you’re sellin’ yourself as a farm hand, why are you comin’ all the way out here? It’s damn near 20 miles. You can’t walk both ways every day for that. Ain’t there any orchards you can work closer to Sweet Apple Acres?”
She looked dejected at that, but there was also a twist on her lips. A hint of resentment.
“They’re all hired up out there, Grand Pear. Them…out-of-towners…”
Grand Pear’s face sank. His head bowed; a hint of tension on his face. “Oh… I see.”
“…I noticed you got quite a few workin’ your harvest too. Guess they…work nice and cheap?”
He looked up at once. “No!” A pause. “Well…yes, but that’s not why I got so many. There’s a lot of farms out here that don’t want ‘em…I reckon for the same reason as what’s happenin’ in your neck of the woods.”
She hesitated, but then looked up hopefully. “Anyway…that’s where I’m at. Can ya’…find me a spot?”
“Of course, of course, darlin’. There’s plenty to do ‘round here. And if you got anyone else at the homestead wantin’ to work, tell ‘em to come on down too. I’d feel safer if they were with ya’.”
A smile. “Thanks, Grand Pear. This means a lot.”
“Sure, sure…” He paused; his mouth twisting a little. “There’s, uh…just one catch.”
“What?”
“I told ya’ times were tough. I ain’t got any more money to give out right now. But don’t you worry ‘bout that none. We start sellin’ the jams and pastries and butter and all that next month, and then I’ll pay ya’ all at once for the last month. How’s that sound?”
Applejack’s smile slowly faded. “Grand Pear…we need that money right now.”
“I’m…I’m sorry, Applejack, but I ain’t got any ta’ spare. I’m already givin’ out produce in place of it. Just give me one month…”
“We ain’t got a month, Grand Pear. Sweet Apple Acres ain’t got a month.”
“I’m real sorry, Applejack… I’d just give ya’ the money right now if I had it…”
By now, Applejack’s look grew angry. “Well, why don’t ya’ let some of ‘em out-of-towners go? I can work harder’n four of ‘em anyway.”
“I can’t do that, darlin’!”
“Why not?”
“Some of these folks’ve got six youngin’s they can’t feed! And I promised ‘em when they came to work for me I’d keep ‘em on ‘til the end of the month!”
“Well who asked ‘em or their youngin’s to settle down here?!” the farmer snapped angrily, shooting up from the chair.
“Applejack, wait!”
“Forget it! I never should’ve come here! You’re as bad as those ranchers back home! Everything’s goin’ ta’ hell in a handbasket ‘cause of them damn Nighttouched things and all you can do is think about how ta’ make a dollar offa them freeloadin’ foreigners! Even if it means stabbin’ yer own in the back!”
She started storming off for the door. Grand Pear forced himself to his feet and vainly tried to struggle after her.
“Applejack, stop! Wait a second! I’ll pay ya’ twice as much at the end of the month! Just…just hang on…”
She reached the door and flung it open, but stopped in the threshold to spin back to him.
“First ya’ don’t try ta’ crawl back into our lives until after ma is gone, and now you kick us when we’re down on our luck! Boy, you must really hate yer own family! And I don’t care if I don’t speak ta’ ya’ for another eighteen years!”
Snapping around, she slammed the door behind her…leaving the old man vainly grasping at air for a few seconds before he bowed his head and began to cry.
The image faded, but immediately another frame lit up. This one looked like the inside of a barn, only it was shut up and bolted so that none could see or get inside without the will of the people already in it. And there were quite a few of them already inside. Dirty, shabby, and most of all angry. Just about all of them were wearing crude black masks made out of cheap cloth such that only their eyes could be seen, but it was clear that they were all rural folk. Men, women, and whatever young people were nearly fully grown. They were murmuring and upset. Based on the fact that only a single hanging kerosene lamp illuminated them, it had to be at night…and secret.
One in the lead, standing on an old crate, held his fist in the air and addressed the crowd. After each point he made, they all murmured their assents—growing more angry and riled up each time.
“This has gone too damn far and we all know it! Now it’s a dirty shame what’s goin’ on up north, but I don’t see why a bunch of people who ain’t even from Appleloosa got ta’ make us suffer for their problems! Them city slickers up in that cozy county seat let them waltz in here and treat our farms and homesteads like they got squatters rights! They’re takin’ the rugs right out from under us undercuttin’ us in every last ranch, farm, or orchard out there! They’re workin’ for peanuts that no decent person can live under and not one of those politicians will do a thing about it! And why? ‘Cause it just means more business for them! It means they get to move in and scoop up our land as soon as they foreclose on it, linin’ their pockets and sending us to the ditches!”
“There just ain’t enough ta’ go around! And there sure as hell ain’t enough for a bunch of Gaitians who’ll work for nothin’!” a voice from the crowd shouted, causing even more angry cheers. “Why should they take food from our mouths to feed them? Why should they be takin’ care of and not us when we built up Appleloosa in the first place?!”
“If those government fellas won’t do anything, then it’s up to us!” another chimed in. “We’ve got to drive ‘em out ourselves!”
More angry assertions, with the one in the lead nodding eagerly in agreement to every one. When they had finally quieted down a little he shouted again. “Now I am pleased to announce we’ve got a new member tonight who’s going to be a big help. She’s young, she’s sharp, and she can get around the country real easy-like without being spotted. And she’s got more’n a few good ideas about what we can do next. Now let me stand down and let y’all get a good look at her.”
The bigger man stepped back, fading into the crowd. A new figure stepped out in his place and stood on the box—the same young Applejack, only looking much angrier and determined.
“Howdy, y’all. I know what we’re all here to do so I won’t beat ‘round the bush.”
As she spoke, another frame lit up to the side of her. The ladies turned and looked to it even as Applejack in the first image kept speaking.
“There’s this one old goat whose family cut out the Sassafrass’ family of milkmaids, but I know he always wheels his cart in after dark on the back road behind the Old Oak place…”
The second image came to life, showing an old dirt path in the middle of a dark night. An old wagon pulled by a pair of horses was coming down the road, with a much older man in a beard and spectacles helming it. The back of his wagon was filled with large milk canisters, obviously from some form of dairy.
Suddenly, men and women in black hoods leapt out from all around him. The old man scarcely had time to look alarmed before he was seized by two of them and thrown out onto the ground. The others first loosed his horses, but then quickly hamstrung either one. After that they climbed into the back of the wagon and began to dump out all of his cargo. As soon as the canisters were empty, they were flung on the ground. Once all were poured to waste, they began to tear up the wagon with axes and hammers.
The old man tried to protest, but all he got was a few people punching or kicking him until he lay flat again. Eventually he was in too much pain to protest.
As they finished up, a third image came up. This one showed the same old man, a hasty dressing on his head and looking still rather bruised and sore, standing with his wife and assorted children in front of a rather angry rancher. On their part, they could only stand dejected and anxious.
“I don’t give a damn if you got jumped! It’s your fault for riding so late out of the ways! That was my wagon and my horses, and you’re gonna pay for all of it plus the milk one way or another!”
The second and third images faded as the Applejack in the first frame changed, putting on different clothes and having slightly different hair. The crowd itself had shifted with new faces.
“Then there’s that one Blossom kid who’s been neckin’ Black Eyed Susie when her folks ain’t lookin’…”
Another image lit up, this time showing a pair of younger people out in a clearing in the woods by a creek. It was again late at night, and the two were clearly in a state of “puppy love” as they made out with one another. At least, they did for a few seconds before more people in black hoods leapt out of the forest. Two of them seized the girl and, much to her shock and confusion, yanked her back. Five, however, seized the boy, ripped him back, threw him to the ground, and proceeded to start to violently beat him.
The girl soon screamed for them to stop and reached for him, but it was all in vain. The two held her back as they kept beating the boy—even when he stopped moving and struggling.
Another image lit up, but this one only showed the exterior of a house with a few shadows moving in the curtained windows. After a few seconds, a loud smacking sound was heard. It was followed up with two more, including a girl’s crying, before an angry man’s voice joined in.
“You damned whore! What the hell were you doin’ in the woods with that Kirin boy?! You spread your legs for him, didn’t ya’? Didn’t ya’?! You dirty little slut! He better have taken advantage of you or I’ll kill you!”
Again the two images faded and returned to Applejack, a little older with an even larger crowd.
“I’ve been fit to be tied ever since they turned that old barn into one of their Gaitian temples…but I know a way in and out of there at night where no one’ll see anyone come or go…”
Still another image lit up, this time of a crowd of people in black masks surrounding an older building that had been renovated with symbols of the Gaitian religion. Again it was at night, and this time each one was holding mason jars filled with kerosene and rags. On lighting each one up in turn, they flung it at the handcrafted temple—soon covering it with fire and flames.
While they were still burning it and hooping and hollering over their victory, and image lit up nearby. This one was in daylight, and showed Applejack with several of her relatives working their ranch. She herself was hauling a bundle of hay toward some waiting steers. As she slung it along on her back, however, one of her relatives ran up to another who was fixing a fence behind her.
“Hey, did ya’ hear what happened last night?”
“Nope, but there was one helluva commotion. What was it?”
“That shack the Gaitians fixed up for their service got burned to the ground last night.”
“No kiddin’?”
“That weren’t all, though. Seems the minister or priest or whatever was livin’ there and was asleep when whoever it was set it on fire.”
Applejack paused in midstep, but her face showed nothing.
“He got out, but…he got burned real bad. No one found him ‘til this mornin’ and it don’t look good for him.”
“Well, he was nuts for sleepin’ in there in the first place. What with all them folks in black hoods runnin’ ‘round at night…”
Applejack stayed still only a moment longer, then moved on with her hay—showing no other reaction.
Again the images faded, and turned back to Applejack again. This time she looked even older, bolder, and seemed to command as much authority as the man in the first image had.
“Now I’m mighty pleased with all the gains we made, but we got ourselves a problem. Looks like they’re figurin’ out they’re not wanted ‘round these parts, but rather than wisin’ up and gettin’ gone they’re tryin’ ta’ fight back. I hear big Coast Redwood’s fixin’ to start up a town watch. Now I’m sure the local sheriff’ll be on our side if it comes to a fight and any one of us ends up busted up…but I ain’t ‘bout to give ‘em the courtesy. I say we pay a visit to the Redwood homestead tonight and give him a message so loud that all the rest of his ilk knows not to try’n cross us ever again!”
Roars and cheers greeted her in response. As they did, she reached behind her own head, picked up the edge of a black hood, and pulled it over her face.
This image faded soon after, and for a brief moment there was no other image to accompany it. When a frame did light up again, it showed another scene in daylight. This time out on a small garden. Applejack was there again, hoeing and occasionally letting out a small swear at a particularly troublesome weed or root.
As she worked, a new unknown person stepped into image. It appeared to be another farmer, but this one looked rather uncomfortable and uneasy looking. She took a moment to glance around a bit, but then walked up to her—drawing close and speaking quietly.
“Applejack…”
“Hey there, Cherry. Make it quick. Granny got a cold so I’m tryin’ to pull double-duty for her today…”
The other one swallowed uncomfortably. “’Bout the visit to the Redwoods last night…”
Applejack stopped her hoeing, immediately snapping to her and giving her a cold look and a loud whisper. “Damnit all, Cherry! I told y’all you don’t talk ‘bout that ‘round here! None of my family knows ‘bout what I do at night!”
“I know, I know…but I’m guessin’ you don’t know how it went down…”
“I was one of the ones on watch but I heard it got done.”
“It…it went a bit wrong.”
“What’dya mean it went wrong?”
“I mean some of the folks got jittery and they decided they wanted to make sure there were no witnesses, so they went after everyone in the house. Includin’ his wife and kids.”
A shade fell over her face, but only for a moment before she turned back to hoeing.
“…It happens. Ain’t the first time we had to do a dirty job.”
“That weren’t all, Applejack. He was friends with one of the local farmers so he was there last night standin’ watch for folks like us with a shotgun. He didn’t get off a shot, but on seein’ him they did worse ta’ him than they did to the Redwoods… And the sheriff just got back and made it official. He’s dead, Applejack.”
“Well, he shouldn’tve been out there. He had no business tryin’ ta’ stick up for one of them out-of-towners, especially bringin’ out a gun to shoot his own-”
“It was Grand Pear, Applejack.”
The hoe dropped from her hands. All sternness and crossness vanished from her face and she looked at Cherry as if she had just stuck her with a knife. The woman could only uncomfortably look back, then stood away to walk on.
“Just…thought someone should tell ya’ ‘fore the sheriff brought the news.”
She turned to walk off, but the rancher couldn’t move again. She just stood there with mouth open—staring at the ground with a hollow look in her eyes as the image faded.
The chamber was totally silent—save for some muted snickering from the peddler. Applejack’s head remained bowed to the ground while the rest of the ladies, even Pinkie, were mortified. They remained gaping at the faded frames for several moments.
Fluttershy swallowed, fearfully turning to Applejack. “You…you didn’t really do any of those things…did you, Applejack?”
“Of…of course not!” Rarity spoke up. “It’s all nonsense. Just some sort of smoke-and-mirrors routine, yes?”
“Uh…yeah!” Pinkie chirped up, but forced this time. “I mean, heh, there’s no way Applejack would ever have…helped set a fire to a Gaitian temple…while someone was in it…”
Twilight forced a nervous smile of her own as she turned to her. “It…it has to be… We all know Applejack, and…and there’s no way she…she would have done anything that would have… I mean…”
She slowed down, noticing Applejack still wasn’t looking up or reacting.
“Applejack…you weren’t really behind anything that…that got your own…your own grandfather kil-”
“He never should’ve been there! He has no business tryin’ ta’…ta’ protect them, of all things! And what right did have ta’ show up for them when he weren’t there for us all them years?!”
The other ladies went silent. They stared at Applejack with shrunken pupils and hanging mouths—not just at what they heard but the look on Applejack’s face. The sudden rage, fury, and hate that painted it when she looked up and glared at them all with clenched jaw.
“None of you know what it was like! Not one of ya’! Seein’ yer own family starvin’! Havin’ more mouths to feed every damn day and less ways ta’ get food! No one cared about us! Not when they could get nice, cheap labor from all them refugees who kept pourin’ in every day like a bunch o’ rats! We should’ve all hung together, but instead they let them eat us outta house and home and had the balls ta’ let them remake the town the way they liked when we were here first! World was goin’ ta’ hell inna handbasket and all the big farms and ranches cared about was makin’ money off our misery!”
Fluttershy, realizing the truth, turned away and cringed and began to whimper.
“Applejack…” Twilight spoke quietly.
“I did what I had to do to save the town and my family! What else was I s’posed to do?! No one ever gave me or mine any handouts! I was forced to let my sister and a dozen of my family run off to the big cities for work ‘cause we couldn’t take care o’ them no more, and you know what happened?! They worked ‘em like dogs! Didn’t give ‘em enough ta’ eat! Didn’t give ‘em enough ta’ sleep! Let two of ‘em get ripped ta’ pieces by one of them damn engines they have in those factories! But they just let all these new folks come in and help themselves to our land?! I hate ‘em! I hate ‘em all!”
Again, the ladies were shocked off of the sheer amount of venom Applejack radiated. Enough to be silent for a moment. However, Rarity, cupping a hand to her mouth, eventually shook her head at her.
“That was…vile…ghastly…despicable…” she uttered in indignation. “That was the act of a barbarian. I had no idea country folk were capable of something so horrid…”
Twilight turned to Rarity and nearly opened her mouth to say something, while Applejack snapped to her and nearly yelled again. Neither got the chance.
“Oh…let’s not judge so harshly, Rarity,” the peddler spoke up with a grin. “We don’t all have the means to be vile, ghastly, and despicable in the ‘proper and dignified’ way.”
Twilight nearly questioned what this meant, before Rarity clasped that same hand over her own mouth and looked fearful all over again. She turned back to her, noticing her reaction, but Grogar was already speaking.
“Perhaps you should inform your friends of just what sort of kind and generous soul you are before you treat others with such moral indignation… Where did you say you were from again, Ms. Rarity?”
Another image showed up. This one was of Rarity sitting at what looked like her personal office/workspace back at Carousel Couture. Based on her look, it was also a few years ago. She was well-dressed and composed—obviously conducting business. A younger woman with Trottingham fashion and what looked like a case holding her official papers and work-related items was sitting across from her. Rarity herself was looking over a resume.
“Well, Ms. Saddles…you do seem to be highly qualified. And as I’m currently expanding into the main market in Manehattan, I could certainly use your expertise.”
“Thank you, Ms. Rarity.”
“I’m almost a little surprised to see one of your background and repertoire applying for Carousel Couture. And emigrating across Greater Everfree to do so…”
“I’ll just say I’ve grown…disconcerted with the political climate in Trottingham. However, I was eager to sign on with a new, up-and-coming clothing producer. I’ve enjoyed my past positions and the amount of connections and networking that they offered, but this is my chance to really be in on the ground floor, so to speak.”
“Ah, I see. I…regret to inform you, however, that I’m not sure I can afford this…starting salary. You see…” She sighed as she set the resume down. “Funding is rather tight at this moment and there’s not much that’s ‘liquid’, shall we say. Most of the other businesses in my home town of Ponyville have shut down due to the awful business with the shadow over Equestria and they’re the suppliers. The situation is rather fragile and I’m already in the red having them doing advance work.”
She looked up a little. “I see, Ms. Rarity… Out of…curiosity, how much of a cut from that figure would you say I would start at?”
“I’m…afraid 25 percent.”
“T-Twenty-fi…?” she began to say. For a moment, she looked like she would reflexively rise and walk out right there. However, she hesitated, looked to one side, bit her lip, and then sat still. “Well…that is quite the cut, but…I’ve seen more than my share of towns go under back in Trottingham and I know how desperate an impoverished neighbor can be.” She paused a moment before smiling. “Ms. Rarity, I would be honored to be able to work for you.”
“Oh, thank you, Ms. Saddles! A thousand times thank you! And Ponyville thanks you too! I’ll get you started right away!”
The image changed. It was the same room, but it looked a bit busier and more well-utilized. Rarity’s clothing had changed but there was a new person at the desk being interviewed. This one was Coco Pommel, who had a variety of designs spread across her desk. She was looking rather pleased with herself on seeing Rarity’s positive reaction.
“Ms. Pommel, I have seen a lot of new designers in Manehattan, but I think you are one of the more avant garde ones I have had the fortune of encountering. This portfolio is wonderful.”
“R-R-Really? You really think so?”
“You’ve come up with such patterns and color palettes that, frankly, I would never have dreamed of myself. I think you are just perfect to head up the new department.”
“Oh, thank you, Ms. Rarity! I…I really don’t know what else to say! This is my first job after leaving Polomare’s and…and I just never expected to connect with a new business so quickly!”
“Now as a new designer, I’ll start you off at 480 a week…”
The smile and enthusiasm faded a little. “I’m…I’m sorry, Ms. Rarity. Did…did you say 480 a week?”
“Why yes, dear. I thought with such a keen eye for the cutting edge you deserved a bonus.”
Coco didn’t seem nearly as happy as that phrase was intended to make her. She began to sink in her chair.
“I’m sorry, darling. Is something wrong?”
“It’s just…I…I really can’t afford my apartment at that salary…”
“Oh, it won’t be forever. Certainly not with this portfolio. Carousel Couture will go straight to the top. Within two years you’ll be making twice that.”
“I…I just wasn’t expecting such a pay cut. That’s less than what I made at Polomare’s…”
Rarity paused, but then her own face fell.
“I’m very sorry, Ms. Pommel. I wish I could offer you more than a great future, but I’m afraid my money is tight. Most of my profits are going to help keep Rockville’s citizenry in business, and after that Light Eater attack last week I’m really having to give them whatever I can spare for some time. I just can’t let my hometown dry up.” She brightened up. “I tell you what. I’ll let you move into the spare apartment right here in the home factory rent-free. I just really don’t want to lose a great designer like you.”
Coco hesitated a little longer, but finally exhaled. “Well…I know what it’s like to have a town go under. That’s why I moved to Manehattan to begin with. So…” She smiled. “You’ve got a deal, Ms. Rarity.”
“Splendid! I’m looking forward to our bright future!”
The image faded again. Rarity, by now, was beginning to turn red. The rest of the ladies looked perplexed, and turned to her.
“Hmm…” Pinkie thought aloud. “Didn’t Rarity say she was from Ponyville before? So…why is she from Rockville now?”
Before anyone could say anything, several images popped up. Each one with Rarity talking to someone else, whether it be a new employee, a landlord, a government official, or a potential client. A bombardment of words began to ring out from all angles.
“I know our contract is a little high, but this would really save the people of Dodge Junction…”
“Please go a little easy on the rent this month. I had to send that money to my family in Tall Tale…”
“I’m sure everyone in Seaward Sholes appreciates your generosity!”
“Hayseed Swamp truly needs this in this trying time!”
Many more town names were thrown out, before all of the images went dead. The ladies again stood silently looking back at Rarity, who continued to hide herself behind her hand.
All save Rainbow Dash, who now looked rather annoyed. She crossed her arms in front of her chest and gave her a glare.
“…And you told me it was ‘Hope Hollow’.”
Rarity finally lowered her hand and looked at her. “Let…let me explain…”
“I think I already know what you’re gonna ‘explain’,” Dash snapped back, “You needed a Huntsman for cheap to get you that damn contract at any cost, and so you made up some sob story to guilt trip me into thinking that a whole town was on the line instead of some weaselly designer from Manehattan!”
“‘Weaselly’?! That is uncalled for!” Rarity shouted back, before calming a little. “I mean…I… Yes, I stretched the truth from time to time! But it’s not like that contract wasn’t still important to all my workers! And everyone in the business tells little white lies from time to time! Compared to some of the more horrendous ‘business’ practices of Manehattan, that was nothing!”
“And just what would those ‘practices’ be, Rarity?” The peddler asked with a grin.
Rarity immediately paled again, covering her mouth once more. However, she didn’t have to say anything as the images came on again, soon directing the attention of the ladies once more.
Again it was in her office, although it looked a bit more disheveled. Rarity was looking a little stressed as she was sipping her tea while Ms. Saddles was going over a clipboard nearby.
“I’m truly sorry, Ms. Rarity, but I’m afraid at this rate the new textile factory simply won’t have the workers to fill it.”
“This is inconceivable, Ms. Saddles… How in the world can we not find enough entry level laborers in Manehattan of all places?”
“I’m afraid it’s the very military we’re trying to land as a client. With all of that horrid business happening on the northern border and the militarization of the east, the male workforce has been totally depleted. More and more of the female workforce is stepping up to fill the ranks; everywhere from chimneysweeps to ironworkers.”
“But there must be some ladies with experience in the textile industry available! We can’t possibly compete trying to teach bootblacks the first thing about fabric design!”
“All of them are already employed in our future competitors. There’s no way we can hire them unless we offer a substantial pay upgrade…”
Rarity let out a sigh, before getting a pitiful look and ungracefully cramming a cucumber sandwich in her mouth. As she munched on it unhappily, she looked down at the morning paper on her desk. She stared for a moment before looking intrigued. “Hello…what’s this?”
Ms. Saddles looked up from her clipboard as Rarity looked it over, her look gradually brightening.
“It says here that the Manehattan government elected to open up the borders to families and refugees from its allies closer to the shadow over Equestria… The first train loads will be coming in next week.”
“Yes, I heard the news this morning. Mostly women and children.”
Rarity grew thoughtful. “Those people will need jobs after coming to Manehattan…and the only ones they’ll get at first will be selling fruit on street corners or sweeping floors for oily factories… I can imagine they’d prefer our new clothing company better…”
“Buttons and bobbins, Ms. Rarity…we wouldn’t be able to pay much better than the fruit or factories.”
“Pish-posh, Ms. Saddles. Our new factory is a far better environment than those places. And in a much better part of town.” She quickly finished her tea and rose. “Let’s pick out something to wear tomorrow. We’re going to be the first to greet those new arrivals from the trains.”
That image faded, but a new one started right next to it. Rarity, looking rather pleased and much more upbeat, walked through one of the corridors and looked out to a factory floor. Coco Pommel, looking bright enough but also sweaty, exhaled as she walked up to her with a sheet of paper.
“So how is our new workforce doing, Ms. Pommel?”
She wiped her forehead. “Very…very good, Ms. Rarity…”
“They’ve learned the new machinery and all that?”
“Yes, yes…production is starting off well… We’re on schedule to start making quota by the end of the month. Just…one detail…”
“What is it?”
“The…the ventilation in Houses #2 and #3 doesn’t seem to be working all that well…”
“Now that you mention it, it is a trifle warm in here… Now I see why that architect tried to sell me that expensive ‘air flow’ option when I commissioned the renovations… I suppose we’ll just have to crack the windows…”
“Um…Ms. Rarity…you had the windows sealed when you realized the soot from the surrounding factories was staining the fabric.”
“Oh…oh, right. Well, it’s only two hours between breaks. I’m sure they’ll be fine. Keep up the good work, Ms. Pommel.”
“Yes ma’am…”
The image faded, and was replaced by another one back in the office. Rarity, looking a little more stressed but still fashionable, was talking with a plumber across from her. She sighed as she bowed her head in her hands.
“Can you please explain to me how a brand new factory has three of its four washrooms break down only two months after opening?”
“If I had to guess, ma’am, it’s because whoever did your plumbing was a real cheapskate on your piping materials.”
“He said it would cost twenty thousand to be top-of-the-line! I don’t have that much money lying around!”
“Well, now it’s going to be thirty thousand to replace it.”
She sighed and rubbed her forehead. “Fine, fine… Please pencil me in for two months from now.”
“…Uh, two months?”
“Well I certainly don’t have thirty thousand in my pocket this instant. You’ll have to wait until I’ve filled some of our orders.”
“You’re going to run a factory on one working bathroom…that could go out at any minute, mind you…for two months?”
“Sir, if I can put up with the stench 24/7, the least my employees can do is wait in a line or two.”
The image faded and another came up. Rarity, looking even more tired, was walking down a hall talking with Ms. Saddles once again. The latter looked regretful while the former looked increasingly stressed.
“I’m sorry, Ms. Rarity, but I did warn you that we didn’t have the manpower…”
“Oh, for the love of Harmonium, Sassy…did you really expect me to just throw my hands in the air on that order? It was the biggest one we’ve received so far! It was our chance to ingratiate ourselves with the higher echelons of Manehattan! Everyone who’s anyone goes to that hotel and they’d be looking at our fashions on the entire staff!”
“Stitches and snips, Ms. Rarity…that quote we offered was practically make-believe!”
“We have to stay competitive somehow!”
“But what now?”
Rarity was quiet a moment, before she drew in a deep breath and exhaled.
“A new policy. If a worker is unable to fill their quotas, then they work mandatory unpaid overtime to fill them.”
“M…Mandatory? With this backlog, everyone will be working at least three hours extra per day!”
“It’s not as if we all won’t be doing the same! Would they rather work extra or be unemployed when my business shuts down?”
The image faded again, replaced by yet another one. This one was again in Rarity’s office, but standing across from her was a worker in one of her business’ uniforms. She looked rather haggard, and very dirty and tired. She also looked severely unhappy.
“I’m afraid I can’t ignore this any longer, Ms. Rarity, and there’s little I can do to help the situation. We’ve had three workers pass out on the line last week from the heat. Two of the ladies are pregnant and they can’t stay on their feet all day. Everyone else can’t stand the hours anymore. They say they barely have time for anything other than sleep.”
Rarity sighed. “Everyone is having to make sacrifices in this day and age.”
The supervisor paused, looking at Rarity’s tea set, her furnishings, and her attire. “…Everyone, ma’am?”
Rarity frowned back. “Yes, everyone. And if they think they can get any better at any other factory in this town, tell them they’re welcome to leave and go there. There are more people in need of jobs arriving in Manehattan every day so perhaps they need to be reminded of just how replaceable they all are.”
The supervisor was taken aback at this, but Rarity’s look remained. “Now if that is all, please go back to the floor. I need to worry about getting these newest orders signed so I can keep paying your salary.”
“…Very well, ma’am.”
The image changed again, this time to just outside the factory, with Rarity talking to a group of what looked like watchmen. She was stern but they looked rather stunned.
“From now on, the doors stay locked during business hours. All of them. I’m not going to allow any more shrinkage in my factory.”
“Ma’am…even the fire escapes?”
“Oh, what in the world could possibly cause a fire on the factory floor?”
“But the fire door is the only way to get a breeze going…”
“Oh, so that’s why the last order came out with forty of the shirts stained with oily filth? Keep the door shut and locked! And do try and keep a better watch for thieves from now on!”
Again the image changed. It went to Rarity’s office, but this time it was late at night. Rarity herself, in her style of always dressing for the occasion, was attired in something more concealing and mysterious. The only light was her small kerosene lamp on her desk; which was why it was impossible to make out the rather large and imposing shadows she was facing. She looked at them grimly.
“Now keep in mind that this business transaction of ours is to be kept highly discrete…just between you and myself.”
“Heh…that’s not a problem. You aren’t the first client we’ve had that wanted to make sure no one knew we were ever there.”
“I don’t need you for much. It’s simply that…some of my employees are causing some trouble. In the past I could simply replace them as necessary, but now they’re talking about unifying. Creating a team of laborers to collectively bring complaint and act as one. If I want Carousel Couture to succeed, it is imperative that this does not happen. I can’t stay competitive if my workers start being the ones who dictate where all of my profits go.”
“Yeah, I imagine that’d be pretty bad for your pocketbook.”
“…And theirs. So long as I employ them, my welfare is their welfare.”
“Sure, sure…whatever helps you sleep at night. We’ll explain this to them. Just one detail…you want whoever gets the explanation of the ‘situation’ to pass on the message to the others, eh…verbally or non-verbally, if you get my drift?”
Rarity’s face looked uncomfortable, and she gave a grimace and a shudder.
“…Which way would you charge less for?”
The man in the shadows barked out a laugh. “You are shrewd, ain’t ya’? Verbally, actually.”
“Then by all means, verbally.”
The image faded, leaving the chamber in silence again. Twilight gaped at what she had just seen, and slowly turned to Rarity. The woman was cringing now and still covering her mouth.
“Rarity…you didn’t…”
“All those ‘sacrifices’ you made for your employees…but I noticed you always wore a nice new outfit, though,” Dash sourly spat. “You still had your little teas on a Kirin set every day. You still had all that nice furniture and got plenty of money to eat out at all the fancy places too. And I’m guessing that Coco’s room wasn’t half as nice as yours.”
“You…you don’t understand!” she protested. “How rough it is to maintain a business in Manehattan! How hard it is to stay competitive! I didn’t want to cut corners everywhere or resort to hiring those…those brutes! I would have failed otherwise and so would they!”
“Now Rarity…” the peddler chided. “Why would you say such awful things about your more secretive business partners? And after that nice favor they did for you a few months ago?”
Now she truly did look horrified. “You wouldn’t-”
Before she could finish, the image lit up again. This time it was daylight and once again in Rarity’s office. However, she looked more familiar this time and was sporting some dressings from a scuffle that had been made against the Nighttouched. However, those dark figures were in the room now too. Only this time, they were in the light—and looked rather familiar to some of the other ladies.
“Isn’t…that those men who came by that one day looking for Rarity?” Fluttershy stated uneasily.
Before she could say more, the scene began. It started with Rarity turning around to the men with a bag. She didn’t look scared of them in spite of their intimidating appearance, but rather sternly and curtly dropped the bag on the desk in front of them.
“There you are. 80,000 as we agreed. And I believe I’ve told you time and again not to come here during business hours. Never do it again.”
One of the men on the side stepped up, opened the bag, and peered inside. He paused, then ruffled around it for a moment. Eventually, he pulled out a thick stack of wrapped bills, which he rifled through. He turned to the man in the center and nodded before replacing it.
The man grinned back. “Pleasure doing business with you. Although I thought the memo was wrong when you first left it for me. Why have Cotton Gin whacked instead of Suri Polomare?”
Rarity closed her eyes and sighed. “That’s not really any concern of yours, but if you must know… I managed to take back my deal right from under her nose this time, but she clearly means to ruin me. I’m too much competition for her and she’ll keep stealing my contracts until I’m bankrupt.”
“This I see, but that’s why I wonder-”
“Oh, do use your heads. If Suri Polomare was to wind up dead after all this, then I’d be the first one the police would come snooping around. If, on the other hand, the colonel ended up dead, then they’d believe I only stood to lose and Suri only stood to gain. I don’t know if you read the papers, but already the government is thinking about cancelling all contracts with her and offering them up to the next bidder, which would be Carousel Couture. And all of her suppliers will be the same way, so I no longer need Fabrichique. I hate to say it…but the colonel is far more use to me now dead than alive.”
A pause from the men, who were genuinely stunned. The center man let out a chuckle, with a hint of nervousness on it. “Did I say you were shrewd before? I was wrong. You’re practically good enough to be a mob boss yourself.”
“In the Manehattan business world, dear, you’ll find that people need to be just as ruthless and even more cutthroat.”
When the image faded, the ladies again turned back to Rarity. But she was no longer facing them. Her back was to them and her head was shrunken down.
“Th-those men…didn’t come…looking for you…” Fluttershy spoke in a near breathless panic. “They…wanted you to pay them for…for…k-k-killing…”
“Um, Rarity?” Pinkie spoke up nervously. “I don’t know if anyone ever told you this, but…um…Gaia Everfree really doesn’t like it when people kill other people…”
“And here I thought you were someone decent from Manehattan…” Dash snorted. “Silly me.”
“I knew you were a crook, just like everyone else in that damn country!” Applejack spat angrily. “Folks like you are the reason my family got sick and my sister died! Slavin’ away in your factories so you could go to operas and fancy-pants galas! Meanwhile they can’t even get enough to eat and are livin’ in trash so-”
“Oh, shut up! ALL of you!”
Rarity suddenly snapping around and barking at them silenced, and shocked, everyone. Even Applejack. She glared at them hatefully and angrily.
“Manehattan is a crueler place than any of you have ever dreamed! My family thought they could make it there running fairly and justly and it drove them into bankruptcy! It sent my mother and father into an early grave while it harbored cads like the Horned Trip which took my Sweetie Belle from me and let the police find her cut into pieces after someone had her way with her! Do you think I care in the slightest if those people suffer to help me succeed? That they don’t deserve to be bled of every proverbial drop they took from me? Stop being so naïve with this moral indignation! I’d be in a gutter if I was half as generous as you expect me to be!”
Most of the ladies were stunned, although Applejack kept looking at her angrily. Fluttershy gave another whimper and cringed back.
“It’s rather fitting that you would mention the Horned Trip at this moment,” Grogar spoke up from his place. “It just so happens they figure quite a bit into this next revelation.”
Fluttershy went rigid as the next frame lit up once again.
It showed an image of a very different looking Fluttershy. While she was still her quiet and timid self, she was considerably younger and dressed as a rather meek waitress. While the image was still filling up, however, an amount of water splashed in her face—making her cringe and withdraw even more. The image continued to fill until it revealed the interior of a small café; obviously in a larger, more bustling town. A rather large and horrid-looking woman, turning nearly beet red and glaring at Fluttershy, was in her face. Based on her surroundings it seemed she had been seated at a table with a smaller child. The girl in question was young but was as obese as the woman and had a sour frown with her arms crossed, refusing to touch her meal in front of her.
“You horrible, stupid, little idiot! How can you be such a moron that you can’t follow a single, simple instruction?!”
“I’m…I’m sorry, ma’am, but…”
“Where is your manager?! I’m going to have you fired for this, you worthless little tramp! I ought to call the magistrate on you!”
“But…but ma’am…”
Fluttershy’s meek protests were so quiet it was likely the hostile woman didn’t even hear her—especially since she spent most of the time casting more insults, threats, and obscenities. She made such a scene that a middle-aged woman finally walked up, looking in more professional dress and attitude. She called out to her as soon as she paused for breath.
“Ma’am! Ma’am! I’m the manager. What seems to be the problem here?”
The furious woman spun to her, pointing an accusing finger in Fluttershy’s face—sharply enough to make her recoil. “Your mongoloid of a waitress here tried to poison my baby on purpose! I told her expressly that she can’t have radishes because she’s allergic, and she covered her salad with them! She tried to kill him!”
“M-M-Ma’am…t-t-those are red cabb-”
“And then she insulted me to my face before she tried to shove it down her throat! She’s a criminal and a menace! What kind of fool are you hiring her in the first place?!”
“M-M-Ma’am…I never-”
The red-faced woman spun to her, making her pull back to shield herself. “How dare you talk back to me, you little bitch! What kind of deranged trollop are you?! Having nothing better to do but try to murder little children?!”
The manager turned to her. “Fluttershy, is that true? What happened?”
The terrified woman, quite shaken up at this point, struggled to find her voice and composure to respond. “She…um…that is…I…I…”
“Speak up, already! What did you do to get her so worked up?”
“I…I just…I t-t-took her order and I…t-t-told the chef to leave off radishes, but…but those aren’t radishes… They’re just strips of red cabba-”
“She’s lying!” the red-faced woman cut off. “You hired a criminal and a liar! You’re the most worthless, despicable establishment I’ve ever eaten at! I want her fired or I’m going to get this entire café shut down!”
“Ma’am! Please, calm down! You’re making a sc-”
“Don’t you dare tell me to calm down! And don’t you dare touch me!”
“Ma’am, if you will just listen for a moment, we want to see what we can do to make this-”
“Ouch!”
Both the red-faced woman and the manager turned to Fluttershy as she yelped. The child at the table had suddenly decided to throw in her “two cents” by leaning over to Fluttershy while she was standing there and biting one of her trembling hands while she wasn’t looking.
Obviously, this had caused her to yelp and yank her hand up and away. As she did, her fingers went out and lightly tapped the girl across the cheek, causing him to snap her head back and away.
The woman went from red to violet. An instant later, a smack echoed across the restaurant as Fluttershy was slapped hard enough to knock her to the floor. “How DARE you touch my baby, you disgusting little bitch!”
The image faded, only for a new frame to light up nearby. Fluttershy was now standing in a back room with the manager, holding a cloth to a split lip and looking more meek and downcast than ever.
“You…you’re…firing me?”
“You insulted a customer and you slapped their child, Fluttershy. What else am I supposed to do? You should have just fixed their order.”
“But…but…there weren’t any radishes-”
“I don’t give a damn if the plate had nothing but lettuce on it! ‘The customer is always right’! End of issue! You apologize, you get what they want, and you don’t cause a scene!”
“But…but I didn’t…”
“I don’t want to hear it! I said you’re fired! Get out!”
“What…what about my work for today…?”
“You used it buying that napkin.”
Fluttershy blinked in surprise, leaning up and looking at the cloth she was using to nurse herself. “Wh…what?”
“You don’t think I can use a napkin with your blood on it, do you? Now get out before I have you thrown out!”
Fluttershy could only whimper and recoil as the frame faded out.
When the next image came on, it was in a dirty, blighted street. Clearly in a bad part of town littered with garbage and all sorts of filth. The people walking around were angry-looking, surly, dirty, and/or shabby. A group of street urchins up the street were roughhousing over what looked like a bottle of liquor they had stolen, laughing and taunting and pushing each other.
Fluttershy herself, still looking sore from being fired, was seated on a stoop. An alley cat was nearby but had warmed up to her nicely. It was purring and pressing against her as she leaned down and pet it. After a few moments, she reached into her pocket and came out with the remains of a bit of bread and put it down next to her.
“Sorry, little friend… I can’t afford any fish right now… I can’t even afford any more bread for myself…” She sighed and looked out to the street. “Zephyr always said places like Manehattan were the land of opportunity…but I guess that was before Cloudsdale fell. I didn’t really have much to offer even before the war destroyed home, but now that I’m from the ‘old enemy’ I’ve got even less… It doesn’t help that people can be…well…rather unfriendly.”
The cat simply kept purring as she kept petting it.
“Oh…I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to talk your ear off about all my problems. I’m sure you have plenty of your own. If it’s bad for me, I can only imagine how much all of you homeless cats are doing. Oh…I hope your owner didn’t die because of those dreadful Light Eaters up north. I’d take you in if I could, but…um…I think I need a home to take myself in first…”
At that moment, the image showed a rather angry-looking person with a broom step out from the building behind her. Frowning at Fluttershy all the way, she shoved the staff end of her broom into her back roughly, causing her to cry out and spill forward. Reflexively, the cat jumped into her lap for protection before she stumbled into the street on her knees.
“Get lost! I don’t need some Cloudsdale hobo chasing away customers!”
“Oh…I’m…I’m sorry… I was just stopping to catch my-”
She didn’t get out another word, as a girl stepped out from behind the adult and proceeded to fling a piece of food trash right in her face. She was cut off as she was pelted, and she shrank her head to the ground.
The girl, on her part, grinned and snickered at how she had made a mess on her, while the adult continued to glare at her threateningly. Not bothering with any more apologies, she nervously picked herself up while cradling the cat with one arm. Soon after she began to walk down the road while using her other hand to wipe her face off.
When she was done, she sighed. “I wish the people in Manehattan were a bit nicer…especially the children… But it’s not all bad. I still get to make friends like you.”
The cat meowed back, as if in acknowledgement.
“I’m glad you think so. I still need to find another job, though… I don’t think I can get any other jobs as a waitress. Even if I hadn’t been to them all, they won’t hire me looking like this… I’m no good at working in factories… No one needs any help running stalls.” She swallowed uneasily. “There is…well…that…but am I really to the point where that’s all I can get? Oh…maybe I should head to the park to clear my head. There’s lots of nice pigeons there I can introduce you t-”
An empty liquor bottle suddenly struck Fluttershy in the head. While it was only a glancing blow, it gave out a thud and soon she fell to the ground in a limp heap. The cat, startled again, immediately jumped out of her arms and fled for it…right toward the same street urchins as before. However, they were laughing at her now, and one of them quickly darted down and snatched up the cat right out of the road. He was rough, and it immediately began to hiss and claw, but he managed to keep it from tagging him.
“Ha-ha! Bullseye!”
“You got her right in the head!”
“She’s crazy! Talking to alley cats like that!”
Fluttershy let out a moan, slowly lifting her now-bleeding forehead from the ground and looked ahead. Her eyes only looked at the children a moment before turning to the struggling cat. Trembling, her hand reached out to them.
“Do…don’t…hurt the…”
“Oh? Heh, you want the cat?”
“P-P-Please…”
“You really want the cat, huh crazy?”
“Let…let her…”
“Hey guys? Let’s take the cat down to the river! You ever see what happens when you tie a brick to their tails and throw them in?”
Fluttershy gasped in horror as the other boys began to chuckle cruelly. Carrying the animal with them, they turned around and began to run off. She weakly tried to pursue them, but could barely push herself up before getting dizzy again.
“S-S-Stop! Please…!”
“Heh, what’re you gonna do about it? Call a cop, you little Cloudsdale hobo?”
“Maybe they can throw you in the nuthouse!”
“Go home, hobo! We don’t want you!”
She cried out again, vainly trying to get to her feet, but it was no use. She couldn’t chase them, and no one even looked at her let alone offered to help her. In the end, all she could do was burst into tears as the howling sound of the panicked cat slowly faded into the distance and oblivion.
The image faded and came in again. Based on how Fluttershy looked in this one…dirty, stained, bloody, and very sad and unhappy, it was the same day. Only it was night now, and she was timidly and nervously standing on a new street. She was quivering all over, still undecisive about whether or not to go forward. She couldn’t even summon enough bravery to look up.
Eventually she was able to, but she didn’t like what she saw. Pictures of women in feathers and lingerie. Big signs saying things like “Burlesque” and “Girls, Girls, Girls”. Sounds of men hooting and hollering from within. She gulped, hesitating a bit more, before she closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and tried to take a step forward.
“Pardon me, little ma’am.”
She stopped and looked outside the image at who had spoken to her.
The image faded and was replaced by a dirty yet functional pub, where Fluttershy was fighting hard not to avoid cleaning a plate of food in front of her. A very tall and imposing figure was seated across from her with his back to the watching ladies.
When she was finally done, she quickly covered her mouth to stifle the tiniest burp ever. “Excuse me…”
“Hmm…seems Manehattan life isn’t treating you that well, Ms. Fluttershy.”
“Well…um…I wouldn’t say that… It’s just, um…it’s hard to find work…or a home…or food…and a lot of people get angry at me…and most people look at me frowning when they realize I’m from Cloudsdale…and…just about everyone is cruel to the animals…”
“Iron Will knows that all too well. Iron Will had to grow a thick skin when he got to Manehattan. Iron Will focused a lot on his muscles and making himself heard. But even that wasn’t enough to save Iron Will’s old consulting business. The world is a cruel place, Fluttershy. And it’s gotten a lot crueler ever since that shadow fell over Equestria. So…you’re having a hard time finding work?”
“Um…yes, I’m afraid… I’m down to thinking about being one of those…dancing girls…”
“Well then, Iron Will may have just the right job for you! With your cute looks and alluring figure, you’re just perfect!”
Fluttershy went wide-eyed at that, before turning red and shrinking. “Oh my…”
“Huh? Oh! Sorry about that! Iron Will phrased that all wrong! It’s nothing like that. Well…mostly. Ms. Fluttershy…have you ever thought about being a Piper?”
As they kept talking, another image lit up nearby. This one showed Fluttershy much more cleaned up and wearing a cute, new dress. It was a different day now, and she was walking up to a rather dirty-looking and shabby-clothed child playing with a can in the street.
She came to a stop and beamed a cute smile. “Oh…hello there, little boy!”
The boy looked up at her and nervously began to rise. “Oh…I’m sorry, ma’am… I didn’t mean to-”
“Oh no! It’s no problem! I just thought you looked hungry! Do you know my rotary club is hosting a free lunch right now?”
“Wha…it is?”
“Sure! Just come with me!”
She extended her hand to the child, who, apparently quite hungry, gratefully took it and let her lead him down the street.
The image cut back to the pub, where Fluttershy blinked. “I…I don’t think I ever heard of that before…”
“Well, a Piper is someone just like you…cute, attractive, motherly…who goes out on the street and finds little boys and girls who don’t have any…shall we say…adult supervision…and then she leads them to…special places that me and my boys set up.”
Another image lit up. This time it was two more shabbily dressed children in a different alley who looked like they were teasing a stray dog. At least, they had been. Now they were focused on Fluttershy, who was in a different dress and beaming at both of them. Both were grinning from ear to ear with delight now.
“Did you say a circus?”
She nodded. “And it’s free just for one day only!”
“Gee! Where is it?”
“Follow me and I’ll show you!”
Again, back to the first image.
“And…what…what happens when they get there?”
“Well…me and the boys load them up. Sometimes on wagons, sometimes on boats, sometimes both…”
Fluttershy began to grow nervous-looking. “And…then…?”
“And then they go for a nice long ride…and a Piper doesn’t bother asking where. It’s not like she’ll be seeing them anymore. No one will.”
Another image. Another new day, another new dress, another child. This one was a little less shabby, however, and with schoolbooks in her hand.
“Could you please show me to the train station, dear? I can’t find my way.”
“I…I don’t know, ma’am. I need to get to school…”
“Just really quickly. I’ll pay you 5 bits for your trouble.”
“Wow…5 bits? I…I guess I can help real quick…”
Back to the first. Fluttershy was now looking rather nervous and trembling. However, the unseen man kept pressing.
“Now, now…don’t you worry. Iron Will runs a very cool operation. You don’t have to worry about the law. Iron Will keeps things under the table and greases the palms of all the ones who find out. As for you, you’ll be able to afford a nice apartment, three meals a day, and plenty of extra bits. Enough to save up and build a whole animal refuge if you want. Believe me, no one will miss these kids. Not in this town where there’s more orphans every day. Deep down, people will be happy they’re off the streets instead of vandalizing, stealing, or torturing pets.”
Fluttershy’s cringing stopped at that. Her eyes widened.
Another image. This time there were three girls eagerly following behind Fluttershy as she led them along down into one of the darker parts of the city.
“You mean each of us gets our own free toy?”
“Two free toys if get there in half an hour!”
“Yay! It’s just like Hearth’s Warming!”
Again, back to the pub.
“Like Iron Will said, the world is a cruel place. And it’s full of cruel people. A lot of them are in respectable positions and everyone thinks they’re saints, but they come to Iron Will just the same. A lot of these people have an ‘itch’ and Iron Will scratches it. If Iron Will doesn’t, someone else will. That’s not about to change, and nowadays the world is just getting worse. People will deride Iron Will and his work all day long, but they don’t want to lift a finger to help these kids and they won’t because they know they’re nothing but future thieves and drunks. Most of them would rather look the other way so long as it’s someone else’s problem. So why not have them do someone some good?”
One more scene. This time, it was in front of a nicer-looking house. Practically a manor. A rather portly child was standing in the garden nearby. A bit closer look revealed it was the exact same child that had bitten Fluttershy earlier. Only now she didn’t seem to recognize her, because she was talking to her across the fence.
“And you’re saying there’s a big new chocolate shop opening just a few blocks away?”
“Mmm-hmm!”
“And it’s free to the first 100 customers?”
“Mmm-hmm!”
“…Are you sure we haven’t me before?”
Fluttershy shook her head. “Definitely not! I’m brand new to Manehattan! So…what do you say?”
“Hmm…mom might get mad. She says I’ve been eating too many sweets lately.”
“What mom doesn’t know won’t hurt her, right?”
The fat kid smiled. “Yeah…you’re right!”
The final image faded, leaving only the one at the pub.
“So…what do you say?”
Fluttershy was quiet for a long time. Her eyes went to the ground, thinking over everything. She was quiet for several seconds, before she took a deep breath and showed more conviction than the ladies had seen from her in the images so far. She turned back to the man and nodded.
“Mr. Iron Will…I accept.”
“Great to hear! Just, uh…one small detail. Iron Will doesn’t like using his real name when doing business. Best not to flash that around too much. When on the job, just remember…he’s Big Tom.”
His big hand went out, took Fluttershy’s, and shook.
Again, the chamber was silent—but the ladies were more horrified than ever. Even Sunset was showing how aghast she was now. Fluttershy continued to cringe, letting her hair cover her face and hiding beneath it.
Dash blinked. “Now…now that one…that can’t have been real… Not Fluttershy…”
“I don’t know…” Rarity spoke rather accusingly, glaring at her. “That would explain why the Horned Trip got away that night. They were your old ‘associates’ all along…”
Fluttershy only quivered more.
Twilight swallowed. She took a nervous step closer. “Fluttershy…please…tell me you didn’t actually…to all of those children…”
A loud sniffle came from Fluttershy, before she cried out as loud as her tiny voice could manage.
“That’s why I told you to leave me but you wouldn’t listen! Nobody ever listens to me! No one ever sees me or hears me! I’m just Wimpy Fluttershy! Doormat Fluttershy! Nuisance Fluttershy! And that’s why I was able to get away with it for…for years!”
Twilight was left speechless. Sunset anxiously looked at her for something, but Rarity, her own face filling with anger, stepped closer to Fluttershy as her jaw tightened.
“You…you…you inhuman monster! I’ve had nightmares about the horrors my sister went through before she died, and miserable wretches like you are the reason it happened to her! You heartless devil! You wicked witch of a woman!”
Fluttershy finally snapped up at that; her own face tightening in anger as she glared right back at Rarity.
“And what about my brother, Rarity? Or my parents? Or me? Did we deserve the way people like you treated us? Made us work to death? Barely gave us enough money to even eat let alone not sleep in a gutter? You never cared about people like me one bit until we made you unhappy! No one ever cared about us! You’d all prefer if we would have died back when Cloudsdale was destroyed! All of those children treated people like me like trash! They’d hurt little helpless animals for fun! They deserved what happened to them! All of them!”
Both women glared at each other, looking ready to dive on each other and get into a fist fight at any moment. The ladies were speechless as they looked between the two, although Applejack looked ready to take them both on. Rainbow Dash, however, regarded the whole scene with a look that was both stern and indifferent. Finally, she frowned and turned to Grogar.
“Alright…I see where this is going… So why don’t you get it over with for me?”
The peddler let out a small chuckle. “Why Rainbow Dash, whatever are you talking about?”
That only made her grit her teeth and fume. “Come on! Get it over with already!”
“I don’t know what you mean. You’ve always been such a good, consummate soldier, haven’t you?”
On cue, another frame lit up. When the ladies looked to it, they saw the farthest back in time yet. It was some sort of military drill field. It was bright and the sun was out, and soldiers and recruits were doing exercises everywhere with commanding officers barking at them. However, the scene was focused in on the central field. A squad of recruits, the youngest by far, were running demanding exercises as several high-ranking Cloudsdale officers looked on and took notes on each one.
By this point, many were sweating and tired, and beginning to collapse. However, one was continuing to push herself harder and onward. A teenager with rainbow-colored hair and a ferocity and determination none of the ladies had ever seen. It was clearly Rainbow Dash.
That image soon began to be accompanied with others, all at the same camp. Each one showed different exercises or trials, whether it was obstacle course racing, wrestling, climbing, or any other activity. In each one, Dash had the strength and drive to excel above all of her competitors.
“Just look at you! How eagerly you wanted to join the Cloudsdale Wonderbolts! How much you excelled at every part of the elite training! How you were the best recruit in years!”
In spite of all of the pleased looks and nods of approval from the officers, the present-day Rainbow Dash only looked more and more agitated. Each scene only seemed to make her angrier.
Another image came on, this one with a somewhat older Dash, now in uniform, facing an older Cloudsdale officer with swept-back, fiery hair. She formally finished affixing a badge to her outfit before standing back and giving her a smile.
“Congratulations, private. You’re now the newest member of the Cloudsdale Wonderbolts. Welcome aboard.” She ended with a salute.
The image disappeared, making way for a different image. This one was in a row of Steam Wings—ones far more impressive and maintained than the ones that the ladies had seen at the Fillydelphian fort. There were several Cloudsdale Wonderbolts heading up to them—decked out in their blue and yellow attire that contained elements both of a flight suit as well as armor. Rainbow Dash, looking a little nervous, was going up to one somewhat hesitantly along with an older, blue-haired Wonderbolt. As he fastened his own helmet and goggles, he looked to her and seemed to pick up on her emotions.
“Nervous?”
“Huh…what?” she snapped to attention. Immediately, she tried to cover it up. “I mean…no way! Heh, what makes you think that?”
“Well, you’re the new kid, aren’t you? And this is your first time out?”
“Er…well…yeah, technically. But this’ll be a piece of cake.”
He smiled regardless. “Heh…I heard you were the youngest recruit to the full Wonderbolts we ever had. I was two years older than you on my first time out and I think I…uh…hmm…well, on second thought, I won’t say what I did to my uniform. Just relax. Once you’re in the air, you’ll feel just like a bird and everything will click.”
“Really? I-I-I mean…well, duh, yeah… But not like I need it or anything, heh…”
“By the way, the name’s Soarin. Looking forward to seeing you in the sky.”
This got her to finally smile genuinely. “Rainbow Dash. I’ll make sure to show you something to make the name stick.”
“That’s more like it.”
The scene faded, turning to another one the same day. The Wonderbolts were returning to the same launch platform where their Steam Wings had taken off earlier. Many of their machines were smoking or steaming with signs of grease and oil damage, but other than that it looked like everyone had made it. One Steam Wing in particular came in for a landing. As soon as it did, it revealed that one of the gun arms on it had a somewhat battered pilot straddling it. As engineers ran out to service the machine, the actual pilot of the Steam Wing quickly dismounted and pulled off her helmet; revealing herself to be the same fiery-headed pilot from earlier.
She went to the straddling pilot and pulled off her own helmet, revealing her to be Rainbow Dash and looking mostly out of it. However, her wits seemed to come back to her as she was pulled off the wing.
“C…Captain Spitfire…?”
“Guess you’re back with us, rookie?”
“What…happened?”
“Overclocked a bit back there. Better take it easy next time or you might end up losing more than your sky armor. All the fancy tricks in the world don’t matter if you blackout while pulling them off.”
As Dash came too, she winced and instantly looked embarrassed. “Um…oh…sorry…I-I-I mean, I’m sorry ma’am.”
She frowned back, crossing her arms. “Not as sorry as I’m going to be when I need to explain to higher command why I need the budget for another new Steam Wing.”
Dash bowed her head, looking about two feet tall. However, the captain soon smiled again.
“Still…that was pretty impressive for a first time. I’m glad to see you can pull it off on the field just as well as on the course. You should fit right in.”
She looked up hopefully at that.
“Which is why I’m only going to make you clear the barracks for a month. Next time, remember, it’s the enemy units we’re supposed to be taking out, not our own, alright ‘Rainbow Crash’?”
While she winced a little at the new nickname, as well as the punishment, in the end she saluted back. “Yes ma’am!”
The captain smirked a little afterward. “And this is one you owe me, rookie. Make sure you pay me back.”
Another image lit up, this one showing some time later. There was another crowd of Wonderbolts coming out from their launching grounds. Based on the looks of them, they had just gotten back from a battle, but were rather enthused and indicating they had been the victors. In particular, many of them were crowding around the youngest in their midst—a slightly older Rainbow Dash.
“You were amazing back there, Crash!”
“I thought you’d have to be in the air five years before you could pull that off, but four down in one sortee?”
Soarin grinned as he leaned in to her. “Looks like you’re not just the youngest Wonderbolt ever, but you’re going to be the youngest one to reach Ace too.”
Dash smirked back cockily. “Ah, don’t think too much about it. It was only a bunch of Griffonstone junkers this time. They could barely even shoot back, let alone shoot straight.”
Again the image was replaced. This time it was in a small office, but from the looks of it one with a distinct military vibe and the colors of Cloudsdale. Rainbow Dash was again standing before Spitfire and both were in more formal uniforms, but Dash was looking stunned while Spitfire smiled slightly at her.
“Why so surprised, Crash? I thought you were bragging that you’d be the head of this outfit before the end of the decade. You’d think a little thing like this wouldn’t be enough to knock your socks off.”
“Heh…it’s just…well…gosh…I mean…I figured that’d only happen once you retired. But you really want me to be your new wingman?”
“You’re not saying you refuse, are you?”
“N-N-No! Of course not! It’s just…uh… Ugh, I can’t believe I’m actually saying this rather than jumping for joy…but you’re sure you don’t want someone with more experience?”
Spitfire’s smile faded. “I’m thinking it’s about time Soarin and Fleetfoot head up their own squadrons…give the younger generation a chance to move into the limelight. And I feel better with you watching my back than most of the newer members.” She cracked a smile. “Especially since you still owe me for saving your ass.”
“Oh yeah…heh…”
Spitfire’s smile went away, becoming more grim and serious. “I’m a soldier, Rainbow Dash. I just do what I’m told to do. But even I can see what’s coming down the pipe and so can everyone else. Cloudsdale got the stink-eye for years, but the Lunar Fall made everything worse. Everyone wants land as far away from the Equestrian border as possible and Cloudsdale is it. We didn’t even have to start fighting Nighttouched until last year when they found that underground channel. And now…now they got the perfect excuse with that Temperance Honeydew shooting her mouth off.”
She frowned and looked to one side.
“A couple years ago she would have just been another Gaitian zealot asking people to smash their liquor cabinets. But once she started saying the Lunar Fall was a sign of the apocalypse, a lot of scared people started to listen. Now we got religious nuts popping up all over. Fillydelphia just needs her to give a good excuse to invade. We’re going to be back to shooting at people instead of monsters a lot sooner than we want.”
Rainbow Dash’s own smile had faded by now as Spitfire looked at her seriously.
“Whatever attack comes, it’ll come for the Wonderbolts first. We’re going to have to be ready. And I know I can only be at my own best when I have wingmen I can trust to be at their best. Now can I assume one of those women is you?”
She hesitated for a few moments, but then stood at attention—looking her right back in the eye. “Yes ma’am.”
That made Spitfire smile again. “I knew I could. Enjoy your promotion by buying yourself and me another round with that fancy new salary of yours tonight, Crash.”
As this image found, Dash was bristling more than ever. Meanwhile, the peddler was beaming. “Honor after honor…record after record smashed…the best ladder-climbing rookie…all for you, Rainbow Dash! Our glorious patriot!”
She practically scowled. “Just show what happened, already!”
“Oh, not just yet! Aren’t you forgetting something? Your illustrious ‘fan club’?”
That made Dash wince. She paled a little before looking away completely. However, the rest of the ladies were able to clearly see as a new image showed up.
This one was a bit different from the others. It had gone back to when Rainbow Dash was back in the drills, and was hopping off of her first flyabout on one of the older models. She was heading over to get water from a tank, but it seemed she had drawn a crowd. The local civilians and field workers were beaming at her in astonishment. One, in particular, stood out from all the others—a girl with short hair stacked up and a homemade scooter cobbled together from spare industrial parts and driftwood.
She went straight up to the water tank as Dash arrived and gaped at her with open-mouthed adoration. “Wow…that…that was…amazing! You’re amazing!”
Hearing her, Dash looked over to her for a moment before looking away again and getting some water.
“That was unbelievable! I’ve never seen anyone fly like that before! It’s like you were born with wings!”
At first, it looked as if Dash was trying to ignore her. But as she kept laying on the praise, she finally gave a small smirk as she began to take a drink.
“I bet you’ll get into the reserve for sure! They’d be crazy not to let you in!”
After drinking, she smiled a little more. “Thanks, kid.”
“I mean it! I mean…I’ve dreamed about being able to fly in a Steam Wing one day. I keep imagining all of the things I could do with it, but…but you’re the first person I’ve ever seen who pulled them off! I bet you could take down all of Fillydelphia by yourself!”
Dash chuckled a little, growing more enthusiastic. “I don’t know about all that, but…heh…I do feel pretty awesome being in the air. So I guess you see a lot of fliers out here?”
“Yeah! I live just down the road! Whenever I’m done delivering papers I always come by to watch the tryouts. I love seeing the Steam Wings in action. You’re the best I’ve seen so far, though!”
“Heh…well…I’m just getting started, so hopefully I’ll get to show you some real cool stuff as I get better.”
“Oh, really? That’d be so amazing! What’s your name?”
“Rainbow Dash.”
“I’ll keep reading the papers, Rainbow Dash! I know you’re going to be the best Wonderbolt in Cloudsdale!”
“Heh…I already got a fan, huh? What’s your name, kid?”
“Scootaloo!”
“I guess I’ll make sure to keep an eye out for you during the victory parades then, huh? See you around.”
The image faded. It gave rise to a different one on a different day. Rainbow Dash, still a bit dirty but more cleaned up and hydrated, was heading out from a large hanger building. She looked a bit tired but still enthused as she walked a short distance, only to come to a halt in surprise.
Scootaloo was there, but she wasn’t alone. She had gotten a few other of the local kids with her to unfurl a hand-painted banner with ‘Welcome Back, Rainbow Dash’ on it. They also gave a chorus of applause and some general fanfare for her as she emerged.
After a moment she grinned. As soon as they died down in the applause, she chuckled. “You were serious about that fan club thing, weren’t you?”
“Uh, duh! Who wouldn’t want to join a club for the best ace in the Wonderbolts?”
“Oh-ho…you found out about that? Heh, you get your news almost as fast as I do.”
“Four anti-aircraft batteries in one sortee? You’re unbelievable! I knew you’d be the best flier in the Wonderbolts!”
“Ms. Dash? Can I get you to sign this piece of paper? My little brother really wants one!”
“Me too! Me too!”
“Heh…sure. I can’t really let down my own fan club, can I?”
The image faded and gave rise to another one. This one was again further in the future, and showed a rather surprised Rainbow Dash looking down at a somewhat older Scootaloo. Except this time, she was wearing a set of coveralls with the same colors as Cloudsdale.
“You’re a mechanic, Scootaloo?”
“Well…junior mechanic. I admit I don’t really know that much yet, but…Cloudsdale was looking for more volunteers and when I saw they were going to teach more greasemonkeys for the Steam Wings, I had to sign up. This is my best chance to be around you! And now I get to make sure your Steam Wings are always up and running!”
“Uh…”
Seeing her hesitation made the girl’s own enthusiasm fade. “What’s the matter? I…I kind of thought you’d be happy about this…”
“No, no, it’s not that… It’s just…um…you know the reason they asked for more volunteers, right kid?”
“Yeah! ‘Cause we’re gonna head to war with Fillydelphia and you’re totally going to kick their butts!”
“Right, right… Um, that’s true, but…you know this is a base right on the border, Scootaloo. It’s going to be the first place they’ll hit if it comes to a war. A lot of people might get killed who can’t use weapons…”
“I know, but I’m not worried. Not when you’re here defending the place! And besides…if they do invade…I want to do something to help you. If I can’t fly, then I’ll make sure your Steam Wing is running at its best!”
Dash hesitated, looking more tense about this than anything else the ladies had seen so far, before she seemed to realize Scootaloo wouldn’t be dissuaded and gave in. “Alright. I can’t very well say no to that, can I? Let’s just cross our fingers that it doesn’t happen until you can fly a wing of your own, alright?”
“Awesome! Thanks, Rainbow Dash!”
Again the image faded and reappeared a bit later. At first, it showed nothing except an empty launching field, similar to the one the drills were on. A second later, however, a Steam Wing came in for a landing. Not one of the professional ones but rather a beat-up model used for testing and practice. Nevertheless, Rainbow Dash, in more casual attire, was piloting it…but she wasn’t alone. Riding in front of her and standing on her feet with her hands out where the controls would go, effectively using Dash as a “booster seat”, was Scootaloo. She was a mixture of shocked and ecstatic as they landed and Dash began to power it down.
“So kid…how was your first flight?”
She was speechless for a moment longer before the shock was finally fully overridden by joy. “That…that was amazing…! I…I can’t believe I actually flew!”
“Heh…just wait until you go up solo. Just got to get a few more inches on you. And, uh…don’t tell anyone I did this. Or I’ll be the one being the greasemonkey for the next six months.”
“Heh-heh…you got it! When can we go again?”
“Let’s say when you make apprentice mechanic, eh? Give you something to work toward.”
“Ugh…seriously? That’s so boring…”
“Alright then. Let’s make it when you get your first five meter jump on that scooter of yours. Deal?”
“That’s more like it! Deal!”
The last image faded, but no more came up to replace it. This actually gave the ladies pause, especially since Dash had closed her eyes and seemed to be trying to block it out all together.
Twilight turned to Grogar. “But there was nothing there that was ‘evil’. Rainbow Dash was loyal to those who depended on her.”
“She was indeed. She was loyal to a fault,” Grogar flatly responded. “And her greatest loyalty was always to the first ones who demanded it of her.”
Another frame started to light up. The ladies looked and saw something quite different. It wasn’t the fields or the hanger or anywhere in Cloudsdale for that matter. It was something else entirely. It was an inner room without windows and only a few lights. Nevertheless, it was still set with a military. There were a squad of people lined up with feet planted and arms behind their backs—all at attention. They were young, though. Barely even old enough to be cadets. Even so, the officers that faced them treated them sternly and coldly.
Only they weren’t from Cloudsdale. They wore the uniforms of Fillydelphia.
“Cloudsdale represents the single greatest threat to Fillydelphian sovereignty if not to the peace and stability of the entire continent of Greater Everfree,” the commanding officer addressed the crowd. “With the invention of what they call the ‘Steam Wing’ and the large population of radical Gaitians they have allowed to infiltrate their society, war is inevitable and, at this juncture, will go very badly for our country. As they continue to develop and proliferate their war machines, it is only a matter of time before they become the uncontested force in our modern world. We cannot allow the chance that they will let an extremist into power. Our own military would be helpless in a conflict, if not for our own secret weapon. And that is what you are—our country’s greatest military asset.”
Pinkie turned her head a little at the scene. “Hmm… Isn’t that Rainbow Dash in the front over there?”
Twilight and Sunset looked and, sure enough, among the children in the front row and standing alongside another girl with hair styled like lightning was a girl with rainbow-tinted hair. She faced the front as boldly and readily as all the others, however.
“You are here for two reasons. One…out of all of the members of the Fillydelphian military youth league, you have shown the most promise. You’re the most highly skilled, the most intelligent, and, foremost of all, the ones with the greatest loyalty, nationalism, and patriotism you have in our democratically elected government. Each one of you has the spirit and drive of a hundred of our soldiers. You are our nation’s truly best and brightest—the ones we look to in order to secure our future.
“Two…and more prominently…because of the first reason, you are being selected on the greatest covert operation our country has ever anticipated. Starting tomorrow, you will all be seeded into Cloudsdale. Your existing records, birth certificates, and identification shall all be summarily destroyed as you are imported as migrants on trains, orphans from conflict, or undocumented workers. Starting tomorrow, you are all citizens of Cloudsdale with no ties to Fillydelphia except the greatest and most important ones—the ones you keep buried deep in your loyal, patriotic hearts.
“Like seeds of ivy, you will be sown among enemy ground. You will grow, blossom, and flourish within them like a vine that grows interwoven with a wall being erected. To all but yourselves and us, you will be Cloudsdale citizens. Some of you will be their citizens. Some will be their soldiers. Some will be their leaders. Yet always your hearts will remain Fillydelphian.
“They will remain that way until the day finally comes in which Cloudsdale turns its ambitions to the north. When that wall they are erecting becomes a blockhouse or rampart against Fillydelphia. At that time, you will finally seize your moment to tear that rampart apart from within. To bring it all crashing down. To clip their wings and silence their fanaticism. To enable the salvation of your true homes and heartlands. Your loyalty will be known only to a few. History will not chart your deeds or memory. Yet ever will you have the pride of knowing how many Fillydelphians will never have to see war and death because of what you have done.”
He made a salute.
“Love and pride for the heartland…Fillydelphia.”
Dash, along with the others, returned the salute and responded. “Love and pride for the heartland…Fillydelphia.”
The scene faded, giving rise to another one many years later. It was back at the fort where the Wonderbolts were stationed, and seemed to be in one of the various officer rooms. In particular, Rainbow Dash’s. It was at night now, and from the fact she was taking off her jacket and shirt and looking weary, she seemed to be getting ready for bed.
As she threw her shirt aside, she lazily looked to the window, only to pause. From her perspective, she was looking out over a long river stretching all the way east and west…a natural border between Cloudsdale and FIllydelphia. Most of the area was long and flat, although it grew more hilly and rocky to the east. However, the landscape wasn’t what had caught her eye—it was a warning light, which was soon accompanied by a distant siren.
She groaned. “Man…those Nighttouched things are attacking now? I was just getting ready to hit the-”
She cut herself off; her eyes widening and the color draining from her face.
She spotted something else. Very small, very innocuous. A tiny light on the far side of the river directly across from her fort. It was so small most probably would have thought little of it. Except it was blinking in a pattern. It seemed random at first but after a few moments it was clear it was showing off a very specific sequence. What more, unlike any normal candlelight or oil lamp, this one had a distinct purple hue.
Dash stood there motionless. She began to breathe a little hard. Sweat formed on her brow.
Finally, though, she closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and was calm again. When her eyes opened they were full of conviction. She only stopped long enough to put her shirt and jacket on again before turning and heading out.
A new image came on nearby. This one was outside the hanger area, and the landscape had changed. Alarms were now going off everywhere. From a distance, the sounds of artillery shells and explosions going off were thundering. A battle had definitely broken out.
After a few moments a chorus of footsteps became audible. Teams of Wonderbolts were revealed running to the hangers. They were struggling to put on their uniforms as they went. Soarin was one of them as a Wonderbolt with white, breezed-back hair and a grumpy look ran alongside him for the nearest one.
“I don’t believe this! Of all the rotten luck! Fillydelphia finally decides to invade on the day we get a Nighttouched attack! We already got most of the ground units trying to hold those things back!”
“We’re just going to have to work twice as hard! Come on! This is what we’ve been drilling for the past couple months!”
He ran forward a bit more, but suddenly slowed. He looked past the hanger as if spotting something or someone nearby. The white-haired one ran a little farther before stopping and turning back. “Hey! What’re you doing?”
“I…I thought I just saw-”
“Just move it! We need to get the Steam Wings in the air before any of their shells can hit them!”
“Y…yeah…alright!”
He took off for a run again, following her to and into the hanger.
That image continued to play as a different image lit up. This one was within the next nearest hanger. It showed an open door for a moment; before a form ran through it, quickly slipping into the shadows to avoid being seen. However, with the way the contrast was lit up on the image, it was soon clear who it was—Rainbow Dash.
She held momentarily, making sure no one had spotted her, before she ducked inside. She moved through the darkened area and through the variously-staged Steam Wings for several moments before she made her way back to the mechanic’s area. She looked around before she spotted what she was looking for—one of the large boiler tanks being used to “refuel” the Steam Wings before launch.
She moved over to it and quickly began to adjust a few of the controls. After she had done so, she took up one of the wrenches and did something to one of the valves. Once she had it turned in a certain way…a way that immediately caused a sound of pressure building to begin to emit…she began to push and tug on the wrench to start bending the end of it, trying to wedge it into some of the pipes.
“Rainbow Dash…?”
In an instant she stopped what she was doing and spun around. Standing in the dark, looking at her a bit tiredly and curiously, was Scootaloo still in her coveralls.
“Scoot…aloo… What are you doing out here this late?”
“I was changing the gaskets… What are you doing out here?”
“Me? Uh…nothing. Just…just didn’t seem to load my wing fast enough last time, so I was checking out the old boiler.”
“But…your wing is over in Hanger B. And…why were you adjusting the shutoff and pressure valves?”
Dash didn’t answer. She moistened her lips. A second later she took a step forward. “Listen…it’s pretty late. Why don’t I walk you home?”
Scootaloo, however, gave her an uncertain look. “But the attack alarm’s going off… I need to be here… And…and for that matter, why are you in here instead of suiting up?”
Dash halted. She stared at the girl. Behind her, the pressure whine got louder. Loud enough to start sounding like a kettle beginning to boil.
Finally, the woman sighed and bowed her head.
“Who am I kidding? I knew it was going to come to this one day from the start.”
“Rainbow Dash…? What are you…”
She said no more. Her voice aborted as Dash pulled out a small revolver from her pocket and proceeded to shoot the girl twice—once in either knee.
Filled with shock and agony, Scootaloo fell to the ground and began to scream. Yet her voice was rapidly being overcome by the sound of the rising whistle as well as the distant explosions. Putting her gun back in her pocket, Dash clamped her jaw shut and looked firm as she walked up to the girl’s body and drag her back—away from where anyone could see her and right next to the boiler system that was starting to quiver. By now, the pain had driven her into tears, and she gazed at Dash in a mixture of horror and disbelief.
Yet she wouldn’t look back at her. She took only a moment to tether her belt to the machine before rising and walking away.
“Why?! Why?!” Scootaloo finally managed to yell through her pain. Dash didn’t stop, however. She kept walking until she was out of the hanger.
The scene with Scootaloo feebly reaching out in vain for Dash with bloody hands, still crying out to her, kept playing for several moments along with those loading up into the hangers. By the time the crew arrived in her own hanger, the whining of the machine and the explosions were too loud to hear her cries. A third scene began to light up as it did. This one was of Spitfire in her own officer’s barracks. She was fully getting into her own flight suit the whole while as fast as she could.
Yet when she finally left the barracks and ran out into the field, the same thing happened in all three images—the hangers exploded. Soarin and all of his companions were instantly engulfed in fireballs. Scootaloo’s face yelled out for Dash one last time before she was consumed along with everyone else in her own hanger. And Spitfire halted in mid-run before gazing at the fiery pillars that were once her hangers and her units in total horror.
She continued to stand there, letting her helmet fall out of her grip and staring silently as the fires rapidly started to spread across the area—being exacerbated by the oncoming Fillydelphia forces as well as the sounds of combat with Nighttouched. The officer’s barracks was located at something of an elevation over the rest of the fort, but from here all that meant was it afforded a great view of the total devastation.
She didn’t break until a voice finally called to her. “Captain!”
Spitfire turned and saw an equally-horrified-looking Rainbow Dash running up the hill to the escarpment overlooking the base.
“D-Dash…?”
“Captain, it’s over! The Fillydelphians sabotaged the hangers! They took out the Steam Wings and everyone who was there! We’re being overrun!”
“Wha…what? That’s…that’s impossible! We’re the Wonderbolts! We’re the elites of Cloudsdale! We can’t-”
Rainbow Dash came to a halt in front of her, panting and gasping but also shaking her head hopelessly. “I’m sorry, captain…it’s all over. They’re gone… They went into the hangers to take off and…and they just…went up…”
“But…but there’s got to be some who aren’t out yet. Soarin…Fleetfoot…”
“They were in Hanger B when it lit up. The Fillydelphians are coming in full force… Those Nighttouched monsters are flooding the channel… There’s…there’s no one left. No one except us. They had to be planning this…”
Spitfire couldn’t answer. She could only stand there dumbfounded as the realization of everything that happened hit her. And that left her as silent and still as a statue, looking out at the flaming remains of her base and hearing the sounds of death coming ever closer.
“Captain, we’ve got to run. It’s the only thing we can do now.”
Spitfire was quiet a moment longer, before she took in a deep breath. “Maintenance Building Charlie.”
“Huh…?”
“Maintenance Building Charlie. It’s on the far side of the fort. There’s five Steam Wings undergoing maintenance. They’re old, but two of them are still good. Between the two of us, we can get them armed quick too.”
“Captain? You’re not…serious are you? It’s all over! Look what they did!”
“The only thing I see, Crash, is that our fort is the only thing standing between that Nighttouched flood, the Fillydelphians, and the capitol. Which means it has to stay standing.”
“But…but we can’t! The Wonderbolts are done!”
“No they’re not, Crash! They’ve still got us!”
Dash went silent as Spitfire turned to her; looking at her with more intensity, ferocity, and devotion than she had ever seen.
“Those cowards couldn’t take us! They had to make Soarin, Fleetfoot, Thunderlane, High Winds and all the others die like that! If we run off now, that’s going to be the end of the Wonderbolts! But even if there’s only two of us, we can make that count for something! We can make them count for something! Every second we’re in the air is a second someone uses to get away!”
“Captain… Spitfire…we can’t win…”
“That doesn’t sound like the Rainbow Dash I know!” she barked back sharply. “Come on, already! I want to hear the real you! The one who boasts that they’re going to take out the Fillydelphians single-handedly! The one who says she’s going to beat my record at every turn! I made you my wingman because it’s times like these when I need you more than ever!”
She held out her hand to Dash, putting it practically in her face from where she stood. Dash stared back silently, mouth hanging open, as the sounds of explosions and fire continued to rage. The flames drew nearer below them and lit up Spitfire with a passion and light she had never seen before. One that passed even her own greatest moments.
After a few moments, Dash’s hand began to raise to take hers. She hesitated before grasping it. “For Cloudsdale…?”
Spitfire extended the rest of the way and clasped her hand.
“For the Wonderbolts.”
Dash hesitated, before getting enough strength to clasp the hand back.
“For the Wonderbolts.”
The captain smiled as she pulled her up and forward, and Dash smiled back at her. “Let’s go. You’re not in your flight suit, but forget that now. Not like we care whether or not we can still hear at the end of this.”
She nearly turned away, but Dash held on. “Hey, Captain?”
Spitfire turned back. “Yeah?”
“Thanks…for everything.”
“Hey…don’t get emotional on me yet, Crash. Save that for when I’ve been shot down.”
Dash let out a single chuckle. She released Spitfire’s hand, letting the captain go so she could turn back around.
And as soon as her back was to Dash, the younger Wonderbolt pulled up the revolver again and put a bullet in the back of her head.
She never saw Spitfire’s final look of shock as her body went limp. The momentum didn’t take her to the ground but rather off the escarpment, dragging her down into the spreading fires below. Dash forced herself to watch that at least—all the way down before she vanished into the flames.
Once that happened, and all three images were now filled with the sight of the fires burning, she tossed her revolver down the hill afterward, turned, and walked away.
All three images faded, leaving the ladies aghast once again.
“It’s just that those who she was only secondarily loyal to never realized that until it was too late,” Grogar finished.
“So…” Sunset spoke up. “That explains everything. Why you were the only Wonderbolt who survived… Why Fillydelphia immediately made you an ‘honorary citizen’… They weren’t respecting your service. They were congratulating you on a ‘job well done’. That battle…that event that meant the end of Cloudsdale… Trottingham always suspected there was espionage involved. But…but it was you. You all along…”
A bitter chuckle came from Dash’s bowed head. She slowly raised it, taking a deep breath, and giving a weak grin to no one. “Funny, isn’t it? I was loyal to Fillydelphia ever since I could join the cadet corp. And somehow that made me end up being the biggest traitor, huh?”
“Rainbow Dash…” Twilight began to say.
This, however, only triggered her to grit her teeth and spin around. “I don’t want to hear it, Twilight! I don’t want to hear it from you or any other civilians! War brings out what life is really all about! All these ideas you’ve got of ‘heroes’ and ‘villains’? It’s a bunch of crap! The only thing that matters is who wins and who loses! Then all the suits who haven’t even picked up a gun in twenty years can write history books however they want it! I did what a soldier was supposed to do! If I have to kill a million people from Cloudsdale to save one person from Fillydelphia, then I do it! Cloudsdale needed to fall!”
“And what about all those people who just happened to be in the way?” Fluttershy angrily retorted. “Did they have to die too? People just trying to stay alive and get by in a world that was already cheating them and kicking them when they were down?”
“Oh, that’s rich coming from a devious siren like you!” Rarity snapped back. “You haven’t the slightest right to judge anyone around here! Not after how many lives you destroyed! How many parents you robbed of their children!”
“Well you’d know all about that, wouldn’t you, Rarity?!” Applejack shouted. “I bet ya’ didn’t give one red cent to your employees when they got sick or hurt slavin’ in your factory! Or maybe ya’ just got them bumped off by your thugs so you could get someone else to fill in for ‘em!”
“And you’d know all about ‘bumping people off’, Applejack!” Fluttershy shot back in accusation. “You talk and talk about wanting to help your family, but you don’t even care about everyone in your own family or anyone else! You just want to make sure that you keep your farm and your ranch! As if thousands of people haven’t already lost a lot more than that!”
“Oh, can it, Fluttershy!” Dash snapped. “Don’t act like you care so much about other people! You’re only mad about some dumb animals! You probably cared more about some alley rat’s babies than girls you sent off to be some fat bastard’s bedroom toy!”
“I’d say you got her trumped, Rainbow Dash!” Applejack sneered. “At least those kids had been onery to her and beatin’ up on dogs and cats! But you? You shot out the legs of a kid who looked up to you and you left her to burn! You couldn’t even look her in the eye when ya’ did it!”
“Oh-ho-ho, let’s not be so judgmental, Applejack,” Rarity spat. “After all, you kept a black hood on when you were off leading hooligans to beat your own grandfather to death! I wonder how much your poor granny’s heart would do to learn about half of the things you’ve been doing!”
“She’s ain’t gotta know ‘cause it’s none of her business! All the family’s got to know is that I kept the farm up, runnin’, and ours! And I ain’t sorry ‘bout that!”
“Well I’m not sorry for having kept my family’s business afloat and making it more successful than it’s ever been! Everyone has a right to take care of themselves!”
“Which is why those parents should have taken better care of their children, or taught them not to be so mean and cruel! No one wanted them around! I did everyone a favor!”
“And if it wasn’t for me, you’d all be dealing with a military run by some fundamentalist whacko, so I did you all a favor! I kept Fillydelphia safe so there’s nothing for me to be sorry for!”
By now, Twilight and Sunset alike were both aghast. Partially at the revelations…but more at how the ladies were reacting. They were growing louder and angrier by the moment. Never before had they seen them all so hateful-looking, and it only seemed to grow the more infuriated it got.
While they were still standing there trying to think of what to say or do next, however, Pinkie ended up taking the initiative. Abruptly, she seemed to pop up right in the center of them where their vision met and held up her hands in a stopping gesture.
“O-kay everyone… Clearly we all haven’t been totally, absolutely, completely honest with each other…but the important thing is that we’re all friends and Gaia Everfree loves and forgives everyone. So…can we maybe try calming down just a teeny bit?”
Aside from going quiet, the four didn’t appear to acknowledge Pinkie at all. They kept glaring at each other even given her position. However, the peddler reacted with another bout of snickering.
“Oh, you’re the funniest one of all, Pinkie Pie. After all, you’ve been ignoring who you really are from the start. I can’t believe it’s come this far.”
“Hey! I know just who I am!” Pinkie indignant protested. “I’m Pinkamena Diane Pie of the Pie family, and a child of Gaia Everfree!”
Grogar let out a single dismissive snort, again summoning the room’s attention. “Childish…in more ways than one. Yet I suppose it is typical. A wretched, purposeless shell of a creature like you would cling to whatever infantile fairy tale the lesser people of this world would invent to give you any sort of meaning.”
Both Twilight and Sunset began to grow nervous at this, in spite of Pinkie’s childish obliviousness. She, on the other hand, only looked a bit puzzled. “I’m not exactly sure what all of those mean, but I do like fairy tales!”
“You are no child of ‘Gaia Everfree’ or any other mother,” Grogar flatly continued. “In fact, you are nothing. Nothing but trash from flesh and souls pieced together into a wretched creature.”
His eyes burned into her like a cosmic judge.
“You are a demon, Pinkamena Diane Pie. One of my own experimental theories brought to life in an attempt to make a singular vessel capable of housing the Angra Mainyu. You were yet another one of the monsters that gave me my namesake. And just like all the others, you have no purpose but to kill and destroy. No other meaning. No other reason to exist.”
Twilight and Sunset both stood alike open-mouthed at all of that; realizing what it meant in the context of what they had been shown by Maud’s spirit. They both looked at Pinkie—growing increasingly nervous on doing so. She stood there silently and expressionlessly. For a few moments, she didn’t betray the slightest emotion. It wasn’t even clear she had heard him.
Then she reacted. She erupted into a guffaw followed by a peel of laughter.
While the chamber stayed silent and Grogar continued to look at her grimly, the laughter was encouraging to the two ladies. Sunset let out an exhale of relief on hearing it herself.
“Hehe…that’s a good one! I know Maud found me in a box and everything, but a monster? You may look like an angry goat man, but you’re still funny!”
“So…you don’t believe me.”
“Nope! Gaia Everfree said that killing people is bad, so I don’t do that!”
“Really now…”
“Twilight…”
Sunset and Twilight alike looked up at the voice that suddenly came from their left, in spite of only the latter being addressed. What they saw made them gasp.
Maud had appeared out of nowhere. Only something was very different this time. She wasn’t her normal composed self. Her clothing was torn and tattered, her “body” was covered with sweat, and she looked like she was struggling with all of her might to hold something back. Like she was standing in front of an invisible dam that was about to burst. And in spite of her normally morose composure, she had a vibrancy in her eyes as she stared at them.
“I…can’t hold him back…and talk to her at the same time…”
“M…Maud?” Twilight asked aloud.
“Then I suppose you wouldn’t mind telling me what happened the night you and your sister traveled to Cloudsdale for new tools six years ago,” Grogar asked, apparently not focusing on them.
Pinkie hesitated, getting one of her thoughtful expressions for several moments. “You know…that’s actually really funny. I usually got a pretty good memory, but it’s weird. I can’t really remember what happened before I got put in that box, and I really can’t remember what happened that night. Just that me and Maud went home without the tools afterward and everyone looked sad and mopey for a while even after I threw them a party to cheer them up.”
“Don’t let her…remember…what happened that night…”
“Huh? Why? What happened…?”
Before Maud could say anything else, though, she vanished. As if she had never been there at all. Twilight was left dumbfounded. Sunset winced and turned back to Pinkie.
“Ah…selective memory loss. Yet another attribute you would naturally possess given your polymorphic body. Who would have thought such a failure would have the ability to feel emotional pain…?” Grogar mused. “No matter, though. You still serve as a key for the Angra Mainyu, which means your true self is waiting to be restored. And it will be now.”
With that, a frame lit up again—this one right in front of Pinkie and the others.
“Uh…P-Pinkie?” Sunset said hesitantly. “Maybe…maybe we should-”
But it was too late. “Hey! There’s Maud!”
The image did indeed open up on Maud. Specifically, both Maud and Pinkie in a scene the ladies had never seen before. They were kneeling before a roadside shrine to Gaia Everfree…one that had been vandalized and covered with paint. The two had done their best to restore it and now they were praying before it. It was either late evening or night alongside a fairly well-traveled road.
As they knelt and prayed, however, shadows gradually loomed over them from behind. The shadows of five or six individuals. Their footsteps clicked against the road, and so the two were aware of them long before they halted behind them. Pinkie turned first, looking curious, while Maud, still reserved as always, turned only slowly afterward.
“Oh, hi there!” Pinkie chirped. “Are you the town welcoming committee? I should probably tell you someone ruined your Gaitian road shrine…”
“Hey there,” one of the individuals asked—not friendly or warm in the least. “What do you two think you’re doing?”
Pinkie blinked. “Well, I’m thinking of going to a great big party with a three-layered cake and lots of games like Blind Man’s Bluff and croquet…”
Maud’s hand extended to her—a signal to be quiet and let her handle this. Pinkie immediately pinched her lip in a childish way while Maud faced the group. “We’re just passing through. We stopped to pray before looking for a place to stay for the night. We don’t want any trouble.”
She began to rise, only for the one in the lead to take a step forward and make her halt. “Well, you see, you say you don’t want any trouble…but there’s a problem with that. One…you can clearly see from the look of that crap you call an idol over there that we don’t want any more of you heathen religious nuts spreading your apocalyptic crap in Cloudsdale. Two…what in the hell made you think any of us want you staying in this town for the night or any other night?”
Maud hesitated, but then finished standing up the rest of the way. Pinkie, seemingly oblivious to the danger, quickly hopped up alongside her. The mob began to move in closer and surround them.
“What do we need to do for you to let us be on our way?”
“That depends. How much you got?”
“We only brought food and clothes with us. We don’t have any money.”
“Yeah?”
The one in the lead pulled out a pistol, cocked the hammer, and pointed it right in Maud’s gut.
“How about you let us check and make sure?”
Pinkie paused. Her face immediately looked uneasy. “Um…Maud?”
“It’s alright, Pinkie. I already told you that me and my sister don’t have anything. You’ll be wasting your time.”
“Well,” he spoke with a sneer as he stepped forward and reached for her shirt, “maybe you and your sister’ll have something else besides money…”
Two of the mob moved in on either side, grabbing either of Pinkie’s arms. Surprised, she looked up and at both of them…
At that moment, Maud moved—suddenly driving her forehead forward and smashing it into the head of the one with the gun. A resounding crack went off, and he let out a cry and a swear as he spilled backward—blood running from his head. As soon as he hit the ground the pistol tumbled from his grip, and Maud rushed forward and kicked it aside.
Two of the other mob members rushed in on her, but she hoisted her rucksack and swung it around. It had to have something solid and metal in it, because the first man let out a cry from a sharp clang against his head before spilling back. The second managed to seize her, but his grip wasn’t good enough and she quickly drove her elbow into his midsection. It was only enough to stun him a moment, but that was long enough for her to reach into her sack and pull out a hammer from her cutting tools.
Immediately, the man grabbed her before she could use it, but she furiously began to wiggle her arm free. Seeing how much trouble she was causing, the two men holding Pinkie hesitated momentarily before they finally let her go to move in on Maud from behind.
“Run, Pinkie! Get out of-”
BLAM
Maud cut herself off. Her face went blank. A moment later, the man wrestling with her suddenly released as she fell to the ground limply. When she did, she revealed to those watching the reason. The last of the mob had taken up the gun and, in a panic, aimed and fired into Maud’s abdomen. Now she lay on the ground with a growing, bleeding wound soaking into her clothes and not moving.
Pinkie saw all of this. At once, every trace of youthful innocence and cheer drained from her face. “Maud…?”
No response.
She took a step closer to her, but that only made her see the injury more closely. It froze her to the spot as she covered her face in horror.
“Maud?!”
Still no answer. Pinkie’s knees buckled. Her hands covered her eyes entirely as she cringed—looking like she was going into silent sobbing.
As for the one holding the gun, he looked a little stunned that he had actually done it. Soon after, one of the others snapped to him. “What the hell, man? You didn’t have to shoot her! We were just trying to scare her!”
“Hey! Screw you! She had a weapon! She was going to split his head open!”
“Well someone had to have heard that!”
“Is she still breathing?”
“Who cares…?” the one whose forehead was bleeding grunted as he started to get up. “Let’s just get the hell out of here before someone sees us!”
“Well what about the other one? She saw the whole thing!”
As they continued to talk and argue, Pinkie didn’t move another muscle. That wasn’t, however, to say that no change at all was happening. On the contrary.
As she stood there, her hair, previously always curly and poofy, was beginning to unwind and smooth. Before their very eyes, it was losing all volume and becoming flat and straight. Except none of the mob noticed due to their arguing.
“Just take her with us! We’ll think of something to do with her!”
None of the mob seemed to like that, but finally they looked to the one with the gun. He grumbled as he raised to his feet, still holding the weapon uneasily, but forcing it in front of him as he walked up to Pinkie Pie.
“Alright…”
At this point, the ladies realized that Pinkie was still holding her position, but wasn’t crying at all. Her hair was now perfectly flat and straight. The moment the man talked to her, she slowly pulled her hands down enough to reveal her eyes.
Twilight and Sunset nearly gasped again. They had somehow gotten bigger. Only slightly so, but definitely larger. Yet far worse was her pupils. They had noticeably shrunk along with the irises. They no longer looked human. And as they watched…they slowly began to drift in independent directions.
The man clamped a hand on her shoulder. “Come on you, let’s go.”
Within the very next moment, a wet ripping sound went out followed by cloth—the sound of a long, disjointed, claw-like, and thin limb ripping out of Pinkie’s back along with her clothing. Without a word or another movement from her, it shot out and seized the man by the face.
He began to scream, but the noise he made next was far more horrible as the digits on the hand sank into his skin and flesh and gripped him by his own skull. With a sound just as horrid as those made by Sombra’s gruesome work, Twilight and Sunset nearly gagged on seeing the limb “debone” the man with one mighty yank like he was no more than a dead fish.
That was merely the beginning of the most horrific, grotesque, and nightmarish scene the two women had ever seen. It defied description…or perhaps merely the act of trying to describe what happened was so scarring and horrifying that they didn’t want to even try. What they did see was Pinkie proceed to grow more limbs and body parts as she killed the remaining five men in the most horrible ways imaginable. She was so fast and brutal that they each had time to realize how they had been mutilated or maimed before they actually died.
Unfortunately for them, they weren’t enough for her.
Whether they were drawn to the gunshot or the inhuman noises, people began to arrive and she set on them just as ravenously and brutally. Those who were fortunate enough to use weapons found them totally worthless before their lives were cut short. Yet still that wasn’t enough for her. By that point, she had worked her way toward the town, and now she was proceeding to break into each building one by one looking for more victims.
By the time the whole town was filled with screams and carnage, and Pinkie had reached her third house, Maud finally gave a pained grunt and grasped her middle. She was still bleeding, but she forced herself to sit up. The moment she did, she saw the remains of her assailants and saw the trail leading into the nearby town.
“Pinkie…”
In spite of her pain, she forced herself back up her feet.
“Pinkie…stop…”
She started to limp toward the town. She looked to be in agony, but she forced it back to call out louder.
“Pinkie…! Stop! I’m…I’m alright!”
Yet over the screams, cries, and carnage, even Maud’s attempt to yell went unheard. Suddenly, the side door of the third house burst open. Terrified and mumbling prayers, a woman in a nightgown desperately clutching a baby to her chest with one hand while pulling along a girl stained with blood with her other hand charged out into the street.
A second later, the entire side of the house burst—allowing a twenty-foot tall, multi-limbed, multi-eyed, multi-faced, and multi-mouthed abomination to lurch out to the sound of squelching flesh. It let out a horrible noise from three of its mouths as its independently gyrating eyes thrashed everywhere, but four of them focused on the fleeing woman and her children. It extended long, ropelike tongues as it started to slouch and hobble over to her with frightening speed.
Maud hesitated at the sight of the monster, but only a moment. She ran after it and kept yelling. “Stop, Pinkie! Stop!”
She began to catch up to it as it got close enough to reach out a long limb with hooked nails that slashed at the woman and her child. It caught both of their arms, ripping gashes into them and causing them to involuntarily release. The girl, crying out in pain, fell to the ground. The mother got two more steps before gasping, realizing what happened and turning back.
“Mommy!”
As the monster loomed over the girl from behind, Maud desperately pushed herself to run right up behind her. “I’m alright, Pinkie! I’m al-”
Hearing another victim behind it, the monster extended its clawed arm and spun around to rend it apart.
Maud’s voice was cut off yet again as her severed head flew from her neck and tumbled down the street.
The thing, about to roar again, cut itself off instantly. Its horrible body froze right where it was, and the independently moving eyes all snapped around and looked right in front of it. It had happened so fast that Maud’s body was still there with one arm extended out toward the monster. Yet it fell as well, and her body soon collapsed to the ground again for the second and final time.
The monster’s horrid mouths hung open loosely. Its pupils in each of its eyes shrank to pinpricks. Noises came from its throat, but they were stuttered and slow. Each of its horrid limbs began to quiver as its claws and fingers lowered. Finally, water started to form in each of its multiple eyes…tears.
A noise began to come from it, but it was no longer horrible or bloodthirsty. It was a whine…a slow, small, lowly whine. Yet it got louder, becoming more of a cry. It started to heave, sounding almost like sobbing. Finally, the eyes bulged and looked to the heavens as tears came from it, and its limbs fell like dead weight as it turned its head up and let out a long, wretched, miserable note.
Still bellowing that note, it turned away from the death and blood it had spilled and charged into the nearest stand of trees. It vanished inside them, still crying as it ran off into the night.
The image cut off, and the room was deathly silent. Sunset and Twilight both looked at Pinkie, but her back was to them…and she was staring where the picture had been. Her arms hung at her sides limply.
Finally, she broke the silence.
“I…I killed Maud.”
Her knees began to buckle. Her hands stiffly raised and grasped the sides of her head. As they did, her hair began to smooth and flatten…just as it had before in the image. Sunset instantly began to sweat. Twilight uneasily held her hand out.
“Pinkie…”
She couldn’t say more, because Pinkie began to produce a sound. Something that sounded like a weak, hysterical laugh. Yet it only lasted for a few seconds before turning into soft sobs, and then back to laughing again, and then crying again. Soon, she was emitting a strange, twisted amalgamation of both.
“I…I killed Maud…!” she said louder as her hair flattened completely. “I killed Maud! I killed Maud!”
Her voice began to grow unhinged as she said that, and her laughter and crying began to grow louder and more disjointed. Both Sunset and Twilight were pale at this point. In desperation, the latter turned to the ladies. “Rainbow Dash, could-”
“So she’s the reason we had to invade!”
Both ladies were taken aback. Dash didn’t sound the least bit impacted by what she had just witnessed. She was still full of anger…of hate…and now directing it at Pinkie as she continued to laugh and cry louder.
“She caused that massacre! Fillydelphia thought it was the Gaitian extremists and they decided we had to invade! The whole reason Cloudsdale fell was because of her! She really is a demon!”
Sunset and Twilight were aghast, but it only got worse.
“Don’t try an’ blame your rottenness on her, ya’ snake in the grass! You backstabbed ‘em all! You’re the rat in here!”
“Keep your filthy mouth shut, you backwoods little hatemonger! You’re nothing more than a redneck thug playing at being salt of the earth!”
“And you’re a liar, a cheat, a thief, and a murderer! You should be thrown into the gutter with the rest of the Manehattan garbage!”
“And you, you soulless little waif, aught to be dragged into a back alley and shot!”
“I killed Maud!” Pinkie shrieked in a horrible voice. “I…killEd…MAuD…!”
Sunset began to shrink back in fear. Twilight was gaping at everyone. They all looked ready to tear each other apart, and Pinkie seemed on the verge of another act of monstrosity…
When, suddenly, they all froze.
The two ladies blinked, as if they were seeing things, but it was true. Each of them had become as a statue. Even Pinkie. The only motion now was from Spike, who was entirely too close to them and whining now.
“I think it best they hold their tongues for this final part,” Grogar remarked. “They’re growing entirely too violent.”
Twilight looked over them, from one face to another in shock. But each one of their faces was twisted in hate. It was hard to even recognize them. Finally, she turned back to Grogar. “What have you two done to them? Why are they acting like this?”
“I’ve done nothing other than remind them of their true selves.”
“You’re lying! This isn’t them! They’re not this…this hateful!”
“You are in no position to lecture me on what they are, Twilight Sparkle. I know everything about them: past, present, and future. You only saw the same masks they wore that they used to hide from everyone…including themselves. Their true natures were always to be creatures of hate, misery, and sin. What you saw in their pasts was their true selves; what you aligned yourself with was merely illusions. They surrounded themselves with falsehoods and denials to try and forget what they were, but all creatures are ultimately defined by their actions. And to one who knows all actions one will commit, that one knows destiny. This moment was always destined to happen. They’ve realized what they really are and have abandoned any attempt to call it false. They’ve stopped lying to themselves and accepted their destiny.”
He leveled his gaze hard on both ladies.
“So…that just leaves you two.”
Both tensed up; looking considerably nervous now. Sunset herself swallowed, but finally squared herself against him. “Well, you’re not going to turn me crazy by just taking me on a trip down memory lane. They already know all of the crap I did.”
The peddler let out another snicker. “At least, everything you can recall…”
Sunset felt a cold chill on hearing that, but again Grogar seemed to ignore it. “You two…so much alike and yet so different…both the prize students of Celestia…both the recipients of arcane and secret knowledge…and yet one went on to become the golden child and the other the black sheep. So strange, considering how much of the same paths you trod…”
Again, the frames lit up around them. As anticipated, it showed them signs from their time at school. Classes they attended. Teas and talks with Celestia. Late night studies and trips to the library. Even their secretive moments sneaking around.
However, there was one key difference. All of them were done from the “first person” perspective.
“You both attended the same courses… You both heard all of Celestia’s lectures…her words of wisdom…her times of comfort and care… You even both broke the same rules and looked in the same dark, forbidden spot… And yet—only one of you clung to her teachings. The other sought her own will.”
Sunset grimaced, but Twilight paused. She looked to the images, but she also looked to Sunset. She saw her reacting to them much the same as her. However, that, in turn, began to make her puzzled.
“Do you not see how similar your pasts were? Are all of the details exactly as you remember them? The position of your books…the order in which you had your cucumber sandwiches…even the friends you had classes with… Are they not perfect reproductions? And yet…is there but one image you see before you that either of you are not familiar with? That you can say belongs to the other and not to you?”
Both women felt a chill. They looked around, but each image they saw was exactly the same as the one in their memory. Everything they recalled about it. And yet, on Grogar’s words, they looked to one another…and saw that the realization was the same was for the other woman.
As impossible as it was, they both had the same memories.
The images vanished and were replaced by a single one. One of Celestia herself in all her youth, beauty, and glory.
“Celestia knew about the coming of the Angra Mainyu. Her command was to prepare the chosen for their final battle with it, but she rejected that. Instead she made it her mission to save this world by destroying it. This was, of course, a hopeless endeavor. Simply killing the Angra Mainyu would cause it to reform in a new body. So instead…she decided to do something far more hopeless and futile. She wanted to actually ‘change’ the Angra Mainyu. She wanted to bring it up to reject the world’s devastation and the death of its sinners. In other words…she thought she could defy destiny. Not just anyone’s destiny, but this world’s destroyer’s.”
The image changed, showing Celestia out riding in her steam carriage. Yet it was soon joined by other images of her walking down streets, to piers, across fields, riding on boats, and many other such endeavors.
“It took some time, but given her foreknowledge of its emergence, and after sufficient searching, she eventually found the incarnation of the Angra Mainyu. She then approached it as if it were any other normal child and outright offered it the possibility of defying its own unknown fate.”
The images all changed to a first-person perspective of Celestia herself, looking down and out at the audience and smiling at them.
“You’re special. You have an amazing gift. One that could even save the world someday.”
Both Twilight and Sunset widened their eyes. Their mouths hung open slightly on hearing that phrase.
“Afterward, Celestia brought it into the school. At first, as was expected for the Angra Mainyu at that stage of development, it was nothing more than another child. Aside from having some aptitudes at magical abilities, there was little to set it apart from its peers. That, of course, changed as it grew and Celestia’s folly became apparent. Everything proceeded exactly according to destiny and design. The Angra Mainyu began to lust for more power. It began to treat its classmates cruelly and even sadistically. It developed thoughts of becoming a god.
“At this point, the logical course of action would have been to abandon the futile effort and simply destroy the Angra Mainyu while still weak. However, Celestia’s foolishness persisted in determination, much to the chagrin of her fellow celestial.”
The image changed in front of them, but what lit up in it was surprising. It was a room none of them had ever seen before—one styled with technology and décor they couldn’t even believe. It took a few moments before they realized it had to be similar to the ones Starlight Glimmer had found.
Celestia was facing what looked like a large class cylinder filled with semi-opaque liquid. A shadow was inside it. One that they could make out was humanoid and the size of a young person. Her arms were crossed and she looked at it in determination. Meanwhile, Luna stood behind her. She looked far better dressed now, but also furious.
“This is a waste of time, sister! If you haven’t the spine, I’ll destroy that brat myself!”
“We both know that won’t do anything to stop the Angra Mainyu, Luna.”
“And who says that I want it stopped? I am perfectly content to let this planet die for its sins! I offered only as a courtesy to you to have you give up this foolish rebellion!”
“Harmonium believes they never should have been created in the first place. And the Crystal Emperor agrees with her.”
“She also agrees nothing can be done for the ones who are already created. This was preordained, sister. There is nothing even you can do to change it.”
“You’re wrong, Luna. I refuse to believe a soul can be created for the sole purpose of wanting evil and death. This isn’t just the fate of one world’s destroyer we’re talking about. It’s all of us. Even you and me.”
Luna frowned at that, bowing her head to one side. Celestia exhaled and turned around.
“The homunculus is fully grown. We can do this tonight, but I cannot do it without you. This is the most important thing we have ever done for this world and ever will do for it. Please.”
Luna closed her eyes and exhaled. “…Very well. It is not as if I could refuse you anyway.”
The image began to fade as Grogar continued.
“All celestials have a special ability. Luna’s was key to allow Celestia’s plan to work. As you have experienced, she has a unique ability to draw out an individual’s darkness. That was paramount to what she had planned. This next chamber…I’m sure you recall.”
The image faded in again, and this time it was of a place that both ladies knew well and they found even more unsettling now. The underground chamber beneath the keep. It was cleaner now. Definitely not as heavily used. The chains that were there were brand new, as was the symbol on the floor.
Both Celestia and Luna were there. The former was laying someone down on the ground. They couldn’t make out who exactly—only that they looked like a child of some sort. Luna also laid a body nearby, but this one was covered with a sheet. Like it was some sort of corpse. One both were laid side by side, the two stepped back.
“Is the chamber prepared according to your needs?”
Luna sighed. “It is…adequate. What of your ‘precious student’?”
“I put a very powerful spell on her. At this stage of her development, she cannot awaken until I bid her.”
“This is your final chance to turn back, sister.”
“I have not come this far to renege now, Luna.”
“Very well…but be prepared to move. You are about to unleash an Angra Mainyu at its most pure and hateful. Even in a child’s body, you’ll have only moments to chain it up.”
She raised her arms. Her Promethean Sigil was barred, and all six emblems began to light up. “I am ready.”
Luna took a deep breath and raised her own hands. The sigil on the floor responded, immediately blazing to life. Soon, a cloud of powerful energy began to coalesce around the first body. Not long after, however, as Luna began to strain and stretch her power out to its limit, part of the cloud began to stream out to the other body.
“And so she had Luna draw out from the child the very essence of the Angra Mainyu. The very spirit it was destined to one day be consumed by to destroy the world—leaving only the child with her ‘larval’ personality intact. And so one became two…one little more than another magical student…the other pure hate and malevolence wrapped in flesh.”
The body beneath the sheet twitched once. Twice. A face beneath it contorted and let out a scream. A horrible, heaven-rendering scream that chilled the ladies to the bone and seemed to shatter the image before them and make it fall into oblivion.
“And yet again, Celestia magnified her failure. Stripping the Angra Mainyu of its dark destiny did not change the outlook of the child, who continued down the dark path. And now she had its true nature trapped in a body locked underneath her own school—thinking of nothing but blood, death, and how it might escape to wage both. Attempts at reason and conciliation were, of course, useless. There was no changing what that entity was. It mocked her attempts to try.”
The image came on again, causing the blood of the ladies to run cold again as it showed the same stone stairway from their nightmares. They began to quiver as they heard the same horrendous voice call out again.
“You made a mistake with her, didn’t you?! Now you wish you’d never brought her here to begin with!”
Both let out a mutual gasp at the memory.
“Celestia didn’t stop the Angra Mainyu—she created the means to ravage this world with two of them. Her student grew more unstable and beyond her control; mostly because she again foolishly failed to use her own celestial ability against her.”
Twilight swallowed. “What Luna said…was the ability to shape the world…”
“Very close,” Grogar corrected. “Properly applied, it could indeed perform such a feat, and she was privileged to have such an ability as it was indeed her duty to shape the world if need be. She never used it, however. Far too loathe to do so in spite of its utility. Celestia’s ability was over the mind itself. A person’s past, memories, and inner thoughts were an open book to her. Free for her to search as she so wished.”
Sunset blinked at that, rather astonished…but also confused. She opened her mouth.
“I don’t need to read your mind to know your question, Sunset Shimmer,” Grogar cut off. “If such a power was hers to command, why did she not see your betrayal? As I said, she was loathe to use it. She was determined to be seen as matronly and trustworthy by her students. As such, she never used it on them once they were established in her school. Not even when it would have helped her. She felt she would be ‘violating’ them doing so. So you see now…much of your success against your former instructor was not due to your cunning but her lenience and soft-heartedness.”
Sunset’s face fell at that, her eyes filling with realization. After a moment her head bowed slightly.
“However, Celestia elected to use that now. In particular in pursuit of her foolish quest. She had failed the original student, but the homunculus that she had built to contain the Angra Mainyu was based off of her. And so she performed her most reckless and dangerous move yet. She attempted to turn the raw Angra Mainyu into her ‘star pupil’.”
The image remained of the stairs, but it was later now. Soon, they heard the same horrible voice again.
“What’re you…you…you whore! Slut! BITCH! Stop it! S-S-STOP IT!!” The voice turned into a deranged scream that peeled out as light and power radiated from the doorway.
“You see…Celestia’s power didn’t just make her a ‘reader’ of minds…but a ‘writer’. That is where her true power lay. The ability to edit and sculp memories. Until now, she had used the ability only to help parents and student forget inconvenient things they had seen or to make the more agreeable or to skirt the authorities of Greater Everfree. But for the Angra Mainyu, she gave it a novel.
“She started with the same memories of her former student. All the lessons, the classmates, the talks…everything. But then she improved on history. She changed her background and gave her one where she was surrounded by love and support. Where her family had embraced and encouraged her powers. Where she had cultivated kindness and charity and learned to love it. No mere mask for an identity…but an entire life. One to completely cut off the conscious brain from its true nature—an identity to so utterly consume it that it could not unite with its raw hate and malevolence again.
“And what was left? Nothing but a simple, pleasant, obedient student.”
The screaming faded and the light died down. Some short gasping, as if catching breath, echoed from the chamber for a few seconds. Finally, an innocent girl’s voice spoke up.
“What…happened? Head…headmistress? What are we doing-”
“Ssh…go to sleep now.”
The girl’s voice let out a deep exhale as she was immediately put to sleep by Celestia’s spell.
The image faded, but the chamber was silent once again save for Spike whining. Neither Sunset nor Twilight moved a millimeter. Their gazes were frozen looking at where the final image had vanished. The truth was beginning to come clear now.
“Two students…one rebellious…one obedient…who share the same memories of their time at school. Two students…who find all the Promethean Sigil bearers of the world drawn to them and turning to savages, because they too are obeying their true natures—their destiny to fight to the death against the Angra Mainyu. Two students…both driven to rid the world of those same bearers, either through sealing their sigils or outright killing them. And at long last, Twilight Sparkle, we come to the answer to your first and most important question. You wanted to know where the Angra Mainyu was. The answer is right here in this room.”
Neither woman moved. They slowly turned to each other, but that only made them look more shaken up and disturbed. Their minds raced with a mixture of refusal to believe but also the grim realization that it could not be otherwise. It felt like ice sinking into their very cores. Their lives…their background…their families…all quivering to the foundation.
“And…one final detail. This one was the most important.”
Though both ladies were practically apoplectic at this point, they turned back to Grogar.
“You may want to know why it was so important to Celestia that she keep you from talking or thinking about the Angra Mainyu. The reason is quite simple. For all the work Celestia had done attempting to make both of her failures into normal people, destiny and purpose continued to persist. Using her power, she determined that, for all of her efforts, even going so far as to split the Angra Mainyu in two, one of them still retained the potential to become this world’s destroyer. So she used her power to determine which one still had the potential to manifest as this world’s destroyer, and then she put a block on that one that would persist even after her death. However…”
He gave just a hint of a smile.
“Without her alive, that block can be removed simply by speaking the true name of the Angra Mainyu where it can hear it.”
Both ladies turned white as ghosts as they gasped.
“It doesn’t matter who says it either. That was why it was important that everyone believe it was too taboo to mention. However, this discordant spirit who found his way to this world happens to know what it is.”
“I prefer the name ‘Discord’, thank you very much,” the peddler smirked in response as he sprung up. “And it’s about time you stopped blathering, old man… I’ve been waiting for this for ages. So!”
He clapped his hands.
“Ladies! Which one of you is ready to turn into a malevolent monster, hmm? Which one of you wants your entire existence, past, and personality to be swallowed up by evil and madness in a heartbeat?”
The two ladies, quaking with terror, looked to each other.
“Twilight…”
“Sunset…”
“I can’t tell which is going to be more fun! Seeing one of you turn into the nightmare you’ve been dreading for so many years…or seeing the other one suddenly come face-to-face with it!”
“Get out of here!” Twilight shouted. “Now!”
“Me? You need to get out of here too!”
“Just go!”
“But what if it’s you?”
Twilight hesitated, tensing up more. The thought creasing her face made her look even more anxious.
“On three! Three!”
“Twilight, it could be you just as easily as me!”
“That…that…”
“Two!”
Sunset was visibly sweating now. “There’s no time! We can’t get out of range! Just cover your ears and don’t listen!”
It was a foolish gesture, but in her panic all she could think of. Not arguing anymore, she shut her own eyes, covered her own ears, and hummed to herself. Twilight, strained, anxious, and panicking, turned away and did the same.
Through their minds went everything they had been through. Their time with the ladies… Their encounters and battles in Equestria… Her farewells and prior friendships with Celestia… Even the time with their respective families…
Was all of it a lie? And even if it was, would it be gone in moments?
With ears covered, all Sunset could hear after that fateful phrase was the sound of her own panicked breathing. Her mind raced. Was it happening? Had it already happened? Yet as she kept gasping, she realized nothing was different. The same memories she had clung to were still there. The same thoughts and feelings she had moments ago were still racing through her mind.
Her eyes opened as her breath caught in her throat. Her hands came off of her ears. There she was. Still in the same room. Still the same as she had been. Even though she had heard that name she was still herself.
The small joy she gained from that vanished a heartbeat later when she heard a cruel, mocking, and powerful voice not far from her.
“Hello again, itty-bitty girl.”
Sunset couldn’t help it…she let out a panicked whine. In an instant, she was back in that stairwell, feeling all the horror and terror she had all those years ago. Worse now…from knowing what it was as well as how it was real.
Her panicked eyes turned to where Twilight had been. A person was still standing there—but she knew at once it wasn’t Twilight. She could feel something horrible radiating off of it. Like it was a boiler of nothing but evil. Something that felt cold and made her skin itch and hair stick up all at the same time. It was still dressed like her, obviously. And from behind, it seemed like her at first. Only hunched over and with her head turned away.
The moment she laid eyes on it, however, it gave such a violent snap of its head that it seemed almost monstrous. She could hear the tendons creak from it—and at once beheld its horrific visage.
There were still traces of Twilight’s face on it…or perhaps it was still her face but twisted inhumanly. But the smile on her face was too wide and too unsettling. And her eyes…her horrible eyes… Like with Pinkie, the pupils had shrunk to tiny dots so there was almost nothing but the white of the corneas. Except they weren’t white anymore. They were some nauseating pale green. The pupils themselves were vibrant and purple. An eldritch light emitted from them. It made her skin appear darker and paler at the same time.
It let out a frenetic giggle.
It loved seeing her scared.
“Look who’s all grown up…and doesn’t have her big headmistress to save her…”
Sunset gasped. Her heart was pounding in her chest so much she thought it was burst from it. She told herself to run. To just look away and run. Pray this was a nightmare she’d wake up from soon just like she had every time before.
But she couldn’t move. Not due to fear—due to her body feeling like it was locked in ice.
It was keeping her there.
It giggled again. “You want to run? Uh-uh.” It turned to face her and stood tall. It felt like she had gained inches over her old persona, and Sunset felt like she was being crushed by its shadow like a bug. “Is that any way to treat your ‘little girl’ or ‘little sister’ or whatever I am to you? Come on…”
Like a crack of a whip, Sunset was yanked from where she stood, still frozen in position, and suddenly found her body hovering an inch from the monster’s grinning face.
“Give us a kiss!”
Sunset let out another sharp gasp. She couldn’t speak or look away. All she could do was let out a panicked mumbling.
This only made it snicker louder. It laughed at her for a few moments before it twisted its own face in a mockery and made the same mumbling right back at her. “Are you really so scared of me, Sunset?”
Its hands raised, and as Sunset desperately tried to move her head, it rested all eight of its fingers along the edge of her face.
“I used to live right under your skin. I know… How about I see if I can still fit?”
With that, all eight fingers drove their nails into her face. Sharp enough to break the skin and draw blood. But that wasn’t all. It immediately pushed them in deeper; shoving its nails under her skin. Like it was trying to dig under it. Needless to say, Sunset was soon screaming in pain.
Fortunately, it stopped before it could do anything drastic…like rip her face off…but as it pulled her bleeding fingers back, Sunset was horrified yet again to see her hand move of its own volition and place itself right in front of its grinning mouth.
“Or how about I tear you into itty-bitty pieces like I promised? I can start with your fingers! Then we can match like real sisters!”
It opened its mouth wide, threatening to bite into—and through—two of her fingers on that hand. Sunset let out another panicked whimper, but it stopped itself before it bit down.
“Oh, but that’s no good. I don’t like raw meat. I want it cooked.”
With that, Sunset’s outstretched hand was bathed in flames.
She only gaped in shock for the length of time it took for the pain to reach her head. Yet even with her skin surrounded by fire and burning right in front of her, she couldn’t move. Not to try and put it out or even clutch it in pain. The only route free to her was her voice, and so she screamed.
She screamed so much she couldn’t hear the laughter of Midnight Sparkle, nor could she hear it eventually die down. It made a cutting motion, and the fire was extinguished just as quickly as it had come, but a moment later she was flung away as quickly as she was yanked up to it. She didn’t hit the ground, but her body was left wrenched in midair, still in pain, and staring back at the Angra Mainyu as it looked wilder yet.
“Don’t worry! I’m not going to kill you now. That wouldn’t be proper. After all, by all rights, I should have eaten your soul and been wearing your flesh as my overcoat right now. It’s only fair that you get to enjoy it all along with me. I promise I’ll save you for last.”
Between her horror and pain Sunset couldn’t even answer, but Midnight Sparkle didn’t seem to care either way. It turned about and faced the five ladies, still frozen where they were.
“Now then…”
The horrible feeling exuding from it grew worse. Enough to make Sunset nauseated even through her terror and agony. The power coming off of it seemed to grow—starting to lift its hair and clothing up around her. It raised its intact hand to the sky and snapped its fingers.
“Wake up, testaments against humanity! Harbingers of this world’s demise! Let me see your sin, wickedness, and hate! Bathe me in it!”
The moment its finger snapped, the five were again freed. Only now it was worse than ever. Each of them seemed to completely surge with hate. Any remains of who they had been when they walked in had faded. Now their faces were simply twisted in expressions of loathing, fury, and misery.
Things grew worse as, much to Sunset’s shock, each of the five began to be enveloped in the same horrible sensation. Only now it was tangible. Auras of darkness began to emit from all of them together. They seemed to twist them downward, as if they was burning and withering them away very slowly. And as they curled up, the darkness around them grew stronger and more potent. Sunset felt the horrible sensation carried on the previous icy breeze throughout the entire chamber. The area around her began to quake. The mysterious machines began to flicker and fizzle, and some of them let out pops and bursts of sparks as it slowly built in intensity. It felt like the room itself…maybe even space itself…was trembling at its foundations.
Yet worst of all was Midnight Sparkle itself. The power around it surged further. Its hair now stood up completely and begin to be “highlighted” with the same fell light from its eyes. The same sickly aura began to radiate around on its brow as its feet slowly elevated before leaving the floor all together. All the while, it began to giggle like mad.
“Give it to me! All the hate and despair of your victims! Fill me! Such refreshing blood! Such delicious flesh! Such sumptuous sin! MORE!”
A tearing sound became audible even over the rising chaos. Sunset saw the back of its shirt was tearing right down the middle. As the quaking grew violent enough to start sending dust from the ceiling and the wind threatened to tear its clothes off all together, a bulge grew out of its back that pushed the garment to the point of splitting. It finally became too much for the clothes and broke apart.
As Midnight Sparkle screamed with delight, a pair of angled black wings exploded from the remains of its clothing and spread out wide. The energy intensified. Sunset saw the metal frames nearest it begin to warp and twist. Light started to erupt from it and the other five ladies.
In the midst of this, she didn’t see as Grogar managed to move his fingertips to quickly press some machinery in his armrest.
In response, white light erupted at the base of all six individuals. Midnight Sparkle didn’t seem to care—too lost in its own revelry. The light quickly expanded into a disk below each one, and then ignited into pillars that surrounded them. A chiming sound rang out as each one was surrounded, and then, most suddenly, the lights collapsed around them and went out.
When they did, the six were gone.
The wind and quaking died instantly. Loose machinery that had been damaged settled, although a few places kept sparking, but the chamber was silent and cool again. Sunset blinked for a moment before her bleeding, burned body was released. She could move again, but was powerless to do so before landing on the hard metal ground.
She was still in a lot of pain and now shocked at what had just happened, but she looked up. Spike was cringing with his tail between his legs and pulled back, but her main focus was on the one called ‘Discord’ as he frowned at Grogar.
“Now what in the world did you do that for? I’ve been bored for years watching the same old wars and violence and now that something was about to get good you send them away?”
“You heard me tell them it wasn’t today. They aren’t ready.”
“What about that demon? She looked ready to me. Granted, she’d be the most fun to keep around…”
“Something’s stopping the connection with her. She needs more time. Even if she didn’t, there’s a problem. She got an unfortunate injury against Sombra. She can’t cast Infinitum Ostium without all ten of her fingers. It will take time for her to find a way to heal that sort of handicap. It doesn’t matter, though. All of them have been consumed. They’ll only increase the misery and evil of this world the longer they’re out there. Entertain yourself with that, if you wish.”
Discord thought a moment before shrugging. “Oh, very well. The truth is, I’ve been wanting to see what the rest of those former Anima Viris could cook up. Not to mention it looks like ‘outside parties’ are taking an interest in this world too…”
“It matters not. As I made abundantly clear, I know the destiny of this world. They can do nothing to alter it. Not any more than Celestia could. All there is to do now is wait.”
He sighed in a touch of boredom. “Then I suppose we don’t need him anymore.”
He snapped his fingers. In a flash of light, Spike was surrounded and then vanished. Sunset let out a start, but by the time she looked at him she was just in time to see his bindings fall to the floor—bereft of their occupant.
“Now I suppose that just leaves this broken vessel,” Grogar mused; his hideous eyes looking back at Sunset.
She was still in quite a bit of pain, but even if she wasn’t she still shrank back. She couldn’t find her voice to even speak against him—if she even had anything she could say.
He stared at her for a few silent seconds; his face never changing.
“There’s nothing to be gained from you. Destiny governs us all, for good or ill. You, however, are now a completely broken vessel. All Celestia managed to do was rob you of purpose entirely. No power. No magic. Not even your Promethean Sigil. Utterly worthless. Your only purpose now is to simply die and be forgotten with the rest of the sinners.”
Sunset could only stare back speechless, yet couldn’t help but look even more hollow on hearing those words.
“Get out of my sight.”
“Allow me.”
Discord raised his hand and snapped his fingers again. Sunset barely had time to register the flash expanding around her before she was gone.
He blew on his fingers like they were a gun barrel, before he gave the side-eye to Grogar. “You seem rather nonchalant about this whole business. Even though you barely qualify as ‘mortal’, most mortals I’ve run into are terrified at the thought of death—let alone their souls being consumed to fuel a world destroyer.”
“As I’ve already said, none of us are immune to destiny. This is mine.”
Discord scoffed. “How utterly dull. It might be good for a laugh when you get to spring destiny on someone like a cream pie to the face…”
With that, he leaned back on thin air and raised a hand into the air, twirling his finger around to make a cream pie appear out of nothingness. He proceeded to next conjure a box, drop it inside, cover it with wrapping paper and a bow, and then send it floating in Grogar’s direction.
“But otherwise it’s far too predictable. Makes far too much sense. And you know my thoughts on that.”
“I’m afraid that’s where we don’t see eye to eye upon. There is no true chaos. Everything serves a purpose in the end. Especially from Harmonium’s handiwork.”
The box slowed to a halt right in front of Grogar’s face. It proceeded to unwrap itself. However, no pie sprung out to paste him. Rather, Discord’s own head was inside, frowning slightly.
“Let’s make one thing perfectly clear.”
The moment he said that, his head turned transparent, but still had a “frame” outline around it like a cartoon drawing.
“You aren’t the one I have to thank for bringing me here. I’m only enjoying the show right now because you promised me more fun than I’ve had in thousands of years and piqued my curiosity. The moment I decide things are getting too boring is the moment I decide your production is in need of a little ‘audience participation’. And when I put on a show, Grogar, no one gets to sit out. No matter how old or tethered to a chair they are. So for your sake, I hope your little ‘crystal ball’ or whatever it is you use didn’t show me getting impatient.”
The rest of the outline of his head vanished, as if erased from an invisible slate. His eyes, however, remained, and dropped down into Grogar’s lap. They sprung little arms and legs and leapt up from there, before crossing their arms and tapping their feet.
“Remember,” both of them said at once, “I’ve got my eyes on you.”
For the longest time, Sunset lay there listening to her heart pound and her lungs gasp.
She saw the night sky above her and a thick canopy of trees, but she didn’t process it or even care. Everything she had seen and heard was still dancing through her mind even now with ever greater vivacity. All of the fears and terrors she had as a child were back—manifested into flesh and larger than life.
Time slowly passed. In truth, most of the night had already waned but she remained lying there until just before dawn. Her heartbeat and breathing eased, but she remained very tired and in pain. Her injuries burned—both the ones on her face and hand as well as her old ones. Yet she ignored them too and kept thinking. Gradually, her thoughts turned away from only what she had seen and turned to the six women. She found herself thinking a lot of what they had been like in the few short weeks they had been together.
And most often, she thought of Twilight.
Even knowing the bond they now shared and the unique connection, she couldn’t help but think of the previous identity of the Angra Mainyu. The one who had been erased in a heartbeat by two little words.
And as she thought longer and harder about it, she realized she felt a tightening in her throat. A cold feeling in her heart. And, at long last, tears in her eyes.
She didn’t believe herself at first, but eventually she realized she was weeping for her. She was probably the first person in her life she had ever wept for besides herself.
What did that mean? Anything? Everything?
It was about that time she sniffled and stopped. She lay there a moment longer. It was autumn now, but even so no birds were calling. She knew what that meant. Then, at last, with much pain and effort, she rolled herself up into a seated position and then stood. After that, she took a few breaths to steady herself and to keep her head from swimming, and started walking.
She had hardly managed to start making a plan to find her bearings when the woods in front of her cleared. She looked further and recognized the unmistakable sign of a train track. She hobbled over to it and soon found something even more promising. A run-down shack on the side of the tracks…not from age but abandonment. Equestrian architecture. That confirmed it. She was back in Equestria.
What more, she recognized it from previous train trips.
Taking only a moment to remove her outer shirt and wrap her burned hand in it, she began to stumble along the tracks heading north.
By the time the sun was up, Sunset felt both of her freshest injuries throb. She was probably sporting an infection. Her hunger and exhaustion began to weigh upon her. Each step began to grow a little heavier, but she forced herself on regardless. The distance was, quite naturally, much farther than she expected now that she was on foot rather than a train. She was rather dizzy by the time she started to see the surrounding canopy looking similar to where she knew the transition junction was.
After a grand total of four hours of walking, she finally turned the crucial corner. She took a few more steps—expecting her world to fall away to reveal the restored train station.
Instead, she walked right off the end of the tracks and onto a blockade of old logs and rocks.
She was so tired by now that it took her sluggish brain a moment to comprehend it. She swallowed to moisten her dry throat and stepped forward again, but that only caused her to walk right into the blockade. Nothing changed.
“Hey. Hey!”
No answer. Distantly, a bird chirped and the wind blew through the trees. Nothing else.
“Hey! I’m out here! I can’t get in!”
Still nothing.
“I know someone can hear me over there! Get Luna to let me in! I’m hurt!”
The bird chirped again. Nothing else.
“Hello over there! I’m bleeding and burned! Things have gone to hell out here and I’ve got a lot to tell Luna! Could someone-”
She cut herself off and stepped back in alarm as, seemingly out of nowhere, Luna in all of her regalia suddenly stepped in front of her. She looked her dead in the eye the second she appeared—a cold, unfriendly look on her face. So sharp that Sunset nearly stumbled.
“I know.”
Silence afterward. Sunset blinked a few times, watching Luna continue to look coldly back at her. She swallowed again, but even in her injured state her mind studied her expression. Not curious, not worried, not concerned…knowing.
She soon realized the truth.
“…You knew she was the Angra Mainyu all along.”
“I knew you both were,” Luna answered. She took a deep breath and slowly exhaled, softening just a little. “I suspected it the moment I saw you. Your face I remembered.”
Her fists clenched.
“I hated looking at it. I hated living in the same city as you, let alone knowing you were attending that school. It reminded me of my sister’s folly every time. And I could see your greed and vanity get worse every time I looked at you.”
Sunset couldn’t help but grimace to hear the loathing on those words.
“But I didn’t see your face clearly back in Trottingham. I saw…its. And after that night under the Western Keep I never wanted to see that face again. I’ve seen Angra Mainyus before but never one still in the flesh and that young. Such a horrible bastardization of youth and innocence… Every time I looked at Twilight Sparkle I could still remember Midnight Sparkle’s sickening grin…”
Sunset spoke again, more quietly and hesitantly. “Then…why didn’t you let that metal warrior kill us on the train?”
“I knew it was one of you…and if the wrong one was killed, for all I knew it would set off the other to awaken. But yes, Sunset Shimmer…ever since the start I intended to eventually kill you both. To rectify the mistake my sister had made the day she brought you here. However, I could not let the Celestial Mech Cavalier destroy you at that time because I still needed you both to get me to Canterlot with the rest of the Prometheans.”
“What…‘Celestial Mech Cavalier’? You know what those things were called? You…”
She hesitated, eyes widening as she realized what Luna had just said. The woman looked coldly back and said nothing.
“You’re the one who sent those things to the summit. You sent them to kill me. That’s why they were saying my name…”
“I have no power to send them, Sunset Shimmer. I have been blacklisted for assisting my sister Celestia as much as I already have, along with her. However, I did realize on the train they had been sent here to destroy the Angra Mainyu before it could reach maturity. Which is why they were looking for the sigil that bore the name ‘Midnight Sparkle’.”
That stunned her even more. “What do you mean ‘sent here’? By who?”
Luna closed her eyes and let out a tired sigh. “That no longer matters. Nothing matters. Celestia should simply be grateful they’re on their way. I know this wasn’t what she wished, but it will have to be a compromise. She alone might have the power to defy destiny since she took part in writing it. I, on the other hand, am no better than my sister. My own attempt to kill Twilight Sparkle failed miserably.”
Before Sunset could react any further, Luna suddenly snapped her arm up and tossed something to her. Instinctively, she caught it with both hands, but was surprised to see it was the same pendant as before.
“I gave that to Twilight Sparkle and the rest of the vessels of darkness so that they could use my train to ride north. They thought they were going to destroy Sombra—what was supposed to happen was that they were to ride to their deaths when they plunged into a ravine. Yet she survived, which was only natural. Trying to kill Twilight Sparkle was like trying to prevent Midnight Sparkle from emerging—futile. All of this was preordained by destiny, and I was a fool for thinking I could subvert it. Now all that I have done is made is everything worse.”
She looked back at Sunset. “You may keep that worthless trinket if you like. It has no value anymore.”
Sunset paused.
“Well…what now then?”
“What now? Now I fulfill the role I was assigned to and prepare those gathered in Canterlot for the inevitable. As we speak, both Midnight Sparkle and the vessels of darkness are roaming this continent—bent on nurturing their hate and rage. The lives they take and the ways in which they horribly send them to their deaths will fill this world with even more tormented souls that will cause them all to ‘mature’. And once fully mature, Midnight Sparkle will devour the souls of the five vessels and unite them with its own to become this world’s destructor.”
Sunset looked at her incredulously. “And…your answer to that is to just sit here in hiding?”
“You understand nothing, Sunset Shimmer,” Luna snapped back so loud it made her recoil. “After all that has happened you haven’t learned a thing. I warned both you and Twilight Sparkle time and time again to accept what would happen, but you wouldn’t listen. And in not doing so you brought the Angra Mainyu into existence even sooner than it should have. There have been far more worlds destroyed by Angra Mainyus than you can imagine. Not one of them was ever able to defy their destiny, and this world won’t be the first…nor the last.”
She inhaled.
“Now then, if that is all, I will ask you to be on your way.”
Sunset was dumbstruck. “What…be on my way? I’m hurt, I’m starving, and I haven’t had water in two days…”
“That is no concern of mine. You aren’t actually foolhardy enough to believe you’re welcome here, are you?”
The younger woman was struck silent. A moment later, Luna began to advance on her—glowering down with increasing coldness.
“Because of you, my sister…the only one who stood a true chance of saving this world from the Angra Mainyu…lost her Anima Viris. She was powerless. And as a result, she’s now dead. My sister wasted everything on you. She treated you like she was your second mother. You repaid her by betraying her. You killed dozens of Promethean Sigil bearers in your selfish lust for power, and you tipped off the rest of the world to their existence leading to even more being slaughtered. Now the numbers are tipped so much against us that our chances of defeating the Angra Mainyu are slim to non-existent. And, let us not forget, that you quite literally stabbed me in the back. What makes you think I want you living in Canterlot? For that matter, what makes you think I don’t hate you more than any other creature in this world?”
Sunset was speechless. She was now subconsciously cringing under Luna’s wrathful gaze, but she could say nothing. Once again, her previous sins had come back on her head.
“You were born to be a creature of hate and loathing, Sunset Shimmer…and it appears that for all my sister’s efforts you ended up personifying that quite well of your own accord. I would love nothing more at this moment than to never see you again and forget I ever met you. I wish you a quick death with the rest of humanity and that it comes for you quite soon.”
The woman still couldn’t answer, but Luna didn’t wait for any further reply. Backing away, she turned her back to her and walked toward the barrier again. In a moment, she vanished inside.
Sunset was left dumbstruck standing there. Her hands trembled a little, and she felt a coldness and hollowness inside herself all over again. After several moments, she tried to straighten herself.
At that instant, however, Luna reappeared. Her arms were holding something, and before Sunset could react she shoved them into her arms.
“Your ‘effects’. I don’t even want to live under the same roof as those.”
She spun around and vanished once again. This time she stayed gone.
It took several minutes of Sunset standing there, hearing nothing but silence and looking at the empty space which should have been filled with Equestria, before she finally realized that was the end of that. Only then did she finally look down to her arms.
They held Flash Sentry’s helmet, and within it her one change of clothes and a lighter. Nothing more.
She stared at those objects for five more minutes, her quivering ceasing and her face turning dark and grim. Without looking back to the opening again, she slowly tucked it under her arm, turned, and began to limp away from not only the blockade but the tracks as well and into the forest.
Sunset lost track of time and place alike as she walked into the forest. The fear that once gripped her of the outside world and her defenselessness against it was gone. She wasn’t sure if she cared whether or not there was a stray Nighttouched that Sombra missed waiting to rip her throat out. She just continued to wander aimlessly further and further away and into the woods. She only knew that the sun remained up and so it had to be all on the same day. A few more birds called, but their time was over. The trees were turning now. It was cool again.
She grew tired as she went on. Her injuries throbbed more—feeling hot in spite of the cooler air. Her steps continued to get harder and heavier.
At last, her foot stepped somewhere wrong and twisted her ankle. Not bad, but enough to make her stumble. Nevertheless, she didn’t even cry out when she fell to the ground. Luckily it wasn’t a hard impact, but even then she panted after she sprawled out. And as she lay there, unmoving for several minutes, she realized she no longer had the will to stand again.
Instead she pushed herself into a seated position, purely because it was more comfortable. She let the items in her hands topple out of them. Then…she stopped, staring at the ground, and did not move. The wind blew and occasionally a bird called, but that was all.
She wasn’t sure how long she sat there thinking. She was still hungry, still thirsty, and still in pain…but all of that mattered less as time went on. There was only one thing on her mind—why should she get up from where she was seated ever again? No one was waiting for her. No one was expecting her. And nothing would change for anyone or anything in the world.
Maybe it was better just to stay there.
It was the dog whine that finally distracted her.
She didn’t jump or recoil like she used to. In fact, she almost absent-mindedly turned her head in the direction of it. She heard another whine, but it was several more seconds before she finally saw a shape come limping along through the trees and come alongside her.
Only then did she finally fully snap out of it.
“Spike…”
It was indeed Spike. She didn’t know how he got there, but considering the fact she didn’t know how she had gotten there that was irrelevant. He looked like he had a rough time, especially on one leg. He turned to her, letting out another whine.
It shook her out enough to at least lean up and hold her arms out. “Come here. Let me see that leg.”
The dog obliged by slowly limping over to her and sitting down. Even then, he remained half-slumped over with his head down as she raised his leg and looked at it. Fortunately, it didn’t seem too bad. He had a nasty sharp rock stuck in the bottom of one paw. She proceeded to pull it out, but that made it bleed a little. Sighing, she reached for her spare clothes in the helmet and pressed her shirt against it.
“I hope that’s better. I wish I could do more, but…can’t really do much for myself right now.” She snorted. “Some turnaround I made. First time I went to go rescue someone, and I even left you behind.”
Spike’s only response, once his paw was tended to, was to slump further. He slowly lay down and rested his head on one of Sunset’s seated legs. She could tell by the dog’s quiet and reserved demeanor how he felt, but even then…she couldn’t deny she felt just a tiny bit better having him there with her.
It didn’t take long for her to reach out and start petting his head.
“You miss her, don’t you?” She snorted again. “Stupid question…of course you do. You two were inseparable. Now I don’t even know what you’re thinking. If you still saw ‘Twilight’ in that…that thing…or if you know she’s really gone. I guess it doesn’t matter. I’d be sad either way.”
Spike didn’t react. She continued to pet him. Her head slowly bowed to the ground again.
“Who I am kidding? I am sad. It’s so weird, but…I think she was my only friend. And that’s…that’s just pathetic, isn’t it? I mean, she came from me. She was just everything ‘bad’ that I was supposed to be with Celestia slapping a past on it. Right?”
Spike didn’t answer. He continued to look out with that same sad look. Sunset stared at him for a few moments—her own face falling more. Slowly, she shook her head.
“No…she was more than that. I don’t even need to look at you to know that was true. She always wanted to help. She wanted to step in when everyone else said it was too hard. She always tried to think of the answers for everyone. She was so persnickety and overthinking and downright nerdy sometimes… Even that way she always fussed over books and shut the world out… And…”
She paused.
“And she still believed in all of them. Even after everything Grogar showed us. I know she did. That couldn’t have been the Angra Mainyu. That was…a person. A good person. She even forgave me. And that’s something I never would have done.”
She stopped petting.
“And it was going to be me. I should have been the one who lost her mind and became that thing. Would I have really done it? I mean…I remember how much I wanted power and all of those Anima Viris, but…the whole world? Would I really have wanted to see this whole world burn?”
Spike, of course, said nothing. Sunset sat there for several seconds. Then her eyes slowly closed and she pulled her hand off the dog, placing it in her lap.
“…I would have. I was too scared. Too scared of everyone and everything. Too afraid that there was anyone out there that could make me feel small and helpless. If I couldn’t grind them under my foot, then…then I hated them. I hated that there were people out there who might one day be stronger than me. And…I wanted them gone. By any means. I never wanted to be a god—I wanted a world where I knew I had all the power so that no one could ever threaten me. Even if it meant a world where I was a queen of ashes.”
She sighed in resignation.
“Grogar was right. I’m no better. Twilight…Twilight was the only one who stopped me.”
She held up her burnt hand, turning it over to where her Promethean Sigil used to be.
“By taking this away. She made me see that I was a coward.”
A pause.
“No…more than that. She made me realize that I didn’t need that power to survive. I just needed to realize that not everyone was like that. That there were people out there who’d care for me…and that I could care about too. So…I guess it really was Celestia all along. She made her. And so that means I still owe her. I owe her more than I can ever repay. And all I could do was betray her and steal from her.”
She hesitated before frowning.
“Although I don’t get it. Everyone…Grogar, Discord, Luna…they all talked about her as if she was dead. But…if she’s dead, then…then who was that…?”
She exhaled and shook her head.
“Maybe I was just seeing things… Maybe I wanted to imagine it was her or…or something…”
She was quiet again for a time. She swallowed. Her eyes closed again and she turned her head to the sky.
“Headmistress…I don’t know where you are right now…and even if I did I doubt you’d care to hear this now, but…”
She let out her longest sigh yet.
“I’m sorry. I’m honestly…truly…sorry.”
As expected, nothing but the wind in the trees and the occasional sound of a bird. Sunset opened her eyes, surprisingly realizing she felt a hint of disappointment, before she looked down at her lap again.
She snickered. “Guess I can’t give up just yet… I may not be able to do anything else, but…I can look after you. We’re all we got now, aren’t we, Spike?”
The dog raised his head slightly, turning to her.
“Sorry…didn’t mean to make that sound so depressing. I’ve been off the cigarettes for a week now so I’m pretty bad at even trying to be encouraging… Maybe I can find some food for you, though.” She exhaled as she began to put her hands behind her. “Just hope you don’t mind having me for an owner when I should have been the Angra Mainyu.”
Sunset froze after that, because the moment that last phrase escaped her lips, a chime came from the tag on Spike’s collar. She looked down at it, only to see that a small light had lit up on the seemingly metal object. A moment later, it echoed her own phrase right back to her.
“I should have been the Angra Mainyu.”
Spike himself seemed alarmed at that, and got up and moved back as Sunset rose to her feet in surprise. However, as the tag began to hum, Spike sat down again. Moments later, light projected from the tag and began to etch through the air—rather like how the summoning of an Anima Viri would do. This one seemed a different sort. It generated color with it, and a full body rather than an outline at life size.
It took Sunset only moments to recognize the form. It became even clearer when the old headmistress uniform was added to her body, and without any doubt when her iridescent hair was added. By the time her face appeared, Sunset was totally transfixed on the semi-translucent image now before her.
“Headmistress Celestia…”
The image raised her own head. From her perspective, it looked as if she was looking straight at Sunset—even though she realized that was just coincidence in short order.
“Hello, Sunset Shimmer. At the time you see me recording this, I am just about to go on my school’s home visiting tour. I do not know what to expect—only that I have a very, strong premonition that I will not be returning to Canterlot ever again, and that this will be the last time I ever speak to you. So if you’re watching this…” The image’s face fell slightly. “Then the worst has happened. I am now dead…and you now know the truth.”
Sunset stiffened, tightening her good hand.
“I wanted to tell you everything many times but, as you have to know by now, I couldn’t risk it. Likewise, I wish I could have been at your side when you found out. There were many things I wanted to say at that moment, and even now there are many other things I wish to share with you. But…I do not know what state this message will find you. And so I will only say the most important things. First and foremost…”
She raised her head again, once more seeming to meet Sunset eye-to-eye.
“To both you and Twilight Sparkle…I’m sorry I failed you.”
The fiery-headed woman couldn’t help but be surprised to hear that.
“Only now, near what I fear is the end of my own part of this story, do I realize how foolish I was. Always I looked only to your future and how I could possibly alter the present to keep it from coming to pass. When I came to you, I did not offer you hope or choice but a different outcome I envisioned. In doing so, I was as guilty as the ones I condemned for thinking there was nothing to the world but fate and destiny…thinking that everyone in the end is nothing more than a series of knobs and switches to get a desired result.
“I should have seen you for who you were…not a growing Angra Mainyu but Sunset Shimmer. I should have helped you realize that this world was not something to be hated and feared but was full of beauty and goodness even at the worst of times. That there are people out there who you can depend upon and rely on. That there is more that can change this world than magic and dominion.
“It wasn’t until the moment that I helped ‘make’ Twilight Sparkle that I realized how foolish I had been. In the end, I treated you both as machines to manipulate. I tried so hard to avoid repeating the mistake with Twilight…but I could never forget my mistakes with you.”
She smiled slightly.
“It’s strange, but…as much as I feared and dreaded what would happen, not just to the world but to you, Sunset…the day you stole my Anima Viris, I couldn’t help but be just a little happy. You never got the sigil for Midnight Sparkle or any of the others. You had changed your destiny, and you had done it without me.”
Sunset felt her breath catch in her throat. Never before had she expected to hear those words from Celestia.
“As I said, I have no idea what state this finds you in. I don’t know if you resolved to be an unwanted god for this world in the end. I don’t know if you lived up to all of the dreams I had for you. I don’t know if you found peace at last and realized you could at last lead a quiet, happy life. But whatever happens, and whatever you may have learned, and whatever you may have been told…please remember this. You…me…all of us…are more than just cogs in a wheel doing what we were placed there to do. We always have a choice. Some of those may be more difficult to make than others, but none of them are preordained. I believe that, and I still believe that.
“There are many who will say that I was a fool and I ended my life in failure. That I died pursuing a hopeless dream. No matter what fate awaits me, however, I know that is not true. You, Sunset, are my consolation for that. My pride…my joy…my knowledge that if nothing else I set you on your own path. Whether that path is for good or evil, in the end it is completely yours. You have no destiny now…none save that which you choose for yourself. And if one was to give me the chance to do it all over again…to save my own Anima Viris…to destroy the Angra Mainyu when I had the chance…even to spare my own life…” She smiled. “I would have you as my student again without hesitation.”
Sunset felt a tightness in her chest once again.
“A soul, Sunset, is a very precious and wonderful thing. There’s no one who has the right to cheat it by saying it was made for greatness, condemnation, or any other destiny. It’s far too beautiful and valuable for that…and far stronger than the will of any man or creature, no matter how much power they claim to have or knowledge they profess to possess. I will hold to that value to the end. I will go to my grave knowing I will see both you and Twilight again.
“Lastly, and most importantly, Sunset…”
She smiled more softly.
“I forgive you.”
Sunset couldn’t help it—she let out a small gasp.
“I want your soul to be free to become whatever you want it to be. I hope it’s something good and beautiful. I want you to know it can be. I still believe it will be, even after everything that happened. An Anima Viri isn’t the measure of one’s existence, Sunset. A glorious, noble spirit…lies in all of us. In the end, it’s when we decide to start living like one.”
With one final smile, the lights died. Celestia’s visage faded into sparks of light and were gone.
Sunset again lost track of what was going on around her. She stood there and replayed the message in her mind—not moving or looking aside. Finally, she started to breathe again, but not normally. It was stilted. Stiff. Soon, it became clear it was sobbing. Her eyes welled and not long after tears began to roll down her cheeks. She clasped her hands to her nose and mouth and shut her eyelids, but they kept flowing.
She had needed to hear that. She didn’t know she did, but now that she had she realized just how important it was.
She wasn’t sure how long she stood there crying. It felt bitter and wrenching, but also somehow liberating. Again, she was shaken out of it when she heard Spike—this time barking.
Sniffling and wiping at her eyes and nose, she looked at him. He was standing again but now further away. He had his body pointed ahead but was calling to her. A moment later, he turned in that direction and moved.
“Spike?”
She hobbled after him. He hadn’t gone far. Just a little deeper into the woods. As soon as she saw him again, he barked and moved once more—leading her on a bit farther yet. This continued about five or six more times, eventually culminating with him reaching a clearing. Before she reached it, however, she already could see what it was and it made her gape.
“Impossible…”
Finding new strength, she pushed herself the rest of the way into the clearing and beheld it in all of its glory—Celestia’s airship.
She didn’t know if it was some manipulation of Discord or some unknown device like what had been in Spike’s collar, but somehow it was here. It had landed in a hover right there in the field with the side hatch open—practically inviting whoever wanted it to come on board and take control.
She blinked a few times, as if to make sure it was real, but it remained there. And while Canterlot wasn’t too far away, she knew she had to have at least walked far enough where they couldn’t see it land. The ship was hers for the taking. Yet even after realizing it, she stared longer at it—once more going into thought.
After a time she finally looked down to Spike. The dog looked back up to her.
She exhaled. “Well Spike…I guess it’s just the two of us now. No magic. No backup. No prospects. Not even any cigarettes. Nothing but Celestia’s old wooden airship that could get taken down by a single artillery round and we’re both beat up and starving.”
The dog looked back expectantly at her.
For the first time in a good, long while, she flashed a smirk.
“Let’s go save them. All of them. Then let’s save the world.”
With more energy than she knew she possessed, she began to limp toward the hatch. Spike let out an energetic bark and followed behind.
It took some time for the three metal warriors to regain their bearings. They did, of course, return to Mount Aris as quickly as they could, but by then it was all over. Not only was their assailant gone but so was their quarry. They began to launch a search, and with three of them working together they managed to cover a wide area in a short period of time. Enough to pick up on the airship and start heading in her direction.
Then came the new signal.
The big one.
Now they were many thousands of miles away…not just from Canterlot and the airship but from Greater Everfree all together. After journeying for a few days they had arrived on a rocky atoll on a gray sea. Waves pounded against it; slowly battering it to mud and dust as it had to the rest of the landform it had once been a part of. It would have been hard for any normal man or woman to even set foot on it let alone stand, but they each touched down easily and stood firm.
All around them was rolling waters and pounding surf. But to the south, a landmass spread. Wide, broad, and expansive from its cliff coastline. Even though summer was nearing for this half of the world, it was still covered with snow and ice as it had been for generations.
The three paid it no mind. As soon as they had landed, they turned to face one another. Although they were each at slightly different elevations given the terrain, they met each other’s glowing gazes. Not long after, the headpieces split enough to expose another glowing light. These each shot out a beam at one another, meeting in the center.
Similar to the sight that Sunset Shimmer had witnessed more than half a world away, they etched a new image of a person. This one, however, was neither pure image nor memory nor recording nor anything else. It was a representation of a very real person, although what features she bore were completely concealed behind her elaborate cape, pauldrons, helmet, and clothing. While the style was different and definitely not of the world, she would have appeared to anyone from that world to be an official. Some sort of page or emissary.
She opened her mouth and addressed them in a language unintelligible to almost all.
“State your resolution.”
A woman’s voice from the helmet of one of the metal warriors answered in the same language.
“Primary objective has failed. Unable to neutralize the Angra Mainyu prior to her awakening.”
“False information was submitted by Vice Executor Luna,” a different female’s voice came from another helmet. “Encountered an unexpected assailant with unidentifiable powers both in nature and magnitude.”
“Submitting full recording of encounter now,” a third female’s voice spoke from the final helmet, albeit one with what seemed like a mechanical “accent” over it. “Analysis indicates that assailant was previously-declared-deceased Executor Celestia with 83.7 percent certainty.”
The figure on the image inhaled and exhaled.
“Most peculiar. It no longer matters, however. We are already entering the planet’s atmosphere as we speak. We can handle any difficulty from here. You are on stand by until needed. From this point on, this world and all living creatures on it belong to Imperium Crystal.”
The beams turned off, and with it came the image.
Only a few seconds later, far in the skies above, a great gleaming light appeared in the heavens and began to descend—heading straight for the frozen wastes at the bottom of the world.
